Lando (1962)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 08

  End it with a blow, I thought, and save him a bad beating. That was in my mind when I swung.

  Suddenly long fingers caught my wrist with a strength I’d never have believed, and the next thing I knew I was flying through the air, to land with a thump on the hard ground. It fairly knocked the wind from me, and the nonsense from my brain as well; but then I saw him standing a few feet away, regarding me coolly.

  Anger surged through me and I lunged up from the ground, prepared for that throw he had used upon me.

  This time I struck the ground even harder—he had thrown me in another way, and so suddenly and violently that I had no idea how it was done.

  There was some sense in me after all, for I looked up at him and grinned. “At least you know a few tricks. Are these what you would show me?”

  “These, and more,” he said. “Now drink your coffee. It grows cold.”

  My anger was gone, and my good sense warned me that had he been my enemy I should now have been crippled or dead. For once down, he could put the boots to me and kick in my ribs, crush my chest or crush my skull. In such fighting there is no sportsmanship, for it is no game but is in deadly earnest, and men fight to win.

  “Have you heard of Jem Mace?” he asked me.

  “No.”

  “He was the world champion prize fighter, an Englishman and a gypsy. He whipped the best of them, and he was not a large man, but he was among the first to apply science to the art of fist fighting. He taught me boxing and I have sparred with him many times.

  “Footwork is not mere dancing about. By footwork you can shift a man out of position to strike you effectively, and still leave yourself in position to strike him. By learning to duck and slip punches, you can work close to a man and still keep your hands free for punching. Certain blows automatically create openings for the blows to follow.”

  He refilled his cup. “A man who travels alone must look out for himself.”

  “You have your knives.”

  “Aye, but a hand properly used can be as dangerous as a knife.” He was silent for a moment, and then added, “And a man is not lynched for what he does with his hands.”

  We both were still, letting the campfire warm our memories. What memories the Tinker had, what strange thoughts might come into his head, andof what strange things he had seen, I knew nothing, but my own memories went back to the day pa left me with Will Caffrey.

  Three heavy sacks of gold he passed over to Caffrey that day, and then he said, “This is my son, of whom I have spoken. Care for him well, and every third coin is your own.”

  “You’ll be leaving now?”

  “Yes … to wander is a means to forgetting, and we were very close, my wife and I.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “I’ll come back, son.

  Do you be a good boy now.”

  Pa advised Caffrey to send me to the best schools and treat me well, and in due time he would return.

  For the first year I was treated well enough, yet long before the change came I had seen shadows of it. Often at night I would hear Mrs.

  Caffrey complaining of the extra burden I was, and how much the money would mean to them if they had not to think of me. And Caffrey would speculate aloud on how much interest the money would bring, and what could be bought of lands and cattle with such an amount of gold.

  Her ^ws bothered me more than his, for I sensed an evil in her that was not in him. He was a greedy, selfish man, close with money and hard-fisted as well as self-righteous; but as for her —I think she would have murdered me. Indeed, I think it was in her mind to do so.

  Caffrey had a reputation for honesty, but many a man with such a reputation simply has not been found out or tested, andfor Will Caffrey the test of those bags of gold was too much for his principles to bear. The year after pa had gone they took me from school—theirthe own son continued—and they put me to work with the field hands. Eleven years old I was then, and no place to go, nor anyone to turn to.

  The day came when Duncan struck me.

  Contemptuous of me he was, taking that from his parents’ treatment of me, and he often sneered or cursed at me, but when he struck me we had at it, knuckle and skull.

  It was even-up fighting until I realized all his blows were struck at my face, so I scrooched down as he rushed at me and struck him a mighty blow in the belly.

  It taken his wind. He let go a grunt and his mouth dropped open, so I spread wide my legs and let go at his chin.

  With his mouth open and jaw slack, a girl might have broken his jaw, and I did, for I was a naturally strong boy who had worked hard and done much running and climbing in the forest.

  He fell back against the woodpile where I had been working, his face all white and strange-looking, but my blood was up and I swung a final fist against his nose, which broke, streaming blood over his lips and chin.

  The door slammed and his ma and pa were coming at me, Will Caffrey with his cane lifted, and her with her fingers spread like claws.

  I taken out.

  So far as I could see, nothing was keeping me, and by the time I stopped running I was far off in the piney woods and nighttime a-coming on.

  By that time I was twelve years old and knew only the mountains. The towns I feared, so it never occurred to me to leave all I had known behind.

  The one place I knew was the cabin, and there I had known happiness, so I turned up through the woods, hunting the way.

  It was thirty-odd miles of rough mountain and forest, and I slept three nights before I got there, the first nights I ever spent in the forest alone.

  When at last I came to the cabin I was a tuckered-out boy.

  If they ever came seeking me, I never knew. They might have come before I got back, or after, when I was off a-hunting. More than likely they were pleased to be free of me, for now they had the gold.

  Five years I lived there alone.

  That isn’t to say I didn’t see anybody in all that time. Long before ma died I used to go hunting with the Cherokee boys, and I could use a bow and arrow or set a snare as good as the best of them. These were wild Cherokees who took to the mountains when the government moved the Indians west.

  Pa had been friendly with them, and they liked me.

  Whenever I was over that way I was sure of a meal, and many a time during that first year I made it a point.

  Whilst working with Caffrey I had done most of the kitchen-garden planting, and there was seed at the house. The Cherokees were planting Indians, so I got more seed from them, and I spaded up garden space and planted melons, corn, potatoes, and schlike. For the rest, I hunted the woods for game, berries, nuts, and roots.

  It would be a lie to say I was brave, forofa night I was a scared boy, and more than once I cried myself to sleep, remembering ma and wishing pa would come home.

  Those first years it was only the thought of pa coming back that kept me going. Caffrey had been sure pa was dead and had never left off telling me so, although why he should be so sure I never knew. It wasn’t until I was past fifteen that I really gave up hope. In my thinking mind I was sure after that that he would not come back, but my ears pricked every time I heard a horse on the trail.

  Travel was no kind thing those days, what with killers along the Natchez Trace and the Wilderness Road, Bald Knobbers, and varmints generally. Many a man who set out from home never got back, and who was to say what became of him?

  First off, I swapped some dress goods ma had in her trunk for a buckskin hunting shirt and leggings; and after I had trapped, I traded my muskrat and red-fox skins with the Cherokees for things I needed. The cornmill was there, and after my first harvest I always had corn.

  My fourteenth birthday came along and ma wasn’t there to bake me a cake like she’d done, so I fried myself up a batch of turkey eggs.

  And that was a big day, because just shy of noon when I was fixing to set up to table, the Tinker came along the trail.

  It was the first time I’d seen him, although I’d heard tell of him. He sat
up to table with me and told me the news of the Settlements. After that he always stopped by.

  The Tinker hadn’t very much to say that first time, but he did a sight of looking and seeing. So I showed him around, proud of the cabin pa had built and the way he’d used water from the creek to irrigate the fields when they needed water— although rain usually took care of that.

  The Tinker noticed everything, but it wasn’t until a long time after, that some of his questions started coming back to mind to puzzle me. Especially, about the gold.

  Once he asked me if I had any gold money … said he could get a lot for gold.

  So I told him about all our gold going to Will Caffrey, and he got me to draw him a picture what those gold pieces looked like.

  “Your pa,” he said, “must have been a traveled man.”

  “Sacketts haven’t taken much to travel,”

  I said, “although we hear tell that a long time ago, before they came over to the Colonies, some of them were sailors.”

  “Like your pa,” he said.

  “Pa? If he was a sailor he never said anything about it to me. Nor did ma ever speak of it.”

  He looked at a knot I had made in a piece of rope. “Good tight knot. Your pa teach you that?”

  “Sure—t’s a bowline. He taught me to tie knots before he taught me letters. Two half-hitches, bowline, bowline-on-a-bight, sheep’s bend—all manner of knots.”

  “Sailor knots,” the Tinker said.

  “I wouldn’t know. I expect a good knot is useful to a lot of folks beside sailors.”

  Aside from the cornmill and ma’s trunk filled with fixings, there wasn’t much left at the cabin beside pa’s worn-out Ballard rifle and the garden tools. In the trunk was ma’s keepsake box. It was four inches deep, four inches wide and eight inches long, and was made of teakwood. Inside she kept family papers and a few odds and ends of value to her.

  The Ballard was old, and no gun to be taking to the western lands, so I figured to swap it off when I did the mill, or at the first good chance.

  If I was going to meet up with Bald Knobbers or wild Indians I would need a new, reliable gun.

  Now the Tinker, he sat there smoking, and finally as the fire died down he said, “Daylight be all right for you?”

  It was all right, so come daylight we taken off down the mountain for the last time.

  One time, there on the trail, I stopped and looked back. There was a mist around the peaks, and the one that marked the cabin was hidden. The cabin was up there in those trees. I reckoned never to see it again, or ma’s grave, out where pa dug it under the big pine.

  A lot of me was staying behind, but I guess pa left a lot up there, too.

  And then we rounded the last bend in the trail and my mountain was hidden from sight. Before us lay the Crossing, and I had seen the last of the place where I was born.

  Chapter Two.

  We fetched up to the Crossing in a light spatter of rain, and I made a dicker with the storekeeper, swapping my cornmill for a one-eyed, spavined mare.

  It was in my mind to become rich in the western lands, but a body does not become rich tomorrow without starting today, so I taken my mare to a meadow and staked her out on good grass. A man who wants to become rich had better start thinking of increase, and that mare could have a colt.

  The Tinker was disgusted with me. “You bragged you’d a mind for swapping, but what can a man do with a one-eyed, spavined mare?”

  Me, I just grinned at him. Two years now I’d had it in my mind to own that little mare. “Did you ever hear of the Highland Bay?”

  “She was the talk of the mountains before she broke a leg and they had to shoot her.”

  “Seven or eight years ago the Highland Bay ran the legs off everything in these parts, and won many a race in the lowlands, too.”

  “I recall.”

  “Well, when I was working in the fields for Caffrey, the Highland Bay was running loose in the next pasture. A little scrub stallion tore down the fence and got to her.”

  “And you think this no-‘count little mare is their get?”

  “I know it. Fact is, I lent a hand at her birthing. Old Heywood, he who owned the Highland Bay, he was so mad he gave the colt to a field hand.”

  There was a thoughtful look in the Tinker’s eyes.

  “So you have a one-eyed, spavined mare out of the Highland Bay by a scrub stallion. Now where are you?”

  “I hear tell those Mexicans and Indians out west hold strong to racing. I figure to get me a mule that will outrun any horse they’ve got.”

  “Out of that mare?” he scoffed.

  “Her get,” I said. “She can have a colt, and sired by the right jack stud I reckon to turn up a fast mule.”

  We sat there on the bank watching that little mare feed on green meadow grass, and after a bit, I said to the Tinker, “When a man owes me, one way or another I figure to collect. Do you know where Caffrey keeps his prize jack?”

  He didn’t answer, but after a bit he said, “Nobody ever races a mule.”

  “Tinker, where there’s something will run, there’s somebody will bet on it. Why, right in these mountains you could get a bet on a fast cow, and many a mule is faster than a horse, although mighty few people believe it. The way I see it, the fewer folk who believe a mule can run, the better.”

  Caffrey’s jackass could kill a man or a stallion, and had sired some of the best mules ever set foot. Before dark we were hidden in a clump of dogwood and willow right up against the Caffrey pasture fence.

  The wind was across the pasture and from time to time the jack could catch scent of my mare, and while he couldn’t quite locate her, he was stomping around in there, tossing his head and looking.

  “Two things,” I said, “had to work right for me to leave this here country—the timing had to be right: You had to come up the trail, and that mare of mine had to be ready. And this here jack will work the charm.”

  “You’re smarter than I thought,” he said, and then we sat quiet, slapping mosquitoes and waiting until it was full dark. Crickets sang in the brush, and there was a pleasant smell of fresh-mown hay.

  Watching the lights of that big white house Caffrey had built just two years ago, I got to thinking how elegant it must be behind those curtains. Would I ever live in a house like that?

  And have folks about who loved me? Or would I always be a-setting out in the dark, looking on?

  Caffrey had done well with pa’s money. He had it at a time when gold had great value, and he’d bought with a shrewd eye there at the war’s last years. He was one of the richest men around.

  When I called on him at Meeting to return the money I had no hope I would get it, but I wanted to put it square before the community that he had wrongfully used money with which he had been trusted.

  I’d no money nor witnesses to open an action for recovery … but almost everybody around had wondered where he got that gold money.

  He had talked large of running for office, but I felt a man who would be dishonest with a boy was no man to trust with government. It always seemed to me that a man who would betray the trust of his fellow citizens is the lowest of all, and I wanted no such man as Will Caffrey to have that chance.

  When I called upon him at Meeting I had my plans made to leave the mountains, for now he would not rest until he had me jailed or done away with.

  Right now I was risking everything, for if I was caught I would be in real trouble.

  Slapping at a mosquito, I swore softly and the Tinker commented, “It’s the salt. They like the salt in your blood. On jungle rivers mosquitoes will swarm around a white man before going near a native, because a white man uses more salt.”

  “You’ve been to the jungle?”

  “I’ve heard tell,” he said.

  That was the Tinker’s way. He would not speak of himself. Right then he was probably smiling at me in the dark, but all I could see was the glint of those gold earrings. Only man I ever did see who wore earri
ngs.

  His being there worried me some. He was an outlander, and Tinker or not, mountain folks are suspicious of outlanders. The Tinker was a needful man in the mountains, but folks had never rightly accepted him … so why had he come away with me?

  When the barnyard noises ceased—the sounds of milking and doors slamming—we went up to the white rails of that fence and I taken a pick-head from my gear and pried loose that rail.

  That one, and the next.

  The mare went into that pasture like she knew what she was there for, and against the sky we saw the jack’s head come up and we heard him blow. Then we heard the preen and prance of his hoofs as he came toward the mare.

  We waited under the dogwood, neither of us of a mind to get shot in another man’s pasture. We were half dozing and a couple of hours had gone by.

  Even the mosquitoes were tiring.

  Of a sudden the Tinker put a hand to my arm.

  “Somebody coming,” he said, and I caught the flicker of the shine on a blade in his hand.

  We listened … horses coming. Two, maybe three. The first voice we heard was Duncan Caffrey’s.

  “We’ve got to have a good horse or two in those races out west,” he was saying. “The Bishop wouldn’t like it if he lost money. The Bishop is touchy about money.”

  They had drawn up right beside the grove where we were hidden.

  The older man spoke. “Now tell me about that gold. You say your pa had it from a man named Sackett? Where’s that man now?”

  “He left out of here. Pa thinks he’s dead.”

  The Tinker cupped his hands to my ear. “Let’s get out of this.”

  The trouble was that my mare was out in that pasture and I didn’t want to leave her. No more did I want to leave off listening to that talk.

  “You go ahead,” I whispered. “I’ll catch up or meet you at the crossing of the Tombigbee.”

  He hoisted his pack, then took up mine.

  How he disappeared so quick with those packs, I’ll never guess. And at the time I thought nothing of his taking up my pack, for I’d have trouble getting it and the mare both out of here.

  “What difference does it make?” Dun Caffrey sounded impatient. “He’s nobody.”