Jubal Sackett (1985)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 04

  “We put upon leaves the stories of our great men, and of wars, but the best books are those that repeat the wisdom of our grandfathers.”

  “The Englishman’s book was like that?”

  “I do not know what book he had, but you said he read from the book. Do you remember what he read?”

  “What he reads sings. I think he has medicine songs, but he say, ‘Only in a way.’ He speaks of the ‘snows of yesteryear.’ “

  “Frangois Villon,” I said.

  “What?”

  “That line was written by a French poet, a long, long time ago.”

  “French? He say Frenchmans his enemy!”

  “That was probably right,” I said, “but that would not keep him from liking his poetry. Did you never sing the songs of another tribe?”

  He started to say no and then shrugged. “We change them. Anyway, they were our songs once … I think.”

  “My leg is better. Tomorrow I shall walk without a crutch.”

  “Better you walk,” Keokotah said. “I think much trouble come. I think we have to fight soon.”

  We slept, and once I awakened in the night. Our fire was down to coals, and above us the stars had gone. The air smelled like rain and I thought of us alone in all that vast and almost empty land.

  It was a lonely, eerie feeling. Alone … all, all alone!

  I drew my blanket around my shoulders and listened to the rustling of the river.

  It was a long time before I was again asleep.

  Chapter Twelve.

  Now I made ready my pistols. I did not wish to use them but the need might be great. My bow was ever beside me, an arrow ever ready.

  Endlessly wound the river along its timbered banks, brushing the roots of leaning trees, heavy with foliage. Dead trees, uprooted far upstream, were a danger to birchbark canoes, and at no time dared we relax. Around each bend, and the twists and turns were many, might lie enemy Indians or some obstruction to rip our bottom out.

  Yet there was beauty everywhere and we were lonely on the river. The forest was dark and deep with shadows where cypress trees were festooned with veils of Spanish moss. Water oak, hickory, tupelo gum, and many other trees clustered the banks, and hummingbirds danced above the water, opalescent feathers catching the light as if they played with their own beauty.

  We startled a flock of ducks, and Keokotah killed one with an arrow. We lived on and off the river, catching fish, killing wood pigeons and geese. Often we saw bears, but they seemed more curious than aggressive. Ours was an easy life.

  “No mans here,” Keokotah suggested.

  “Sometimes it is better so.”

  He threw me a quick glance over his shoulder, a glance of agreement. Perhaps that was why Keokotah traveled, to be alone with all this, or almost alone. How long would it remain so? Knowing the driving, acquisitive people from whom I came, I did not give it long. We were among the first and the most fortunate. A man might travel forever here, living easily off the country, untrammeled and free.

  “The Englishman? You knew him long?”

  He held a hand above the water. “I am no higher when he come. I am a man when he die.”

  This surprised me, for I had not realized he had been with them so long. This was a mystery. Why would an educated, intelligent man choose to live his life away from all he knew? And how had he come there in the first place?

  “It is good to have a friend.”

  He made no reply, but after a few minutes he said, “It bad. No good for me.”

  “No good to have a friend? But that’s—”

  “I ver’ small. He tell stories. I like stories. No stories of coyote. No stories of owl. Stories of men in iron who fight on horseback.” He paused. “What is horse?”

  Of course, he had never seen a horse. “It is an animal. Larger than an elk. It has no horns. Men ride them.”

  “Ride?”

  “Sit astride of them and travel far.”

  “He has long tail? Two ears … so?” He held up two fingers.

  “That’s it.”

  “I have seen him. Run ver’ fast.”

  “You’ve seen ahorse? But that could not be, you—!” I stopped in time. There had been that other day when he spoke of what could only be an elephant, but with long hair. I had made him angry then. “Where did you see it?”

  “Many.” He gestured off to the south. “I kill young one. Eat him.” He looked at me to see if I believed. “Only one toe. Ver’ hard.”

  I’d be damned. I’d be very damned. Horses here? But then, the story had it that when De Soto died his men built boats and went down the river. What did they do with their horses? If they had turned them loose they might well have gone wild. And the Spanish were inclined to ride stallions, using mares or mules for pack animals.

  Horses … now wouldn’t that be something! If we could catch and break a couple of horses—

  If a man had something to ride, those plains in the Far Seeing Lands might not seem so vast.

  Our canoe glided smoothly upon the waters of the Mississippi and as night came on we held closer to the western shores. Once we saw a thin smoke but kept well into the stream, for we would find no friends here. At night we camped on a muddy point and killed a water moccasin as we landed. It was a big snake.

  Keokotah puzzled me. That the Kickapoo were wanderers we had learned from the Cherokees, but I sensed something else in him. Had his boyhood teacher been too good? Had the lonely Englishman taught his pupil too well? Had the Englishman’s teaching created a misfit, as I was?

  The thought came unbidden, unwanted, unexpected. Yet was I not a misfit, too? Had not Sakim’s teaching given me ideas I might never have had?

  Kin-Ring and Yance were better fitted for survival in the New World than I. Yance perhaps best of all, for he asked no questions. He accepted what he found and dealt with it in the best way he could. He lived with his world and had no thought of changing it. If a tree got in the way of his plowing he cut it down. If an Indian tried to kill him, he killed the Indian and went on about his business. Kin-Ring was much the same, although Kin was a planner, a looker-ahead.

  Sakim had been a philosopher and a scientist in his own way, and like those of his time and country his interests had extended into all things. He had questions to ask and answers to seek. He had learning to do, as I had.

  Keokotah had a restless mind. The Englishman had aroused something in him that took him away from his people. I began to see that his thinking was no longer theirs.

  We were strange ones, Keokotah and I, but the result was less for me than for him. The Indian peoples I had known belonged to clans, and the clans demanded that each member conform. The Indian seemed to have lived much as he had for hundreds of years, and now here and there an Englishman, a Scotsman, a Frenchman was coming among them with disturbing new weapons, new ideas. Keokotah was a victim of change. His Englishman had dropped a pebble into the pool of his thinking, and who knew where the ripples would end?

  “Big village soon.” Keokotah pointed ahead of us. “Quapaw.” He swept a hand to include the country we were in and where we had come from. “Osage. Ver’ tall mans.” His hands measured a distance of a foot or more. “Taller than me.”

  Six and a half or seven feet tall? It was a lot. By signs he indicated they were slightly stooped and had narrow shoulders.

  “No good for us. Kickapoo fight him.”

  The village was on the eastern shore so we hugged the western, watching for the mouth of the Arkansas River, which would soon appear. It flowed into the Mississippi from the northwest and despite its flow of water could be easily missed because of the bayous and convolutions of the Mississippi.

  According to Keokotah the Quapaw were allied to or a part of the Osage people, but were inclined to be more friendly than the Osage, who were very jealous of their lands along the river.

  At dusk we killed a deer.

  Night came suddenly to the river. The shadows under the trees merged and became one, t
he day sounds ended and the night sounds began, tentatively at first. Bullfrogs spoke loudly in the night, and some large thing splashed in the water. “Alligator,” Keokotah said, “a big one.”

  Alligators here? It could be. We often saw them in Carolina, and Yance had seen many when he went south to trade with the Spanish for horses.

  The thought of our flimsy canoe with alligators about was not a pleasant one.

  He made a motion for silence and began dipping his paddle with great care. The canoe glided through the dark, glistening water. There was a smell of rotting wood and vegetation from the shore. Once, on a fallen tree lying in the water we passed only the length of a paddle from a huge bear. He was as startled as we, but we slid past in the dark water and he gave only a surprised grunt.

  It was very still but for the sounds from the forest and the soft rustle of water. In the distance and across the river we heard the beat of drums and occasionally a shrill yell. Then a large island came between us and the village.

  “Soon,” Keokotah whispered.

  Several long minutes passed. Peering into the darkness of the western shore I saw nothing but a wall of blackness where the trees were. The air was damp and still. The current was strong.

  We felt the movement of water before we saw it. There was a push against the right side of the canoe, thrusting us toward the middle of the stream.

  “Now,” Keokotah said. “It is here!”

  He turned the bow into the now strong current from our right and then he dug in, paddling with strength. No longer drifting with a current, now we were breasting one, and a strong one at that.

  It was a rich and lovely country and there was beauty where the river ran. Once a canoe with four warriors tried to overtake us, but their clumsy dugout canoe was no match for our lighter craft and we drew steadily away from them until finally they gave up.

  My wounds had healed well. There were scars on my skull from the teeth of the cat, and there would always be claw marks on my thighs and one hip.

  Without doubt Keokotah had been correct. The panther who had attacked me had had one injured leg and could no longer capture and kill a deer except with the greatest good luck. It must have depended upon slower, less agile game. I must have seemed a perfect catch. I had been fortunate in seeing the beast before it leaped.

  The wounds had healed, but the scars would be mine forever. There were none on my face. Not that it mattered. I smiled at myself. Where I was going no one would care about my looks, and my mother and Lila were far away.

  The Arkansas wound about as much as had the Mississippi, and its banks were heavy with fine timber. One of the cargoes we had often sent to England for sale or trade was timber for the masts of ships. Here there were many tall, fine trees. My eye had learned to measure them, for often as a boy I had gone timber cruising with my father or Jeremy Ring.

  Often we had sat long hours studying the crude charts we had and maps my father had put together from the stories of Indians and our wanderings. Somewhere to the south was a great gulf into which the Mississippi must flow. Someday men would build ships here and send their timbers, furs, and whatever else there was down the river to that gulf and to the sea.

  The great civilizations had often been born of rivers or at river crossings. The Nile, the Tigris-Euphrates, the rivers of India, the Tiber, the Seine, and the Thames. One day such a civilization might grow along the Mississippi.

  Always my eyes were alert for what could be found. This had been our way at Shooting Creek, for whenever we returned from a hunt our father had questioned us as to what we had seen. He wanted not only animal or Indian sign, but the kind of rocks, the timber, possible sources of minerals of which we always stood in need.

  We had located deposits of sulphur, iron, and lead and of course were always alert for gems. Some had been found of real quality, and one such might buy the entire cargo of a small ship.

  We had double reason for being alert now. Any Indian whom we saw was a possible enemy, and we must now watch for signs of Itchakomi and her party.

  Several times we stopped at places that offered campsites, but we found nothing. How were they traveling? By canoe or over the land? The Natchee were a river people, so they must have canoes.

  Our first discovery was by chance. Weary with a long day’s struggle against a strong current, we had sighted a creek entering the river, and we turned our canoe into the mouth of the creek and pulled it up on the muddy bank. Keokotah had leaped ashore to scout the place and as I tugged the canoe higher and made it secure with a length of rawhide rope tied to a root I glimpsed something in the mud.

  Taking hold I started to pick up what seemed like a bit of metal, and it resisted. Surprised, I dug around it and found that what I had was chain mail.

  It needed time, but I dug the mud from around it and then dipped it into the stream to rinse more mud away. It was a coat of mail once worn by some Spanish soldier. One of De Soto’s men? Probably not, but it was possible. De Soto had come to the Mississippi something like a hundred years ago, but other Spanish soldiers might have been around since then.

  Keokotah had a fire going, and when I came up with the coat of mail he showed me the remains of another fire. He had built his own away from it so I might see. It was an Indian fire, and just back from it at the edge of the woods a shelter had been built of woven branches, some from living trees.

  “Natchee,” he said.

  It had been a shelter for one person, and a bed of boughs and cattails had been carefully prepared. It was old. Weeks, but more likely months, had gone by. The cattails, evidently green when laid in place, were dried out and dead now.

  It was a shelter for one person. Itchakomi?

  There were no tracks. No other signs. Yet others had camped here; probably the wearer of the coat of mail had been one of them, in some bygone year.

  Sitting by the fire that night I cleaned the mail still more, working the rust out of it and rubbing it with sand to bring back the brightness. I explained its purpose to Keokotah.

  We kept our fire small, for we had no wish to attract attention. The finding of the coat of mail on the same site as what could have been Itchakomi’s camp did not surprise me. Others had stopped here for the same reason we had, and as still others would in years to come. A good campsite for one is also good for another.

  Looking down at the bed where Itchakomi could have slept I wondered how she fared? Was she still alive? Had she found the place she sought?

  She was a Sun, a great lady among her people, yet when she traveled it must be like any other. Among the Indians we had known there was nothing comparable, although we had heard many stories of the Natchee. She was seeking a new home for her people just as my father had done, and as I had been doing when I sought the valley of the Sequatchie. I wished her success.

  As for Kapata … we would meet again.

  I was sure of it, and when we did I would be on my feet and armed.

  I hoped it would be soon.

  Chapter Thirteen.

  There was sunlight on the water that morning, but shadows still lurked under the trees along the banks. The trees leaned over the river, brushing our heads with their leaves as we passed. We paddled on into the morning, wary of what might come, knowing that danger could await beyond every bend of the river.

  Kapata was somewhere ahead of us, I believed. Our good fortune was that he did not know we followed. How long we would have such fortune we did not know.

  Peace lay upon the land, the ripples caught diamonds from the sun, and a kingfisher flew up, skimmed the water ahead of us, and then veered suddenly. Keokotah shipped his paddle and took up his bow, notching an arrow. Something had startled the kingfisher, something ahead of us, just beyond the point of trees. I handled the paddle as gently as possible to provide a good shooting platform for Keokotah.

  A tumble of dead trees on the point obscured what lay before us. Dipping the paddle deep I propelled the canoe past the point, ready to backwater into the protecti
on of the driftwood.

  Smoke slowly rising from burned lodges, a bloody man standing erect amidst a welter of sprawled bodies, skulls stripped of their flesh bobbing on stakes or poles, broken pots and kettles strewn about—a village destroyed, looted, its people slain. Never had I seen the like.

  As we pushed our canoe ashore the standing warrior fell and we went to him. His skull was bloody, for his scalp had been ripped away when they believed him dead or did not care. A terrible gash, straight and clean, had laid open his body for all of twenty inches, and there were similar gashes in his thighs. The wounds had bled badly, but his eyes were open and aware.

  He had fallen among other bodies, mutilated and dead, so we lifted him away and Keokotah brought the campfire to life and dipped water from the river into a piece of broken pot, to be heated.

  We bathed his wounds clean and with sinew such as we always carried we stitched the slashes in his legs and body. He lay still, perfectly conscious, but making no sound as we worked.

  No others lived. I put out a few fires, wandering about through the scene of horror. Everything of value had been carried away or destroyed. It was apparent the raid had caught them still asleep and had been totally unexpected. What weapons that had not been carried away had been thrust into the dead or dying.

  I brought water from the creek, and the wounded Indian drank thirstily. When I took the cup from his lips, he spoke, looking at me.

  “He say he is Quapaw,” Keokotah said.

  I gestured to Keokotah. “He is Kickapoo,” I said.

  “He knows what I am,” Keokotah said. “He knows not you.”

  What could I say? That I was an Englishman? He would not recognize the tribe, and who was I, really? I had been born here, in this land, so I could be called an American. But what did that mean? The Quapaw was born here, too.

  “I am Sackett,” I said, “a son of Barnabas.”

  “Ah?” he whispered. “Sackett!”

  He knew the name. Had my father’s reputation traveled so far, then? It was true that he had been in America for most of thirty years, and much of that had been lived at Shooting Creek. Indians of many tribes had traded with us and we ourselves had wandered.