Ride the River (1983) s-5

by Louis L'Amour

  A couple of times I almost dozed; then I tried making memories come back, something to keep my mind busy. I tried wondering what Regal was doing and how far it was to the Clinch Mountains, where some of us Sacketts lived.

  They couldn't be far away. That is, as the crow flies. The trouble was, they had no idea they had kinfolk in trouble. I wished they did. I was scared for me and I was scared for those boys sleepin' yonder. If anything happened to them, I'd never forgive myself.

  Right then I began to think like Pa would, or Regal; I began to think about takin' my rifle-gun and playin' Injun down through the woods until I found their camp. If I could catch sight of them, I knew I could leave them with somethin' to bury. A few days ago I'd not have thought seriously of that, but when folks you care about are in danger, you do get to thinkin' such thoughts.

  This was a part of the country I knew only from hear-tell, but often of an evening when the boys were settin' around they'd talk of lands where they'd hunted and how the land lay. That's all we knew of much of the country around, yet it was all we needed.

  Suddenly that shep dog lifted his head from his paws, he lifted his head and he started to growl, away down deep in his chest.

  "Easy, boy!" I whispered. "Easy, now!"

  I reached out with my rifle muzzle and prodded Dorian, hoping he'd wake up quiet. There's some who grunt and groan or wake up exclaimin'. He didn't, I'll give him that. His eyes opened and he followed the rifle barrel to me. I put my finger to my lips and indicated the dog, his hackles all bristled up. Dorian reached out a hand, and Archie sat up, drawing his pistol.

  The little fire we'd had had gone out, long since. There was no light but from the stars, and few of them. We sat quiet, listening.

  We heard faint sounds from the woods, expected sounds. Then a whisper of movement down below where we lay on the ledge. If we kept silent, they might not even guess there was a ledge or a place for us to hide. I held my rifle-gun ready, but I didn't cock it. That sound could he heard sharp and clear in the night.

  A low wind stirred the leaves and moaned through the pines. My mouth was dry, and I could feel my heart beating, slow and heavy.

  Something was moving down there, working its way through the woods. We waited, holding our breath, but it moved off, and after a time we began to breath easy again.

  Setting there, to keep myself busy, I rigged a sling with which to carry my carpetbag easier. Something I could hang down my back from a shoulder.

  Right back of where I sat was the limestone cliff, topped with pines and a scattering of other trees. On my left the cliff broke off and thick forest swept away down along the mountain.

  I stood up, slinging my carpetbag to try it, taking up my rifle. The dog was not a dozen feet away, peering into the darkness. "No, Shep," I whispered. "Ssh!"

  I was standing in the shadows and I moved toward that place where the cliff broke off into the forest. It was darker there and I would be able to see better when I looked back.

  Dorian was on his feet; Archie squatted against the rock wall.

  Shep came suddenly to his feet, staring at the trees on the other side of the clearing and growling, low and deep.

  Archie had his gun out, waiting.

  "Don't you make a move!" The voice spoke from the darkness across the way. "Don't you make a move!"

  Chapter 18

  Three years back, when he saw that wall of water comin' down the gorge, he thought he was a goner. Thing that saved him was that yellow poplar right there on the rising edge of the gorge, and he taken to it, making a fast jump to the first limb and then climbing higher. The water kept him there all day and part of the night, but he'd not forgotten what he saw.

  Big old logs were coming down that gorge like shot from a gun, and later when the water was down he went below where they hit the main river, and there they were, all floating pretty as you please in a little bay.

  Trulove Sackett was not a man to overlook a thing like that, so he fetched his calk boots and pike pole and he worked out on those logs, cutting the limbs with his ax and bunching them. When he had a log raft made, he packed some grub and floated them down the river to sell.

  When fall came and the leaves were dropping from the trees, he went back up that gorge again, carrying his rifle-gun. Sure enough, it was as he'd remembered, a long slope above that gorge, both sides thick with a fine stand of yellow poplar, with here and there an oak or, lower down, a sycamore.

  That first raft of logs had been happenstance. A body couldn't depend on such things to make a living by, so he fetched his cross-cut saw and double-bit ax and went to work. The cliff was so steep that once he cut a tree it couldn't do anything but fall, sometimes in the creek but more often on the side of the creek.

  Trulove wasn't worried. Every third or fourth year there would be a high-water flood on that creek and he would cut trees and wait.

  When the chores were done and there was a fresh-killed deer hangin' out on the porch for eatin'-meat, Trulove would fetch his tools to the gorge. It was a long walk, a good ten miles from home, but he'd carry a bait , with him and a jug of persimmon beer.

  First he'd set out on a rocky place he knew, and restin' that jug on the fork of his elbow, he'd have a drink, cork her up again, wipe the back of his hand across his mouth, and give study to that slope, pickin' each tree real careful so it could get a clear fall to the creek bed.

  If a tree got hung up on that slope, he'd have to get down there and cut it free, and when a tree that size, maybe six to ten feet through, when a tree like that starts to move, a body had better be somewhere else, fast. So he chose the trees with care to keep the slope cleared and give them a free fall.

  Trulove Sackett was six-feet-six inches tall and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds and had never found anything he could take hold of that he couldn't lift. The folks down to the forks of the creek said Trulove could jump higher and farther than any man alive, and run faster, although there was nothing and nobody who could make him run. That was what folks said about Trulove, and he just smiled, drank a little persimmon beer, and went back to hand-loggin', which was what he knew best.

  He was settin' on that rock studying his next set-to with them yellow poplars when he heard somebody halloo at him.

  He knew the voice. He looked down the gorge to where a man was hoppin' from rock to rock to come up the slope. That would only be Macon. Nobody else knew where he was or knew about the loggin' he was doing on chance of a spring flood some year.

  Macon Sackett spent most of his time huntin' ginseng to be shipped off to China. In between times he trapped a little fur.

  When Macon reached the rock, Trulove handed him the jug and Macon taken a pull. "Now, that's mighty fine drinkin', but a body has to have a taste for it. I know folks can't abide persimmon beer nor brandy."

  "That's most of them. Leaves more for us."

  Macon studied the slope, then glanced at Trulove. "That's a killer, Trulove," he commented, "that slope is. One o' them big logs will get you sometime."

  "Maybe."

  Macon hadn't come this far to talk logging, so Trulove waited, taking another pull at the jug. If he was to get anything done, it was time he started. Took a while to fell the big ones.

  Macon stropped his knife blade on his boot sole. Sized it up, stropped some more. "You mind that nubbin of a girl from over by Tuckalucky Cove? Echo, her name was?"

  "The one who outshot all the boys over at Caney's Fork?"

  "That's the one." Macon tested the edge of the blade on a hair. "She's been down to the Settlements to pick up some money due her. Seems like she's on her way home with a couple of pilgrims an' there's somebody after her."

  "They better not catch up."

  "Oh, she can shoot, all right! She can prob'ly shoot better than anybody, but there's a passel of them." He paused a moment. "One of them is Felix Horst, from over on the trace."

  Trulove put the cork in the jug and smacked it with his palm to settle it solid. "Where they at?" />
  "Word come from somebody down on the Russell Fork. He figured we should know." Macon paused.

  "She'll be headed for the Cove. Where's Mordecai?"

  "On his way, I expect. Gent who passed the word to me saw him first."

  Trulove cached his tools along with the jug, still more than half-full. He picked up a small cache of food, powder, and shot he kept there.

  They crossed Big Moccasin Creek and came through the trees to the old Boone Trail. It was not far from here that Boone's oldest son, James, had been killed by Indians, along with several others. That had been back around '73, if Trulove recalled correctly.

  They were running smoothly, easily, with the swinging stride of the long hunter.

  "Mordecai will get there before we do," Macon said.

  "Aye, he'll have the lead on us."

  When they slowed to a walk after an hour's run, Trulove asked, "Two pilgrims seein' her home?"

  "A big black man and a Yankee, the way it was said. A big young man."

  "Honey draws flies," Trulove commented. "As I recall, she was right shapely an' pert."

  It was coming on to day-down, with shadows gathering. The two ran on, taking time only to pause for a drink at a cold branch that trickled down the rocks. They rested for a moment, thinking of what lay ahead, and then they were off again, running easily.

  "Should come up to that country come dawn. Then we got to find them."

  Macon was a long, lean man, a Clinch Mountain Sackett, as was Trulove, a man given to long periods in the woods hunting for ginseng, usually alone. Yet he had done well, as there was always a market for what he found, and a market that paid well.

  No matter, a Sackett was in trouble and they were coming down from the hills to see her safely home or bury the ones who brought her grief. Old Barnabas, him who founded the clan, he laid that down as law more than two hundred years back, and since that time no Sackett had ever failed to come when there was need.

  "What do you think?" Trulove asked.

  They had slowed to a walk again, and Macon took his time, considering. "We'd better cut for sign around the head of Wallen Creek. There over to Stone Mountain or the Powell. If they've gotten further, we'll know it."

  "We'd best watch for Mordecai."

  "He'll find us. Nobody can find Mordecai lest he's wishful of it."

  An hour before first light they went off the trail into a thicket and put together a small fire and made coffee. They napped by the fire, drank some more coffee, and they listened. Sound carried a ways in the mountains during the still of morning.

  "Mordecai will find 'em. He's almighty sly."

  "He still make all his own gunpowder?"

  "Surest thing you know. He's got several places, one of them a cave over to Grassy Cove. You recall that place Jubal found on his way west?"

  "I didn't know he still went there. Folks have settled down there, I hear."

  "More'n forty years now. The way Pa tells it, Jubal almost settled down there himself, he liked it that much."

  Macon Sackett sat up. "Mordecai trusts no powder but his own make."

  They finished the coffee and put their few things into packs. Carefully Trulove extinguished the fire, then scooped dirt to smother the ashes. A moment or two they studied the dead fire, then moved down to the trail.

  "Today, you reckon?" Macon knew the question's answer, but Trulove nodded.

  From here on they would walk. They could hear better.

  When that voice told us not to move, I was in the shadows and I just faded back, easy-like. When I had a big tree betwixt them and me, I waited, my rifle up.

  They came out of the woods then, seven or eight of them, and a rough, rough lot. Felix Horst was there, Tim Oats, and Elmer, but there were others I'd not seen before, except for one. He was the last one to come out and I recalled seeing him down to the Cove one time. His name was Patton Sardust and he had been one of the Natchez Trace thieves. A big man, and mighty mean.

  Horst looked from Dorian to Archie. "Where is she?"

  "Who?" Dorian said.

  "Don't give me lip!" Horst's features sharpened. He was a man of no patience; you could see it in him. That was a notch against him. In the wild country, a body needs patience.

  Horst stared at Chantry. "Who are you?"

  "Dorian Chantry, sir. Not at your service."

  "Chantry? Related to Finian?"

  "He is my uncle, sir."

  Felix Horst swore; he swore slowly, viciously, and with emphasis. He glanced over at Oats. "How'd he get into this? What's he doing here?"

  "I told you," Oats insisted. "I told you he was along. I expect the old man sent him."

  Horst glanced at Archie. "Runaway slave, eh? Well, you're worth something, anyway."

  "He's a free man," Dorian said. "He has always been free."

  Horst smiled. "We'll change that. If he isn't a slave, he should be, and I've got just the place for him. They'll teach him who is free."

  "What about him?" Patton Sardust said, indicating Chantry. "We don't need him."

  "He's Finian Chantry's nephew," Oats protested. "Anything happens to him, we'd never hear the last of it."

  "Him?" Sardust scoffed. "No Finian scares me. I'll cut his throat myself."

  "You could try," Dorian said.

  What could I do? If I started shooting, they'd probably kill the two of them right off. Yet something was going to blow the lid off, I could see that. Whatever else he might be Dorian surely wasn't scared. Might have been better if he had been. Archie, I noticed, had quietly shoved his pistol back of his belt when they first closed in, and nobody had made a move to disarm them.

  Where I stood I had a good field of fire and I was no more than thirty yards back into the trees.

  "If they moved," Horst said, "kill the white man. That black is worth money."

  Then he gestured. "Hans? You, Harry, an' Joe, you scout around and find that girl. Bring her here to me."

  What to do? I could ease off through the brush, I could wait right there so we'd all be together, or ... They were coming; one of them headed right at me, although I knew he couldn't see me.

  They'd stirred up the fire, put wood on, so the place was lit up. If I moved, that man was going to see me, and if I didn't, maybe ...

  He came around the tree. "Ah!" he said. "I am the lucky one."

  The rifle was close by my side and he was not looking for a woman to be armed. Regal had taught me a thing or two, so when he loomed over me and stepped close, I just jerked up the muzzle of that rifle and caught him right where his chin backed into his throat. I jerked up with it, and hard.

  It caught him right and he gagged, choking, and taking the rifle two-handed, I gave him what dear old Regal taught me, a butt stroke between the eyes.

  He went down like a poleaxed steer, falling right at my feet, out cold as a stepmother's embrace; then I just faded back into the brush.

  The others were closing in on the spot where I'd been, and suddenly the one called Hans gave a yell. "Horst! For God's sake!"

  Horst came into the woods. "What is it? What's wrong?"

  "It'sJoe ! Look at him!"

  Horst came through the trees, then stopped. He swore again. "Bring him into camp," he said brusquely.

  "What hit him?" somebody asked. "Look at his face! And his throat!"

  "He's still alive," Oats said matter-of-factly, "but he surely ran into something."

  Felix Horst straightened up from the injured man. "Chantry? Who's out there? Who did this?"

  Before he could answer, there came a weird, quavering cry, an eerie cry that rose and fell, then rose again. It was like nothing they had ever heard, and nothing I had ever heard, either, but I knew what it was.

  "What'sthat ?" Elmer gasped.

  "A ghost," Dorian said. "You've aroused the ghosts that haunt these mountains. You're in trouble now."

  "Shut up!" Oats said viciously, anxiously looking around.

  "The ghosts," Dorian said, "Echo told me abo
ut them. They don't like strangers."

  He had called me Echo. He had used my first name!

  Chapter 19

  From where I was I could see into their camp. The fire was blazing now and the men were drawing toward it but keeping their guns on Dorian and Archie.

  That cry had come from afar off-how far, a body couldn't guess on a night like this and in those mountains. It came again, suddenly, wavering, weird, a distant sound in the night.

  "A banshee!" Dorian said. "A warning of death to come."

  "Yours, more'n likely," one of the men said.

  I'd never heard that sound before, but I'd heard tell of it, although there was only one man left who used it. Long ago some of the Clinch Mountain Sacketts had used that cry to warn enemy Injuns they were about, and some Injuns thought it was a death spirit out there in the forest, haunting them, waiting to steal their souls away. The only one I'd heard of using that cry in my time was Mordecai.

  He was a long hunter Sackett, not given to the life of today but clinging to the wild old life of mountains and hunting. Long hunters was what they called those men who went off into the mountains alone to be gone for months, sometimes even years. Dan'l Boone had been one of them, but there'd been a sight of others. Jubal Sackett was one of the first, he'd gone west a long time back, never seen since, although there'd been rumors, stories, and the like.

  "Leave him lay," Horst was saying of Joe. "He's been knocked out but he'll be all right."

  "But who knocked him out?"

  "Maybe 'what' is a better word," Dorian said.

  Horst turned on him. He lifted a hand and slapped him across the face. "I told you to shut up!" he said.

  If Dorian had struck back, they'd have killed him. He never moved, he just smiled, and that young man went up some notches in my estimation. Maybe he had something to him.

  "I thinkshe done it," Elmer said.

  "A woman? A slip of a girl? To Joe? You ain't serious."

  "You don't know her," Elmer said.

  Horst looked at Chantry. "Where's that carpetbag? Where is she?"

  Felix Horst was mad, I could see that, but worse than that, he didn't know what to do. I could see that in him, too. His instinct was to kill, but he was afraid Dorian was his only clue.