To the Far Blue Mountains (1976) s-2

by Louis L'Amour

  He leaned back in his chair. "None of us knows what the future holds, and by all appearances I shall be governor here for several years. It may be that we will again need your help."

  "You have only to ask."

  "Thank you. I would also take it kindly if you would keep me informed on any exploration you do into the mountains, or beyond them. And perhaps you can help us develop our relationship with the Catawba. I understand they are a strong people."

  "They are among the most noted fighting men in the country, Sir Francis. And, as it happens, most of their enemies are our enemies, too."

  I paused. "You understand, Sir Francis, that I left England rather hurriedly."

  He lifted a hand. "Please! No more of that. You are a settler here. You have proven useful and helpful. I wish to know nothing more. I am a practical man, Sackett, and I am interested only in the interests of the colony." He glanced at me curiously. "You have been here a long time?"

  "More than twenty years."

  "You realize that, officially, no one has been here so long?" He refilled his glass. "Of course, for some time there have been stories of white men in the back country. You knew that, I suppose?"

  "There were such rumors when first we came here, Sir Francis. I am sure that we were not the first. We found initials carved upon trees, and stories among the Indians of white men. And such stories were here before the lost colony of Roanoke vanished.

  "Juan Pardo heard such stories. It is likely that Ayllon's captain, Gordillo, also did. Estevan Gomez was along this coast in 1525, and contributed much to the mapping of it. And I have had access," I said, "to many maps. No matter how far back you go, you still find rumors of white men. It is obvious the sea was crossed many times, perhaps continually over long periods of time. The Phoenicians never divulged their sources of raw material or trade goods."

  We talked long, and Sir Francis asked many searching questions about the soil, the game, the minerals. I told him we had found but little gold, but several mines of both iron and lead, and that we cast our own musket balls and manufactured our own powder.

  When I returned to our cabin, Pim Burke was waiting for me. He looked uneasy, and that was unusual.

  "What is it, Pim?"

  He looked shame-faced, then said, "Barnabas, I-" he paused. "Well, I have been offered a post. I shall be clerk and interpreter, and do some trading as well.

  There's a grant goes with it, Barnabas, and I'm growing no younger."

  "None of us are, and I'd advise you to accept."

  He looked relieved. "I don't want to seem disloyal-I mean, just when you are losing so much."

  "Nonsense! If I had heard of it first, I would have suggested it to you. By all means, Pim, take it. You may be of more use to us here than at the colony.

  Besides, I am thinking of going over the mountains."

  "Well ... if you do not object, Barnabas. My first loyalty is to you."

  I put a hand on his shoulder. "We have come a long way together, Pim. We are friends, you and I, and where we are you will never find a wife, and you should have one. You deserve one."

  "Well, to tell the truth-"

  "There's a girl?"

  "A widow, Barnabas. Young, and with a bit put by, and I've a bit, as you know ..."

  "By all means! But Pim ... ?"

  He looked at me. "The emerald? I've told only one person." He suddenly looked shy.

  "So be it, then," I said. "Let us keep in touch, and wherever I may be, Pim, you have a friend."

  We shook hands and he went his way, hurrying a little as if he feared he might turn back.

  That night I lay awake, having said nothing to Abby of Pim's going. She would regret him, regret his being from me, for he had been a good friend and loyal but I had been much put out these past months, seeing no future for him in what we did.

  Land, yes. We had bargained with the Catawba for land, and he had his piece as I had mine, yet it is an empty life for a man alone, although it seems not so when a man is young.

  Yet I wished he had not mentioned the emerald. We had found several ... he had one, I had four. Three of these I had given to Abby and one to Brian. They would serve as something in case of need, and any one of the stones was rich enough to buy an estate if need be.

  Pim's emerald was not a large one, but struck me as exceedingly fine.

  We had heard rumors of a few small diamonds being found in the lower foothills, but of this we had no positive knowledge.

  At last the day came. Several times I had met with the master of the Eagle, a solid man, and by all accounts, a good seaman. I had twice been aboard his ship, and she was finely kept with a competent-appearing crew.

  At dawn I was up and outside, looking at the weather. A fair day ... yet a gloomy one for me.

  Abby came out shortly afterward and walked beside me. We stood at the river, saying nothing, my hand touching hers or hers mine. But no words came to us.

  We talked of her returning, yet I think neither of us believed in it. There was still a chance the warrant for my arrest might lie dusty in some drawer to be taken out and used, and both of us knew that a frontier girl of ten does not become a great lady in three years or four.

  At the end, we kissed lightly and she said, "Be careful, Barnabas," and little Noelle clung to my hand with tears in her eyes.

  Brian stood tall, as I expected him to, and gripped hard my hand. "I will make you proud of me, Father."

  "I am already proud," I said quietly. "Take care of your mother and sister."

  The other boys stood around, looking awkward and feeling worse. Lila kept saying over and over that she should be going with them.

  "You've Jeremy to think of," Abby said quietly, "and your own children."

  "Come back, Abby," I said. "Come back."

  "Wait for me, Barney, for I love you. I do, I always shall, and I always have since that very first night when you came in from out of the storm."

  I stood on the bank then, and watched the Eagle sail down the river, and suddenly I knew in my heart with an awful desperation that I would not see any of them again.

  Lila took my hand and gripped it hard. "They will be all right. They will be all right. I see a safe voyage and a long life for them."

  She said nothing of me, or of my life.

  Chapter 33

  The place on Shooting Creek was not the same. Time and again I found myself turning suddenly to exclaim over a sunset, the dappled shadow of tree leaves upon the water or the flash of a bird's wing ... and Abby was not there.

  The blue of the mountains seemed to draw closer, and more and more my eyes turned westward ...

  Yet there lay the mountains, vast and mysterious, with unknown valleys and streams that flowed from out of dark, unbelievable distances, and always beyond, the further heights, the long plateaus, the sudden glimpses of far, far horizons.

  Jubal slipped silently into the cabin as I sat over Maimonides, reading.

  "Pa? There's talk in the villages. They're coming after you again."

  "You'd think they would tire of it."

  "You're a challenge, Pa. You don't realize how much, for their best warriors have tried, and they have been killed or suffered from wounds. You have become a legend, and some say you cannot die, that you will never die, but others believe they must kill you now, it is a matter of honor. They will come soon. Perhaps even tonight."

  Jubal nodded, then he spoke suddenly, as if with an effort. "Pa? You don't mind it? That I am not like the rest?"

  "Of course not. You're a good man, Jubal, one of the very best. I love you as I do them."

  "Folks crowd me, Pa. I like wild, lonesome country. I like the far-looking places. It ain't in me to live with folks. It's the trees, the rivers, the lake and wild animals I need. Maybe I'm one of them ... a wild animal myself."

  "I'm like that, too, Jubal. Almost as much as you. And now that your mother is gone, I could walk out that door and keep going forever."

  We were silent for a ti
me. The fire crackled on the hearth and I closed my book.

  The firelight flickered on Jubal's face, and moved the shadows around in the back of the room, and my eyes wandered restlessly over the stone-flagged floor, over the hide of the bear I had killed in the forest on the edge of the rhododendrons. I remember I had recharged my musket and then slid down the rugged slope, where flowering sand-myrtle cluug to the crevices, to stop beside the carcass of the bear.

  My shot had gone true and the bear had dropped. They were never so difficult to kill if the shot was placed well, and a raven had flown over, looking with a wary eye at me and on a second flyby with a hopeful eye at the bear's huge size.

  For that raven well knew I'd take the hide and some choice cuts, but I'd never carry that six hundred pounds over the ridges between myself and home.

  "Pa? Aunt Lila told me once, you had the gift."

  "We are of the blood of Nial, Jubal." I glanced at him. "Do you have it, too?"

  "The Indians believe I do."

  "Do you know about me?"

  "I ... think so, Pa."

  "Do not speak of this, Jubal. It is enough for you and me and Lila. I am not distressed, for there is a time for each of us, and we are rarely ready.

  "One thing I know. I am still too young to rust. When spring comes and my crop is in once more I shall make a pack and walk over to see some of your western lands before I die."

  "I've been beyond the mountains," said Jubal, "and have ridden the rivers down.

  I've been to a far, far land where the greatest river of all flows south and away toward the sea, sometimes I think I'd like to get a horse and ride off across those plains forever, going on. and on just like that river goes.

  "Beyond the bunch-grass levels where the buffalo graze, there are other mountains, or so the Indians say, mountains that tower their icy summits into the sky, and I've gone that way, but not yet so far.

  "The Indians there live in tents of buffalo hide, and I've fought with them, hunted with them, slept in their lodges, and I could live their way and find happiness, I think. They've got horses, the southern Indians do, got them from the ranches down Mexico way."

  "They do not have horses further north?" I asked.

  "Not yet, but they'll have them soon, and Pa, when an Indian gets a horse he becomes a different man. I've seen it. The Comanche and the Kiowa have the horses, but the Kiowa haven't been long upon the western plains, for they have just come from the mountains further west.

  "The Indian in America is like the people you told us of in Europe and Asia, always at war with one another, always pushing into new lands and pushing off the people who were there, or killing them."

  "People are much the same the world around, Jubal. We are no better and no worse ... nor are they. The Picts were in England and the Celts came, and long after them, the Anglos, Saxons, and Danes. And when they settled nicely down, the Normans came, took all the land from the people of England, and handed it out in parcels to the men who came over with William the Conqueror. It is the old story. To the victor belong the spoils.

  "For the Indian has done the same thing to other Indians. In Mexico the Aztecs were a savage people who conquered an older, more civilized people, and then marched out like the Romans and tried to conquer all about..

  "Cortez found willing allies because many of the Indians of Mexico hated the Aztecs.

  "It was the same in Peru. The people we call the Incas suddenly went on the march and welded together a vast empire of tribes and peoples, and it was done by conquest. Yet it is not only men who do this. Plants do it also. When conditions are right a new type of plant will move in and occupy the ground."

  "Pa? There's been white men out yonder. After I crossed the big south-flowing river I went by canoe up a river that flows down from the west, and in wandering the country north of there, I found some great stones with writing on them, writing just like on some of the old, old maps you have from Iceland."

  "Runes?"

  "Yes. No two ways about it, Pa. They've been there."

  Long we talked while the fire burned down and the coffee turned cold in the cups. It was the most Jubal had ever talked, I think. The sound of his voice was warm in the room, and when at last he stood, he said, "Sleep lightly, Pa, for the Indians will come when their medicine speaks, and those who sleep too soundly may never awaken."

  He went outdoors then, for he rarely slept inside even in the coldest weather.

  Taking wood from the bin, I built up the fire, and when the wood caught I went outside and walked over to Jeremy's.

  Lila was kneading dough. Jeremy was weaving some cloth, for Barry Magill had been teaching him the trade.

  "Sit you," Lila said. "The pots on. It's sassafras tea, if you'll have it."

  "I will," I said, and then to Ring, "Jubal's here. He says there's been a gathering of warriors to the north and the talk in the villages is that they will come again ... perhaps tonight."

  "We will need two men on the walls, then. Barry and Tom for the first watch?"

  "Aye, and Sakim and Kane for the second. We'll save the last for ourselves."

  " 'Tis then they'll come, Barnabas. I was thinking back, just now. Do you remember the sailor's wife who let us rooms? Mag, wasn't it?"

  "I think so. Aye, I recall her well. I hope her man came back and that she had a dozen sons. She was a good woman."

  "I'd like to see Jublain again. He was a good man with a blade, Barnabas. The best I ever know ... excepting you."

  "And you."

  "Well ... it was a skill I had. I could ride, too, but how long has it been since I've seen a horse?"

  "You'll be seeing them again. There's a Spanish man below the Santee who has nine horses to sell or trade. He's going back to the old country and he wants to live well. He cannot take the horses for the trouble and the expense, and nobody would wish them to go, yet his own people cannot pay the price. He has said he will bargain."

  "When?"

  "I've sent Kin and Yance."

  Jeremy Ring gathered up his work and put it aside, drinking the last of his tea.

  "I'll go over to John Quill's now, but I do not think he'll leave his place.

  He's built three cabins now, two burned by Indians, and his crop burned three times, so he's sworn that the next time he will stand them off or die."

  I went to warn Black Tom. He had been early asleep, and he rolled out and pulled on his clothes, a cutlass, two pistols, and a musket, and climbed the walls.

  Sakim followed, for he would stand the watch until Barry was up.

  The night was cool. The stars were out but clouds were moving in. It would be a dark, dark night.

  Kane O'Hara and his wife came in from their cabin at the edge of their fields.

  Kane had taken to smoking tobacco, having been taught by Wa-ga-su, who was still much with us.

  It seemed strange, at such a time, not to have Abby to think of.

  The wind seemed unusually cool off the mountain. Was this to be the night?

  "No ... not yet." I spoke aloud, and Kane O'Hara, who stood near me, glanced over.

  "Just thinking aloud," I said.

  He nodded. "I do it, too, when my wife is from the house."

  We watched the stars disappear beneath the oncoming clouds. The night was dark and velvet with stillness. I moved, and the planks beneath my feet creaked slightly. A vagrant breeze stirred the leaves of the forest, then passed on. We listened to the sounds, for these were our woods and we understood them well.

  For never are the sounds of the forest quite the same, one place to another, and if the ear is tuned to listening it distinguishes each whisper from others in the night.

  Leaving Barry and Tom on the wall, I walked back to my cabin.

  On the wide bed I lay alone, thinking of Abby, of Abigail. I remembered the things she had said, the lift of her voice and the quiet, intimate sound of it in the night. I thought of the times when our children had been born, and how frightened I was when the secon
d one came.

  Why it was, I never knew, but upon that night I felt suddenly isolated, terribly alone, and I tried to get someone to stay with me-even a little longer, for Abby had been lying in Lila's cabin where she could be cared for better and watched over in the night.

  All the terrible aloneness I had ever felt crowded around me then, for this was her time, and there was nothing I could do, I who would have done everything.

  John Quill had stopped by that night with a piece of venison from a kill and I talked to him until he almost had to pull himself away.

  There was no reason for my fears, for the child came easily, with no complications.

  Sometime I fell asleep, and was awakened by Sakim's hand on my shoulder. "It is time, I think."

  "Is there any sign of them?"

  "Perhaps ... a little change in the sounds ... but very little. Come! I have coffee."

  Coffee was still a rare thing, but we had acquired a taste for it from our captured cargo, long ago, and when that was gone we had gotten our supplies from slave ships bound for the West Indies. Sometimes we were without, but used ground beans or whatever was available.

  Our kitchen table was scoured white. That had been Abby's doing and I had done nothing to mar its perfection since she had left. My meals I had taken on a bench outside the door, and used the table only when writing or reading. Which led me to think ... I had to see if John had poured candles for us. Mine were getting fewer and fewer.

  Sakim filled our cups. "It is good, old friend, that we are together. I see you have been reading Montaigne. Earlier it was Maimonides ... I wish I might introduce you to Khaldoun ... Ibn Khaldoun. His Muquaddimah! That you must someday read. He was of the greatest of our thinkers ... not the greatest, perhaps, but one of them. A most practical man ... like you."

  "I? Practical? I only wish I were. There is a madness in me at times, Sakim, and much of the time I am the least practical of men."

  "Drink your coffee. There is bread made from the meal of corn here. Lila would be desolate if she thought you had ignored it."

  "Not Lila. You forget how she is. She does what needs doing and is not hurt by being ignored. I learned long ago that in her own way our Lila is a philosopher."