Sackett's Land (1974)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 01

  “The big roots will help,” I said, “but we must build up some shelter with mud.”

  “Mud?”

  “We will not cut the line,” I said, “because both of us will be needed to rescue Rufisco. We must bethere when the line breaks, not here. We will start a fire, a very small fire, and leave it burning. It will be screened by roots and mud as well as the brush. When the line gives way, we will be ready and waiting.”

  Sakim considered, then nodded. “Allah be with us,” he said. “It is a fearsome thing we do.”

  Carefully we prepared our small fire, and added fuel. It began to burn; flames touched the heavy line. Adding a little fuel, we turned and went swiftly back to our former place.

  Now we must hope. If the fire did not die out, or if it was not discovered and killed, then the line must part. Caught by the current the stern would swing into the stream, turning counterclockwise. All hands would immediately rush to save their ship, and then, if all went as we hoped …

  We waited … and waited. Nothing happened.

  The same two men stood at the door of the hut where Rufisco was likely imprisoned. Others were gathered about their cooking fires. I notched an arrow and looked at the man nearest me by the hut.

  All was quiet. The vessel lay gently upon the waters, only straining a little at the lines. Had our fire gone out? Had someone discovered it?

  Suddenly there was a sharp cracking sound as the line parted, and instantly the stern of the ship swung into the current. Somebody let go with a wild yell, and there were shouts and running from aboard the vessel. Men dashed toward the bow where a rope ladder hung.

  “Now,” I said, and we went forward, not running, but walking carefully, swiftly. A step, two steps … The heavier guard turned and I let fly my arrow. It was high, but lucky. It took the guard in the throat and he fell, grasping the arrow’s shaft with both hands.

  Around the shore there were wild yells, shouts, orders, recriminations.

  The second guard had run out a small way, and Sakim put an arm across his throat and a knife into his ribs. I ducked into the hut.

  Rufisco, barely visible in reflected firelight, was struggling. I slipped my blade under his bonds and the razor edge parted them. “Rub your legs,” I said. “We’ll have to run.”

  “I can run,” he replied grimly, and we ducked outside. I sheathed my sword and took up the bow again.

  I notched an arrow and followed, backing up, watching to cover our retreat.

  My eyes were seeking Nick Bardle. An arrow for him and I would consider myself well paid.

  Just one arrow!

  He was there, but shifting about among the running men, and there was no good target.

  “Another time, Captain,” I told myself. “Another time.” I turned and walked into the woods, and in a few minutes had caught up with my friends.

  We had been quick, but lucky too. I had no good feeling about that luck of ours. It was too good. It was building us for a smashing blow… I could feel it in my bones.

  Chapter 12

  We found our way to our gig. Under the shelter of the shrubs and trees we slept, awakened, cooked a meal, then slept again.

  Finally when my eyes opened the others still slept, and I lay awake, a lonely man, thinking back to England, the fens, and even more to a girl with a lamp in her hand. I’d no cause to be thinking of her, yet each man has some girl he thinks of, and my thoughts kept turning back to her.

  We Sacketts had a feeling for home and family, and although I’d had no family but my father, the sense was strong within me. Now we had furs, one half of which were mine. It was a goodly sum, but insufficient. We must go along the coast and keep a sharp lookout for theTiger, Tempany’s ship. By now it might be near.

  If we could exchange our furs for more trade goods, another venture might be even more profitable.

  Rufisco awakened as I was broiling a piece of venison.

  “I have not thanked you,” he said.

  “It is not important.” I stirred the coals. “You would have done the same for me.”

  He sat up. “Perhaps. I have been wondering about that.”

  “Well,” I said, “in my place you would have.”

  “Your place?”

  “I was your leader. I was responsible. It makes a difference, you know.”

  He chuckled grimly. “I avoid leadership. I do not wish to decide such things, nor to be responsible.”

  With my knife I cut off a sliver of my meat, burning my fingers in the process. “When you and Sakim chose to come with me I accepted responsibility for your lives. I became no longer a free agent. Unless one is at heart a rascal, I think he becomes a little better in many ways by assuming leadership.”

  “You may have it.” He reached for a chunk of the meat, impaled in on a stick and held it to the flames. “And now what, Oh Mighty Leader?”

  “We go to sea. If she survived the crossing, theTiger may now be alongshore. I saw her charts, and it was toward this place she intended to come.”

  “And then?”

  “Exchange our furs and return to trading.”

  “For you … not for me.”

  “No?”

  “I have a foreboding upon me. This land is not for me. I shall return to Naples, or even to Florence or to Ravenna. I shall bask in the sun on a terrace somewhere and watch the pretty girls go by. I shall drink wine and smell the smells … No, my friend, I want to live.”

  He gestured widely. “I have no taste for wilderness like this. I do not like swamps, lonely beaches and forests. Nor your mountains yonder. I am a man of the streets. I like to push through crowds, feel bodies about me. I am a man of the world, not of the wilderness.”

  Sakim was awake and he was smiling. “I, too, miss the world and the women,” he said, “but this … this isnew ! It is splendid! It is unknown! What feet have trod this soil? What lungs have breathed this air? What mysteries lie beyond the mountains?”

  Rufisco shrugged. “I know what lies beyond your mountains, and it is only more mountains. Beyond each bend in the road there is another bend in the road. You may go, but I shall sit in a tavern and drink the wine of the land, of whatever land, and pinch the girls of the country and perhaps be slapped for my pinching, but smiled at, too.

  “You are a merchant, Barnabas, and you, Sakim, a poet. I am a lover. This voyage has convinced me finally. I shall sit somewhere with a glass and throw bread to the pigeons.”

  I arose. “Very well, but for the present we had best be getting out upon the sound, and wary of theJolly Jack. “

  “A neat trick,” Rufisco commented, “to be seen by the one … if it is there … and not by the other, which is certainly there.”

  From the river bank I studied the river. It flowed, brown and muddy, toward the sound. There was nothing upon the water but a great dead tree upon whose bare branches a brown bird perched, in ruffled contentment, accepting the free ride.

  We shoved off, and lifting our sail, scudded along before the breeze, our eyes alert for theJack, for floating snags, and for the sound that lay before us where the river’s wide mouth ended. Clearing the river mouth finally we turned into the main sound.

  Midday was past, but no sail lifted against the sky. There were only clouds and gulls, their white wings catching the modest flash of a sullen sun. Far away to the east we thought we could see the coastal banks, yet we saw no mast, no dark hull, only the gray water and behind us the darker green of the shore.

  Huddled in the stern I unrolled my charts and gave them study. Two great sounds were here protected from the sea by narrow coastal islands, and into these sounds flowed several rivers, large and small. I believed it was the southermost from which we had come. Several openings through the coastal banks permitted access to the sounds from the sea, and these as well as some of the rivers were mapped in astonishing detail. Obviously someone had explored this coast most carefully, or portions of it, at least.

  Through the night we sailed, taking turns at t
he tiller, the wind holding well. At daybreak it fell off and we dipped and bobbed in a choppy sea, with the dim gray line of dawn off to the northwest.

  Visibility was poor, yet we saw no ship. The sun arose and after a while we caught an offshore breeze and worked in closer to the shore, watching for a cove or bay into which we might go for shelter.

  It was a low shore when we found it, a swampy place, yet offering shelter. Sakim threw a weighted line ashore and let it wind around a tree, then we hauled in closer. Wading ashore, we made fast with a simple slipknot, knowing well how swiftly we might leave.

  We had a little food. We built a fire, ate, and I worked at making arrows for my longbow.

  We saw no savages. A few ducks and geese flew up from time to time, and one of the geese I killed with an arrow. Two of us slept onshore, the other on the boat. We rested, ate, and rested again, and in the evening when I went down to the sea to look for whatever might be seen, I saw a deer and killed it.

  So we skinned it out, stretched the hide, and hung the meat for drying, aiding the process with smoke.

  We had carried our goods aboard the boat, all but the meat, and Sakim was taking in our line, waiting for Rufisco and me, ready to shove off.

  I heard a cry … a choked, hoarse cry.

  Turning swiftly I saw Rufisco. There were four arrows in him and a dozen savages rushing toward us. Sakim fired.

  A man spun and dropped, but the others were not dismayed by the sound, and came on. I caught up my sword and wheeled about, taking a wide slash as I turned, and severing an uplifted arm holding a tomahawk. Sakim had dropped the one pistol and lifted the fowling piece, which was charged with shot, and fired it into them.

  They scattered, two dropped, one of them very bloody, and I rushed in and had Rufisco by the collar. Back I went, sword on guard, dragging him through the water and into the boat, which Sakim shoved off. A flight of arrows, pursued us.

  One scratched me, another lodged in my clothing, but Rufisco was aboard, and when they rushed again we were well out of their reach, the wind filling our sail.

  Rufisco stared up at me, breathing in hoarse gasps, a bloody froth upon his lips. “Too late!” he mumbled. “There will be no wine with the passing girls, no sitting in the sun.”

  He was not a man to lie to, and he knew as well as I that with two arrows in his lungs there was little that could be done. He held on to my hand and I could not take it from him to do what might be done to make him easier. Maybe the handclasp was all he wanted at the moment.

  “Bury me where I can smell the sea,” he said, after spitting blood.

  “We can push the arrows through,” I said. “They’re showing out your back.”

  One was through his thigh, and bleeding bad.

  “Let me be. The knowledge of death was in me.” He spat again. “At least, I die with men.”

  He lay on his side on the gig’s bottom, and there was no way I could make him easy without causing more pain. He lay there, eyes closed, breathing hoarsely, always that bloody froth at his lips. I wiped it away.

  He opened his eyes again, strangely quiet. “A gray day, that an Italiano should die upon a gray day!”

  “We can reach the coastal islands,” Sakim said. “There we can find a safe place.”

  I held his hand with my left, and with my right the tiller. It was a long way across, and somewhere upon the crossing Rufisco died … I do not know when, nor even where. Except at the last his fingers held no longer to mine, and I placed the hand down and Sakim looked over at me, but said nothing.

  We had lost a comrade, one not easy to lose.

  The moon was high when we came up to shore again. It was a long sandy shore on which the surf of the sound rolled up softly.

  We beached the gig and carried a line inland to make fast to a low-growing tree. Then we carried the body of Rufisco ashore and above the level of the tide we dug a grave, and there we buried him where he could hear the winds blow, and feel the pulse of the sea. It would not be too different, I thought, than his own Mediterranean, for this too was an inland water, and this too, was warm.

  Taking a sight upon a tree, I marked the place for memory, but in the morning, when there was light enough, I carved a name on a slab and placed it there. I knew not the day of his birth, but gave that of his death. His name, too, I placed there, although the place a man leaves is in the hearts of those he leaves behind, and in his work, not upon a slab…

  We went back to the boat, then, and shoved off, lifting our sail and pointing our bows again to the north. And all that day we saw no sail, nor the next nor the next nor the next.

  When again we walked upon land it was on the shores of the northern sound. I killed a deer there, at ninety paces, with one arrow, and we ate well. Later we collected the leaves from a plant Sakim recognized and made a tea, and not a bad one.

  We rested on the sand, and Sakim said to me, “It is a good land, this, a fine land.” He sat up suddenly. “You should stay in this land, this should be your home.”

  “Here?” I was not astonished, for the thought had been in me, too.

  “Perhaps. I would like a family. A man should build. He should always build.”

  “You want sons?”

  “Sons and daughters.”

  I raised on one elbow. “I wonder about you, Sakim.”

  “There is no need. I was once almost a philosopher, my friend, but there was too much of the rascal in me. There was also a woman … the daughter of a very important man. I was rascal enough to woo her, and philosopher enough to leave quickly when we were discovered.”

  “Have you never been back?”

  “To be killed by soldiers? Or imprisoned? Besides, she was a philosopher, too.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “When she saw that I was gone she faced the realities and married another man. Now she is rich, important, and domestic. I would no longer be interested in her, and she would only be amused by me.”

  “You were a student?”

  “I was a teacher. My father, my grandfather and my great-grandfather were judges, and so was I to be.”

  “You were fortunate. I had few books, and no school.”

  Sakim shrugged. “You had your father, obviously a wise man, and you had a gift.”

  “I? A gift?”

  “A gift of listening. When men spoke, you heard, and of what you heard, you thought.” He sat up. “And now,” he smiled wickedly, “Oh, Master of Wisdom, we should float our craft … We will catch noTiger on this shore.”

  Our sail was no sooner up, our craft before the wind, than we saw her, broad and beautiful across the way, Captain Brian Tempany’s three-master coming down upon us, all sails set and a bone in her teeth, as the saying is.

  We hove to and, with Sakim at the tiller, I stood by the mast and waved my hat.

  She came along up to us, taking in sail as she approached, and there were faces at the bow rail and aft, and there was Captain Tempany, and Corvino!

  Corvino as well, and Jublain … good old Jublain!

  And then another face. I was startled and blinked my eyes, but it was she. It was Abigail.

  Her hair blowing in the wind, smiling at me, her eyes bright with welcome.

  “See her, Sakim?” I said, half-turning. “That is why I dream.”

  “I see, I do indeed. But she is not to dream about, my friend, sheis the dream!”

  Chapter 13

  An hour later, in the cabin, and over a glass of sack, I explained our situation.

  Tempany did not interrupt, only nodding from time to time as he paced the deck. “So we suspected,” he said, “but there was no chance. TheJack slipped from her moorings and was well down the river before we discovered that you were missing.”

  He paused. “You have furs, you say?”

  “Getting them will not be easy. I am afraid it cannot be done without alerting Bardle. He has you outgunned, Captain.”

  “Perhaps. And we want no trouble.” He frowned.
“We should recover your furs, then sail up the coast. There’re the Spanish below us.” He glanced at me. “What would you suggest?”

  “Move now … at once. Recover the furs and get away before Bardle is prepared. Once he knows your vessel is in these waters, he will be alert.”

  Tempany moved to the companionway and called. In a few minutes he returned. “You’re sure of the water’s depth?”

  “We are … and Sakim and I will go in after the furs.”

  He went on deck and Abigail smoothed her skirt with careful hands. “I was dreadfully frightened,” she said quietly. “I was afraid something terrible had happened to you.”

  “How do you happen to be here?” I asked.

  She laughed. “I convinced him I’d not be safe in London! I think he wanted to bring me, anyway, and all he needed was an excuse.”

  “Have you been ashore?”

  “Oh, no!”

  “It’s beautiful,” I said. “So many kinds of trees, and flowers everywhere. Of course,” I added, “there’s alligators and bears and Indians.”

  “We saw some alligators, and once some Indians came out and tried to get us to come ashore. We did not go, although we traded with them for some dried meat and a couple of huge turtles.”

  “I am glad you came,” I said suddenly. “I have been thinking of you.”

  She glanced at me. “Really? With all those alligators and Indians to think of, I am surprised.”

  “From alligators and Indians there is always a chance of escape,” I said smiling.

  “And from me?”

  “A much smaller chance, but I am not sure I would try.”

  Tempany called down the hatch. “Sackett? Come on deck.”

  He had land on his starboard bow. It was the passage from the northern sound to the southern. I stood by him as we started into the passage, for we had passed it before.

  “That man you have with you? He’s a Moor?”

  “Aye, a good man, and an educated one.” I told him about Rufisco and the sudden attack by Indians.

  “I’ve been told some are friendly,” Tempany commented.