Louis L'Amour (2 page)

Right now I was beginning to regret this old Indian. Had it not been for him, I'd have been shagging it down the Cherokee Path to find ol' Yance, who was behind time in his coming. There was always the chance that he'd rounded up too many Indians.

Of course it took a few to be too many for Yance, and I had mercy for anybody who cornered him. I'd done it a couple of times when we were youngsters and was lucky to get away with my hair. Yance was bull strong, bear tough, and he could fight like a cornered catamount.

Yance was casual about most things, but pa had pressed it upon us to be prompt. It was a rule amongst us to be where we were supposed to be and no nonsense about it. We knew it was often the difference between life and death.

“Miz Penney say you come. Much bad Indian. Take two girls.”

Taking up my musket, I moved to the door, standing where I could watch the path to our clearing. If Yance came running and was hard pressed, I might take down at least one of them. I mind the time he came to the door with a big she-bear about two jumps behind him. It was a nip-and-tuck thing getting him in the door and keeping the bear out, and just having freshly mopped the floor, I was almost minded to shut the door and let them fight it out.

“All we want is the hide and the tallow,” I advised him later, “not the whole bear.”

“Did you ever tote a fresh-killed bear or even a bear hide and its tallow over three ridges in a boiling hot sun? I figured to let him bring it right to the doorstep.”

“What happened to your musket?”

He blushed. “I was fixin' for a shot when he came for me. I'd no choice but to allow for distance betwixt us, so I taken out running.”

This time Yance would be a-horseback with pack horses, which would hold him to the trace and no chance to take to the woods. He was an almighty stubborn man and I knew he'd not leave his horses and furs for some Indian.

“You wife Penney?”

It took me a minute to realize he'd mistook me for Yance. What had he said before? Two girls gone? Taken by Indians?

He'd come a far piece if he'd come from Cape Ann or the nearby country, and those girls were long gone now. Still, I'd heard of a swap being made, goods for girls, or whatever. Anyway, she was kin by marriage to Yance. We'd never let them down. Whatever we could do would be done.

It must have taken that Indian a week to get here. Even more, it was likely. I'd never been up north, for it was Yance who'd gone girlin' up there to find himself a wife. Only I think he was just looking around when he saw her and took to her first sight.

Putting my musket close to hand, I put water on and began slicing meat into it for a stew. I added some wild onions and other herbs from the forest, for we did with whatever was to hand.

There was no question of not going. My corn crop would suffer from lack of cultivation and from varmints, but crops were a chancy thing in this country. There'd have to be grub got ready and packs. Whilst the stew was shaping up, I set to gathering what we'd need.

The old Warrior's Path would be the fastest route even though we might encounter war parties along the trail. Yet we must travel fast. Indians were notional about prisoners. They might want them for slaves, for torture, or for trade. They might want them simply to exhibit and then kill, but if they whined and carried on
or got weak so they could not travel, the Indians would surely kill them out of hand. It had happened before.

Temperance Penney had been living in a settlement nigh to Cape Ann when Yance found her. We Sacketts were a free-roving folk, and now and again we boys would take off across the country to see what might be seen. Often one of us went alone, or sometimes two or three would venture together.

We had visited Jamestown a time or two, and Kane O'Hara from our settlement had gone down to the Spanish villages to the south. It was there he found his wife. We'd heard tell of the Pilgrim folk to the north, but Yance was the first to traipse off thataway.

Yance was curious as an Indian as to how other folks managed, and he lay up there in the woods watching their village until he had seen Temperance.

She was sixteen then, pert as a kitten and feisty, with the woman in her beginning to show. Already her good spirits had gotten her into trouble. Her neighbors were good folk but serious minded and with a set way about them and not much time for play or merrymaking.

Yance had only to look one time to know what he'd come north for, and come night, he'd taken a quarter of venison down, hung it outside her door, and rapped sharply on the door; then he skedaddled and laid low.

Now few of those northern settlers were hunters. In the England of their time all the game belonged to the king or ran on a few of the great estates, and unless they poached, they got none of it. Nor had they weapons about except during time of war. Fresh meat was hard to come by, and when they reached America where game abounded, they had no skill as hunters and were uneasy about taking game, for here, too, the game was said to belong to the king. A haunch of venison outside the door was a likely treat, so they took it in and were grateful.

If Temperance herself had any ideas, she wasn't talking about them, just going about her churning, weaving, and gathering as though she paid no mind to anything. After they were married, she told me she'd seen Yance on the slope and in the woods a time or two from a distance, so she had her own ideas where that venison came from.

A few nights later Yance came down from the trees bearing another haunch and was made welcome.

He was a bearer of news and from another colony as well, although, being one of us, I don't imagine he was too free about saying just where he came from. Yance was a good talker, that being the Welsh in him, for the Welsh are like the Irish in having a feel for the language and a liking for the sound of their own voices. He done a sight of tale telling, but he never once looked at Temperance, but she needed no telling to know whom he was talking to, and for.

Now a pert and feisty girl like Temp, with a shape like hers, had taken the eye of every man in the settlement, not to mention occasional peddlers and tinkers who passed. Some of the local sprouts had ideas about her, and then here comes this stranger in wide-brimmed hat and buckskins. They liked nothing about him.

Moreover, Yance had been brought up like all of us, free thinking and free speaking. Pa had believed in us using our minds, and he believed in freedom and in expressing ideas, nor was Yance one to keep his mouth shut. He stayed on, a-courting Temperance, and it wasn't long until he had crossed the ways of the folk, and he found himself in the stocks.

It was the way of the time to pitch rotten fruit or clods at whoever was in stocks, and as the boys and men cared little for Yance, and as he was a stranger in buckskins, like an Indian, he caught more than his share, good though he was at ducking. He had taken it, biding his time. He knew he would not be there forever; moreover, he had a good idea what Temp would do, and she did it.

Somehow or other she contrived to get the keys, unlock the stocks, and set Yance free. Being wise for his years, Yance just naturally left the country; being doubly wise, he had taken Temperance with him.

He might not have taken her, having respect for her family and all, but she wasn't to be left behind. Moreover, she had been doing some thinking beforehand and led him down the country where they could rout out a preaching man. He wasn't of a mind to read over them until she told him she'd go with Yance without it, and he got right to it.

From time to time after she came to us, she sent word home by traders or travelers, so they knew she was honestly wed and cared for. Now they were in trouble, and they'd sent for Yance.

This was 1630, and folks had been living in that Massachusetts Bay colony for ten years or so, but most of them were latecomers, innocent as babes about Indians and such.

Nobody needed to tell us about Pequots. We'd had no doings with them, but word is carried on the wind, and other Indians had told us of them. They were a strong, fierce people, unfriendly to the whites.

It was in my thoughts that it was Temp's mother who sent for Yance. She was a righteous, churchgoing woman, but she knew a man with hair on his chest when she saw him.

“Who took those girls?” I asked the old Indian again.

“Pequots.”

Had he hesitated there just a mite? Or was that my imagination? If they were not already dead, trying to get prisoners away from the Pequots would be a hard-bought thing. Yance was suddenly in the yard, astride that big red horse he favored, his pack animals loaded down with fur. It took only a minute or two for me to lay it down to him.

“I'll go. No need for you to lose your crop.”

Well, I just looked at him, and then I said, “Pa always
said, ‘I want it understood that no Sackett is ever alone as long as another Sackett lives.' Besides,” I added, “you will need me to keep those Pilgrim folk off your back whilst you take out after the Indians.”

“Don't figure the Pequots will be easy. Any time you take after them, you've bought yourself a packet, Sackett.”

“What about him?” I gestured toward the Indian. “He's old, and he's hurt.”

“I go.” The Indian spoke quickly. “You go, I go. You no go, I go, anyway.”

“You fall behind,” Yance warned, “and we leave you.”

“Huh.” He glared at Yance. “You fall behind, I leave
you!
”

Yance put up his horses and then went to eating. On horseback, we would make good time up the Warrior's Path. We had meat, and we had cold flour, so there would be no need to stop for hunting.

“That other girl,” I asked, “the one with the Penney girl, who was she?”

It was a full minute before he spoke. “She Macklin girl. She plant woman.”

Why the hesitation? What had happened up there, anyway? What was wrong with their own men? Of course, few of them were woodsmen, if any at all. In the old country they had been craftsmen, weavers, woodworkers, and their like, and the Penneys knew Yance was a woodsman, knowing the ways of wilderness travel and of Indians.

A plant woman? What did that imply? That she gathered herbs, perhaps, or was knowing about them. Such a girl would be at home in the forest.

“We'd better hurry, Kin. I think we'll have this to do alone. Those folks aren't going to look for Diana Macklin.”

Something in his tone made me look up from the packing. “No? Why not?”

“Because they do be saying she's a witch woman.
They'll be saying ‘good riddance,' and they'll just walk away.”

“But what about the Penney girl?” I protested.

“Too bad for her that she was in such company. I tell you, Kin, they will do nothing. Unless it be us, the girls be lost—lost, I say.”

C
ome daylight, we had distance behind us. We took a back trail up through the rocks behind our cabin so no chance watcher would know we had gone, winding through the rocks and the rhododendron. We were all mounted, and it was the first time I'd ever seen an Indian a-horseback. The old Indian's name was Tenaco.

Horses were scarce in the colonies, and we had bought ours from a Spanish man who wished to return to Spain and had to sell what horses he owned. The Spanish men of Florida were not permitted to trade with the English, but people will be people, and we had much they wished for, so the trading was done. We paid in gold, of which we had found a little, and had more we kept by us from pa's dealings.

There was Indian country before, behind, and all about us, and any stranger was fair game for any Indian. Yet some of them were moved by curiosity and the desire for trade, and we were wishful of no trouble.

It was far we had to go, through terrain wild with strange trees and vines, a country of lonely paths, and the awareness of death rode with us, Tenaco no less than we, for Indian forever killed Indian long before the coming of the white man.

We rode the Warrior's Path, three mounted men and a pack horse to carry our necessaries.

A witch woman, they said! Well, I put no faith in witches, although both Welsh and English had stories
enough of witches, elves, gnomes, and haunts and such. Pa had the gift, it was said, and to some it was the same thing, but not to pa or to me or to Lila, who was said to have it, too.

Yet being thought of as a witch would be held against her, and it was unlikely any would wish to go to the rescue of a witch even if the child with her was liked. It was likely they'd feel the Indians got what they deserved when they took her.

We saw no fresh track of moccasin or boot. We passed among the dark leaning poles of the pines into the shadows and beyond, wondering what memories these slopes held and what peoples might have been here and gone before our coming.

Half of our teaching had been from Sakim, the scholar from far-off Asia, and Sakim lived with the awareness of lives he had lived before.

We carried long bows made English style, for pa and several of the others amongst our lot had understood the bow. It was a saving of lead and powder, which now we mined for ourselves or made. Also, it was silent hunting and left no echo upon the hills for unfriendly ears.

How lonely were these silent hills! How reaching out for the sounds of men, for I believe a land needs people to nurse its flesh and bring from it the goodness of crops.

As we looked upon the shadowing hills, I saw a red bird fly up, a bit of the sunset thrown off by a soundless explosion, and then there were a dozen flying, then gone.

“It is an omen,” Tenaco said. “There will be blood.”

“Not ours,” Yance replied grimly. “It is Temperance's sister they have taken.”

“Do you recall her, then?” I asked.

“Aye, and a lovely lass. She would be ten now, I think, perhaps eleven. Gentle, sweet, and graceful as the wind. She was the first of them to accept me—after Temperance, of course.”

“You knew the other girl?”