Louis L'Amour (25 page)

“The settlements along the Virginia coast are growing. People are moving into the Carolinas. This you know.”

“I do.”

“This land we occupy is ours only by right of settlement, which in the courts of England would be no right at all. Think you not that we should take steps to establish a claim to our land?”

“But how? My father dared make no such claim. He was flying from the queen's justice, a wanted man. Falsely charged though he was. We have held our land for many years now.”

“Be wise, Kin. Explore the chances. Perhaps you might write to Brian? Or to Peter Tallis? Believe me, we can wait no longer.”

What he said was, of course, true. Although I would not say anything of that to Jeremy, I had been worrying over just that very thing and worrying even more since I saw men moving out from Cape Ann and Plymouth, looking for land. The troubles of Claiborne over Kent Island had been explained to me, for although Claiborne had settled there, Lord Baltimore's grant took in all Claiborne occupied, and he might be thrown off at any time. So it could be with us.

I worried not for myself or for Yance. There was
always the frontier for us. Yet my father had brought men with him, and those men held land because of his urging. Some of those men, Jeremy Ring included, had become well off from the trade and the produce of their land, yet they might lose the land itself if something was not done.

“I shall write to Peter Tallis,” I said, “and to Brian as well.”

There was a packet of letters awaiting me and a press of business that needed my attention, for our plantations had grown and their demands upon my time as well. Glancing over the receipts and payments, I could see our small colony was doing very well indeed, but soon it would come to the attention of the tax collectors and of His Majesty's officials, who were ever greedy for themselves as well as for the Crown.

In the months that I had been gone in the mountains as well as to Jamaica three shiploads of mast timbers had been sent down the river and loaded aboard sailing ships. Thirty-two bales of furs had been sent, seventy tons of potash, fourteen buffalo hides, twenty fine maple logs for the making of furniture.

Our enemies awaited us in the forest, but each thing in its time, and the time for our enemies would come when they attacked or made some move against us. In the meantime I would trust to Jeremy and those others and would be about my business here.

It had never been easy for me to write a letter. I was a man of the forest or of the plow. I could kill a deer for meat, fell a tree, or break ground for a field. I could hew timbers, build walls and houses, but a letter was a painstaking thing that required putting thoughts into words.

First I wrote to Peter Tallis. My father had told us much of him. From a booth in St. Paul's Walk where he dealt in information and all manner of things that could be done with inside information or knowledge of where lay the powers, he had become a wealthy and respected merchant. He was the middleman, the man to whom one could go if one wished to approach a minister or
anyone in a position of power. If there was merchandise to be sold by some stranger or foreigner, Tallis was the man who could tell the best market, the best price. He was our friend in London, our agent as well.

Explaining our situation, of which he was no doubt aware, I also expressed my wish to establish legal title to our lands. Brian was in London, undoubtedly seeing Peter Tallis, and together they could develop a solution. That my father had been a fugitive from the queen's men posed a problem.

Next I wrote to Brian. As a student at the Inns of Court, he would understand better than I the legal complexities of our situation and those who depended upon us. Of Yance's marriage he knew. I now told him of mine. At the same time I told him of Legare and his need for a representative in London.

How strange are the fortunes of men! My father, a strong young man with ambition, had found on the Devil's Dyke a rotted wallet in which were several ancient gold coins. Their sale had given him his start in life and led to his coming to America. Yet they had also brought much trouble, for the queen's officers, inspired by his enemies, believed my father had found King John's treasure, the lost Crown jewels of England, among which there had been some old coins of gold. The find and the fact that my father lived in the fens not far from the Wash where the treasure had been lost was all that was needed. My father had been seized, questioned, and imprisoned. Despairing of making anyone believe his story, he had escaped from Newgate prison and fled to America.
^*

Our plantations now did well. Our trade with Indians prospered. Each year more and more people came to America, and we knew a time would come when they would press hard upon us, so already Yance and I had gone beyond the mountains and had explored lands there, building our two cabins and planting
crops where only Indians had been before. Or so we originally supposed. Now, from discoveries there, we knew that others had been before us.

My hand was tiring from the unfamiliar writing, so I placed the quill upon the table and sat back and stared off into nothing, thinking.

Our father was gone, killed by the Seneca along with his good friend Tom Watkins. My mother was in England with Brian and Noelle. And Jubal? What of Jubal, my strange, lonely, wandering brother?

For years now there had been no word of him. Each season I watched the trails, hoping he would come again to see us, if for a few days only.

He was ever the lonely wanderer, ever the remote one, loving us all and being loved, yet a solitary man who loved the wild lands more. He had gone westward, and he had returned from time to time with tales of a great river out there, greater than any we knew, and of wide, fertile lands where there was much game. And then he had come no more.

Yance came to the door. “Kin? Better come to the wall. There's somebody out there with a white flag.”

O
utside the sun was warm and pleasant. It felt good to be back in buckskins and moccasins again. Pausing a moment, I took a long look around and about, and as far as I could see, we were ready. The men had come in from the fields, and those on the outlying farms would have closed up shutters and barred doors by now.

Since I was hoe handle high, I had been taught to be ready, and so with all of us. A body never knew when the Indians would be coming down upon us, especially the Senecas, who had selected us for their foes. I won't say enemies because we had nothing to fight about except to make war or protect ourselves. The Senecas lived a far piece away to the north, and it took them days to get where we were. As long as I could remember, they had been coming.

Mounting the ladder to the walk along the inside of the wall, I looked out over the palisade, and there was the white flag.

Turning, I looked at the back wall, but Jeremy Ring was there, and Jeremy wasn't about to be taken by surprise. There was always a chance that under cover of talk they would try to close in on us.

We had sickness amongst us, so we were short-handed on the walls, but there were six of us up there, and at the first shot the womenfolk would be out to reload for us, and we had two dozen spare muskets, all of which could be kept loaded and ready for use.

“If you wish to talk,” I shouted, “come out in the
open! But no more than one of you or we start shooting!”

What Bauer had in mind, I had no idea, but by this time he had scouted our position with care. Our fort was well situated, but scattered up the valley were a dozen other cabins occupied by members of our little colony, often enough by families. Each was prepared to defend itself, and each was built in such a way as to receive support from at least one other cabin. In other words, when attacking one cabin, the attackers must in most cases expose themselves to fire from another.

Yet I doubted if he had any true estimate of our strength, nor had I any of his. Whether he had a half-dozen men or many more I had no way of knowing. We ourselves must do some scouting.

It was Lashan who came forward.

He strode into the open and stood there, feet well apart, hands on hips. He wore a cutlass and a brace of pistols but carried a musket as well.

“You folks in there!” he called. “You give us Sackett and that Macklin girl and we won't burn you out. If you don't surrender them, we'll kill you, every one!”

“Diana Macklin is now my wife,” I replied, “and we have no intention of surrendering anything. As for you, I would suggest you start back to the coast while you still have supplies enough to feed you.”

No doubt he had brought his men along with a promise of loot and had never expected to face an established fortress surrounded by what would be to them a trackless wilderness. It seemed the odds were with us, yet I was wary. Max Bauer might hate me enough to follow and kill, but he was a canny man with an eye to enriching himself always.

Nor was an attack by him to be compared to an attack by Indians. Max Bauer would know something of siege warfare and might many times have attacked such positions as ours. Indians, on the other hand, had not learned how to attack fortified positions. No doubt time would change that.

Clouds hung low around the Nantahala Mountains to the east, and the nearer slope of Chunky Gal Mountain was dark with foreboding.

“Going to storm,” I commented idly to Yance.

“Threatenin',” he agreed. He shifted his musket. “What you reckon they'll do?”

Lashan was still there, standing in the same way, and somebody might have been talking to him from the trees. He called out sharply. “You got an hour. You best make the most of it.”

“Stalling,” I said. “They've something in mind.”

It was very still. Then, back over the Nantahalas, I heard a mutter of thunder. Rains could be mighty sudden here, sometimes a regular cloudburst. They had better find shelter for themselves.

Bauer knew, of course, that I had not yet been to Shawmut or Plymouth with whatever evidence I had obtained. He also knew that once I put such evidence before the authorities there, such as they were, his profitable trade was ended. The trade in young white girls was a specialized trade, yet it involved no costly transportation across the ocean, only rare losses at sea, and top prices. No doubt some of his trade had been with the Indians for captives they had taken, but once the word was out, all ports would be closed to him, and he would be a fugitive.

My first intent had been to get Diana to a place of safety. The trip overland to Plymouth could be a fast one, and Samuel Maverick would put his influence behind the evidence I had. The bare fact that such things had happened was enough to destroy the chances of it happening again.

So Max Bauer, both for his own safety and the continuance of his lucrative trade, must eliminate me.

Somehow or other he must lure me from the fort to be killed or destroy the fort itself with me inside.

Lightning flashed back over Chunky Gal Mountain, and thunder grumbled in the canyons. A few spatters of rain fell.

“They aren't likely to try anything now,” Yance commented. “Get their powder wet.”

“I was thinking about my cabin,” I said, “and my corn crop. Be a while before we get back out that way.”

“Likely.” We were both huddling under the eaves of the blockhouse, watching the forest. “I've been thinking,” Yance said, “of that long valley the Cherokees told us about. This here”—he covered the area with a gesture—“is all right, but that sounded mighty nice.”

“That's the trouble, Yance. There will always be a place somewhere that sounds nice. Some of us should stay and build here.”

He chuckled. “But not you an' me? Nor Jubal. Wonder where ol' Jube is about now? Yonder by his great river?”

The rain fell hard. “Get yourself something to eat, Yance. I'll stand watch.”

The rain had drawn a veil over the Nantahalas and over Piney Top, and it was falling now on the Tusquitees and in the dark canyon of the Nantahala River where the Indians said they had killed the great horned serpent they called
ulstitlu
and taken the gem from between his eyes.

It was a deep, narrow, dark canyon where the sun reached only at midday. The Cherokees said that was the meaning of Nantahala, “the Land of the Noonday Sun.”

Jeremy Ring came and stood beside me and watched the steel mesh of the rain.

“I miss your father,” he said suddenly. “Barnabas has been gone for several years, but his stamp is upon everything. He was an extraordinary man.”

“He made big tracks,” I agreed.

“You will do as much, Kin. I have no doubt.”

I told him about Jamaica then and of my fight with Bogardus. Swordsman that he was, he must have every detail, and we refought the battle, move by move. Yet as we talked, we scanned the edge of the forest all around.

“I must go again to Shawmut,” I told him. “I must take the statement I have from Adele Legare as well as
the letters I have written to Brian and to Peter Tallis. You are right. We must wait no longer about establishing a legal claim to our lands.”

“We must consider alternatives, too,” he said. “Although I should hate to give this up, it may be necessary.”

“Aye, but there are lands to the westward. Good lands. Yance and I have seen them.”

“The place you have now? Is that good?”

“It is not the best. It is too high up. It is only beautiful, with just a little corn land. Down below in the flat lands is where we must have land. The soil is rich and deep.”

“Do not wait too long.”

“It will be a hundred years before men get over there unless it is the French. Jubal saw Frenchmen over there, and they claim it all.”

“Settlers?”

“Trappers and hunters like us. I do not think the Indians would let anyone settle. There has been much fighting there, and some parts of it they shy from. They say it is haunted ground.”