Louis L'Amour (4 page)

Pushing back my empty bowl, I got to my feet and drank off the last of the cider.

“If they can be found, Mistress Penney,” I said, “I shall bring them back, with Yance's help.” I put down the mug. “One more thing. Do the Pequots have muskets?”

Penney looked around. “Muskets? I think not, although there was talk of some selling of arms to them. Why do you ask?”

“Tenaco,” I said, “the messenger Mistress Penney sent for us, was shot. He was shot only just after he left here, shot by someone who both had a musket and who did not want him bringing help.”

I lifted the latch. “Now who do you suppose would do that?”

I stepped out into the night and pulled the door shut quickly behind me. Instantly I rounded the edge of the house and stood quiet to let my eyes grow accustomed to the darkness.

A moment I listened. Someone, some
thing
was out there. Out there in the darkness, waiting.

W
aiting or watching. The night was a secret place, but the keys to the secrets were the senses. Edging a little along the cabin wall, feeling the rough stone at my back, I listened.

There was a pile of cut wood stacked in cords nearby; beyond it was a lean-to. Crossing swiftly to the stack of cordwood, I waited an instant, then moved to the lean-to and around it. Nothing.

In a moment I was at the edge of the woods, and there I waited, listening. Whoever was watching, and I was sure someone had been, was back along the path to the woods down which I'd come. Somebody had laid out in the woods, watching for me.

The night would be none too long, and I was wearied with travel, so I made out to pass through the woods, stepping light and easy. We boys had played so much in the woods and hunted with Indians back yonder that we'd become like ghosts when in the forest.

It had taken an hour, but I was back in the woods, and Yance came out from nowhere.

“Tenaco's gone.”

“Gone?”

“I was rustling cooking wood, and next thing I knew he had disappeared.”

“He'd done his job. He found us, brought us here. It's no fight of his.”

We moved off together to where the horses were. The moment Tenaco was gone, Yance had shifted camp. Not far, but far enough for safety, or whatever
safety there was in a hostile land where even the white people would be against us.

We slept, trusting to our horses to warn us and to our own senses. At dawn we ate some of the meat I'd brought from the Penneys' and drank some of their cider. Then we moved the horses to a hidden meadow, a small place cozied down among the oaks; then I went back to watch for Penney.

When they came, Penney and Macklin, there were two other men with them. I looked to my priming.

One of them was a powerful big man, and it was not a thing that pleased me, for I'd expected them to come alone.

The night before there had been much talk while I was at table, and taking no part in it, I listened nonetheless, for a trail is followed not only upon the earth but in the minds of those one pursues or the minds of those whose thinking is similar.

It had been talk of local affairs and happenings, events or persons of which I had no knowledge. There was much talk of sermons, also, and I gathered from this, as well as what Yance had told me, that sermons had much to do with shaping of thinking. These were a stiff-necked, proud folk, not easily persuaded to any course not dictated by conscience, yet conscience could be a poor guide if accompanied by lack of knowledge.

Yet now I thought of what must be done. Lack of knowledge of the Pequots was my greatest problem, for little as I knew of Indians, I had learned from dealings with those I knew that there were great differences in them, and to speak of a redskin as being Indian was like speaking of a Frenchman or an Italian as a European.

If I knew little, I at least knew that I knew little. My experience had been largely with the Eno, Catawba, Occaneechi, Seneca, and Cherokee. There were differences, and the differences were important.

They came up the path together, Penney and Macklin in the lead.

The house Tom Penney built indicated much of his character: solid, built for security and comfort, not a
hasty habitation thrown together for mere shelter. It had two rooms, the large kitchen–living room and a bedroom adjoining. There was a loft where the girls slept, warmer because of the rising heat. Everything in the house showed the hand of a man with a love for work and for his materials.

Diana Macklin, seventeen and unmarried, was obviously a maid of independent mind, accustomed to the woods and the search for herbs. Not likely that she would wander off with a child and become lost, although even woods-wise men occasionally did.

When they were near, I stepped into their path. “You can take me to where they were last seen?”

“I can.” Penney pointed. “It is ten minutes. No farther.”

Macklin said, “Diana would not become lost. She had played in the forest as a child.”

“This knowledge of herbs? She had it from Indians?”

He hesitated ever so slightly, and I wondered why. “She learned it in England, and more from a woman here, and some from the Indians, also.”

“She spoke their tongue?”

“She did. She had a gift for languages.”

Surely an unusual girl and one who, if she kept her wits about her, might make a place for herself even among Indians and could protect herself and Carrie.

The big man was Max Bauer, and he was both wide and thick. There was about him an air of command that surprised me. He did not appear to be a man who would be second to Joseph Pittingel, which had me wondering if I had not underestimated Pittingel himself.

“Ho!” Bauer thrust out a huge hand. “So this is the woodsman!”

The instant our hands met I knew he meant to crush mine to show me who was master, so I met him grip for grip and saw his confidence fade to irritation, then to anger.

“You have come far? From Virginia, mayhap?”

“Far,” I said.

“You will find nothing! The earth has been trampled so that no tracks are left!”

“Not even on the first day?”

He brushed off the suggestion. “I was not here the first day. When my boat came in, I went to study the ground. It was hopeless.”

The hollow where the girls had come to gather herbs was a pleasant little place, a meadow beside a small pool with reeds all about the pool's edge and forest encircling the hollow itself. There was a wide variety of plant life and a well-chosen place in which to look for herbs.

The earth had been badly trampled, the grass pressed down, reeds parted where men had gone to the water's edge. Any sign one might have found had long since been destroyed.

“There's nothing here,” I said.

“Agreed!” Bauer spoke loudly. “It is a waste of time! In any event, by now the Pequots are far from here.”

“Pequots? You saw them?”

“I did not. But they were here. I have a feel for them. They were here.”

We had seen nothing of Yance, nor did I expect him, but I knew he was out there, watching and listening. We had been so much together that each knew the other and his thinking, and right now he was beginning to do what I would have done in his place. He was casting about in a wide circle to pick up sign farther out, where the grass had not been trampled.

Now we had to place ourselves in the minds of the maids or their captors and try to decide what they must have done. The search would not have progressed far on that first attempt, for undoubtedly few of them were armed; fewer still would know anything about tracking.

These people were city folk or from good-sized towns. In England they had been craftsmen for the most part, gentry some of them, and the parks or woodlands of England were vastly different from these
primeval forests, or so I heard from my father, Jeremy Ring, and the others at our settlement on Shooting Creek.

We went back to the settlement. The man with Max Bauer was a small, quick-moving man with sandy, tufted eyebrows and a quick, ratlike way about him. His name was not mentioned, and I deemed him judged of no consequence, yet I did not feel so myself. It is such men of whom one must be forever wary, for they live in the shadow of greater or seemingly greater men, often eaten by jealousy or hatred, not necessarily of those whom they serve.

We stopped at the Penney's, and the rest went on, but Macklin and I went in and sat down to a glass of cider, cold from hanging in the well.

Anna Penney was filled with questions about Temperance, so I told her much of our life at Shooting Creek. “Our settlement is at the foot of the mountains. The water is very clear, cold, and good there. We have a dozen cabins, a stockade, and several of us are good farmers. So far the crops have been good, and there are berries in the forest and many roots. All of our men are hunters, and there is much game.”

“Your family is there?”

“My father was killed by the Senecas, and my mother is in England. She was wishful that my sister not grow up in the wilderness, and my brother Brian wished to read for the law.

“You must not worry about Temperance. She is much loved and is one of us. We do not have a church, for services have always been conducted in our homes. I fear by your standards ours are not much. Rarely do they last longer than half an hour.

“She has good friends amongst us. Jeremy and Lila Ring are there. They came with my family. Jeremy was a soldier and a gentleman.”

“I have heard of Jamestown. It was to Virginia the first settlers here were going, but they came ashore sooner than expected.”

“Jamestown is far from us. We came up the rivers through Carolina.”

She left the house, and Macklin and I sat alone. He seemed uneasy. Several times he cleared his throat as if to speak. He was a tall, quiet, scholarly-looking man.

Putting down my glass, I said, “Tell me about your daughter.”

He looked at me strangely, but he did not speak for a moment. Then he said, “Why? What is it you wish to know?”

“To find them I must understand them. A track is not only marks upon the earth. If she is a prisoner, she must do what she is told, but if she is not, or if she gets away, I must understand her thinking. She may have been taken. We know nothing.”

“Do you doubt it?”

“All is surmise. Nobody
saw
Indians take her.”

He took a swallow from his mug, then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “She is a fine girl,” he said, “a fine, honest girl.”

“Most maids of her years are already wed,” I commented.

He looked straight at me, his eyes hard. “She had many offers. Why Joseph Pittingel himself—”

“He wished to marry her?”

“He spoke of it. Joseph Pittingel is a wealthy man.”

“She refused him?”

“She did, in a way. She just, well, she just looked at him and walked away.”

I decided I liked Diana Macklin.

“Yet there was little search made for them. Was something wrong?”

He sat silent, his lips firming in a stubborn line. He liked not the trend of the conversation but seemed to realize my need to know. “After all, you will hear it soon or late.” He looked around at me. “There is always talk in these small settlements when someone is different. She liked none of the young men, although she was
gracious and sweet to the older ones. I suspect it was that only which saved her from being called up. Some said she was a witch! My daughter, a witch!”

“I have no faith in witches,” I replied, “nor in the devil, for that matter.”

“Be careful of what you say,” Macklin warned. “It is well nigh as sinful not to believe in the devil as not to believe in God!”

“Could she have gone away of her own free will? Seeing the attitude around her—and she seems a girl of uncommon intelligence—could she have decided to go and simply not return?”

He considered that, then shook his head. “No. Had she been alone, she might have gone away, but she would not take Carrie with her.

“Carrie loved her like a sister, and they were much together, but Diana would never have taken her from her family. Also,” he added, “Diana would have waited until spring. Midsummer is not a good time to begin such a journey, and Diana is a girl to think of such things. She was never impulsive but very cool. She thought things through to their conclusion.”

“What of Diana's mother?”

“Diana's mother is dead. She died in England when Diana was a small child.”

Someone approached the door. Anna Penney returning from wherever she had been. I got up. “Shall we go to your place? We must talk more of this.”

Reluctantly, he got to his feet as Anna entered. She came at once to me. “You will find my Carrie for me? You and Yance? When she was gone, the others would not look, and I knew what they believed, yet I have always loved Diana. I never believed any of the things they said. It was just that she—”

“She what?”

“She loved the night. Our parson has said that witches love the night, that they meet in the forest in old caves, ruined buildings, and that they keep to darkness and the shadows.”

We crossed the lane to Macklin's cabin, spotless in
its neatness. We sat at the table, and he looked out the open door.

“Our house is empty without her,” he said. “I have been much alone, and she cared for me. I—have some small skill with tools, but I am happier with my books. She read them, also, and we talked—long hours.”

My eyes went to the small row of books.
The Compleat Gentleman
, by Peacham, stood beside Barrough's
Method of Physic
and Michael Dalton's
Country Justice.
Although I knew them by name only, I had seen them in Jamestown. Bacon's
Essays
and his
Advancement of Learning
I knew well. They had been among the last batch of books brought up from the coast. “I see some old friends yonder,” I said.