Novel 1978 - The Proving Trail (v5.0) (17 page)

“Get your sock off!” he said. “Let’s see that foot.”

“I must have stepped on the side of it,” I said. “It would have hurt much more had I stepped on the point.”

There was no puncture or scratch on my foot. Louis examined the point again. “You’ve been very lucky,” he commented grimly. “I am sure this is a poison, and I am sure it was meant to kill you. She must have placed it in your boot while you were asleep, never imagining you’d shake out your boots.”

“We all do it,” I said. “You learn quickly out here.”

“She must have believed you stepped on it when you stood up. She believes you are poisoned.”

He was still examining the tack. “I know something of this sort of thing,” he commented. “When I was studying at the seminary in France, there was a professor there who was making a study of plant poisons—arrow poison and the like which had been used by primitive peoples. It resembles pakuru, a poison made from a tree of that name. If my memory serves me correctly one staggers, becomes clumsy, is apt to lose control of some muscles, then one dies. Depending on whether one gets a little of it or much, it can kill in anywhere from fifteen minutes to several hours, but usually the quicker time.”

“When I started to rise, I almost fell,” I said. “It was pure clumsiness, but—”

“Of course, she believed her poison was working. Very well, the thing for you to do is be gone before morning. Be out of here and away into the mountains.”

“I came to see the papers my father left,” I protested.

“And so you shall. How long will it take? An hour…less, surely. In the meanwhile I shall see your horses are made ready.”

He took up the tack. “I shall get rid of this. It must not be left lying about, and I am sure you do not want it.” He looked at it. “An ugly thing…murder is the answer to nothing. It invariably creates more problems than it eliminates. A dozen times in my life I have thought of it, and of course did not do it. I am a civilized man. However, a year after, the person I would cheerfully have murdered was no longer of importance to me, and in many cases of no importance to anyone. Time eliminates so many problems. It is a good thing, I think, to save newspapers, then read them months later. One soon discovers then what is important and what is not. Many a crisis that seems about to shake the earth and bring down governments turns out to be no more substantial than those dust devils which one sees in the desert or plains. They spin furiously for a few minutes, then fall apart, leaving not even a ghost of themselves.”

There was a tap at the door, and when Louis opened it, Sophie was there holding the familiar buckskin case that my father had so long carried.

He took it from her and passed it on to me. “There! I know nothing of what it contains, and only what he told me of his story. I think you should read these, but please,
mon ami,
before you do anything, consult with me. And with Sophie.”

“Sophie? I thought you did not like women?”

“Most of them I dislike. Not woman…women. Silly creatures, most of them. Sophie is different. We have been friends, Sophie and I, and although she does not know it, when I am gone this will become hers. Sophie is a jewel, Kearney, a jewel of the purest water. She is a philosopher, a true philosopher with a sense of reality far better than mine. She sees much and says nothing, a rare quality in a man, let alone a woman. Most women sparkle beautifully as young girls. These are the robes nature puts on them to help trap the unwary male, but once the game is trapped the bait disappears, and most of them settle into dullness.”

The idea was amusing, but I objected. “You can’t say that of her…of Delphine,” I said. “It seems to me the bait is still there.”

He shrugged. “Of course. She is a huntress. She is not looking for a man. All men are useful to her, none really important. Many of the famous courtesans of history were such women. Sex was not important to them. They simply used it as a tool in reaching for wealth or power. Such a woman usually controls the situation because she herself does not care. I think Delphine, like her brother, if such he is, wants wealth because it insulates her from people. She has an inborn hatred and contempt for people. They are like spiders with webs, not to trap prey necessarily, but simply as a place to
be,
where the world cannot brush against them. Apparently whatever they have is not enough to insure this, and what is yours would be enough. But beware, my friend! Such people are intent, they are relentless and single-minded in their purpose, whatever it may be.”

“I cannot always run from them,” I protested.

“You cannot. What you must do is go east, establish your claim to the property, and settle the fact once and for all that there is an heir and you are he. If you wish to take possession, do so. If not, sell the property and return here, away from them and all they mean, buy yourself a ranch, and make your own place in the world. Your father avoided the issue because he wished to avoid the family feud, he wished to be free of all that, but there was a final killing. It disturbed him very greatly, and to return would have meant more killing. Also, there were others between him and the property. That, apparently, is no longer so. You are a shrewd, intelligent young man, Kearney, but I would suggest you move quickly to assert your claim while they are still looking for you here. I have friends, and I can arrange for you to move very swiftly indeed, so go east, see a man whose name I shall give you, and take possession. The rest is up to you, and now I shall leave you with these things,” he said, tapping the buckskin case, “but do you study the contents carefully.”

The room I had overlooked the street, and I sat near the window but at one side of it so that I might survey the approach to the hotel. I could not see directly down into the street without pressing my face against the glass, which caution told me would not be advisable. Delphine was not likely to take a shot at me, but I did not believe for the moment that she was alone. And if she had come alone, she would not long remain without recruits.

Louis was right in suggesting that I slip out of town. One attempt had been made to kill me, but when it was realized that the attempt had failed, they would surely make another. It was this that was irrational about them, that they seemed to want to gain possession of what papers my father had left and to kill me also, but so impatient were they that they could not seem to wait until I came into possession of the papers they wanted. They would kill me first and take their chances on the papers…or that seemed to be the case. What I had surprised in the eyes of Delphine was simply that, an eagerness for the kill.

First, to read and understand what my father had left. It was only a small packet of papers, including a very skillfully drawn map showing the locations of several pieces of property, two plantations, one quite large, and several patches of pasture and woodland in other parts of the state. Accompanying them were the deeds to two of the smaller parcels.

There was a letter, folded and sealed, addressed to me. I broke the seal.

My Son:

When you read this I shall be dead. Since your mother died I have lived for you and you alone and now that I am gone the decisions will be yours to make. If you decide to go back, know that you must see Old Tolbert. He will know best how to proceed.

For three generations there has persisted in our family a deadly feud which has resulted in seven duels, four of them fatal. There have been other deaths attributed to one cause or another, but some at least were from poison.

Twice I was myself embroiled in duels, twice I was victorious, and after that efforts were made to use poison or to way-lay me. I had enough. I simply disappeared. Then I met your mother, married, and you were born.

There was no honor among them. They wasted their inheritance and wanted the rest. At last count there were thirteen of them and but three left of us. Their name is Cabanus although some have used the name of Yant. If something happens to us they will be the closest and can claim any estate, and this, as much as hatred, is behind it.

Do not take them lightly. They have intelligence of a high order, and they have courage, yet they will stop at nothing, and will kill from ambush or with a knife in the dark, or poison, and it is said the women are skilled and practiced poisoners with poisons brought by them from Surinam, where they frequently go.

I had hoped to keep you from all this, had hoped to win by gambling enough money to send you to school, to set you up somewhere in a business or profession, and have done with all that. Then word came to me that they were seeking me out.

The most skillful and deadly of them all is Joseph Vrydag, a cousin of theirs, lately of Surinam. He would now be a man of forty years and spent some years before he was twenty in the goldfields of California and Nevada. I have no idea as to his appearance.

There was a little more, but there lay the gist of it, and it seemed I should have no recourse but to lay claim to what estate there was, if only to defeat them. When one is very young, death seems remote. I thought of the poisoned tack in my boot. I should have to be wary.

Joseph Vrydag…no idea as to appearance, but a man of forty years. I must walk with caution, and alone.

There remained one more document. It was another map, but an ancient map, drawn upon beautifully tanned deerskin. On it were located a river, a small fort or what appeared to be so, and an Indian village. Trees were indicated and a cliff, nearby a deep canyon or ravine, and at a point in the wall of the canyon, a cave was indicated, or what appeared to be a cave, behind a waterfall.

What it meant I had no idea, but somehow I got the idea that it might be the most important item of all. Why was it enclosed here? Obviously it was very old, obviously a part of my legacy, if such it could be called. There was no indication as to the location of the map, no names were given, nothing beyond the few terrain features. The map was meant to be used by someone who knew the area to which the map applied.

On a sudden inspiration I opened my bedroll, where I sometimes carried a few extra items of clothing, and got out my old buckskin hunting shirt. It had been patched a time or two but was still useful. On the inside of the back, just above the waistline, I stitched the buckskin map, the face of the map toward the back of the shirt so it was not visible.

When I had finished the stitching, I stood up and stretched, and as I did so I glanced out of the window. There was a man standing across the street, somewhat in the shadows. As the night was cold, he wore a heavy coat. Moving to the side of the window, I drew the shade, then went to the door, glanced into the empty hall, and in two quick steps was at the door of the room next to mine. It stood open, as the room was empty. Closing the door after me, I went to the window of the dark room and peered out.

The man in the heavy coat was still there, his shadow obscured so I could not make him out. Another man came up the street and joined him. I saw the white of his face as he looked up. So then, I was being watched for.

Returning to my room, I put the last of my possessions together, rolled my blanket roll tighter, and lay down on my bed to wait, with the light turned off.

A hand touched my shoulder. It was Louis. “No light,” he warned, “and come now!”

Rising, I took up my rifle and blanket roll and followed him down the dark hall. How he expected me to leave the hotel without being seen I had no idea, for the front entrance opened upon the street and the back door upon what I remembered as a wide, vacant area. Yet I had not had time to examine it.

He led the way to the back door and paused. Outside I heard a confused mumbling and what sounded like a drunken argument, then a rather confused medley of voices singing “Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair.”

“Step outside,” Louis whispered, “and join them. Say nothing, just go along with them.”

The door opened a crack and I slipped out and men closed around me. Almost at once the door opened again, but this time the hall was lighted and a shaft of light fell over the group.

“Come on, boys,” Louis was saying, “be reasonable! I’ve got some sleepy, tired people inside!”

“Aw, look!” a drunken voice said. “There’s French Louie! Good ol’ Frenchy! Come on, Louie! Have a drink!”

“Too much work,” Louis said affably, “but I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You go sing somewhere else and I’ll give you a couple of bottles!”

“It’s a deal!” the man beside me shouted. “Good ol’ Frenchy! ’Member when we worked the graveyard shift together?”

“Now, now, boys,” Louis said. “Here, take these bottles, and you boys just drift along. My guests are tired people and need their rest.”

“We were just serenadin’ ’em,” another miner said. “Come on, Louis! Come along with us!”

“Some other night,” he said. “You boys get along now!”

He closed the door, and staggering and singing, waving a bottle or two, they started off across the lot, singing “Tenting Tonight on the Old Camp Ground.”

The man who had draped his arm around my shoulders now whispered, “Your hosses are under them cottonwoods yonder. When we get to ’em, you just slip off and you’re on your own.”

“Sure…and thanks.”

“Forget it. Any friend of Louis’s is a friend of ours.”