Lando (1962) (2 page)

The cabin was a fair, kind place among the rocks and trees, with a cold spring at the back and a good fishing stream not a hundred yards off. And happily they lived there until ma died.

"If you stay here," the Tinker went on, "they will kill you. You have but the one barrel of your old rifle and they are three armed men, and skilled at killing."

"They are my uncles, after all."

"They are your enemies, and you are not your father.

These men are fighters, and you are not."

My head came up angrily, for he spoke against my pride. "I can fight!"

Impatience was in his voice and attitude when he answered. "You have fought against boys or clumsy men. That is not fighting. Fighting is a skill to be learned. I saw you whip the three Lindsay boys, but any man with skill could have whipped you easily."

"There were three of them."

The Tinker knocked the ash from his pipe. his'Lando, you are strong, one of the strongest men I know, and surprising quick, but neither of these things makes you a fighter. Fighting is a craft, and it must be learned and practiced. Until you know how to fight with your head as well as with heart and muscle, you are no fighting man."

"And I suppose you know this craft?"

I spoke contemptuously, for the idea of the Tinker as a fighting man seemed to me laughable.

He was long and thin, with nothing much to him.

"I know a dozen kinds. How to fight with the fists, the open hand, and Japanese- as well as Cornish-style wrestling. If we travel together, I will teach you."

Teach me? I bit my tongue on angry ^ws, for my pride was sore hurt that he took me so lightly. Had I not, when only a boy, whipped Duncan Caffrey, and him two years older and twenty pounds heavier? And since then I'd whipped eight or nine more, men and boys; and at Clinch's Creek was I not cock of the walk?

And he spoke of teaching me!

Opening his pack, the Tinker brought out a packet of coffee, for he carried real coffee and not the dried beans and chicory we mountain folk used. Without moving from where he was, he reached out and brought together chips, bark, and bits of twigs left from my wood-cutting andof them he made a fire.

He was a man who disliked the inside of places, craving the freeness of the open air about him. Some said it was because he must have been locked up once upon a time, but I paid no mind to gossip.

While he started the fire and put water on to boil, I went to a haunch of venison hanging in the shed and cut a healthy bait of it into thick slices for roasting at the fire. Then I returned to grind more meal.

Such mills as mine were scarce, and the corn I ground would be the last, for I planned to trade the mill for whatever it would bring as I passed out of the country.

If it was true the Kurbishaws sought to kill me they could find me here, for mountains are never so big that a man is not known.

But the thought of leaving this place brought a twinge of regret, for all the memories of ma and pa concerned this place. Yonder was the first tree I'd climbed, and how high the lowest branch had seemed then! And nearby was the spring from which I proudly carried the first bucket of water I could hold clear of the ground.

No man cuts himself free of old ties without regret; even scenes of hardship and sadness possess the warmth of familiarity, and within each of us there is a love for the known. How many times at planting had my shovel turned this dark earth!

How many times had I leaned against that tree, or marveled at the cunning with which pa had fitted the logs of our house, or put all the cabinets together with wooden pins!

The Tinker filled my plate and cup. "We shall talk of fighting another time."

Suddenly my quieter mood was gone and irritation came flooding back. No man wishes to be lightly taken, and I was young and strong, and filled with the pride of victories won.

"Talk of it now," I said belligerently, "and if you want to try me on, you've no cause to wait."

"You talk the fool!" he said impatiently.

"I am your friend, and I doubted if you have another.

Wait, and when you have taken your whipping, come to me and I will show you how it should be done."

Putting down the coffee cup, I got to my feet. "Show me," I said, "if you think you can."

With a pained expression on his lean, dark face he got slowly to his feet. "This may save you a beating, or I'd have no part of it. So come at me if you will."

He stood with his arms dangling, and suddenly I thought what a fool I was to force such a fight on a friend; but then my pride took command and my fingers clenched into a fist and I swung at him.

End it with a blow, I thought, and save him a bad beating. That was in my mind when I swung.

Suddenly long fingers caught my wrist with a strength I'd never have believed, and the next thing I knew I was flying through the air, to land with a thump on the hard ground. It fairly knocked the wind from me, and the nonsense from my brain as well; but then I saw him standing a few feet away, regarding me coolly.

Anger surged through me and I lunged up from the ground, prepared for that throw he had used upon me.

This time I struck the ground even harder--he had thrown me in another way, and so suddenly and violently that I had no idea how it was done.

There was some sense in me after all, for I looked up at him and grinned. "At least you know a few tricks. Are these what you would show me?"

"These, and more," he said. "Now drink your coffee. It grows cold."

My anger was gone, and my good sense warned me that had he been my enemy I should now have been crippled or dead. For once down, he could put the boots to me and kick in my ribs, crush my chest or crush my skull. In such fighting there is no sportsmanship, for it is no game but is in deadly earnest, and men fight to win.

"Have you heard of Jem Mace?" he asked me.

"No."

"He was the world champion prize fighter, an Englishman and a gypsy. He whipped the best of them, and he was not a large man, but he was among the first to apply science to the art of fist fighting. He taught me boxing and I have sparred with him many times.

"Footwork is not mere dancing about. By footwork you can shift a man out of position to strike you effectively, and still leave yourself in position to strike him. By learning to duck and slip punches, you can work close to a man and still keep your hands free for punching. Certain blows automatically create openings for the blows to follow."

He refilled his cup. "A man who travels alone must look out for himself."

"You have your knives."

"Aye, but a hand properly used can be as dangerous as a knife." He was silent for a moment, and then added, "And a man is not lynched for what he does with his hands."

We both were still, letting the campfire warm our memories. What memories the Tinker had, what strange thoughts might come into his head, andof what strange things he had seen, I knew nothing, but my own memories went back to the day pa left me with Will Caffrey.

Three heavy sacks of gold he passed over to Caffrey that day, and then he said, "This is my son, of whom I have spoken. Care for him well, and every third coin is your own."

"You'll be leaving now?"

"Yes ... to wander is a means to forgetting, and we were very close, my wife and I." He put his hand on my shoulder. "I'll come back, son.

Do you be a good boy now."

Pa advised Caffrey to send me to the best schools and treat me well, and in due time he would return.

For the first year I was treated well enough, yet long before the change came I had seen shadows of it. Often at night I would hear Mrs.

Caffrey complaining of the extra burden I was, and how much the money would mean to them if they had not to think of me. And Caffrey would speculate aloud on how much interest the money would bring, and what could be bought of lands and cattle with such an amount of gold.

Her ^ws bothered me more than his, for I sensed an evil in her that was not in him. He was a greedy, selfish man, close with money and hard-fisted as well as self-righteous; but as for her --I think she would have murdered me. Indeed, I think it was in her mind to do so.

Caffrey had a reputation for honesty, but many a man with such a reputation simply has not been found out or tested, andfor Will Caffrey the test of those bags of gold was too much for his principles to bear. The year after pa had gone they took me from school--theirthe own son continued--and they put me to work with the field hands. Eleven years old I was then, and no place to go, nor anyone to turn to.

The day came when Duncan struck me.

Contemptuous of me he was, taking that from his parents' treatment of me, and he often sneered or cursed at me, but when he struck me we had at it, knuckle and skull.

It was even-up fighting until I realized all his blows were struck at my face, so I scrooched down as he rushed at me and struck him a mighty blow in the belly.

It taken his wind. He let go a grunt and his mouth dropped open, so I spread wide my legs and let go at his chin.

With his mouth open and jaw slack, a girl might have broken his jaw, and I did, for I was a naturally strong boy who had worked hard and done much running and climbing in the forest.

He fell back against the woodpile where I had been working, his face all white and strange-looking, but my blood was up and I swung a final fist against his nose, which broke, streaming blood over his lips and chin.

The door slammed and his ma and pa were coming at me, Will Caffrey with his cane lifted, and her with her fingers spread like claws.

I taken out.

So far as I could see, nothing was keeping me, and by the time I stopped running I was far off in the piney woods and nighttime a-coming on.

By that time I was twelve years old and knew only the mountains. The towns I feared, so it never occurred to me to leave all I had known behind.

The one place I knew was the cabin, and there I had known happiness, so I turned up through the woods, hunting the way.

It was thirty-odd miles of rough mountain and forest, and I slept three nights before I got there, the first nights I ever spent in the forest alone.

When at last I came to the cabin I was a tuckered-out boy.

If they ever came seeking me, I never knew. They might have come before I got back, or after, when I was off a-hunting. More than likely they were pleased to be free of me, for now they had the gold.

Five years I lived there alone.

That isn't to say I didn't see anybody in all that time. Long before ma died I used to go hunting with the Cherokee boys, and I could use a bow and arrow or set a snare as good as the best of them. These were wild Cherokees who took to the mountains when the government moved the Indians west.

Pa had been friendly with them, and they liked me.

Whenever I was over that way I was sure of a meal, and many a time during that first year I made it a point.

Whilst working with Caffrey I had done most of the kitchen-garden planting, and there was seed at the house. The Cherokees were planting Indians, so I got more seed from them, and I spaded up garden space and planted melons, corn, potatoes, and schlike. For the rest, I hunted the woods for game, berries, nuts, and roots.

It would be a lie to say I was brave, forofa night I was a scared boy, and more than once I cried myself to sleep, remembering ma and wishing pa would come home.

Those first years it was only the thought of pa coming back that kept me going. Caffrey had been sure pa was dead and had never left off telling me so, although why he should be so sure I never knew. It wasn't until I was past fifteen that I really gave up hope. In my thinking mind I was sure after that that he would not come back, but my ears pricked every time I heard a horse on the trail.

Travel was no kind thing those days, what with killers along the Natchez Trace and the Wilderness Road, Bald Knobbers, and varmints generally. Many a man who set out from home never got back, and who was to say what became of him?

First off, I swapped some dress goods ma had in her trunk for a buckskin hunting shirt and leggings; and after I had trapped, I traded my muskrat and red-fox skins with the Cherokees for things I needed. The cornmill was there, and after my first harvest I always had corn.

My fourteenth birthday came along and ma wasn't there to bake me a cake like she'd done, so I fried myself up a batch of turkey eggs.

And that was a big day, because just shy of noon when I was fixing to set up to table, the Tinker came along the trail.

It was the first time I'd seen him, although I'd heard tell of him. He sat up to table with me and told me the news of the Settlements. After that he always stopped by.

The Tinker hadn't very much to say that first time, but he did a sight of looking and seeing. So I showed him around, proud of the cabin pa had built and the way he'd used water from the creek to irrigate the fields when they needed water-- although rain usually took care of that.

The Tinker noticed everything, but it wasn't until a long time after, that some of his questions started coming back to mind to puzzle me. Especially, about the gold.