Louis L'Amour (9 page)

“How will it be,” I asked, “when you return?”

She was quiet for a minute, and then she said, “It will be the same, I think. Perhaps worse. If it were not for my father, I would walk away one day and never look back.”

“Why don't you …” I caught myself, not wishing her to misunderstand, “and your father come south to Shooting Creek? You would like it there, I believe, and there is a place. One of our farmers was killed by Indians, and his cabin is a strong one. It is empty.”

“Thank you.”

She gave no sign that she thought it a good suggestion or not, so I said nothing further. After a moment we started on, walking steadily into the night. Yance carried Carrie for more than a mile, and we stopped again.

Henry was impatient. “It is foolish. We cannot escape. They will surely find us.”

“Would you leave them?” I asked.

He threw me a disdainful glance. “Of course not, but we will all be taken.” He paused a minute. “You do not know them. They are vicious, and they are cruel.”

“Whose slave were you?”

“A ship's captain. He has been much along this coast, and he has made swift attacks on Indian villages and carried some of them off for slaves. I was his servant.”

He turned his head toward me. “To lie in the hold of a ship was not good, and there was no chance for escape. So I let them hear me speaking English and telling
another slave that I was once servant to an Englishman. It was not true, but it worked as I hoped it would, and the captain sent for me. I became his servant and henceforth was upon deck. Then I taught him to trust me.”

“And how did you get ashore?”

“Lashan needed a man, and there was no other, so for this one time they left me ashore to help him. It was what I had been waiting for.”

“If we get through this, you will return to Africa?”

He was silent, thinking about it. “I know not,” he grumbled. “I have seen much since then. Perhaps there is a better life here.”

“There are slaves here, too.”

“There are slaves everywhere. Many are slaves, one way or another, who do not realize they are, but I shall not be a slave. There is opportunity here even among white men.”

“You are not worried about your color being a handicap?”

“Worried, no. In some ways it will work against me, and in others it will work for me. You wonder why I speak English as I do? I learned it from an Englishman who was a slave in my country. He was captured when a party came ashore from a ship. He began as the lowest of slaves, but it was discovered that he knew something of treating illnesses, although he was not a medical man. Then he became my teacher, also. Soon he was my father's adviser and confidant. When my father died, he returned to his country and returned with gold and diamonds my father had given him.

“He stood upon the shore with me before his ship sailed, and he said to me what I should remember, that any man can be a slave, and a few men, if they will it, can become kings. He put his hand upon my shoulder and told me that in the world were two kinds of people, those who wish and those who will, and the world and its goods will always belong to those who will.

“ ‘When I came to your land, I was a slave, but I shouldered whatever burden was given me. I looked for other burdens, and for those who will shoulder a burden
there will always be many burdens to carry. Finally I helped your father, whose burdens were growning too heavy for him, and your father rewarded me, first with freedom and second with wealth.' ”

Well, it seemed to me it was time to move along, so I got up. “Henry,” I said, “it looks to me like you had a good teacher.”

“Yes, it is so, although it took me much time to learn it. What he taught was good, but what his life showed me was even better.”

The day had not yet come when we stopped in a hidden place in the midst of a thick stand of young pines. It was the side of a knoll where the ground broke steeply off, then shelved to a narrow bench. There we bedded down and were instantly asleep. This time we felt secure, and all slept, and deeply, too.

The sun was not yet up when I awoke. For a moment I lay still, listening to the forest sounds, identifying each as my ears came upon it. Rising, I went to the edge of the bench where we had slept and looked all around. A moment, and then as I started to turn, I heard the faintest
clink
of metal on metal.

My breath caught and held; then slowly I exhaled and looked in the direction of the sound.

There not thirty yards away was a camp! And in the camp, striking flint against steel, was Vern, about to light a fire!

V
ery, very carefully I stepped back. When out of sight, I turned swiftly and awakened Yance. Accustomed to trouble and knowing me, he was instantly awake and alert. He moved to awaken Henry, and I went to the girls.

Gently I touched Diana's shoulder and put a finger across my lips. Her eyes flared open; there was an instant until she realized, and then she moved quietly to awaken Carrie. My gestures toward the enemy camp were enough to warn her.

Swiftly, quietly we moved away through the woods, going directly away from their camp. Somehow we made it, or seemed to.

The leaves were wet with dew, or perhaps there had been a whisper of rain during the night, but there was no sound as we moved quickly along. That they would find our camp was without question, for once they started to look about for dry wood, they would undoubtedly come upon it. The first problem was distance, the second to leave no trail, yet it was distance of which I thought at first.

Max Bauer had not seemed to be with them, so perhaps the two groups had not come together. Or it might be that Bauer was too shrewd to allow himself to be found with the men who had actually been holding the girls. And it was he who worried me most, for I doubted the tracking skill of Lashan or Vern.

“If aught goes amiss,” I warned Diana, “go at once to Samuel Maverick. From what you have said, he
seems a good man and a solid one. Go to him, tell him all, and trust to his judgment. If he knows your father, he will get word to him.”

The war party of Indians, I believed, had gone off to the north of us, raiding some other Indian people, I suspected. Bauer should be close by, but I suspected he was now behind us, as was Lashan. With luck—and mentally I crossed my fingers—we should have a clear way to Shawmut.

We moved well through the long morning, and when it came to high sun, we were upon the banks of a goodly stream, one flowing north into that great river that I assumed to be what the Indians called the Merrimack or something of the sound.

“This must be that river called the Musketaauid,” Diana said. “Father came once to its shores and fished here while with other men who looked for land for the future.”

The river worried me. It was a good hundred yards wide and perhaps more, and we had to cross it. Yance and I could swim, and no doubt Henry could, but I doubted the girls could, for it was not often a woman has the chance to learn, and Carrie was young.

Leaving Henry with them, Yance went downstream, and I turned up, for well we knew that Indians often conceal their canoes along the banks after traveling, hiding them against the next crossing. There were places where canoes were left for years, used by whoever came and left hidden on one side or the other.

We found no boat, it not being our lucky day, but Yance came upon several logs lying partly in and out of the water. They were of modest size, and there were others nearby.

Choosing dry logs, we found several of the proper length and bound them together with vines. The river moved with incredible slowness, and while we worked, we studied what currents we could see so as to know how best to control our crossing. Meanwhile, the girls ate huckleberries picked from bushes along the shore.

When the raft was complete, and a pitifully small
thing it was, we had the two girls climb aboard, and with them we put our muskets and powder horns.

Henry came suddenly from the woods. “They come now!” he said.

“Yance?” He looked up at my question. “You and Henry. Get on with it. I'll wait a bit.”

I kept one pistol with an extra charge of powder and ball laid out close to hand. And I had the bow and the arrows. They shoved off. Yance being a powerful swimmer, I knew he'd do his part, but Henry proved just as good, and the two of them, with tow lines, started swimming for the far bank, letting what little current there was help them along.

They weren't more than a dozen yards out when somebody yelled, and I heard crashing in the brush. The first one I sighted was the fat one, and he slid to a halt and lifted his musket to fire. It was no more than thirty yards, and I wasted no lead on him but put an arrow into his brisket.

His musket went off as he staggered, the ball going into the air, and he lost hold on his musket and grabbed the arrow. It was buried deep, and I saw him tugging as he fell.

Slinging my quiver to my back, I took up the pistol. There was more crashing in the brush, and somebody called a question. The fat man had fallen out of sight behind some brush, but I could hear him groaning there.

Suddenly a tall, thin man appeared in view, looking about. I lifted the pistol, but he saw me and dropped from sight. A quick glance showed me the raft was a good sixty yards into the stream and no longer a very good target, as the girls were lying flat, and you could see nothing of Yance or Henry but their heads and occasionally the flash of an arm.

There was more movement in the brush, and I took a chance and fired at the sound, knowing I'd best get going. Then I hastily reloaded, and taking the pistol in hand, ran along the shore until I reached a bend large enough to give me some cover. Then I tied my pistol to
me and went into the water. When I was a dozen yards out, I went under and swam some twenty good strokes before coming up for air.

I was downstream of them, and I heard a shot but no other sound, and when I cleared water again, I turned my head for a look back, and there were three men on the shore, two of them getting ready to swim and a third running along the bank looking for me. He spotted me just as I took a breath and went under, but I changed direction and went downstream and swam a good thirty strokes before I came up again, just shy of midstream.

Looking back, I could just barely see what I believed was the raft, and it was close to shore. I swam toward the bank then and came out on the bank among some deadfalls. There was no sign of the raft or of my people, but I could see at least two men swimming.

Shaking the water off my pistol, I swore softly, bitterly. I had no more powder with me, and my bowstring was wet. All that remained was my tomahawk and knife.

Taking a quick look along the shore again, I went into the trees and started toward where my path should join theirs. There was a thick stand of maple with occasional oak and in spots a pine tree or two. Nobody looked to have wandered these woods, but there was not too much brush, and I moved quickly, running through the trees.

My one thought was to rejoin Yance and the rest, and what followed was brought on by pure carelessness. I jumped a deadfall, leaped up to another, and ran along the top of it for thirty feet or so, then dropped to the earth and broke through the brush and found myself looking into the end of a musket held by a grinning redheadea man with a scar across his nose.

He has another one there now, for my reaction was instantaneous. Seeing the musket, I threw up a hand and grasped it, jamming it back into the man's face. He staggered, but another leaped on my back, and I went down into the leaves, bucked hard, and almost
threw the man off. I came to my knees, swinging a fist into the nearest face, for there were three at least, and then I lunged up with a man still clinging to my back.

A broken-off tree, felled by some wind, was near, and I slammed myself back against the tree and a stub of a broken branch that thrust out from it. The man on my back screamed and lost his grip, and I lunged away from him and into the brush. Somebody shouted and swore, a gun blasted behind me, and the lead hit bark from a tree near my head, but I was running again, weaving a way through the forest that would show them no target for shooting among all those tree trunks.

That I was a good runner served me well, for I had run much in the depth of forests before this, and leaping some obstructions and using others, I ran as never before, thanking the good Lord and all my ancestry for the long legs of me.

I had escaped by merest chance and because I had come upon them almost as suddenly as they upon me, and they were ill prepared for what followed. Fear helped me much, and I ran, bearing off toward the river again and hoping my brother and those with him were already to the east of me.

When I slowed down, I felt for knife and tomahawk. Both were with me. My quiver had been thrust around and was still across my shoulders with my bow. Luckily he who leaped upon me had wanted my throat and nothing less.

Suddenly I came upon the tracks of Yance and the others and made haste to scatter leaves across them and to drop a dead branch along the trail as though it had always been there. Then I walked away into the woods.

As the crow flies, it was likely no more than fifteen miles from where we now were to Shawmut, but by the route they would take and that I must take, it would be no less than twenty. In the wilderness there is no such thing as traveling in a straight line, for one turns aside for trees, rocks, embankments, cliffs, and what not until one may cover half again the distance a straight line
would require. Also, such diversions, no matter how small, can lead one far astray unless the traveler is alert.

The land over which I moved was strange to me but very familiar. Strange in that I had never before travelea over it but familiar in that it was wilderness country, and in the wilderness I was ever at home.

My moccasins made almost no sound on the damp leaves, and in most places I could, by twisting and turning, avoid the dry whisk of leaves and branches as they brushed my clothes. My buckskins, stained by travel and by lying on grass and leaves, merged well with the foliage and tree trunks through which I moved.