Rivers West
Authors: Louis L'Amour
Tags: #Fiction, #Westerns, #Western, #Historical, #Adventure
Contents
A
D
EADLY
P
LAN
R
EVEALED
Y
OU HAVE INFORMATION that something is wrong in the South, in the West?”
“Let me say I had grounds for suspicion,” Miss Majoribanks replied. “And then this letter from my brother. When I received it, I acted at once. I got out the ledgers and read all the information we had on the Louisiana Territory, read the reports of Lewis and Clark and the letters from James Mackay. What my brother has discovered, Mr. Tate, is a plot to seize the Louisiana Territory and to make an independent kingdom of it.”
“That's nonsense.”
She shrugged. “Exactly the reaction from our senator, Mr. Tate. I approached him on the matter. He either does not believe anything I say or has reasons for not wishing to believe.”
“Miss Majoribanks, you must remember, you are a very young lady.”
“Mr. Tate, I have told you all this not only to give you my reasons for going west, but because I hope you will see the necessity for prompt action.”
“The man who is to direct the subversive movements in the Louisiana Territory may already be en route. I know much of this man. He is a devil incarnate, who will stop at nothing.⦔
Chapter 1
A
GHOST TRAIL, a dark trail, a trail endlessly winding. A dark cavern under enormous trees, down which blew a cold wind that skimmed the pools with ice. A corduroy road made from logs laid side by side, logs slippery with mud and slush, with rotting vegetation from the swamp.
Here and there a log had sunk deep, leaving a cleft into which a suddenly plunged foot could mean a broken leg, and on either side the swampâ¦well, some said it was bottomless. Horses had sunk there, never to be seen againâand men, also.
My father's house lay several days behind me, back of a shoulder on the Quebec shore above the Gulf of St. Lawrence. For days I had been walking southward. An owl glided past with great, slow wings, and out in the swamp some unseen creature moved, seemed to pause, listen.
Was that a step behind me?
Astride a gap between logs, I paused, half turned to look.
Nothing. I must have been mistaken. Yet, I had heard
something
.
My shoulders ached from the burden of my tools. Straining my eyes in the darkness, I looked for a place to stop, any place in which to rest, if ever so briefly. And then I saw a wide stump from which a tree had been sawed, a full six feet in diameter. The tree cut from it lay in the swamp close by, half sunk.
With my left hand I swung my tools to the stump, keeping the rifle in my right, ready for use. This was a wild place. There were few travelers, and fewer still were honest men. Young I might be, but not trusting.
For the first time I was leaving my home, going south from Canada into the United States. Westward, it was said, they were building, and we are builders, we Talons.
There was a time when at least one of the family had been a pirate. He had been a privateer in the waters of the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, and the Red Sea, but mostly off the Coromandel and Malabar coasts of India. He'd done well, too, or so it was said. I'd seen none of the treasure he was said to have brought away.
What was
that?
I half rose from my seat on the stump, then settled back, holding my rifle in both hands.
It was cold, and growing colder.
Behind me, on the Gaspé, I had left only my father's cottage and the good will of at least some of my neighbors. My father was gone. My mother had died when I was yet a young boy, and I had no sweetheart.
Of course, there had been a girl. We had roamed the fields together as children, danced together, even talked of marriage. That was before a man far wealthier than I had come to see her father. To be wealthier than I was not difficult, for I had only the cottage inherited from my father, a few acres adjoining, a small fishing boat, and my trade. And she was ambitious.
The other man was a merchant with many acres, a three-masted schooner trading along the coast, and a store. He was a landed, a moneyed man, and, as I have said, she was ambitious.
She had come to our meeting place one last time. At once she was different. There was no fooling about on this day, for she was very serious. “Jean!” She pronounced it
zhan
, as was correct, but with an inflection that was her own. “My father wants me to marry Henry Barboure.”
It took a moment for me to understand. Henry Barboure was nearly forty, twice as old as I, and a respected, successful man, although I'd heard it said he was very close-fisted and a hard man to deal with.
“You are not going to?” I protested.
“I must, unlessâ¦unless⦔
“Unless what?”
“Jean, do you know where the treasure is? I mean all that gold the old man left? He was your great-grandfather, wasn't he? The pirate?”
“It was further back than that,” I said. “And anyway, he left no gold. None that I know of.”
She came closer to me. “I
know
it is a family secret. I know it's always been a secret, a mystery, but Jeanâ¦if we had all that goldâ¦well, Father would never think of asking me to marry Henry. He always told me you'd know where it was, and you could get it, some of it, whenever you liked.”
So that was it. The gold. Of course, I knew the stories. They had been legend in the Gaspé since the first old man's time. He had been one of the first to settle on what was then a lonely, almost uninhabited coast. He had built a strong stone castleâburned by the British during one of their raids on the coast many years after, and attacked many times before that.
The story was that he had hidden a great treasure, that he could dip into it whenever he wished, and that he had bought property, a good deal of it. It was true that he had sailed to Quebec City or Montreal whenever he desiredâeven down to Boston or New York to buy whatever he wished. But I knew nothing of any treasure, nothing at all. If he had left any behind it was so well hidden that no one knew where it could be.
My father had shrugged off the stories. “Nonsense!” he would say. “Think nothing of treasure or stories of treasure. You will have in this world just what you earnâ¦and save. Remember that. Do not waste your life in a vain search for treasure that may not exist.”
“There is no treasure,” I said to her. “It is all a silly story.”
“But he had money!” she protested. “He was fabulously rich!”
“And he spent it,” I said. “If you want me it shall be as I am, a man with a good craft who can make a good living.”
She was scornful. “A good living! Do you think that is all I want? Henry can give me everything! A beautiful home, travel, money to spend, beautiful clothes⦔
“Take him then,” I had told her. “Take him, and be damned!”
She left me then, and the next time we met on the street she walked by me as if I didn't exist.
My heart, I told myself, was broken. For a week I tried to convince myself of it. I tried to write poetry about it, I told myself my life was ruined, and I had a great time playing with the drama of itâbut not for a minute was I really fooled. Actually, only my vanity had suffered, and that not very much. In fact, I was relieve. Now I was free to go out in the world.
Had not we Talons always done so? Those Talons, that is, of my blood. Others might have the same name, but we of our family knew from whence came the name. Our pirate ancestor had had his hand lopped off by a tyrant, had fashioned a claw to replace the hand, and had taken from that claw the name we bore. Talon.
A fierce old man in his later years, it was said. When I was a boy there was an old man in the village who claimed to have known him when
he
was a boy, and who never mentioned his name without a quick glance over the shoulder.
All that was long ago, and a mill does not turn upon water that is past, nor does a ship sail with the winds of yesterday. I had my own name to make. The story of that pirate Talonâ¦well, that was his story.
A splash of waterâ¦a stir from the swamp
.
The muzzle of my rifle shifted to cover the spot. It was an eerie place this, and I should be on my way.
Suddenly my throat choked with fear. From the dark, oily waters of the swamp, a white hand liftedâ¦liftedâ¦faint, ghostlike. It seemed to beckon. I was on my feet, thumb on the hammer, ready to fire.
Then, slowly, the hand became an arm. It dropped over a log, and then a head lifted from the water. A strained white faceâ¦gasping, pleading, reaching out.
I sprang forward and caught at the hand.
It was coldâ¦cold. But it was the hand of no ghost. It was flesh and bone. I hauled upon the arm, and a body emerged from the swamp and fell across the half-submerged log. Gently then, I turned him over.
“Help,” the voice was faint, “help me, I⦔
There was a stab wound in his chest, a deep wound from which blood and water bubbled. The man was dying. Even had I anything with which to treat him, his life still could not be saved.
“
He
killed me. He stabbed me. He knew who I was, he⦔ the voice faded.
“Easy, now!” I warned. I loosened his collar, then tried to ease his position. I'd no idea what he was talking about, nor what to do. He was badly hurt, but from the appearance of the wound and the bubbling, I feared the knife had penetrated a lung.
There was another stab wound in his side, and there might be others in his back. There was no dry land anywhere about that I could see. Nor any place to build a fire. To carry the man in his condition was unthinkable.
“Sir,” I said, “there's not much I can do.”
He turned his eyes on me and seemed conscious of me for the first time. “I know,” he said, his voice suddenly quiet, “and I'd rather youâ¦you didn't try. I'mâ¦I'm sort of comfortable.
“Got me in the back. He's powerfulâ¦drove it right to the hilt three times before I got turned around. I don't believe Iâ¦I even scratchedâ¦him.
“A bad manâ¦who'll stop at nothingâ¦nothing at all.” He caught my hand. “I'm Captain Robâ¦Robert Foulsham.”
“American army?”
“British.”
I should have known from his accent.
It was dark and gloomy. I was far from where I wished to beâwhich was an inn or stopping place somewhere in the five to ten miles that lay before me. It was already late.
He muttered, talked lucidly, then wandered. I stayed close beside him, irritated that there was nothing I could do, vowing not to be in such a situation again. Yet he was far gone and growing weaker.
“Get him!” he spoke suddenly, loudly. “He is vicious. A renegadeâ¦a traitor. He will destroyâ¦destroy. He is evil. He is⦔ His voice wandered off, and he was silent.
“Who killed you?” I asked Then, realizing how my words must sound, I said, “Who attacked you?”
“Torvilleâ¦Baron Richard Torville. A desperate man.”
“What's he like? Is he tall? Is heâ?”
It was no use, for the man had died.
I got slowly to my feet and stood looking down at him. What could I do? What should I do? I had no means to sink him in the swamp, and there was no way to bury him. Yet to leave him where he lay seemed a shameful thing.
If he had relatives, theyâ¦
Relatives! I knelt beside the man's body and went carefully through his pockets. There were some water-soaked papers, yet there were others in a sort of water-proof packet. In his pockets I also found several gold pieces, and in a belt about his waist, several more.
There was a pistol, useless until dried out and recharged. A small pistol it was, admirably made.
These few things I gathered together. When I reached a city I would mail them, for among the things there must be an address.
He was young, older than me but less than thirty, and well made. Somehow from his bearing I decided that “Captain” might not have been his only title. He had manner and style.
I had straightened from my final task when I heard a faint splash, a stir of something, a movement. My rifle came waist high, held easily in my hands.
Sounds came nearer, a step and a swish, a hit and a miss.
Who else could be on this road on such a night? Certainly, I had been a fool to attempt to reach my destination before night fell, and the captain here had been, apparently, pursuing someone. Suddenly a figure loomed in the darkness.
“Come along,” I said. “If you're friendly, come easy with your hands in sight. If you want to be friendly, we can talk. And if you're not friendly, I can split you right up the middle.”
“Avast there! Avast, lad. I'm coming in peaceful, wishing no harm to any man or beastâ¦least of all, to me.”
He was six or seven inches taller than my five feet and ten inches, with shoulders like a yardarm, and he had a peg-leg. He also had a black beard and wore a gold ring in one ear.
Armed, too. I could see he carried both a rfle and a dirk.
“You travel late,” I said.
He glanced down at the body. “Did you kill him?” His eyes gleamed at me.
“I did not. Did you?” For certainly he looked the murderer, if ever a man did.
“Not I.” He peered at the body. “Well, well. A fine, handsome young chap to die so easily. Oh, I've killed a few in my time, but not that one.” He grinned at me. “Anyway, I've just come up. You stand over the body, and the man is freshly dead. The law will ask questions, so you'd better think of some answers.”
“There is no law here,” I said. “This is the forest. Yet it is no way for a man to die.”
The big man shrugged. “Who is to say where a man should die? He dies when his time comes, no matter where. And,” he added, “only the body of the man is here. What was inside him is gone. Where he lies does not matter.”
He gestured down the way. “I am told there's an inn nearby. Are you for it?”
“I am.”
We started on then, leaving the body where it lay for lack of a better thing to do.
The big man wore an old cocked hat and a cloak that made him look even larger in the darkness than he was. “How far is it, do you suppose?” he asked. “I have come far, and this leg of mine, it does not favor long walks.”
“Five milesâ¦perhaps less. Sometimes the understanding of miles is not well grasped. Five miles can mean over the hill and around the bend, or it can mean all day.”
“I know.” He peered at me. “You've a load there. Is it tools you carry?”
“Tools of my trade. I am a shipwright.”
“In the forest?” He stared at me. “You are to build ships in the forest?”
What my destination was, and why, was none of his business, so I simply said, “South of here are many seaports where they build vessels to trade with the Indies, or ships for whaling.”
“You've a French sound to your voice.”
“I am Frenchâ¦in part, but Canadian born, and pleased to be.”
We walked on in silence, slipping and splashing, swearing a little and grunting. “I am called Jambe-de-Bois,” he said suddenly, “because of this,” he indicated the leg.
“It is as good as another,” I said. “A name is what a man makes of it.”
