Follow the Free Wind

by Leigh Brackett

  Aloud he said, “I guess so, Mr. Carson.”

  He continued to hammer on the shoe. The horse quivered nervously with each blow.

  “Been out late just about every night, haven’t you, Jim?” The sweat ran on Jim’s body under the leather apron. Inside his belly the nerves were tight. He kept his eye on the upturned hoof, the hairy fetlock, the lapped and folded frog. He hammered with even strokes, the sinews of his shoulder moving rhythmically.

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “I guess I have.”

  “I don’t like it, Jim,” Carson said. “Even at your age you can’t rabbit all night and work all day. From now on, you get your rabbiting done early.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Ten o’clock, Jim. You’re not in by then, you’ll hear some more from me.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He kept his head bent over the shoe. Inside himself now he was hot. Even his fingers burned. The heat swelled in his head and blinded him. But he could feel Carson looking at him, with his sharp shrewd eyes in a broad face that was neither brutal nor kindly but merely businesslike. A broad man all the way down, a successful man and well-respected. And if he calls me, Jim thought, if he questions my tone of voice or the way I look, I’ll put this hammer straight through his head.

  And this morning, he thought, they started. Twenty-nine men, hunters and trappers, with General Ashley at their head and a long train of horses and pack-mules, going to the Rockies overland.

  But you, Jim Beckwourth, you be in by ten o’clock.

  He heard Carson turn and walk out past the forge, out of the smithy and into the sweet hay-and-horse-smelling gloom of the livery stable adjoining, where black men and boys worked with pitchfork and currycomb, or polished up the rigs that were for hire, or washed the country mud from the carriages of gentleman farmers come to town.

  Jim let the sorrel’s hoof drop down with a suddenness that made the horse skip sideways, snorting. He walked to the open door of the smithy and stood in it, breathing as though he had run all the way from Beckwourth’s Settlement.

  Get through with Francie and be home by ten.

  Yes, sir.

  He did not see anything at all of the street in front of him, and he was quivering like an aspen tree in a spring wind.

  It seemed like an endless time before that day was done.

  He washed carefully. He had a good body, of medium build but very strong and quick, with the muscles laid on long and lean. He was not dark, at least no darker than the Spaniards and the swarthy French, certainly no darker than the Indians who shared the streets with them. He dressed in the best he had and went out into the evening.

  The lighted windows showed yellow in the blue dusk. The pulse of life was flowing away out of the places of sober business as they closed and darkened, to quicken again in the drinking places, the gambling places, all the resorts of pleasure high and low. Carson lounged in the doorway of the livery stable, underneath the sign that had his name on it in huge letters. He nodded at Jim, not only to say hello but to remind him. Jim made a respectful salute and passed on.

  Ten o’clock, Francie, I have to be home.

  He walked, and the dusk became full night and the October stars came out.

  He was within shouting distance of Francie’s place before he understood that he was not going there tonight. He was not in that kind of a mood, and he did not want to talk, especially to Francie. He kept on walking, and after a while he was beside the river. He sat on the levee and watched the slow, thick, massive flowing of it, pouring south to New Orleans and the Gulf, carrying with it the mixed and muddied waters of a hundred rivers, the Yellowstone, the Powder, the Bighorn, the Rosebud, and the Grand. Farther along the levee a party of Negroes set their lines for catfish, laughing and talking among themselves. Their voices reached him mellow and sweet with distance. Somewhere out on the black current of the river a loose snag pounded the water with a rhythmic hammering, up and down. It was a mild night. The frogs and the crickets still sang in the bottoms. Jim sat for a long time. After a while he understood another thing.

  He was not going to be home by ten o’clock.

  The stars wheeled over him. The Negroes went off with their catch and all human noises died. Mist crawled up out of the low places. The frogs sang and the river flowed, and it was midnight. And then it was even later.

  Jim smiled. He knew now that he was not going home at all tonight.

  The bitter taste in his mouth and the writhing of his stomach went away. He lay back. Presently he slept, quite peacefully.

  When he woke again it was already getting light. He stood up stiff and chilled, shaking off the dew. He was hungry, but he was pretty sure he would get little breakfast this morning. He stood for a moment or two looking out over the dim water with the dawn just glimmering on it cool and gray. He was not frightened, not even greatly upset. He merely wanted a little space to breathe and gather himself. Then he began to walk, heading in a straight line for Carson’s.

  It was still early when he got there, barely sunup, but the day’s business was well under way. He walked in through the front door of the stable and down the long broad aisle between the stalls. The boys who were mucking out and the men who were mending harness or throwing down hay stopped what they were doing and looked at him as he passed and he greeted them pleasantly and went on, feeling what was in their thoughts, the suppressed fear, the suppressed admiration, the suppressed excitement, the not-at-all suppressed relief that none of them was standing in Jim’s boots, and the tired certainty that his little gesture of defiance was perfectly useless anyway.

  Maybe it is, thought Jim, but I’ve made it.

  He went into the smithy and removed his coat and took down the leather apron. He did not hurry. There was no reason to hurry.

  Carson came in and closed the two wide doors behind him. He said, “Don’t bother with that, Jim.”

  Jim hung the apron back on its peg. He faced Carson and waited.

  Carson looked at him. Jim stood straight and easy, meeting his eye, and he saw Carson’s face flush over with an angry red. But his voice was even when he spoke.

  “For special reasons you’ve had some special privileges around here, Jim, and it hasn’t been good for you. I’m going to have to teach you where you belong.”

  Jim said, “Maybe I’m over old for learning.” And he added, “Mr. Carson.”

  “You’ll learn. It’s a simple lesson. You do what a white man tells you, and you don’t talk back.” Carson reached out and took down a harness strap from the wall. “Take off your shirt.”

  Jim said softly, “You go to hell. Mr. Carson. Sir.”

  The angry red went out of Carson’s face, leaving it pale. His eyes turned cold and hard as two little chips of ice.

  “Take off your shirt.”

  “You lay a hand on me and I’ll kill you,” Jim said, so softly that for a moment Carson was not sure he had heard right. Then he made a small strangled noise in his throat as though the words he wanted to say were choking him. He stepped forward.

  Jim crouched slightly, his shoulders bending. He looked steadily into Carson’s eyes.

  Carson hesitated, not from fear but because the strap he carried was no longer adequate for what he wanted to do. He dropped it and seized a hammer from the forge. He was a big strong man. He threw the hammer with all his force at Jim’s head.

  Jim dodged. The hammer went whirling past his ear and cracked into the wall behind him, then fell onto the floor. He turned and picked it up, moving lightly, moving swiftly, and he threw it back at Carson and saw it hit, a glancing blow on the shoulder that nevertheless brought out a bellow of pain. And I might just as well have killed him, Jim thought, for what’ll happen if they catch me.

  He ran out of the smithy into the still-drowsy, half-deserted street. His boots hit the paving hard and fast and the woods were far away. But it seemed to him that he was lightened as of a great stone, and the morning sky had never looked so bright.

&nbs
p; THREE

  The blockhouse had had fallen out of repair, but it was still a shelter. Jim sat amid dust and spider webs and the smell of rotting wood and looked out over his father’s fields, worked by his father’s slaves.

  And I would be one of them, Jim thought, but my father is a generous man. More than that he’s a proud man, too proud to see his own children sweating in the fields even if we are mongrels.

  More than that, he has a sense of humor. And maybe even a sense of shame. He’s a contrary man, my father.

  Jim sat hungry and waited for the sun to go down.

  The broken door creaked below as the wind moved it. Jim remembered a time when it was strong and solid. He remembered the many hours he had spent here—it seemed when he thought about it that in the early years he had lived here almost as much as he had at home—waiting for an attack that often did not come, but just as often did. Then the guns would crack and there would be yellings and screechings outside. The women would hold the children tighter and sit all huddled together, and the powder-smoke would fill the place like fog.

  The land was tame now. Men could work it without fear. But only a few years ago half the male population had stood guard while the other half worked. And sometimes no amount of care had been enough. Jim remembered a day when he was nine years old. He had ridden past a neighbor’s house on his way to the mill, and he had called out but there had not been any answer. The sun was high and bright, but he could remember yet how strangely the sky had seemed to brood above that unnatural silence. And then he had seen a bit of cloth blown idly in the breeze and he had ridden closer and seen that it was the petticoat of a little girl. She was lying in the grass. She was two years younger than himself, and her name was Sarah. Her throat was cut and she no longer had any hair. He remembered how the big workhorse had shivered and tried to blow the smell of blood from his nostrils. Jim had wanted to vomit. He had wanted to scream and kick the horse into a run. But he could not do any of these things. He could only sit rigid on the broad back, with the sack of com in front of him, and look and look until he had seen all there was to see, Sarah’s seven brothers and sisters, and her mother, and her father, all dead and scalped, the blood still fresh and bright in the sunlight. This he remembered in his dreams, though he would have liked to forget it, but of his flight homeward he remembered nothing, and he never knew what happened to the sack of com. The men of the settlement had picked up their guns and gone out, and two days later there were eighteen scalp locks drying to pay for Sarah and her family.

  Hard days. But now the slaves could work without fear.

  They went home from the fields at last and the night came down dark and heavy with a feel of rain. Jim left the blockhouse and made his way across the open land.

  After a time he saw the house. It had grown since the first early days, putting forth wings and porches and balconies until now it stood quite grandly in its grove of trees. But it was still the house where Jim had spent most of his queer anomalous childhood, the conscious part of it at any rate, and it still had the power to tug at his emotions. He passed silently through the trees, avoiding the slave quarters and coming at the house from the front. But he was able to see that there was a big gray horse in the stableyard and even at that distance there was no mistaking what horse it was. Jim had shod him too many times. Sam Carson was here ahead of him.

  Jim was not surprised. He paused only a moment and then went on to the terrace outside the long windows of the room that was his father’s office, study, and sanctum inviolable. He had been inside it only once before, when he was eight years old. He was strictly forbidden to go there, and he was allowed in the “front” of the house only with his mother or one of the other servants, so he was breaking two commandments when he sneaked in to see this room that even his mother couldn’t enter. Only Marshall, his father’s bodyservant, was trusted in here. He had been awed, disappointed, and bored because there had been nothing in it but furniture, like any other room. He had not been caught.

  The inside shutters were closed, but there was a light behind them and a mutter of men’s voices. Jim lifted his hand and knocked.

  The voices fell silent. Jim waited, knowing there was no need to knock again. In a minute the shutter catch rattled. The panel swung back and a man was looking at him through the glass, seeing Jim’s face in the lamplight that came now from the room.

  Beckwourth opened the glass door and said, “Come in.”

  He seemed almost to have been expecting Jim. He turned away, walking back to the table where he had left his glass and a cigar.

  “Close it behind you,” he said, and Jim closed the door and latched the shutter over it. Carson sat massively in a chair, his face very red and ugly as he looked at Jim.

  Jim looked at his father.

  He was a handsome man, spare and well-built. In his youth he had fought in the Revolution. Later, being of a restless nature, he had come west to fight the frontier. He was settled now, successful and taking his ease, but there was still no flabbiness about him, either of mind or body.

  “You’ve made a lot of trouble, Jim.”

  “Yes, sir.” He could call his father “sir” without the word tasting bitter on his tongue. And in all these years, Jim thought, I’ve never called him father and he’s never called me son. The whole thing is never mentioned by anybody, and I might have got my name like any other slave, Beckwourth because a man named Beckwourth owned me. But I have his face. Darker. But his. Maybe that’s why he set me free, to get rid of me, so he wouldn’t have to see himself walking around in a black skin.

  Carson started to speak, but Beckwourth silenced him.

  “I freed you, Jim. I gave you more education than a lot of white men have. I had you taught a trade. And this is what you do in return. You could hang for it.”

  “And damn well ought to,” Carson muttered.

  “Maybe,” Jim said. “Hang or no hang, I can’t stand still to be whipped.”

  Carson swore. He rose and stamped up and down rubbing his shoulder, unable to contain his rage. “If it wasn’t that I owe a lot to you, Beckwourth, I’d—” He looked at Jim, and then at Beckwourth, and became speechless.

  For the first time Beckwourth faced Jim. Very coldly and quietly he said, “I’ve been at some pains to save your neck this time.”

  Jim said, and meant it, “I’m grateful to you.”

  “I will not do it again. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I hope so,” Beckwourth said. Then he looked into Jim’s eyes and his expression changed and he shook his head. “Don’t mistake me, Jim.”

  “I don’t.” Jim glanced at Carson. “And don’t mistake me, either. If I go back to work for him I’ll be swinging before the week’s out. I didn’t come here to beg for that.”

  Carson, who had been overcome with a sense of his own nobility at his willingness even to discuss taking Jim back, now stopped in mid-gesture to stare at Jim in such astonishment that Jim would have laughed, except that there was nothing funny about any of it.

  He saw the study, the polished wood and the warm fire in the grate, the fine carpet, the big desk that held the records of crops and sales and many human lives, and he felt the room close around him like a trap. He saw the men, the white men with all the weight and power of authority behind them, Carson to whom he was still bound as an apprentice, Beckwourth who was his only hope of escape, and he knew that he was at the end of his plunge, the long wild leap that had started somehow on the night he met the trapper, to reach its peak when he threw the hammer at Carson. In the next few minutes he would know whether that leap had carried him to freedom or the gallows.

  He heard Carson say harshly, “This one’s dangerous. He don’t know his place and I don’t reckon he ever will.”

  Jim turned to his father and waited.

  Beckwourth said, “What did you come here for?”

  “Permission to leave Mr. Carson. Permission to—” It was hot in the room. Jim’s m
outh was dry. “To go west.”

  “West?” said Beckwourth.

  “With General Ashley. Overland. He’ll need a blacksmith.” Jim took a deep breath and made his voice stay steady. “Give me permission and the loan of a horse. I can catch up with him in two days.”

  “I’ll be damned,” said Beckwourth.

  The sweat stood on Jim’s forehead. He waited, and the silence was a hundred years long.

  Carson broke it. “What the hell business has a—”

  “Just a minute, Sam,” said Beckwourth. He looked at Jim. “What makes you so sure Ashley will take you?”

  “He don’t have a blacksmith. There wasn’t one would go with him.” He didn’t mention Dave Richards. Now was no time to be questioned about that. The gumboes he had beaten up were, after all, white.

  “Suppose he does take you. You know what your chances are of ever coming back.”

  Jim said slowly, “Not much worse than yours were when you first came to Beckwourth’s Settlement.” He added, “Sir,” but his meaning was plain, and Beckwourth understood it. They faced each other and for a moment neither of them moved, and Jim felt the blood beating in his temples and he wanted to speak, to cry out a name that had never been spoken, to ask a question that had never been put into words. And then Carson, who understood nothing, said scornfully, “The Indians’ll cut him up for dogmeat,” Mid the moment was gone, and they were both relieved.

  “Ashley too,” said Carson. “Damn fool. He’ll never see the Rockies.”

  Beckwourth turned to Carson, jerking his thumb toward Jim. “You want him back, Sam?”