Jubal Sackett (1985)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 04

  My fire blazed up, a small, hot blaze but larger than usual. Deliberately I was inviting him in. By now he knew it was not my custom to build large or very bright fires, and he would recognize the invitation. As he was curious about me, so I was curious about him. Who was this stranger who wandered alone where all went in company?

  He had tried to kill me, but that was expected where any stranger was a potential enemy. Drawing back into the shadows with a great tree at my back, I waited. My longbow was placed near in plain sight, but a pistol lay in my lap. My visitor would be friendly, I hoped, but if his destiny was to die I would not stand in his way.

  Chewing on a bit of dried venison I listened and waited. Then, suddenly, he was there at the edge of the firelight, a man as tall as I but leaner. He was an Indian of a kind I knew not.

  With my left hand I gestured to the earth beside the fire. He came forward on light feet, yet before he seated himself he hung a haunch of venison over the coals.

  “Meat!” he said.

  “Good! Sit you.”

  With a small stick I pushed coals under the meat and added a few sticks, which began to sizzle pleasantly.

  “You go far?”

  “To the Great River, and beyond.”

  “I have seen the river,” he said proudly, “and the Far Seeing Lands beyond.”

  “You speak my tongue.”

  “I speak much with Englishman. My village.”

  An Englishman? So far west?

  “Where is your village?”

  “Far,” he gestured toward the north. “Many days.” He looked directly into my eyes and said with great pride. “I am Kickapoo Keokotah.”

  “A nation of warriors,” I acknowledged.

  He was pleased. “You know?”

  “Every wind carries news of Kickapoo bravery. In every lodge a warrior would wish to have a Kickapoo scalp—if he could.”

  “It is true,” he spoke complacently. “We are great warriors and wanderers.”

  “What of the Englishman? Where is he now?”

  “He is dead. He was a brave man, and took a long time to die.”

  “You killed him?”

  “It was the Seneca. They took us both.”

  “Yet you escaped?”

  Keokotah shrugged. “I am here.”

  Our fire was dying from neglect. I added sticks as did he. He cut a sliver from the venison. “I would learn from the Kickapoo,” I said. “You are old upon this land.”

  “We come, we go.” He glanced at me. “You have a woman?”

  “It is too soon. I have rivers to cross.”

  “My woman is dead. She was a good woman.” He paused. “The best.”

  “I am sorry.”

  “Do not be. She lived well, she died well.”

  We sat silent, chewing on the venison sliced from the haunch. “You are from over the mountain?”

  “Aye.”

  “You know of Barn-a-bas?”

  Startled, I looked up. “You have heard of him? What do you know of Barnabas?”

  “All men speak of Barn-a-bas. He great warrior. Great chief.” He paused. “He was great warrior.”

  “Was?”

  In that moment my heart seemed to stop, and when again it throbbed it was with slow, heavy beats.

  “He is dead now. They sing of him in the villages.”

  My father …dead? He was so strong, so invulnerable. No trail had been too long, no stream too swift, no mountain too high.

  “He died as a warrior should, destroying those who attacked him. So died he who was beside him.”

  “Only one died with him? A young man?”

  “So old as Barn-a-bas. Older.” He looked hard at me. “You know this Barn-a-bas?”

  “He was my father.”

  “A … eee!”

  Again a long silence. I remembered my father and grief held tight my chest, choking in my throat. I stared at the earth and remembered the few arguments we had had and the unkind words I must have said. I had been a fool. He had been the best of fathers and it was never easy to be a father to strong sons growing up in a strange land, each coming to manhood, each asserting himself, loving the father yet wishing to be free of him, finding fault to make the break easier. So it had been since the world began, for the young do not remain young and the time must come when each must go out on his own grass.

  I had known he would die, and almost how, but I had not thought it to be so soon.

  In silence by the fire with only a strange Indian for company I thought of Barnabas Sackett, who sailed first to this wild land and then returned for our mother.

  Our mother? Did she know by some strange intuition of our father’s passing? She had gone home to England to rear our sister, Noelle, in a gentler land. It had been a wise decision we had believed, we had hoped.

  My brother Brian had gone with her to read for the law in London.

  What of the others now? Of Kin-Ring and Yance? Kin-Ring, my strong, serious older brother, born on a buffalo robe in the heat of an Indian battle, with my father’s old friend, Jeremy Ring, standing over my mother to fight off the attackers as the child was born.

  What of Yance? Wild, unruly Yance, strong as a bear, quick to anger, quick to forget.

  Would I see them again?

  Deep within me a knell tolled … I would not. I knew I would not see them again even as both my father and I had known his time was near, for we were of the blood of Nial, who had the Gift.

  My brothers had their world, I mine. Theirs was in the mountains that lay behind me, and mine was the westward way.

  Keokotah looked across the fire at me. “You are son of Barn-a-bas. I am Kickapoo. We will walk together.”

  And so it was.

  Chapter Three.

  Stark and black were the tall trees, growing misty green along the branches with the budding leaves of spring. I walked to drink water from a running stream and startled a perch, twenty pounds at the least. It swam away, disturbed by my presence. Downstream a deer lifted its muzzle from the water and crystal drops fell back into the stream. It glanced disdainfully at me and walked away, seemingly unworried by our coming.

  With morning our wood smoke mingled with the lifting mists and we heard no sound but the soft crackle of our own fire and the slight hiss of some damp wood we used. A movement in the wild clover made us look up to see something vast and shadowy, some monstrous thing, coming toward us through the meadow grass, emerging slowly from the mist.

  It stopped, smelling the fire at last, and seeing us. It faced us, massive and horned, a huge buffalo bull with a great mass of wool over its face, shoulders, and hump, wool that sparkled with morning dew. Wreaths of fog hung about it as it stared from small back eyes almost buried in the wool.

  The buffalo was no more than fifteen yards away and behind it there were others.

  It stared at us, undecided as to our importance. It dropped its head then, pawing at the grass.

  “Meat,” Keokotah said, “much meat.”

  With one of my two pistols I aimed at a spot inside the left foreleg and squeezed the trigger. The pistol leaped with the concussion, and I placed it on the ground beside me and took up the second, but held my fire.

  The great buffalo stood stock still, staring at us; then slowly the forelegs gave way and the beast crumpled and went to its knees. Then it rolled over on the ground.

  The others simply stood, staring stupidly, unalarmed by the sound because, being unfamiliar with firearms, the sound might have seemed like thunder. One young bull came forward and sniffed at their fallen leader, smelling the blood and not liking it. We stood up then and walked toward them, and the young bull put its head down, but at our continued approach it backed off and they began to walk away across the meadow.

  Glancing at Keokotah I noted his features were unmarked by surprise. Had he seen or heard a gun before? Later, I learned he had not, but he was a Kickapoo, not to be astonished by such things.

  With our skinning knives we went
to work, each in his own way but working well together, cutting away the hide and selecting the best cuts of meat. There was fuel here, so we built up our fire and built drying racks for the meat, cutting it in strips to smoke and dry the better. Then we staked out the hide to be scraped and cured.

  Nobody in our time could have been better armed than I. For general purposes I carried an English longbow, with which our father’s training had made us expert, and a full quiver of arrows. I also carried a razor-sharp twelve-inch blade. My true strength, and one which I had not intended to reveal except in emergency, lay in two long-barreled firearms my father had taken from a pirate ship. Obviously a part of some booty the pirates had themselves taken, the pistols must have been made for some great lord.

  They were matched repeating pistols with carved walnut stocks elaborately dressed with scrollwork, masks, and figures of gold. The operating mechanism was nothing less than a masterpiece, designed—according to the story my father had heard, and which he passed to us—by one Fernando, the bastard son of the Cominazzo family of armorers, of Brescia. When that noted family fell upon evil times and was taken by the Inquisitors, Fernando escaped to Florence, carrying only his tools.

  Anxious to obtain a place for himself he labored in secret to create the two pistols. Charges of powder and ball were carried in tubular magazines in the butts, the openings closed by a revolving breechblock into which were cut two chambers. To load, one simply pointed the pistol toward the ground and rotated a lever on the side of the gun. This dropped a ball and a measure of powder into one chamber, sealed off the chamber, primed and closed the flash-pan.

  The pistol could be fired twelve times without reloading. Fernando had taken the finished pistols to the Lorenzoni and won a place in their establishment. Much later, other such weapons were made by the Lorenzoni.

  Barnabas had never used the weapons, worried by what seemed a too complicated mechanism. When I was allowed to examine the guns it seemed to me that I could handle them. They were both beautiful and deadly, but when traveling I preferred to use the longbow and conserve my ammunition. The two pistols I carried in the scabbards provided for them.

  My father had grown up using the bow. In the fens where he had lived it was the most effective way of hunting, whether for birds or for larger game. As we grew up we boys vied with one another in shooting at marks, often at incredible distances for a bow.

  Until I killed the buffalo Keokotah had seen only the scabbards. He was aware of firearms, for he had had contact with the French in the Illinois River country, yet I intended him to believe they were single-shot weapons.

  Keokotah was not yet my friend. We were two strangers traveling together, but at any moment he might choose to kill me. The rules of conduct Europeans were supposed to apply in their dealings with each other were the product of our culture. The Indian, of whatever tribe, came from another culture with none of our ethical standards. He had standards of his own, and in most Indian languages the words stranger and enemy were the same. To attack by surprise was by far the best way, as he had long since learned, and what to us might seem the basest treachery he might consider simple logic.

  My father had gotten along well enough with Indians, but he trusted few of them and few trusted him. It was simply the way it was, and it would need many years, if ever, for the white man and the Indian to come to any understanding. What the white man considered charity the Indian considered weakness, yet if a stranger penetrated an Indian village without being seen he was treated with hospitality as long as he was within the village, for the Indian tried to keep peace in his own village. Once the stranger left he might be killed with impunity. This was the usual practice, yet there were variations.

  Keokotah might travel with me for days, and then, no longer amused or curious, he might kill me and travel on without giving it another thought. And he would expect the same from me. At every moment I must be on guard, for at any moment I might be attacked without warning.

  We might become friends, but that lay in the future, if ever. Meanwhile, I would be careful, as would he.

  Westward I had hidden a birchbark canoe when on an earlier trip to the Great River, and now we went that way, taking our time, learning the land as we passed over it.

  That English friend the Kickapoo had known—I must learn more of him. Where had he come from? A prisoner of the French? Taken at sea? Or somewhere ashore? Who was he? What was he?

  Yet I had begun to realize that Keokotah did not respond to direct questions.

  Upon the brow of a low hill we paused to study out the land. A deer moved across before us. The Kickapoo looked about, and then he looked over at me. “Somebody come.”

  I had seen nothing, yet I must not betray my lack of knowledge. My abilities must seem equal to his. To surpass him might be dangerous, and in any case, unwise. He must never know how much I knew.

  I gestured westward. “Hiwasee over there,” I said, “many Cherokee.”

  He shrugged. “Who are Cherokee? Nobody. I am Kickapoo.”

  We remained where we were, studying the country. He might be an enemy, but out there before us there were certainly enemies. The Cherokee we knew, and they knew us. So far we had been friends, but the Indian was often a creature of whim, and the man with whom I traveled was no friend. I might be judged accordingly.

  “Somebody come.” That was what he had said. How did he know? What had he seen that I had not? And who was coming?

  My canoe was less than a day from where we now were, but I said nothing of that. When we came to it would be soon enough. To talk too much is always a fault. Information is power. Also, these paths I knew, and I watched to see if he knew them too, yet in no way did he betray himself.

  Watching Keokotah I was puzzled. His attention did not seem to be directed to any particular point, yet he was alert, listening.

  His apprehension affected me. What had he sensed? What was he expecting?

  A small grove of trees clustered behind us, and before us the hill sloped away toward a meadow lying along a stream. Above us the blue skies were scattered with puffballs of cloud. It was very still. The deer we had seen earlier came out of the brush again and walked to the stream.

  I started to move but Keokotah lifted a hand. As he did so an Indian emerged from the forest near the stream and stood still, looking carefully about. That he was an Indian I was sure, but he was clad in garments unfamiliar to me. His head was wrapped in a turban. As he stood two others followed him, one of them an old man.

  The old man looked up the slope at us and said something to them we could not hear. The first Indian then faced us. “Sackett?” he asked.

  I stepped forward. “I am Jubal Sackett,” I replied. We were separated by all of a hundred paces but in the clear air our voices sounded plain.

  “Our father wishes to speak with Sackett,” the young man replied.

  Upon the grass he spread a blanket and then another for me. He stood back, waiting. The old man came forward and seated himself cross-legged. I started down, and the Kickapoo said, “It is a trap.”

  Two more Indians came from the woods and stood silent, waiting. “They are five,” I said, “but they do not threaten us. They wish to talk.”

  “Five? Five is not enough. I am a Kickapoo.”

  “And I am Sackett,” I said, “with whom they wish to speak. Do you come. You can help us speak.”

  Reluctantly, he followed, and I went down and seated myself opposite the old man.

  For a long moment we simply looked at one another. His features were those of an Indian but with a subtle difference. What the difference was I could not have said, but perhaps it was only that he was a kind of Indian I had not seen before.

  He was old, so very, very old, and age had softened features that once must have been majestic. Old? Yes, but there was no age in his eyes. They were young, and they were alert. He wore a magnificently tanned white buckskin jacket that was beaded and worked with colored quills in a series of designs unknown to m
e. On his head was a turban such as the younger man wore, tight fitting, snug. What hair I could see was white and thin.

  He spoke in Cherokee, a tongue with which I had long been familiar. “I have come far to see Sackett,” he said. His eyes were friendly and appealing. “I have come to ask for help, and I am not accustomed to ask.”

  “If there is anything I can do—”

  “There is.” He paused again. “The name of Sackett is known, but I expected an older man.”

  “My father, Barnabas. He was our strength and our wisdom, but he is gone from us, killed by the Seneca.”

  “I have heard. I did not believe it true.”

  “Nevertheless, I am a Sackett. If there is something my father would have done, it shall be done.” I paused a moment. “What is it?”

  One of the others had kindled a fire, and now with a coal he lighted a pipe. First he handed it to the old man, who drew deeply on the pipe and then passed it to me. I drew deeply on it also and would have handed it to the Kickapoo, but he drew back.

  It seemed to me that the pipe ritual was not a customary one with him, but I did not know. That the old man was a Natchee Indian I was sure, but our contact with them had been slight, for they lived far to the south along the Great River. It seemed to me he was endeavoring to follow a ritual of other Indians and one with which he believed me to be familiar. It was an unusual experience, for the Indians I had known kept to their own ways and rarely borrowed those of others.

  “The day is long,” I suggested, “and you have far to go.”

  “I go no further. I am here.”

  Puzzled, I looked about me, but he only smiled. “It is Sackett I have come to see.” He paused and laid the pipe aside, perhaps realizing I was as unused to the ceremony as he. “You are known to us. The Sacketts are great fighting men but wanderers also.”

  “It is true.”

  “You are just men.”

  “We try to be just.”

  “You have come from afar but you take no more than you need. You do not take scalps. You do not make war until war is made upon you. This we have heard.”

  “It is so.”