Ride the River (1983) s-5

by Louis L'Amour

  Chapter 12

  "Did I understand you to say, Miss Sackett, that you are leaving the steamer at Cincinnati?"

  "That is my present plan, Mister ... is it Chantry?"

  "Dorian Chantry, at your service. I believe you know my Uncle Finian?"

  "I've had the pleasure, and indeed it was a pleasure. He is a very fine man, a remarkable man."

  "And a stern one, very stern."

  "With reason, perhaps?"

  His glance was cool. "No doubt he feels it so." He resumed the former topic. "From Cincinnati you go home, I believe? Is not that very rough country?"

  "Some might think it is."

  "But there is a stage? Or can you take another steamer?"

  "There is, I think, but right across country is quicker."

  He was irritated. How foolish of her to come so far, unprotected and alone! Because of it he had to leave everything and come on this wild-goose chase, escorting a girl who did not seem in the least grateful. She was pert, almost impudent.

  "I am astonished that your family would permit it. Suppose you met a bear? Or a man of evil intention?"

  I made my eyes very wide. "I'd take him home for supper."

  "What? You'd invite such a man to your home?"

  "I meant the bear." I smiled innocently. "Could I do less?"

  His expression showed his exasperation. "Uncle Finian said I was to see you safely home. He was quite worried about you. He said there were - "

  "They are here."

  Startled, he looked up."Here?"

  Before he could say more, I said, "It is very nice of your Uncle Finian to worry about me, but I shall be quite all right. I would not want you to go to so much trouble. There are bears where I am going, and quite a few men, but most of them are very nice."

  "It is preposterous for you to travel alone." He glanced at the woman who sat beside me. "Don't you agree?"

  "I should say I do! And across country? Dear me!"

  "But there was no one else. My uncle was not well, and the trip must be made. Anyway, it is nearly over now. Soon I shall be home."

  Irritated, he looked down at his plate. What must he think of me? Yet I could not keep from teasing him. He looked so exasperated, and so handsome.

  "You must not worry, sir. I shall be all right, and there will be no need of an escort. I shall manage very nicely."

  He was very cool. "I am not at all sure of that. From what I have heard, you have had your bag stolen from you already - "

  "I have it back."

  "And you disappeared from the stage for several days. I had no end of trouble finding you."

  I gave him my prettiest smile. "But youdid find me! I can't thank you enough! I don't know what I'd have done without you!"

  He gave me a very cool, level glance. "Miss Sackett, my uncle insisted I see that you got home safely. I shall do my best to do just that."

  I glanced at the third table. Timothy Oats was gone. Essie Buchanan was rising. Where was Elmer?

  From where I sat, I could see the door to my cabin, but of course, there was an outer door, too. It was locked, I had made sure of that, but such men know how to open locks as simple as that would be. "If you will excuse me ... ?" I pushed back my chair and arose.

  Dorian Chantry got to his feet also. "Will I see you at breakfast, Miss Sackett?"

  He was certainly tall. "I believe so. Thank you, Mr. Chantry."

  As I walked away, I heard the woman who had sat beside me say, "She's very pretty, you know." I did not hear his reply, if he made one, although I very much wanted to.

  Our cabin was empty when I reached it, my carpetbag untampered with. I turned and looked at myself in the mirror. That blue dresswas becoming.

  I shook my head. I must stop thinking such thoughts. What I must do now is get home with the money. It would do so much for us, make my mother's years so much more comfortable. As for Regal, he was probably recovering very well, but how did we know? Several men who had been clawed or chewed by bears had never really gotten well. A man I knew at the store said it was because bears often fed on half-decayed meat and fragments of it clung to their teeth. Regal should have a doctor look at his wounds, and if I got home with the money, we could afford it.

  One side of me did not want Dorian Chantry along at all, but another side certainly did want him to come with me. I knew the woods where we would soon be. I knew how to move like an Indian, but did he? Suppose he got chewed by a bear? I'd never forgive myself.

  I had wanted to meet him, and now I had, but I must have left him with a very bad impression. It was obvious that he disapproved of me and that I was a nuisance. Surely he had other plans. He had not wanted to come all the way out here into what was almost a wilderness, just to be sure some silly girl got home safely, somebody who should not be out there alone anyway.

  The more I thought of it, the worse I felt. My pretty blue dress! It must seem very plain and dull to someone who saw so many beautifully gowned women, and saw them all the time.

  How could I even talk to him? What did women like that talk about? And what did they talk about to aman?

  Essie Buchanan came in and stepped into the corner where the washbasin and mirror were. She began fluffing her hair, and glanced at me out of the corners of her eyes. "You shouldn't be back here," she said. "It is much too early! I met a couple of interesting men out there, and I told one of them about you. He would like to meet you. I told him I would try to arrange it."

  "No, thanks, I need the sleep. I've been traveling a lot."

  "You'll never meet any men back here. They don't permit men aft of the midship gangway, you know. Come on! We'll have some fun."

  "You go ahead."

  "That man I mentioned. He's middle-aged but he's worth a lot of money. To the right girl he'd be very generous."

  Well, I just looked at her. Regal had told me about women like her. "No, thanks," I repeated.

  After she had gone forward, I lay staring up at the underside of the deck above me and thinking. It was unlikely that either Elmer or Timothy Oats would attempt anything while aboard the steamer, although they would be watching for their chance. It was when I went ashore that I must move with care. What I must think of was some way to slip away from them. It was then I thought of the Big Sandy.

  But that was Indian country, hunting ground for a half-dozen tribes; the Creek, Cherokee, Shawnee, and several others hunted there. I was known to the Cherokee, and the Sacketts were known to them all, I suspected, but I'd be taking a great chance. Still, it was early in the season and hunting parties would not be out in any number.

  On the lower Big Sandy there were some fine farms, and a body might even get a horse, or if not that, a canoe. I could make my way up the Levisa Fork into Kentucky, cut across the toe of Virginia, and be right back in my own mountains in no time.

  There were Sacketts on the Clinch River, a bunch of rowdy boys but good folks and cousins of ours. If Timothy Oats followed me into Clinch Mountain country, one of those big Sacketts was liable to bounce him up and down all the way back to the Ohio.

  First thing tomorrow I had to lay hold of Robinson, that young officer. He could get me a map or at least a layout of the river so's I could see what to do.

  In the mountains we work from sunup to sundown, so when day broke I was up, moving very quiet so's not to disturb Essie Buchanan or whatever her name was. I eased out of the room and walked forward to where I could look down the river and feel the wind in my face. It was mighty nice. I had not done much traveling, but if a body had the time, it was a way to live. I could see us chugging away downstream with high bluffs covered with trees and here and there an occasional cabin or farm. I could see those across the river better than on the nearer bluff because they were so high. Then I remembered how Pa had been on the Ohio close to the Mississippi when the New Madrid earthquake hit. He had told me that bluffs like this, a hundred and sometimes two hundred yards of it, would cave off into the river. It must have been a sight.


  That earthquake even had the Mississippi flowing back upstream for a while, tilted the whole bottom of the river for miles! Just as I was fixing to go back to the main cabin for breakfast, young Robinson found me.

  "A map? A chart, you mean. I guess I could draw one for you."

  "Just so I would know where I am on the river," I suggested. "I could pay you for it," I added.

  He blushed. "Pay me? I'd enjoy doing it for you," he said. "I really would. I'm proud you thought to ask me."

  "I just thought you would know," I said, "you studying to be a pilot and all. If anybody would know the river, you would. Just as far as Cincinnati," I suggested. Then I added, "Do we stop at night? I mean to let folks get on or to take on freight?"

  "Sometimes, and sometimes we tie up at night. They do that a lot on the Mississippi and Missouri because of the snags and sawyers in the river that can tear a boat's bottom out. You have to be able to see."

  Dorian Chantry was at breakfast, and that surprised me some because I had an idea easterners didn't get up all that early. His hair was combed with a kind of wave in it and he looked neat as if he'd stepped out of a bandbox, as Pa used to say.

  "Well? Good morning, Miss Sackett! I hope you slept well?"

  "I did, and a good morning to you, sir!"

  There were only a few people in the main cabin and nobody at the same table with us. He glanced around, then asked, "Last night you suggested those men who tried to get your money were aboard here?"

  "They are," I said, "but stay clear of them. They are rough men."

  He stiffened a little. "I can be rough if need be."

  "If you have trouble with them, it will be," I warned.

  "What happened back there? I mean when you lost your bag?"

  So I told him a little. I surely did not tell him all, but how I didn't even suspect that little ol' lady and how she switched bags on me and was getting away with Oats when I taken after them.

  "By the time I got my bag away from them, I'd gone on down the road a ways, so I caught the stage when it caught up." There was no need to tell him about the house by the road or how I got my bag back. "The stage, I mean."

  "They did not follow you then?"

  "They did, but I got away from them." He needed a warning, so I said, "There was an Irishman who said he would stop them. He was a big, strong lad, too, but he did not do it. Oats had a couple of bruises on him and some skinned knuckles, was all."

  "I see."

  Well, now he knew what he was in for. Dorian Chantry was a fine, strong young man but I could not see him in a country brawl with Timothy Oats. Dorian could fight the gentleman's way, not the eye-gouging way of the riverboat men or such as Oats.

  "Look," I said suddenly, "why don't you go back and tell your Uncle Finian I am all right? I shall be safe enough once I am into the mountains. I am a Sackett, after all, and Sacketts and rough country are as twins. I shall be all right."

  "He sent me to look after you."

  "You're a handsome lad," I said honestly. "I'd not see you hurt."

  "Hurt?Me ? I shall be all right. No," he said then, "I shall see you all the way home to your cove."

  "You'll have to get some other clothes," I warned. "In the brush those you're wearin' won't last at all. You need linsey-woolsey or deerskin."

  We ate our breakfast then, not talking much, and other folks began to come in and out. Something about me was a worry to him, I could see that. I was not like the girls he'd known, nor could I talk to him as they might have. I was used to talking with men and boys, used to saying what I meant and no two ways about it.

  He was more the gentleman than anybody I'd ever met, knowing all the ways of them, and it was mighty fine, being treated like a lady, like you were something special. All the boys I knew treated me like one of them - I mean, not as if I was special. Although they were respectful enough, it just wasn't their way.

  "Mr. Chantry," I said, "that Timothy Oats has something in mind. He means to have that carpetbag from me and I've got to outguess him. If I let him do as he's planned, he'll win, I know he will. Pa used to say, and Regal says the same, that a boy should never play the other man's game. If I stay on this steamboat I will be playing their game, and I think he's got a wheel turning with that Essie Buchanan, who shares my cabin. They've been talking, and - "

  "I was going to speak to you about that," he said then. "You should not be sharing a cabin with a woman like that. It's a disgrace."

  "It won't be for long," I said.

  "It has been too long already. I shall speak to the captain."

  "Don't you do it." I had looked up to see a man come into the main cabin. I saw him look around and I saw his eyes meet mine.

  "We've troubles enough," I said. "There's Felix Horst!"

  Chapter 13

  For a minute or two I just sat there. Timothy Oats and Elmer did not worry me much, but Felix Horst was something different. I was afraid of him.

  A body could see at a glance this was not only an evil man but a wily one. I would never have tricked him as I had Oats, nor would he have bothered to fight with that young Irishman. He would simply have killed him and chased after me, wasting no time. He wanted that money I carried, and meant to have it.

  Oats had no doubt gotten Essie Buchanan to keep an eye on me, so if I got away, I had to slip away from her.

  "Mr. Chantry," I said, "you have to help me. I am going to leave the steamer. I am going to get away. You can help me."

  "How?" He was cautious, not trusting me or my ideas.

  "You've got to ask me out to take a walk on the deck after supper. I mean" - I blushed a mite - "like you were courting me."

  He studied me coolly. "And then what?"

  "I slip off the boat. I get ashore and take off up the Big Sandy. I figure I can rent a horse or buy one. Or maybe a mule. Then I head for home."

  "Not without me."

  "Are you up to it? That there's rough country, Mr. Chantry. It won't be like riding to hounds. You'll be sky-hootin' it along ridges, dippin' down into hollows, you'll be pushin' through woods and brush and maybe have a mite of Injun trouble."

  "Indians?What you are talking about isn't exactly the far west!"

  "No, sir, but there's Indians. The Cherokee mostly know us Sacketts. Some of the others do, by reputation. The ones that know the Sackett name won't do us harm, but there's Shawnee around, too, and they aren't friendly with the Cherokee right now. The Creek, too, sort of go their own way."

  I tried my coffee and it was still hot. "Have you got a rifle, Mr. Chantry?"

  "A rifle? No, of course not. Not here."

  "You'll need one, and so will I. I left mine at a tavern on the way, but it is some little distance. Regal an' Ma, they convinced me young ladies in Philadelphia do not carry rifles as a reg'lar thing."

  "Can you actually shoot a rifle? You're serious?"

  "Yes, sir, I have shot a rifle."

  He did not take that seriously, I could see. In his world womenfolks danced, rode to hounds, partied around, and wore pretty clothes most of the time. Well, that was all right, but in the mountains things weren't quite like that.

  "Mr. Chantry," I said after a bit, "we should smile more, like we were enjoying each other's company. Let Horst and them think something's going on betwixt us. If we act too serious, they are apt to get suspicious."

  He smiled beautifully.

  "There! That's better! A body would think you'd never courted a girl before."

  "I am not exactly courting you, Miss Sackett. If you wish to deceive them, of course - "

  "We've got to. We can't let them guess we're going to duck off this boat and head upcountry. I've got a map coming to me. A young officer promised he'd find one for me, or draw it."

  "A young officer?" He raised an eyebrow. "You do get acquainted, Miss Sackett."

  "Yes, sir, when it's necessary. He's a right handsome lad, too."

  "You've talked to him?"

  "Of course. Several times. He's the tal
l blond officer."

  "I haven't noticed," he replied somewhat sharply.

  "No reason why you should. You noticed Essie Buchanan, though, didn't you?"

  "She intends to be noticed. She dresses to draw attention."

  "And she gets it." I swallowed some coffee and then added, "She wanted me to meet some men. One of them, she said was very well-off."

  "You didn't accept, I hope?"

  "Well, no. But a girl has to think of her future, and most of the boys back in the hills are spoke for. You see, I am sixteen, and where I come from, that's almost an old maid."

  "As I have said, I do not think Essie Buchanan is fit company for a young girl." He glanced at me in a very professorial manner. "She's what is known as a shady lady."

  "Well, what do you know? I always wondered what one of them would look like. Regal's told me a good bit about them."

  "And who is Regal?"

  "I thought I told you about him. He's my uncle, and he goes round and about from time to time and is quite a man with the ladies. Right now he's laid up. Had him a little go-around with a bear."

  "You mean he shot a bear?"

  "Not exactly. This was a notorious bear, a trouble-making bear, and he tackled Regal, not knowin' he was a Sackett, so Regal had to kill him. Not until they'd disputed the subject, however."

  "Killed him? How?"

  "Mostly with a knife. He's got him one of those Tinker knives and he cut that bear up considerable. Finally did him in with his ax but not until the bear chawed on his leg and arm and clawed his ribs."

  "You mean he killed a full-grown bear with a hunting knife and an ax?"

  "Wasn't no other way. The bear wouldn't wait for him to fetch his shootin' iron, so they just had at it, an' Regal fetched him."

  She looked at him seriously. "You ever eat much bear meat, Mr. Chantry? Grandma Sackett, she says there's no other way to raise a boy. Got to feed 'em bear meat when they're young. Ever' two, three days she'd take down her rifle-gun and fetch home a bear from the woods. Got so we had to move."

  "Move? Why?"