The latch-string had been drawn in through its hole so the latch could not be lifted at night, but when Artemus Lint lifted the bar, the door swung open and a man glided swiftly in. The door was closed and the bar dropped in place. The boy saw only movement melded into movement and the man was there, beside the fire.
The newcomer put his rifle down and took his powder horn off his shoulders and hung it on a peg near the rifle. That rifle had drawn the boy’s eye at once, for it was unlike any he had seen before.
“You’re welcome. There’s meat and bread.”
“All’s well here?”
“No trouble.”
“It will come. I have seen them.”
Artemus went to the sideboard. “Milk?”
“It is a good drink.”
“Aye, there’s many prefer ale, but we’ve none of it here.”
“My father had cows. I grew up on milk.”
Jacob’s father added fuel to the fire. It was the first comment he had ever heard, from anyone, about the family of Vanderdyke. He was a man of whom no one knew anything, nothing of who he had been, nor of whence he came.
Men who knew said he was the greatest woodsman of them all, and they were not men who were free with compliments. If he had a place he called home no one knew where it lay, nor if he had kinfolk anywhere at all.
Vanderdyke ate his meat and bread, then drank almost a pitcher of the milk before stretching out on the robe before the fire.
He reached over and got his rifle, putting it down beside him. He opened his eyes once. “Seen some Senecas. Six, eight miles back.”
He was asleep then, and Jacob Lint looked down from the loft at the long, lean body, the deep chest and powerful shoulders. He looked to be even stronger than Pa, who was considered a mighty man.
Jacob saw his father put the mug on the sideboard and the milk into the cool-hole under the floor. Then his father removed his moccasins and stretched out beside his wife, pulling the buffalo robe over him.
Buffalo were scarce now, and Jacob had seen but three, all at one time. That was over a year ago. The Indians said there once had been a good many and there were still a lot of them south of the Ohio, in Kentucky.
—
When he awakened in the morning Vanderdyke was squatted by the fire. “Stay close to the cabin,” he was advising, speaking to Jacob’s mother, “and keep the boy close. He’s old enough to keep a good lookout, and to shoot if he has to.”
“Artemus will be out in the field,” she said.
“Yes,” Vanderdyke said. “He came here to build a home, to plant fields, and to make a life for his family and himself. He must get on with it, and you’d have it no other way.”
“Times are hard,” she said, wistfully.
“They always are,” Vanderdyke commented. “There never was a perfect time, and there never will be. You hear of golden ages and glorious times, but they were only so for some people, and even for them it was only some of the time.
“The way to go, ma’am, if you’ll take my advice, is to enjoy the minutes and the hours. Enjoy now, not some distant day when things may get better. Maybe they will, but it doesn’t really matter. You’ve a fine son, so watch him grow and become a man. You’ve a fine husband; enjoy your time with him.
“Maybe if a body works hard enough and keeps a-going, he’ll make life easier for himself and his family. Chances are war, taxes, and storm will take a part of it, and maybe all, but those times you have together, those quiet hours, nothing can be better.
“I’ve known men that wished to be drunk, that wished to have a woman, who wished for this and for that, and all the while, all around them there was so much that was theirs for the taking.”
He got up. “I’ve spoken my piece for the morning, and I reckon I’ll drift along now. It is a long way to the settlements.”
“The settlements!” She sighed, drying her hands on her apron. “Will I ever see them again?”
He smiled. “More than likely, but you’ll find the only difference is there’s more to want, more to spend money on. Maybe you live a little more comfortably—”
“I’d just like to sit and talk with another woman.” She looked at him, her eyes wide. “It’s been two years since I have had a woman to talk to. I don’t want to talk about anything particular, just about folks and cloth-materials and how to fix this or that.”
“I know.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “Folks will be coming by, but pioneering…well, ma’am, it’s hard on women-folks.
“I’ll be back this way…maybe next year. I’ll fetch you something from a town. Something…I don’t know what.”
“I’d be pleased,” she said gently, and watched him away across the field and into the trees.
A moment he was there, and then he was gone, and that was Vanderdyke.
Jacob spoke of it later, to his father. “It’s his way. He’s a kindly man. A lonely one, I think. Maybe somewhere he lost something…somebody.”
“He stays nowhere long. He’s like a ghost in the woods. He shows up, then he’s gone, and never a leaf stirred nor a ripple left behind.”
“How does he do it, with the Indians about?”
“He does it. Odd thing about Indians, Jacob, most of them would kill him in a minute and carry his scalp with pride, but they’d miss him. They are warriors and they love a good fighting man. The Iroquois hunt him, and yet they sing songs about his bravery and the things he has done.”
Mady Lint stood in the doorway after Vanderdyke was gone. She loved her husband and wished for no other man, yet she sensed the loneliness in Vanderdyke and her heart followed after him.
“He needs someone,” she said aloud.
“You speaking of Vanderdyke?” Jacob came close to her.
“Yes. Everybody needs somebody, Jacob. We’re lucky, you and I and your pa. We have each other. Maybe in time you’ll have a baby brother or sister.”
“I’d like that, I reckon,” he said.
His eyes were on the woods, and he was remembering what Vanderdyke had said, that he was old enough to be a good lookout, and it was something he had already learned. It was Pa he worried about, out in the field plowing, and having to give most of his mind to his work.
Ma had told him the story of how she had married his father, but he never tired of hearing it over again. Her father—Jacob had to remember it was his grandfather—had been a prosperous man: owner of a store and a gristmill, a deacon in the church, and a member of the town council.
She could have married up, as the saying was, for young men were courting her who were well-off, but after she met Pa there was nobody else in her thoughts.
He had come into the store on a day when she was helping, and he brought furs and hides to trade. She handled the trading with him, conscious that he was watching her always. She was flushed and excited, but not so much that she did not deal sharply with him on the furs. They were, she noticed, beautifully dressed.
“I’ve come a far piece,” he had said, speaking suddenly and with no preliminaries or wasted time, “and I’m a woodsy man. I’ve neither house, nor land, nor cow, but there’s land aplenty where I ketched my fur, and a cold spring hard by. I’ve the hands and the skill to build a house, if you’ll abide with me.”
She looked up at him, right into his eyes, and her pa said, “Madeline, I—”
She was not listening, although she heard the words coming to her as from another time, another age. “I will abide with you, Artemus. I have been waiting for you to return.”
He just looked at her.
“Three years ago,” she said, “in our church of a Sunday morning. You’d come from the woods then, too. I tripped on the step and would have fallen but your hand caught me. You were so strong, yet so gentle.”
“There’s a boat going down tomorrow, if you’re of a mind to come.”
“What is it like, Artemus?”
“It is sleeping on pine needles and cooking over a fire. It is trees so large you cannot belie
ve in them, and lost meadows with no foot upon them, ever. There are streams nobody has named, and a far, far land of beauty that stretches on forever.
“Of a winter the nights are bitter cold, and time to time there’s Indians, some friendly, some not. It is no easy land in which to abide, and mayhap you’ll grow old before your time, but there is richness in it and beauty, and wherever you are, I shall be close by.
“You will have no fancy clothes and for a long time there will be no meetinghouse, nor anybody to attend one. There will be times you will yearn for the voice of a stranger, no matter whose, but the soil under your feet will be deep and rich, and you’ll have mist rising off the river, the sound of a paddle dipping, and the smell of the forest.
“You will be shaping a new land for those to come after. You will see your own house built and say how you wish it to be, and there will be corn growing where none ever grew before.”
“I will come with you, Artemus. Is it to be in the morning, then?”
“Before light,” he said.
She took off her apron. “I had best go across to the parson then. He will be wishing to speak his words.”
“Madeline?” Her pa was worried now. “It is a hasty thing to do.”
“Pa,” she explained, her hand upon his sleeve, “I knew three years ago if he came back from the woods and had no woman of his own that he would be the man for me. If you will be telling Mama, I will speak to the Reverend Goslin.”
And that had been the way of it. Madeline had never been one to back and fill or flutter her mind over things. She saw what she wanted or knew what she would do and went promptly about it.
She told Jacob later how she had listened to every word she heard spoken about Artemus Lint, and there were words from time to time in those three years while she grew to be a woman and waited for him to come back. There had been talk around the store, for no country is so big that a man is not known for what he is. They spoke of him as being a fine hunter and trapper, a good, steady man who took a drink but did not make a thing of it, and who saved his money.
She had put by a little of her own, knowing the man she wanted would probably never have wealth, although she meant to see him well-off, in time. She had been sewing and stitching, too, and no doubt her mother saw it and wondered somewhat, but Ma was a woman who kept her own ideas and did not talk them about.
Jacob liked hearing the story. He knew this was their third cabin. The first cabin Artemus sold because he did not like neighbors crowding him, and the second cabin was burned by Indians while they were away, visiting. Artemus had never liked it because it was too far from the spring.
This, the third cabin, was by far the best, and with Jacob’s help Artemus had put in five acres of corn, two of barley, and an acre of vegetables. Hunting had been good and they’d jerked enough meat for winter. Soon they would be harvesting corn, but the root crops were already dug and stored in the cellar…most of them, at least. Jacob was nine years old now, and worked beside his father, dawn to dusk on some days.
On this morning Jacob went to the fields with his father, driving the old muley cow his father had trained to draw a cart. They had begun picking corn; the shucking would come later. Each walked on a side of the cart, picking the ears as they went.
At mid-morning they stopped for a breather and Madeline brought cold water from the spring and a turnover for each.
“Pa? Who is Vanderdyke?”
Artemus had his mouth full of gooseberry turnover and he finished chewing before he answered. “He may be the best long-hunter there is. Nobody knows how far he has gone to the westward, to the north or the south. Folks say he never misses with that rifle, but he often carries a bow and arrows, too, and he is equally good with them.
“By name he’s a Dutchman, and some say he came from a Dutch settlement in New York State. There’s Indians who say he’s no man at all, but a ‘wind-spirit’. “One story is that the Senecas killed his family and when his pa was dyin’ he gave Vanderdyke his rifle-gun and his hatchet and told him to get away.
“Some Indians say he’s always been here, like the hills and the streams, that he belongs to the land. One thing seems sure. He’s a loyal man of this country, and will fight for it.
“He’s wary of the Iroquois because he believes they will join the British against us if it comes to a fight. They fought beside the British against the French, and war will give them an excuse to wipe out such folks as we are who are moving toward the frontier.
“One thing is sure. The Iroquois are a strong, fighting bunch of Indians…conquerors much like the Romans were.
“When the French first came into this country the fur trade routes were controlled by the Hurons, enemies to the Iroquois. The French wanted fur so they naturally sided with the Hurons, and the Iroquois never forgave them. At first, because the French had guns, the Iroquois took a whipping, then they traded with the Dutch at New Amsterdam for guns. Then they really started to move.
“They nearly destroyed the Hurons, wiped out the Neutrals and several other tribes. For a hundred years they were almost continually at war, and were feared from the St. Lawrence to the Tennessee, from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. What they haven’t subjugated they have destroyed.
“Do not fear them, son. Respect them, however. They are a shrewd folk, uncommon fighters, and never to be trusted because they do not think as we do, nor have the same standards or beliefs.”
Jacob Lint remembered that morning. They had worked steadily, stripping ears of corn from the stalks, and from time to time his father paused, stretched, and took time to look all about, usually while drinking or seeming to drink from the water-jug.
That afternoon the cart was not half-full when suddenly he said, “We will go in now.”
“But Pa, the corn—!”
“Can wait.” Artemus spoke sternly and handed the lines to his son. “Drive right to the barn now, and do not stop.”
Artemus picked up his rifle and swung his powder horn easier to his hand. His face looked stiff and strange; only his eyes were alive. “When you get to the house, leave the cart in the barnyard and go in. Close the shutters and bar the door.”
“Pa?”
“No questions. Move along now, but don’t seem to hurry.”
Jacob Lint was scared. He felt his heart pound with slow, heavy thumps, and his stomach had gone all hollow. What had Pa seen? Or heard? Fear choked him, but he kept his eyes straight ahead while his father walked alongside the cart.
Often his father had warned him that when told to do something he should never pause to ask why or argue, but just to do what he was told. In an emergency it was best to act quickly and with intent.
Never had the barnyard seemed so far away, never had the old cow plodded more slowly. He wished he had his pa’s shotgun. He saw his mother come to the door to throw out dishwater, saw her stop and shade her eyes toward them, then go quickly inside. When they came into the yard the shutters were closed and Ma was filling two buckets at the well.
Turning the cow into the barnyard, Jacob got down to loosen the traces.
“Don’t bother with that. Get into the house.”
There was no sign of anything, no unusual movement. Taking one of the buckets from his mother, he followed her into the house. He took down the shotgun.
His father stood in the barn door. He caught a movement at the edge of the forest. Four Indians stood there, in plain sight. One of them suddenly lifted his bow and loosed an arrow. It struck, quivering, in the doorjamb of the barn.
His father did not move. He simply waited, his rifle in his hands. Another arrow flew, this one into the casing above his head.
“Why doesn’t he shoot?” Jacob cried out.
“That is what they want. If he shoots his gun would be empty. Once he fires, they will charge. He could not reload in time.”
She was very calm, but her eyes were large and she was very pale.
Opening the door a crack, Jacob showed the muzzle of the shotgu
n, and no more. He glanced toward his father, and he was there, his rifle ready and easy in his hands. How could he be so calm? So steady? He glanced toward the Indians, and they were gone.
“Why have they gone? Were they afraid?”
“No, Jacob. They are not afraid. Nor do they wish to die. We were ready for them, and your father could not be frightened into firing, and they knew that when he did shoot he would kill at least one.
“Knowing that, they just went away. They will come again, and again, hoping to catch us off guard.” She put her hand on his shoulder. “You did the right thing, Jacob. You may have made the difference, because when they saw your gun muzzle they knew two might die, and if they killed your father, you could still reload and fire again.”
“Why do we do it, Ma? Why doesn’t Pa take you back to the settlements?”
“He doesn’t suggest it because he knows I would not go. This is the life he has chosen and I am his wife.”
CHAPTER 3
Vanderdyke’s route was south, then east. Deliberately, he avoided the traces, traveling a route roughly parallel to them so as to leave no obvious signs of his passage. It was slower, but safer, and he was never a man to take an unnecessary risk.
This was mingled hardwood and pine forest, and his travel-stained buckskins merged well with the trunks of trees, pine needles, and mottled hillsides, where some snow had melted, leaving patches of gray-brown or yellow grass and leaves.
Crossing a long hillside he came upon an old buffalo trail. The woods buffalo who had frequented the area in the past were somewhat larger than the plains buffalo, and the paths they made were easily followed. Always they held to the contour of the hills and found the best crossings of streams.
By midday he had put thirty miles behind him and found a place on a rocky brush-and-tree-covered hillside where he could rest and see the country over which he must travel in the next few hours.
The noonday sun was warm and he had a sheltered place where he could enjoy the sun without being seen unless man or beast approached within a few feet, which was unlikely as the spot he had chosen was difficult to approach and far from any beaten track.
Volume 1: Unfinished Manuscripts, Mysterious Stories, and Lost Notes from One of the World's Most Popular Novelists Page 29