The Warrior's Path (1980) s-3

by Louis L'Amour

  One of the Catawbas slipped away into the woods, going back toward the Rapidan. The rest of us started out, walking swiftly along the flank of the mountain, taking a dun trail southward.

  No attention was given to he who had left us, the Catawbas taking it for granted he would take care of himself and catch up when he could. It was apparent that he had gone to have a look down the river to see who, if anyone, might be following us. On that subject I had my own thoughts, private though they were. What Diana thought, I knew not, nor did I ask.

  One name hung in the back of my mind, the name of a man who knew how to hate, a man who would not be frustrated, our enemy always.

  Max Bauer.

  Chapter XXI

  We hastened on into the gathering dusk and at last came to a hollow among great trees where boulders lay about and there was a spring from which a small branch flowed. The place was shadowed and gloomy when we entered, and the fire we made was small, for hasty cooking. Among themselves the Catawbas muttered, and I knew from a word I caught it was of their brother they spoke.

  "What is it?" Diana whispered.

  "The other one has not come. They talk of it now."

  She was silent. We ate then and put out the fire. About us the dark columns of the trees lost their shape in the shadows, and only overhead could we see the black fringe of leaves against the starlit sky. A wind stirred. In the aisles of the forest, leaves skittered, and cool was the wind from off the high ridges.

  Three Catawbas slept, and two remained awake. After a time I, too, slept, yet for minutes only, awakening with eyes coming wide and ears stretched to hear the slightest sound.

  At dawn we awakened, chewed on jerked venison, and moved swiftly away. There was no sign of him who had left us.

  "He is dead," one said when I spoke of him. "If he has not come, he is dead."

  "You wish to go back? We will go, also."

  "No. There is another time. There is always another time."

  We crossed over the mountains at Swift Run Gap and descended into a lovely valley beyond and turned south once more. Diana, although the hard travel left her tired, made no word of complaint, yet I was worried, fearing for her but hating to be driven by whoever it was who came behind us. If the young Catawba had been killed, the blood feud was mine as well as theirs, for he had been acting for us. It was all very well to say they would have come this way, and all might have happened, anyway, yet I liked it not. Had Diana not been with us, I would myself have turned back to see who our enemies were and to take toll of them.

  Yet there was wariness in me, too, for if the Catawba had been killed, someone among them was a woodsman, and one skillful indeed. To hunt down and kill a Catawba warrior was no small thing; of course, even the best made mistakes.

  We held close to the mountains, traveling in the forest when possible.

  On the last morning I came upon a tree that I myself had blazed upon a trail my feet had often trod. "We will be home soon," I said to Diana, and she put her hand on mine, touching it lightly.

  The trail opened upon a meadow where fresh-cut hay was stacked and beyond it a cornfield. Melons lay on the ground among the rows of corn. This would be a good harvest.

  We saw the palisade before us, low upon its knoll near the creek. The gate stood open, and two men faced us, shading their eyes to see us. I lifted a hand, and there was an answering wave.

  The first to reach me was Yance.

  "Where you been, lad?" he asked, smiling. Glancing at Diana, his smile widened. "I told Temp you'd be bringin' a lass with you, but not who it was. She's been devilin' me for a name, but I haven't told her a thing!"

  "There's somebody behind us, Yance. Somebody who wants us real bad. He's killed one of our Catawba friends, or must have."

  "It is a bad time, Kin. Two of our men are down sick with chills and fever. Will they be many or few?"

  "Few, I think, but not easy men."

  He grinned widely, cheerfully. "When have they ever been easy? We were born to hard times and hard men, Kin, and I am thinking we are hard men ourselves." He glanced at the Catawbas. "Where did you come by them?"

  So I told him as we walked, and he listened, nodding from time to time. He shook his head. "You took a long chance going to the islands, Kin. A long chance."

  "White women are not so many, Yance, and they are noticed. Yet without Henry I could not have done it."

  "He is a good man and welcome amongst us." He nodded toward the settlement. "They know you are coming, and they have prepared a feast for the prodigal."

  "Me? A prodigal? It should be more likely you."

  They were wailing for us, and Temperance ran forward when she saw Diana. "Oh, Di! You're my sister now! If I could have chosen, it would have been you."

  "Come within," Lila said quietly. "There is food upon the table, and you be hungry folk."

  My eyes went to her, this woman who had once served my mother and had married one of my father's best friends. The size of her never ceased to astonish me, for she was nearly as tall and broad as I, who am larger than most. There was a little gray in her hair now, and it pained me to see it. Yet she was older than my mother.

  My mother, would I ever see her again? She was gone across the sea to England with Noelle and Brian, but I remembered her well.

  Jeremy came up from the field, his hand hard from the work there but his smile as bright as ever. "It has been too long, lad. You must stay now."

  This man had stood over me when I was being born during a battle with the Senecas, guarding my mother during her labor. He had been my father's friend and had left England with him, a down-at-heel gentleman, a wandering swordsman, and a farmer now but holding broad acres with excellent crops and a good trade in furs with friendly Indians.

  "I have brought trouble," I said, and explained.

  "The men are coming from the fields," Jeremy said.

  They started within where the food was upon the table, but I lingered to look about. There was a place where some of the logs were blackened near the ground, a place where fire started by Indians had seared the logs before being put out. My father and his men had come into this country when no white man was nearer than the coast and had remained here until he went beyond the mountains scouting for fresh land. For this was our way, bred into us, and we knew it well, always to go beyond the mountains to open new lands.

  Within all was bright and cheerful--sunlight through the windows upon burnished copper pots and the dull shine of pewter. The floors were spotless as always and the windows hung with curtains. Muskets stood in their racks near the walls, and the heavy shutters were thrown back now but could be drawn quickly shut.

  A strongly built man with a shock of flaxen hair pushed back from the table. "I go to the wall," he said.

  When he had gone, Jeremy said, "He is Schaumberg, a German. He heard of us and came looking, one man and his woman with a baby son. They came through the forest alone."

  "He belongs here, then," I said. "He is a good man?"

  "He works hard, and he is handy with tools. He seems to fear nothing."

  "It is better," I replied, "to fear a little. One is cautious then."

  "Aye, but he is a careful man."

  One by one they slipped away to the walls, and when I looked again at the rack of muskets, it was half empty. I started to rise. "Sit you," Lila said. "There will be time enough when the fighting begins, if fighting there is to be."

  She filled my glass again and stood across the table from me. "I like her. Does she have family?"

  "A father. A good man. He should be amongst us. He would make a teacher," I added, "and we will need such."

  We talked long then and of many things. Yance came in and sat beside us. When I asked about our enemies, he shrugged. "We have seen nothing, but they are there. A fawn was crossing our field where they always cross, and suddenly it turned sharp away and trotted back almost the way it came."

  "If it is Max Bauer," I said, "he will want victory without cos
t. He will wait, or he will find a way."

  I turned my head to Yance. "I want him," I said. "I want the man myself."

  Yance shrugged. "Let it happen, Kin. If he comes my way or Jeremy's, so be it."

  My hackles rose at the thought of him. There were few men I disliked, none that I hated but him. But this went beyond hate, for we were two male creatures of strength who saw in the other an enemy. No matter how we met, we should sooner or later have fought. It was in our natures, deeply laid, and he knew it as well as I. We ached to get together; we longed for the moment.

  The man was a monster of cruelty, a savage man but cold and mean in his savagery. I had hated no Indian whom I fought. Warfare was their way of life, and they fought because it was their way. They were splendid men, most of them, and although they had slain my father, he himself would have felt no hatred for them. They were men, opposed to him but men, and warriors. They fought, but there was respect there, also.

  It was not so with Max Bauer and myself. We must fight, and one must destroy the other, and each was aware.

  Lila needed no urging to keep me from the walls, for it was in my mind that he would not attack. He would come, he would look, he would go all about us in the forest, and then he would try to find some way he could hurt or injure me or mine before he killed me. He was that sort of man, and he knew that death can be an end to suffering. He wanted me dead but only after I had suffered all a man can suffer. It was his advantage, perhaps, that he wished to kill and I did not. I wanted to fight him, to destroy what he was, to break him. I did not care about killing.

  Jeremy came back and sat down opposite me. "Kin," he said, "since the death of your father, you are the accepted leader here, but we have troubles coming that you have not, perhaps, considered.

  "The settlements along the Virginia coast are growing. People are moving into the Carolinas. This you know."

  "I do."

  "This land we occupy is ours only by right of settlement, which in the courts of England would be no right at all. Think you not that we should take steps to establish a claim to our land?"

  "But how? My father dared make no such claim. He was flying from the queen's justice, a wanted man. Falsely charged though he was. We have held our land for many years now."

  "Be wise, Kin. Explore the chances. Perhaps you might write to Brian? Or to Peter Tallis? Believe me, we can wait no longer."

  What he said was, of course, true. Although I would not say anything of that to Jeremy, I had been worrying over just that very thing and worrying even more since I saw men moving out from Cape Ann and Plymouth, looking for land. The troubles of Claiborne over Kent Island had been explained to me, for although Claiborne had settled there, Lord Baltimore's grant took in all Claiborne occupied, and he might be thrown off at any time. So it could be with us.

  I worried not for myself or for Yance. There was always the frontier for us. Yet my father had brought men with him, and those men held land because of his urging. Some of those men, Jeremy Ring included, had become well off from the trade and the produce of their land, yet they might lose the land itself if something was not done.

  "I shall write to Peter Tallis," I said, "and to Brian as well."

  There was a packet of letters awaiting me and a press of business that needed my attention, for our plantations had grown and their demands upon my time as well. Glancing over the receipts and payments, I could see our small colony was doing very well indeed, but soon it would come to the attention of the tax collectors and of His Majesty's officials, who were ever greedy for themselves as well as for the Crown.

  In the months that I had been gone in the mountains as well as to Jamaica three shiploads of mast timbers had been sent down the river and loaded aboard sailing ships. Thirty-two bales of furs had been sent, seventy tons of potash, fourteen buffalo hides, twenty fine maple logs for the making of furniture.

  Our enemies awaited us in the forest, but each thing in its time, and the time for our enemies would come when they attacked or made some move against us. In the meantime I would trust to Jeremy and those others and would be about my business here.

  It had never been easy for me to write a letter. I was a man of the forest or of the plow. I could kill a deer for meat, fell a tree, or break ground for a field. I could hew timbers, build walls and houses, but a letter was a painstaking thing that required putting thoughts into words.

  First I wrote to Peter Tallis. My father had told us much of him. From a booth in St. Paul's Walk where he dealt in information and all manner of things that could be done with inside information or knowledge of where lay the powers, he had become a wealthy and respected merchant. He was the middleman, the man to whom one could go if one wished to approach a minister or anyone in a position of power. If there was merchandise to be sold by some stranger or foreigner, Tallis was the man who could tell the best market, the best price. He was our friend in London, our agent as well.

  Explaining our situation, of which he was no doubt aware, I also expressed my wish to establish legal title to our lands. Brian was in London, undoubtedly seeing Peter Tallis, and together they could develop a solution. That my father had been a fugitive from the queen's men posed a problem.

  Next I wrote to Brian. As a student at the Inns of Court, he would understand better than I the legal complexities of our situation and those who depended upon us. Of Yance's marriage he knew. I now told him of mine. At the same time I told him of Legare and his need for a representative in London.

  How strange are the fortunes of men! My father, a strong young man with ambition, had found on the Devil's Dyke a rotted wallet in which were several ancient gold coins. Their sale had given him his start in life and led to his coming to America. Yet they had also brought much trouble, for the queen's officers, inspired by his enemies, believed my father had found King John's treasure, the lost Crown jewels of England, among which there had been some old coins of gold. The find and the fact that my father lived in the fens not far from the Wash where the treasure had been lost was all that was needed. My father had been seized, questioned, and imprisoned. Despairing of making anyone believe his story, he had escaped from Newgate prison and fled to America.

  Our plantations now did well. Our trade with Indians prospered. Each year more and more people came to America, and we knew a time would come when they would press hard upon us, so already Yance and I had gone beyond the mountains and had explored lands there, building our two cabins and planting crops where only Indians had been before. Or so we originally supposed. Now, from discoveries there, we knew that others had been before us.

  My hand was tiring from the unfamiliar writing, so I placed the quill upon the table and sat back and stared off into nothing, thinking.

  Our father was gone, killed by the Seneca along with his good friend Tom Watkins. My mother was in England with Brian and Noelle. And Jubal? What of Jubal, my strange, lonely, wandering brother?

  For years now there had been no word of him. Each season I watched the trails, hoping he would come again to see us, if for a few days only. He was ever the lonely wanderer, ever the remote one, loving us all and being loved, yet a solitary man who loved the wild lands more. He had gone westward, and he had returned from time to time with tales of a great river out there, greater than any we knew, and of wide, fertile lands where there was much game. And then he had come no more.

  Yance came to the door. "Kin? Better come to the wall. There's somebody out there with a white flag."

  Chapter XXII

  Outside the sun was warm and pleasant. It felt good to be back in buckskins and moccasins again. Pausing a moment, I took a long look around and about, and as far as I could see, we were ready. The men had come in from the fields, and those on the outlying farms would have closed up shutters and barred doors by now.

  Since I was hoe handle high, I had been taught to be ready, and so with all of us. A body never knew when the Indians would be coming down upon us, especially the Senecas, who had selected us
for their foes. I won't say enemies because we had nothing to fight about except to make war or protect ourselves. The Senecas lived a far piece away to the north, and it took them days to get where we were. As long as I could remember, they had been coming.

  Mounting the ladder to the walk along the inside of the wall, I looked out over the palisade, and there was the white flag.

  Turning, I looked at the back wall, but Jeremy Ring was there, and Jeremy wasn't about to be taken by surprise. There was always a chance that under cover of talk they would try to close in on us.

  We had sickness amongst us, so we were short-handed on the walls, but there were six of us up there, and at the first shot the womenfolk would be out to reload for us, and we had two dozen spare muskets, all of which could be kept loaded and ready for use.

  "If you wish to talk," I shouted, "come out in the open! But no more than one of you or we start shooting!"

  What Bauer had in mind, I had no idea, but by this time he had scouted our position with care. Our fort was well situated, but scattered up the valley were a dozen other cabins occupied by members of our little colony, often enough by families. Each was prepared to defend itself, and each was built in such a way as to receive support from at least one other cabin. In other words, when attacking one cabin, the attackers must in most cases expose themselves to fire from another.

  Yet I doubted if he had any true estimate of our strength, nor had I any of his. Whether he had a half-dozen men or many more I had no way of knowing. We ourselves must do some scouting.

  It was Lashan who came forward.

  He strode into the open and stood there, feet well apart, hands on hips. He wore a cutlass and a brace of pistols but carried a musket as well.

  "You folks in there!" he called. "You give us Sackett and that Macklin girl and we won't burn you out. If you don't surrender them, we'll kill you, every one!"

  "Diana Macklin is now my wife," I replied, "and we have no intention of surrendering anything. As for you, I would suggest you start back to the coast while you still have supplies enough to feed you."