He took me by the elbow, but I withdrew it from his hand. Not that I did not like it, but I wanted my hands free for what was coming.
I’ll give him this. He did not stand waiting for invitations. Suddenly they rushed, and he stepped to meet them. He struck hard with a left and a right, and the man he hit went down.
A big sweaty, smelly man grabbed at me. “Now, little lady …!”
Two of them were swinging on Dorian and time was a-wasting. As that big man grabbed at me, I slid that pistol from my reticule and eared back the hammer.
He heard the click and seemed to catch himself in midstride. I let the hammer fall, there was an explosion, and that big man taken a quick, staggering step back, then fell against the rail.
Somebody, somewhere up on the Texas yelled, “What wasthat ?”
There was a sound of running feet, and almost at once the attack broke off and those men just scattered.
“Was that a shot?” Dorian grabbed my arm as I slid the pistol back into the reticule. “Are you hurt?”
“Let’s get away from here,” I said.
The steamer was nosing in to the bank and I could hear men down below getting the rigging away to lower the stage. Swiftly we went down the ladder. The man Dorian had hit was struggling to get up; the man I’d shot was just lying there. People were coming from the main cabin as we disappeared down the steps to the bow.
As the stage lowered into place, we ran ashore. A big deckhand called out, “Hey? You folks! You can’t go ashore here!”
By that time we were in the shadows of a shed, and I heard Dorian’s friend Archie whisper, “This way,quick !”
There was a landing, a shed, and a road leading back into the country. We got into the darkness under some big old trees and stopped there, catching our breath.
There was confusion on the landing. Cargo had been waiting and there had been some heavy boxes waiting to be off-loaded. I heard somebody call out that a man had been shot.
“Thug,” somebody else said. “What’s he doing on this deck? He’s no passenger!”
“I think we had better move,” Archie whispered. “The further we get, the better.”
Glancing back, I could see, in the light from the stage, a tall man wearing a planter’s hat. He was looking off our way, although I knew he could not see us. It was Horst. There was a cluster of houses and barns, then a land that led away along the Big Sandy. As we moved away, the sounds from the Ohio receded. We stopped a couple of times to look and listen. Had we gotten away? I was not at all sure. Felix Horst was no fool, and he wanted the money I had.
Nobody had much to say, walking that muddy road up the Big Sandy, climbing a mite, passing a farm here or there. Dogs barked at us but nobody came to the doors, and it was graying sky before we fetched to a halt under a big old sycamore. One limb of it, big as the trunk itself, ran parallel to the ground and we sat on it, resting our feet.
“Maybe we could get horses,” Dorian suggested.
“A canoe,” I commented, “then we could take off up toward the forks of the creek.”
“That man back yonder?” Archie wondered. “Who could have shot him? One of his own crowd, maybe?”
“He didn’t seem to be dead,” Dorian commented. “I saw him trying to roll over when we went down the ladder.”
Me, I hadn’t any comment to make. My only worry was getting loaded again, and I was hopeful of recharging my pistol alone, where they could not see. No use them getting ideas, but it was my shot that broke the attack, coming unexpected like that, and alarming folks in the cabins.
“There’s a farmhouse,” Dorian suggested, “smoke coming from the chimney. We might buy some breakfast.”
“I’m for that,” Archie agreed.
“All right,” I said, “but we’d best not linger over coffee. We will have followers comin’ up the trail after us, and they won’t be bare-handed. They’ll come to fetch trouble this time.”
We walked down to the lane and spoke to the shepherd dog who came charging at us. I put a hand out to him and after a moment he sniffed it, then seemed to accept us, although he barked again from time to time as we come nigh the door.
That door opened and there was a man standing there who had to put his head outside to stand up, he was that tall. He had thin reddish hair and a large Adam’s apple.
“We’re travelin’ folks,” I said to him, “headin’ back for my own mountains, and these gentlemen are keepin’ the bears off my back whilst we walk. Right now we’re shy of breakfast.”
“Come in an’ set. Ma’s puttin’ on some sidemeat an’ corn fritters. Coffee’s a-bilin’. This here is fresh ground from our own parch. Never did take to lettin’ anybody else parch m’ coffee.”
He glanced at Archie, who had seated himself on the steps where he could watch the road. “He belong to you?”
“He’s a free man. Has never been any other way.”
“Then I’d warn him to get back across the Ohio. Some who come huntin’ escaped slaves aren’t pa’tic’lar who they lay hold of.”
“I’ll tell him. He’s a good man.”
“If he’s keepin’ watch for you all, tell him to set in the barn window. That way he can see a mile or two down the road.” He paused, glancing from me to Dorian. “You two runnin’ off?”
Dorian was embarrassed. “No, sir. Miss Sackett had business with my uncle and he wanted Archie and me to see she got home all right, to Tennessee. She’s been followed by some bad people.”
We ate, taking our time. I described Felix Horst, Tim Oats, and Elmer. “There’s others, but those three are the ones we know.”
“Your name is Sackett?”
“It is.”
“You got kinfolk in the Clinch Mountains? Seems to me I’ve heard tell of Sacketts down thataway.”
“Some. They’re cousins, sort of.”
I carried food to Archie. “We’d best be movin’, ma’am.” He glanced at me. “You know how we’re goin’?”
“Up the Sandy. If we could find a canoe, we’d move a lot easier.”
Dorian was up and ready. The sandy-haired man was watching him. “You need you a rifle-gun,” he said. “If those follerin’ you have a rifle-gun, they’ll pick you off.”
“Do you have one to sell?”
The man shook his head. “I’ve my own, but we can’t live without meat, and I shoot my meat. You might find one of the McCoys with an extry rifle-gun, although folks hereabouts only has what they need, mostly.”
“We’d better go.” Dorian held out his hand to the man, who accepted it. We thanked his wife and waved at the children and went out by the gate.
“They’re comin’,” Archie said, “a mile or two back. At least one of them has a rifle.”
That scared me. If that one could shoot, there would be places he could lay his rifle-gun on a rest and take out any one of us at a distance.
The trail followed the Big Sandy. We crossed a meadow wet with morning dew and went into the trees. It was shadowed there, and still. Dorian led the way, and he had a considerable stride.
There was a place where the trail curved out from the woods to the bluffs above the river. We looked back and glimpsed them, five of them.
“They’re gainin’ on us,” Archie said. “We’ve got to make our fight.”
Chapter 15
“Not yet,” I said, and they looked at me, surprised, I guess, that a girl would speak up at such a time. “We’ll make ourselves hard to catch,” I said. “Come on!”
My eyes had been busy and I’d seen a dim trail taking off through the trees. As I started, Dorian hung back. “Where’s that go?” he demanded.
“We’ll find out, won’t we?”
Muttering, he followed. The trail led down through the trees into a wooded hollow. There were deer tracks, but I saw no human tracks. Swiftly I led the way through the trees, past some craggy rocks, and across a small stream. Waiting there, I waved them past and then tried to make the signs of their passing less obvi
ous. Oats was a city man, I was sure, and I suspected Elmer was. I knew nothing of Horst, but if I could confuse them a mite, it would save time.
They had walked on, as I meant them to do, and I stood listening. There was no sound but a faint stirring of wind, and then I heard a voice, somebody calling. They had already reached the place where we’d turned off, but had they noticed? I was hoping they would continue on along the Big Sandy.
Regal had hunted down this way a long time back, following an old trail left by Pa in his younger days, and I was hopeful of finding the trail that ran parallel to Blaine Creek, or sort of.
A moment more lent to obscuring tracks, and then I followed along after Dorian and Archie. It was quiet in the woods, but sound carried when a body was in the open. I must caution them about talking. From time to time the trail emerged on the banks of the creek or in a meadow, but we moved on, heading south. Every step was drawing us closer to Sackett country, but we still had a ways to go. If I only had my rifle-gun!
It was back yonder, waiting for me in a tavern where I’d left it, and far from here. Yet, I dearly wanted that rifle and I studied in my mind to find a way to get there and pick it up. The tavern was miles away to the west and south, but mostly south.
When I fetched up with Dorian and Archie, they were resting, waitin’ for me. “Where’s this taking us?” Dorian complained. “We’re getting nowhere very fast!”
“Talk soft,” I said. “Voices carry. They’ve passed by where we turned off, but they’ll realize something’s wrong and they’ll come a-lookin’.”
We had a chance to gain time, so I led off along the trail. This was wild country, and strange to them, and Dorian didn’t like it much, me leading off thataway. He wanted to go places that he knew, and that meant to towns or settlements.
This was lonesome country; until a few years back, Injun hunting country. We were on the Kentucky side now, but most of those West Virginia mountains had belonged to nobody. Here and there Indians lived in the low country but stayed out of the mountains except when in pursuit of game.
It was wild country, rough, cut by many small streams, heavily timbered, country but it was my kind of country, the kind where I’d grown up. Settlements were all right for most folks, but a body was too easily seen and followed where other folks abide.
There were folks along the river, however, and once in a while a place hidden back in the hollow. It came to me suddenly that somewhere ahead was the little town of Louisa and that while I’d been thinking poor, I needn’t do so longer. We could go into that town and I could buy me a new rifle-gun, biding the time I could recover my own. At least I wouldn’t feel so plumb undressed as I did now.
That meant takin’ a chance on being caught up with, but having a rifle-gun meant all the difference.
“Mr. Chantry,” I advised, “there’s a town yonder on the river. I think we’ll amble thataway. You better keep your shootin’ hand ready, because we’ll almost surely run into Felix Horst and some of his outfit.”
“At least we can buy a decent meal!” he said. “I am not worried about Horst.”
“That’s where you an’ me differ,” I said. “I worry considerable about him. All he’s got to do is kill us an’ he can take my money and be off with it.”
“I don’t kill very easy,” he commented.
“I hope you don’t,” I agreed. “You’re a right handsome young man and there’s not too many about, but that there Horst, he isn’t going to come up an’ give you a break. He doesn’t want to die and he knows he can, so he’ll be no damn fool. He’ll shoot you from the brush and take what he wants off your body.”
We came into the town with the sun hanging low in the sky, and I went first to a store to buy my gun. I’d taken coin from the carpetbag, and sure enough I found what I wanted. I bought me a brand-new rifle-gun like those made in Pennsylvania. Nor did I waste time charging it.
There was a tavern there, and we went to it and put our feet under their table for supper. “We’ll stay here through the night,” Dorian said.
Well, I looked at Archie and he shrugged his big shoulders. Both of us knew we’d better light out of there because this was right where Horst and them would come. I will say that meal tasted good and it would give us a chance to wash up.
There was a room with a bed for me, but they’d sleep in the outer room on the floor, wrapped in whatever they wore. There was one window to my room and the one door that opened into the main room of the tavern. The window was shuttered and locked from the inside. I taken my bag inside and put it down with the rifle-gun and peeked out through the shutter slats. Not far away was the river and a great big old stone house somebody said had just been completed.
The tavernkeeper fetched me a wooden tub filled with hot water, and when I’d bathed and cleaned my clothes some, I felt a whole lot better. I was even beginning to feel Dorian might be right, and then I heard a voice in the taproom and it was Timothy Oats. He was having a drink. Through a crack where the door didn’t fit that well, I could see him. He was settin’ with Elmer and a big swarthy man, and Dorian was across the room with Archie, a glass of beer on the table in front of him.
Well, I got dressed. By now they would know I was here, and they would have some kind of a plan worked out. Nothing to happen right here in town, maybe, but after we’d gotten out on the road.
This was where the Big Sandy River started, I guess you’d say, the Tug Fork and Levisa Fork joining here to make the Big Sandy. Sometimes, although I’d not have said it aloud, I almost wished I was alone and didn’t have those men to worry about. Archie, he was a swamp boy, a swamp and timber boy, and I could see it. If you wanted to call him a boy, that is. He wasn’t much older than Dorian but he’d grown up scratchin’ for a livin’ back in some swamp. I could see it.
He was a trouble-wary man. Part of that came from being black them days. A black man had to ease himself around the tight spots and learned how to keep himself from trouble. Dorian Chantry never had to worry about trouble. Everybody in his part of the country knew who he was and had respect. The trouble was, this wasn’t his country.
Sleep was what I was wishful for, but I couldn’t lay my head in comfort with him out there in the same room with Tim Oats. Peekin’ through the slats, I could see Archie was worried, too. He knew as I knew that Tim Oats probably felt if they could be rid of Chantry they could handle me.
The keeper of the tavern was no fool. When you run a place like that, you learn to sense trouble coming before it happens, and I caught him throwing a glance, one to the other.
If he was worried, he wasn’t the only one. What Tim Oats had in mind, I don’t know, but something was cookin’ and he had the mixture in mind. Tim Oats was between Dorian and the door, and so was that big swarthy man, to say nothing of Elmer.
Dorian finished his beer and stood up. Archie had finished his beer too, but he was still holding the mug. Dorian glanced over at the host. “Do we sleep here? On the floor?”
“It will be warmer, with the fire going.” The tavernkeeper wanted no trouble. “You can bed down right here.”
Tim Oats exchanged a quick look with the big man, and I guessed this hadn’t been a part of whatever they had in mind. Maybe they expected Chantry and Archie to go past them out the door.
Archie moved their table over closer to Oats and his group, putting it between them. He carefully moved the benches, too, kind of walling themselves away from Oats. It was done naturally, like he was just clearing a place to lie down, but I must say it was going to make it hard for that outfit to start anything in the night without making some noise.
Dorian drew his pistol and checked the loading, then stretched out on the floor near the fire. Oats glared at the pistol. “What’s that for?” he demanded.
Dorian smiled that lovely smile of his. “Indians!” he said. “Wild Indians! Lots of them in these woods! Or haven’t you heard?”
“They been cleared out,” Oats protested uneasily.
“Don’
t you believe it. They come around during the night, looking for scalps. A man can’t be too careful.” He hesitated and his face was innocent as a girl’s. “Now, don’t you boys move around too much. If that door opens in the night or somebody creeps around, I’m liable to go to shooting.”
“Ain’t been any Indians around here in years!” the swarthy man argued.
“Well,” Dorian said cheerfully, “if they come, you are closer to the door than we are, so please stop them.”
Looked to me like everything was going to be all right, so I went to bed, and tired as I was from the long night and day of walking, I slept until day was breaking.
When I came out for breakfast in the morning, they were all at a table. Two tables.
“Ah? Miss Sackett! You do look as if you slept well! Won’t you sit down?” Dorian was smiling and cheerful, but Oats looked sour. He shot me a quick glance but I ignored him, making as if I’d never seen him before. Elmer looked mean, but I would expect that. He was a young man who needed his sleep.
“Buckwheat cakes and honey!” Dorian said. “This is living!”
He glanced over at Oats. “Are you gentlemen going far? I mean, if there is any way we can help … ?”
“We don’t need no help,” Oats said. “Tend to your own affairs!”
“Oh, but we intend to!” Dorian was almighty cheerful, and a body would almost think he welcomed trouble. “It will be no problem.”
The buckwheat cakes were good. The coffee was fresh ground like it should be. Once the food was on the table, nobody was inclined to talk, and I was giving thought to what lay ahead. Somewhere to the south was Pikeville, and it would surely be easier if we could find a boat. A canoe would be best, or even a skiff.
When the rest of them had gone outside, I went to the tavernkeeper. “What’s going on?” he asked. “I thought there would be trouble.”
“They are thieves,” I said, “and we’re wishful of getting away from them. Is there anybody with a skiff or a canoe?”
“There’s an old birchbark canoe…” He pointed. “Yonder, back of the barn there’s an inlet. The canoe lies there.”
Ride the River (1983) Page 11