Ride the River (1983)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 05

  It was that shep dog who saved us. We’d swung wide to come around some driftlogs and brush gathered at a bend of the creek when that dog suddenly come to his feet, every hair bristling, and he began to bark.

  “Backwater!” I yelled, most unladylike, and my voice was drowned in the crashing thunder of rifles firing. I dug in with my paddle and Archie with his. A bullet shattered the paddle in my hands, another ripped the front of the canoe, then the current had us back behind that point of driftlogs, the current and Archie’s quick reaction to my yell. There was another shot and then I heard swearing and somebody yelled, “… too soon, damn you!”

  “Across the creek!” Archie spoke low but quick. “Into the trees!”

  The river wasn’t wide here and the current helped. For a moment we were visible from upstream and somebody shot, but the bullet missed and then we were back of a timbered point.

  We beached the canoe and piled out. “Leave it!” I said.

  “Are you hurt?” Dorian was staring at my wrist, which had been cut by flying splinters when the paddle was shot from my hands.

  “A scratch,” I said. “Let’s get away from here!”

  They had been laying for us, all set to mow us down, and that shep dog had saved our bacon. When he jumped up and went to barking, he evidently caused those hiding men to shoot too quick. If we’d been a canoe length further up the creek, they’d have killed us all.

  We dragged the canoe ashore, taken up our goods and went into the forest.

  We had been days on the water and had paid little mind to the forest we were passing through, but this was big timber, giant sycamores, blue beech, river birch, and clumps of black willow, with here and there a table of rhododendrons. There was a game trail taken off toward the mountains, and we taken it, with me leading.

  Maybe it was forward of me, bein’ a girl and all, but whilst Archie had a knowin’ way about him, I didn’t think Dorian when it came to trails would know come hither from go yonder, so totin’ my bag and my rifle, I just headed off into the tall timber.

  What I wanted was a place to hole up and make a stand. Whoever fired on us would be wanting to finish us off, and I didn’t know how my outfit would do in an Injun fight amongst the trees. Back toward Pine Mountain there were rock formations, caves, and such. What I wanted was high ground with some rocks and timber, a place with a good field of fire.

  I’d never been in a shootin’ fight but once, when I was ten, when some raidin’ Injuns had come through, but I’d heard Pa, Ethan, Regal, an’ them talk about what was needed.

  That trail didn’t amount to much, but it was going our way and it was climbing along some limestone ridges and through the timber. Nor did the boys argue with me. They seemed to want to get shut of those folks back there just as bad as I did.

  Who was it? How had they gotten ahead of us? Or was this Felix Horst with some of his old Natchez Trace outlaw friends?

  “You’d better let me carry your carpetbag,” Dorian suggested. “Or your rifle.”

  “Take the bag,” I said. “Nobody carries my weapon but me.”

  Once, stopping to catch our breath after a climb through rocks and trees, I said, “We’d better do some thinkin’. They know where we’re a-goin’. They’ll cut across an’ get ahead of us again. Somewhere up yonder they’ll be waitin’ for us.”

  “We lucked out this time,” Archie said. “That won’t happen again.”

  We rested there among the pines, watching the country below us. We were tired, and we were scared. I know I was, and Archie’s face had a haunted look. Dorian, he was white under the flush the sun had been colorin’ him with. Bein’ hunted by men who want you dead is no way to live. If it hadn’t been for that shep dog we’d all be dead. Where did he come from, out of the night like that? Whose dog was he? Looked to me like he’d been on his own a good while, and it might be his home was far from here.

  “We’ve got to cut them down,” I said, “make ‘em understand there’s a price to pay.”

  “You mean kill them?” Dorian was shocked.

  “They’re tryin’ to kill us,” I said.

  “Your Uncle Finian sure wouldn’t hesitate,” Archie said. “That old man’s a holy terror!”

  Dorian looked around at him. “What do you mean? UncleFinian ?”

  “He went down to the Dutchman’s,” Archie explained, then repeated the story of the fight in the street.

  “Uncle Finian did that?”

  “I was with him.”

  “I can’t believe it! Uncle Finian!”

  “I can believe it,” I said. “That’s a tough old gentleman. I could see it in him.”

  We moved on, Shep trotting ahead, and believe me, I felt better with that dog along. Why he adopted us, I’d never guess, but he surely had.

  From time to time we saw deer, and we crossed the trail of a coon. It was coming on to night before we found a ledge masked by trees. It was above the trail we’d been following, and with a fine view of the way we’d come.

  “It’s a good place to sleep,” Dorian said.

  We were wearied by the long day, and nobody was of a mind to talk very much. There wasn’t much left to eat, but we ate it cold, sharing a mite with the dog. We were on a ledge, a sort of notch in the rock wall, and it was a good tight spot.

  “Somewhere yonder,” I told them, “is a big ol’ pine tree, stands by itself. They call that way the Trail of the Lonesome Pine.”

  They looked where I pointed, but neither had any comment. It was wild, lonesome country with the breaks of the Big Sandy lyin’ close by. Right at that moment I wanted most of all just to be home.

  We made us a fire you could put in a teacup, almost, and made coffee. When we’d had our coffee, we left the pot on the coals. “You all sleep,” I said. “I’ll keep watch.”

  “You?” Dorian said. “Of course not. You sleep. Archie and I will share it.”

  “There’s three of us here,” I insisted. “We’ll take turn about. That dog’s tired too. We shouldn’t trust to him.”

  They slept first, and the wind came down through the pines, moaning a lonesome song. I went over to the little branch that flowed down from a crack in the limestone and had a drink; then I went back to a place I could set with my back against the rock wall and my rifle-gun on my knees.

  A couple of times I almost dozed; then I tried making memories come back, something to keep my mind busy. I tried wondering what Regal was doing and how far it was to the Clinch Mountains, where some of us Sacketts lived.

  They couldn’t be far away. That is, as the crow flies. The trouble was, they had no idea they had kinfolk in trouble. I wished they did. I was scared for me and I was scared for those boys sleepin’ yonder. If anything happened to them, I’d never forgive myself.

  Right then I began to think like Pa would, or Regal; I began to think about takin’ my rifle-gun and playin’ Injun down through the woods until I found their camp. If I could catch sight of them, I knew I could leave them with somethin’ to bury. A few days ago I’d not have thought seriously of that, but when folks you care about are in danger, you do get to thinkin’ such thoughts.

  This was a part of the country I knew only from hear-tell, but often of an evening when the boys were settin’ around they’d talk of lands where they’d hunted and how the land lay. That’s all we knew of much of the country around, yet it was all we needed.

  Suddenly that shep dog lifted his head from his paws, he lifted his head and he started to growl, away down deep in his chest.

  “Easy, boy!” I whispered. “Easy, now!”

  I reached out with my rifle muzzle and prodded Dorian, hoping he’d wake up quiet. There’s some who grunt and groan or wake up exclaimin’. He didn’t, I’ll give him that. His eyes opened and he followed the rifle barrel to me. I put my finger to my lips and indicated the dog, his hackles all bristled up. Dorian reached out a hand, and Archie sat up, drawing his pistol.

  The little fire we’d had had gone out, long since. T
here was no light but from the stars, and few of them. We sat quiet, listening.

  We heard faint sounds from the woods, expected sounds. Then a whisper of movement down below where we lay on the ledge. If we kept silent, they might not even guess there was a ledge or a place for us to hide. I held my rifle-gun ready, but I didn’t cock it. That sound could he heard sharp and clear in the night.

  A low wind stirred the leaves and moaned through the pines. My mouth was dry, and I could feel my heart beating, slow and heavy.

  Something was moving down there, working its way through the woods. We waited, holding our breath, but it moved off, and after a time we began to breath easy again.

  Setting there, to keep myself busy, I rigged a sling with which to carry my carpetbag easier. Something I could hang down my back from a shoulder.

  Right back of where I sat was the limestone cliff, topped with pines and a scattering of other trees. On my left the cliff broke off and thick forest swept away down along the mountain.

  I stood up, slinging my carpetbag to try it, taking up my rifle. The dog was not a dozen feet away, peering into the darkness. “No, Shep,” I whispered. “Ssh!”

  I was standing in the shadows and I moved toward that place where the cliff broke off into the forest. It was darker there and I would be able to see better when I looked back.

  Dorian was on his feet; Archie squatted against the rock wall.

  Shep came suddenly to his feet, staring at the trees on the other side of the clearing and growling, low and deep.

  Archie had his gun out, waiting.

  “Don’t you make a move!” The voice spoke from the darkness across the way. “Don’t you make a move!”

  Chapter 18

  Three years back, when he saw that wall of water comin’ down the gorge, he thought he was a goner. Thing that saved him was that yellow poplar right there on the rising edge of the gorge, and he taken to it, making a fast jump to the first limb and then climbing higher. The water kept him there all day and part of the night, but he’d not forgotten what he saw.

  Big old logs were coming down that gorge like shot from a gun, and later when the water was down he went below where they hit the main river, and there they were, all floating pretty as you please in a little bay.

  Trulove Sackett was not a man to overlook a thing like that, so he fetched his calk boots and pike pole and he worked out on those logs, cutting the limbs with his ax and bunching them. When he had a log raft made, he packed some grub and floated them down the river to sell.

  When fall came and the leaves were dropping from the trees, he went back up that gorge again, carrying his rifle-gun. Sure enough, it was as he’d remembered, a long slope above that gorge, both sides thick with a fine stand of yellow poplar, with here and there an oak or, lower down, a sycamore.

  That first raft of logs had been happenstance. A body couldn’t depend on such things to make a living by, so he fetched his cross-cut saw and double-bit ax and went to work. The cliff was so steep that once he cut a tree it couldn’t do anything but fall, sometimes in the creek but more often on the side of the creek.

  Trulove wasn’t worried. Every third or fourth year there would be a high-water flood on that creek and he would cut trees and wait.

  When the chores were done and there was a fresh-killed deer hangin’ out on the porch for eatin’-meat, Trulove would fetch his tools to the gorge. It was a long walk, a good ten miles from home, but he’d carry a bait , with him and a jug of persimmon beer.

  First he’d set out on a rocky place he knew, and restin’ that jug on the fork of his elbow, he’d have a drink, cork her up again, wipe the back of his hand across his mouth, and give study to that slope, pickin’ each tree real careful so it could get a clear fall to the creek bed.

  If a tree got hung up on that slope, he’d have to get down there and cut it free, and when a tree that size, maybe six to ten feet through, when a tree like that starts to move, a body had better be somewhere else, fast. So he chose the trees with care to keep the slope cleared and give them a free fall.

  Trulove Sackett was six-feet-six inches tall and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds and had never found anything he could take hold of that he couldn’t lift. The folks down to the forks of the creek said Trulove could jump higher and farther than any man alive, and run faster, although there was nothing and nobody who could make him run. That was what folks said about Trulove, and he just smiled, drank a little persimmon beer, and went back to hand-loggin’, which was what he knew best.

  He was settin’ on that rock studying his next set-to with them yellow poplars when he heard somebody halloo at him.

  He knew the voice. He looked down the gorge to where a man was hoppin’ from rock to rock to come up the slope. That would only be Macon. Nobody else knew where he was or knew about the loggin’ he was doing on chance of a spring flood some year.

  Macon Sackett spent most of his time huntin’ ginseng to be shipped off to China. In between times he trapped a little fur.

  When Macon reached the rock, Trulove handed him the jug and Macon taken a pull. “Now, that’s mighty fine drinkin’, but a body has to have a taste for it. I know folks can’t abide persimmon beer nor brandy.”

  “That’s most of them. Leaves more for us.”

  Macon studied the slope, then glanced at Trulove. “That’s a killer, Trulove,” he commented, “that slope is. One o’ them big logs will get you sometime.”

  “Maybe.”

  Macon hadn’t come this far to talk logging, so Trulove waited, taking another pull at the jug. If he was to get anything done, it was time he started. Took a while to fell the big ones.

  Macon stropped his knife blade on his boot sole. Sized it up, stropped some more. “You mind that nubbin of a girl from over by Tuckalucky Cove? Echo, her name was?”

  “The one who outshot all the boys over at Caney’s Fork?”

  “That’s the one.” Macon tested the edge of the blade on a hair. “She’s been down to the Settlements to pick up some money due her. Seems like she’s on her way home with a couple of pilgrims an’ there’s somebody after her.”

  “They better not catch up.”

  “Oh, she can shoot, all right! She can prob’ly shoot better than anybody, but there’s a passel of them.” He paused a moment. “One of them is Felix Horst, from over on the trace.”

  Trulove put the cork in the jug and smacked it with his palm to settle it solid. “Where they at?”

  “Word come from somebody down on the Russell Fork. He figured we should know.” Macon paused.

  “She’ll be headed for the Cove. Where’s Mordecai?”

  “On his way, I expect. Gent who passed the word to me saw him first.”

  Trulove cached his tools along with the jug, still more than half-full. He picked up a small cache of food, powder, and shot he kept there.

  They crossed Big Moccasin Creek and came through the trees to the old Boone Trail. It was not far from here that Boone’s oldest son, James, had been killed by Indians, along with several others. That had been back around ‘73, if Trulove recalled correctly.

  They were running smoothly, easily, with the swinging stride of the long hunter.

  “Mordecai will get there before we do,” Macon said.

  “Aye, he’ll have the lead on us.”

  When they slowed to a walk after an hour’s run, Trulove asked, “Two pilgrims seein’ her home?”

  “A big black man and a Yankee, the way it was said. A big young man.”

  “Honey draws flies,” Trulove commented. “As I recall, she was right shapely an’ pert.”

  It was coming on to day-down, with shadows gathering. The two ran on, taking time only to pause for a drink at a cold branch that trickled down the rocks. They rested for a moment, thinking of what lay ahead, and then they were off again, running easily.

  “Should come up to that country come dawn. Then we got to find them.”

  Macon was a long, lean man, a Clinch Mountain
Sackett, as was Trulove, a man given to long periods in the woods hunting for ginseng, usually alone. Yet he had done well, as there was always a market for what he found, and a market that paid well.

  No matter, a Sackett was in trouble and they were coming down from the hills to see her safely home or bury the ones who brought her grief. Old Barnabas, him who founded the clan, he laid that down as law more than two hundred years back, and since that time no Sackett had ever failed to come when there was need.

  “What do you think?” Trulove asked.

  They had slowed to a walk again, and Macon took his time, considering. “We’d better cut for sign around the head of Wallen Creek. There over to Stone Mountain or the Powell. If they’ve gotten further, we’ll know it.”

  “We’d best watch for Mordecai.”

  “He’ll find us. Nobody can find Mordecai lest he’s wishful of it.”

  An hour before first light they went off the trail into a thicket and put together a small fire and made coffee. They napped by the fire, drank some more coffee, and they listened. Sound carried a ways in the mountains during the still of morning.

  “Mordecai will find ‘em. He’s almighty sly.”

  “He still make all his own gunpowder?”

  “Surest thing you know. He’s got several places, one of them a cave over to Grassy Cove. You recall that place Jubal found on his way west?”

  “I didn’t know he still went there. Folks have settled down there, I hear.”

  “More’n forty years now. The way Pa tells it, Jubal almost settled down there himself, he liked it that much.”

  Macon Sackett sat up. “Mordecai trusts no powder but his own make.”

  They finished the coffee and put their few things into packs. Carefully Trulove extinguished the fire, then scooped dirt to smother the ashes. A moment or two they studied the dead fire, then moved down to the trail.

  “Today, you reckon?” Macon knew the question’s answer, but Trulove nodded.

  From here on they would walk. They could hear better.

  When that voice told us not to move, I was in the shadows and I just faded back, easy-like. When I had a big tree betwixt them and me, I waited, my rifle up.