Ride the River (1983)

by L'amour, Louis - Sackett's 05

  Patton Sardust squatted on his heels, rifle in hand, and studied the country below him and to the north. It had been some time since he had hunted this part of the country, but that should be the North Fork of the Clinch down there, and over beyond it, the Sinks.

  Felix Horst stood beside him, also staring at the country below. He was hoping for smoke, yet doubted they would be so foolish as to build a fire.

  “We been underratin’ that girl,” Sardust said. “We’ve got to settle down to trackin’, movin’ in slow an’ easy.”

  “I don’t want that black man killed,” Horst said. “He’s worth an easy thousand dollars if he’s in good health.”

  “How much is she carryin’?” Sardust asked.

  Felix Horst knew, but it was not something he cared to tell. Elmer knew, and so did Timothy Oats. That was already two too many.

  “She’s carryin’,” he said, “enough to make it worthwhile. “

  “I think she’s cached it,” Elmer said.

  Horst looked around irritably. “Now, why would she do that? She’s on her way home.”

  “I caught a glimpse of her yonder in the trees. She didn’t seem to be carrying a carpetbag. She had a rifle - “

  “What’s a woman doin’ with a rifle?” Collins asked.

  “She’s a mountain girl,” Sardust replied. “They grow up with rifles. Chances are she can shoot.”

  “Somebody can,” Elmer said. “Baker’s knee is busted and he’s in bad shape. We’ve got to get him to a doctor.”

  “You get him there,” Horst replied, his tone sharp. “I want that girl and her money.”

  “You got three men laid up,” Elmer insisted, “and I think she done it all. One man knifed, one with his face bashed in, and Baker’s knee shot away. I think - “

  Horst turned angrily. “Close your trap! I know you’re White’s man, but any more talk like that and you get out of here! Do you get that?”

  “It ain’t going to be easy getting those men out of here,” Elmer said, and then he added, “if you intend to.”

  For a moment there was silence, a cold, dead, heavy silence. Elmer involuntarily took a step back, but Horst ignored him.

  “You’re the best tracker,” he said to Sardust. “Can you find them?”

  “As long as she stays with him, we’ve got a chance. Those boots of his leave tracks, and he’s no woodsman. She’s easy on her feet and she’s light anyway, so she leaves mighty little to see. Also, she’s canny where she puts her feet.”

  Oats had been quiet until now. “Suppose Elmer’s right and she’s cached the money? Maybe we’re chasin’ her for nothing.”

  “I want her,” Horst said. “She needs to be taught a lesson.”

  “Who does that pay off?” Oats objected. “I want the money.”

  “So do we all,” Horst replied. He turned to Elmer. “Where was she when you saw her without the carpetbag?”

  “It was just before Baker got shot. I saw her clear, but she was gone before I could get my rifle up. She did not have the carpetbag.”

  “Then she’s cached it,” Sardust said. “We can backtrack her right to where it is.”

  Horst did not like it, but he kept his mouth shut. He wanted her and he wanted the money and he wanted it all for himself, yet if she had cached it …

  Well, when it came to that, he thought he was as good at reading sign as Sardust. In his years along the Trace, he had learned a lot. He had no intention of sharing what he found with any of them, and that included James White.

  “Elmer,” Horst said, “those wounded men need care. You stay in camp and do whatever you can. Patch up that knee and put a splint on it. We can get him down to the river and float him down to a town.

  “Meanwhile, we’ll scout around. They haven’t gone far.”

  Oats avoided Elmer’s eyes. Elmer did not like it, but he knew better than to cross Felix Horst. He had already said too much. Yet he did not like it out here in the woods and he did not know a thing about wounds or wounded men. He had an idea all three were worse off than anybody admitted; Elmer also had a good idea that Horst intended to abandon them, and maybe him. He should have kept still about her not having the carpetbag. Then he could have looked for it himself.

  “I scouted around some,” Sardust said, “and I think I know where they’re at. Let’s go get ‘em.”

  When they were gone, Elmer added grounds to the coffee on the fire and dug around in his pack for some cold biscuits.

  Baker looked over at him. “You goin’ to patch up my knee?”

  “I’ll try. I’m not much good at such things.”

  “Get a splint on it and some kind of bandage. If you can get me down to the creek, we can float down and I won’t have to walk, which I can’t do anyway.”

  Gingerly Elmer went to work. He cut away the pants leg a little more and removed the crude bandage. The sight of the smashed knee made him sick and he started to retch. Baker swore at him. “Shut up, damn you! You only got to look at it, I got to live with it.”

  With a spare shirt from Baker’s small pack he bandaged the wound, then rigged splints to keep it stiff. Baker was suffering considerable pain, but it showed only in his eyes or an occasional catch of the breath.

  “You get me out of this, young feller, an’ my kinfolk will make it up to you. Just get me down to the river.”

  He filled a cup for Baker and then went to where Harry lay stretched out. Harry had been stabbed, a thrust from low down, driven sharply up. The knife had just cleared his belt and had gone in under the ribs.

  Harry stared at him as Elmer checked the wound. He knew nothing about such things, and although the slit was inflamed, there wasn’t much blood this time. There had been quite a bit when they first got to him.

  “She was such a little thing,” Harry muttered, “I didn’t figure…” His voice trailed off into nothing, and he closed his eyes.

  Joe lay on his back, both eyes blacked and swollen shut, a great lump where his brows should be and his nose broken. She or somebody had hit him with a rifle butt, and he looked awful. There was nothing Elmer could do, and he went back to the fire and filled his cup.

  He had to get out of here. If he stayed, Horst would kill him. Horst didn’t care about these men, either. They were thieves or river roughs hired on for the job.

  Suppose, just suppose he could find the carpetbag? Then he could get out of here and leave them all. He could go back to Philadelphia …

  Maybe not. White would be after him for explanations. Maybe Pittsburgh, or even New York. New York? With money in his pocket …

  He closed his eyes and tried to think of where they had been and how she must have moved. From time to time there had been glimpses of her. She’d still had the bag when she clobbered Joe, so she must have hidden it close by.

  Elmer thought it all out, trying to remember how Harry had gone out to catch her and where that fight had taken place. She must have been close by, perhaps within a few hundred yards.

  He sipped his coffee and thought it through, trying to remember the various places he had seen out there. In among the trees there wasn’t much brush, although there were fallen logs, branches, occasional clumps of some brush he did not recognize. Some places under the trees were bare and could be eliminated. After all, the area was not that large, and he should be able to find it.

  He got to his feet. Baker had dropped off to sleep, and only Harry was aware. When he started to move away, Harry said, “You comin’ back?”

  Elmer pointed. “There’s my pack. I’m just scoutin’ around.”

  Harry closed his eyes, and Elmer stepped out beyond their sight. Although he was not aware of it, he had changed a lot in these past two weeks. For the first time in his life he had become aware of his own vulnerability. Injury and death happened to others, not to him, but suddenly he realized it could happen to him. He also realized that Felix Horst had no intention of sharing that money with anybody, and anybody who got in the way would be eliminated. S
o why not find it for himself and get away scot-free?

  He wouldn’t mind sharing with Tim Oats, but Tim was with Horst and would have to make out as best he could.

  Elmer had learned from James White. He had learned to think before he acted, and now he carefully eliminated various areas beyond the camp, where he would not have to look. It would have to be somewhere she could have hidden, somewhere not easily seen from camp.

  Elmer studied the woods before him. There were many large trees, a number of fallen, rotting tree trunks, a few clumps of brush in the more open areas. At one place a huge old giant of the forest had started to topple, but its branches had caught in the branches of other trees and left the tree hanging, its great root mass partly ripped from the earth.

  Elmer moved out, searching the ground for tracks. He had never spent time in the woods or wilds, knew nothing about tracking, yet the tracks of the men who had gone out to capture Echo Sackett were plain enough.

  She had stabbed Harry. It would have to be her. Who would ever expect a pretty little thing like that to have a knife? Or that she would use it?

  That time he had suggested walking her home. He had thought that maybe, on one of those dark streets …

  His brow broke into a cold sweat. Why, she probably had that knife then. It would have been him who got stabbed. The thought gave him a queasy feeling in the stomach. Cold steel had that effect on some people.

  Elmer paused, looking all about him; then slowly he began to walk. He counted his steps, stopping every few yards to look all about him. When he had walked two hundred steps, he walked several yards to the east and then turned about on a route parallel with his first and walked slowly back, searching the ground with his eyes as he moved.

  This was no time to be careless. He was going to work this out bit by bit. When they came back, if they did come back, he could be just scouting, but he hoped he would find the bag and be long gone by the time they returned.

  There was a place where the sunlight splashed a clearing in the woods, and there was a tangle of wild rose there. He looked at it but could see no trail through, nor where any bush had been trampled down or broken. There was a profusion of the wild roses there, all pink and lovely in the sunlight. He stood for a moment, caught by the lonely beauty of the place, then shook it off and walked away, frowning at some transient thought.

  What was he doing here, anyway? Why had he come? He had come because White had sent him, but was he to be White’s errand boy forever? Or was he to go his own way? With this money he would have a start, he would go away, leave White behind, and perhaps study law for himself.

  He paused again among the trunks of the great trees. How still it was! How beautiful a place! He did not recall ever thinking of beauty before. He had been sly, cheating, prepared to do White’s bidding, no matter what.

  He remembered Echo Sackett’s cool reaction to his innuendos, if they could be called that, and for the first time he felt shame. There had been something about her, small as she was, a kind of quiet dignity that left him uneasy. Then Finian Chantry had come and Elmer had felt ashamed for James White. He had thought White was quite a man, important and shrewd. Suddenly he saw White dwarfed and he knew he could never respect him again. Finian Chantry had put him in his place quietly but firmly.

  Thinking left Elmer uneasy. He was not used to it, and ethics had never concerned him. Why was he thinking like this? Was it she who had started him? Or Finian Chantry? Or was it something about the silence here? He was uneasy, eager only to be away.

  On the fourth march of two hundred steps he drew near the toppled tree, its top caught in the branches. He looked up at it, held so insecurely. He looked again, and swung his path a little wide of it.

  When he started back, he was on the far side of the tree, and it was not until he had passed it that he turned to look back at the great mass of uplifted roots.

  “Of course,” he muttered. “Why not?” He turned and walked back and stood looking at the shallow pit where the roots had been torn from the ground. It was almost filled with leaves. He stood for a moment, looking around. He was sure this was the place, yet he was suddenly uneasy.

  Suppose somebody saw him? Suppose Felix Horst returned before he could get away?

  Get the carpetbag and leave at once, right down the mountain to the river. He did not know what the river was, but there would be towns along the river, a place where he could catch the stage or a steamboat and get back to civilization.

  He glanced quickly around. All was still; there was nobody. So why did he feel uneasy? What was bothering him? He went down into the pit, waded through the leaves, kicking with his feet to find it.

  His toe hit something yielding. He brushed away the leaves, and there it was.

  The carpetbag! The gold! And all his!

  He grasped the handle and straightened up and turned.

  Patton Sardust was standing on the rim of the pit, his rifle in his hands.

  “Now, ain’t that nice?” he said softly. “And just the two of us. Nobody else. Just you an’ me.”

  Chapter 21

  Sunlight was falling through the leaves, weaving a web of gold and shadow, when my eyes opened. Dorian’s coat was over me, and I sat up suddenly, frightened.

  “Did I fall asleep? On watch?”

  “You did not,” he said. “You awakened me when you knew you couldn’t stay awake, then you went to sleep as though you’d never slept before.”

  “What’s happened?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing I know of. I’ve heard some movement out there, but nothing close. We’d better get ready to move.” He looked around. “What happened to the dog?”

  Getting up, I brushed off the leaves and straightened my clothes, wishing there was somewhere to bathe. I felt grimy and my hair would look a sight.

  “I think we’d better get your carpetbag and leave,” he said. “We’ll get to a settlement of some kind, then I’ll get help and come back and look for Archie.”

  “All right.” There was no more run in me. I was tired and I wanted to be home and take the money to Ma. Rightly it was mine, but in my mind it was ours, and that was the way it was going to be.

  Quiet as we could move, we worked our way down through the trees. No way I could forget that great hanging tree where I had left the carpetbag. We were still a good sixty yards off when I saw it, and we stopped, looking carefully around. Their camp had been just beyond. Now there was no smoke, nor smell of smoke, and no sound or movement. Still, we waited.

  We were almost to the edge of the pit left by the torn-up roots when I saw the tracks. For the first time I felt panic. If somebody had found that money …

  I ran down into the pit, scattered the leaves, wading from side to side.

  It was gone!

  “They’ve taken it?”

  Dumbly I nodded. I fought to keep the tears back. After all our trouble, after all this, I had failed my family, I had failed Ma, I had failed Regal, I had failed Finian Chantry and his efforts to help. I said as much.

  “Maybe not,” Dorian said. “Maybe not. Let’s go after them. Uncle Finian sent me to see you got home safely with your money, and that’s just what I am going to do!”

  I nodded, unable to speak. They were gone, and the money was gone.

  “I wish I was a better tracker,” Dorian said, studying the ground.

  It brought me back to reality. “I can track. I’ve been tracking game since I was knee-high.”

  Of course, I had seen all their tracks, and once a body has tracked, he or she just naturally registers things in the mind. That was Elmer. He had big flat feet and he toed out when he walked. No question about him.

  “And that” - I pointed to another track on the rim of the pit - “that’s the big fellow. Patton Sardust, I heard him called. Looks to me like Elmer was in the pit an’ Sardust came up on him. Or they came together.”

  “What about Horst?”

  “No tracks of his here, nor Oat’s either.” I began to c
ast about. Those two had walked away together. In some places where there were no leaves I could see the tracks better.

  “Elmer’s got my carpetbag,” I said.

  “How can you tell?”

  “Walkin’ away from the hole back yonder, his right foot makes a deeper track. He’s carryin’ weight in his right hand.”

  We walked away, following them. They were not wasting time moving out of the area. “Heading for the river,” I said. “They don’t plan to share with the others.”

  “Or with each other, probably,” Dorian said cynically.

  He was learning. Maybe he knew more all the time than I’d expected. “We’d better be careful,” I said. “Horst was looking for us. He has Hans with him, maybe somebody else. There must have been eight of them, including the men Horst rounded up.”

  We talked no more. The trail was plain enough, but occasionally Elmer and Sardust were pausing to look around. They were scared, too. Watchful, anyway. We were doing some looking around ourselves. At least Dorian was. I had my eyes on their trail, not to lose them.

  “Eight?” Dorian asked. “Are you sure?”

  “Some of them are out of it. One of them’s got him a busted knee. I’d guess three are out of action.”

  “Elmer and Sardust are ahead of us. That leaves Horst, Oats, and at least one more if our figuring’s right.”

  “It’s pretty close,” a voice said, and I looked up to see Timothy Oats standing there with the one they had called Hans. My rifle was on them, but Dorian was standing with his feet spread apart, staring at Oats, who was staring right back.

  “You fire that gun,” Oats said to me, “an” Felix Horst will be here. He’s in a killing mood.”

  “So am I,” I replied.

  “Don’t be foolish,” he said impatiently. “You two haven’t a chance. They are all around you. Whatever happens here will be forgotten when we leave here. Nobody will even find your bodies.”

  “You don’t know this country, mister. There’s folks coming and going all the time.”

  “No matter. We will be gone. Give us that carpetbag and we will let you go. At least you will have a running start.”