“Jacob Binns is an envoy, a messenger or communicator between members. No doubt he or someone close to him knew who you were and where you were.”
I did not like the mystery of it, nor the feeling that forces might be pulling at me over which I had no control, even though they be friendly. Yet, Binns had been a good friend to me.
Suddenly a man was down from the deck. “Captain? The pinnace is heading for the entrance. I think she is going to sea.”
Dabney got to his feet at once. “I think she is not.” He turned to me. “Shall we go on deck, Chantry? The attack is about to come.”
Instantly I was on my feet. Guadalupe started to rise too, but my hand pressed her down. “Stay…it will be safer, and I want not to worry about you in what happens.”
The clouds were low and gray still. The sea was ruffled with whitecaps but the swell had lessened. We lay scarcely a hundred yards offshore as the cove was not a large one, but the pinnace had skirted its far rim in reaching the entrance. All eyes were upon her.
Suddenly, she seemed to change course toward us, then her bow swung away again. Puzzled, I looked at Dabney. “What is he about? Is he going to sea? Is he going to attack? Is he—?”
Guadalupe screamed.
Spinning around, I was in time to see them coming over the rail, dripping wet, cutlasses in hand. While all our attention had been taken by the seemingly erratic maneuvers of the pinnace, the attackers had swum out from shore. Over the rail they came, some with cutlasses or knives in their teeth to allow both hands for climbing. They spilled onto our lower deck, in a mass.
They swarmed over the rail ready for attack, and they found the deck was empty!
The Captain and I faced them from the top of the ladders leading from the poop deck.
On the deck below there was only Guadalupe, standing in the doorway of the passage leading to the main cabin, which was under the poop deck.
The attackers halted momentarily, Rafe Leckenbie among them, caught off guard by the empty deck where they had expected enemies. Cutlasses lowered, they stared about them, and at that moment, Captain Dabney fired his pistol.
He shot into the mass of attackers, and a man fell, but instantly on the shot the ship’s crew rushed from under the fo’c’stle and from the cabins aft.
Taken from both sides, the surprise of Leckenbie’s men was total. They were doubly shocked, first at the empty deck, and then at the attack.
Leaping to the deck, I took a cut at a brawny pirate with a hairy chest and a ring in his one ear. The cut only scratched him and he lunged at me but I thrust low and hard and he impaled himself on my sword. For a moment we were face to face, then I jammed my palm under his chin and shoved him back off my sword.
Rafe Leckenbie stood waiting, smiling. He saluted me with his blade. “It has been a long time since first we met, Tatton Chantry!”
“But worth the waiting, Rafe,” I said. “Do you wish to die now?”
He laughed, a great laugh, a fine laugh. “Die? Me? I have just begun to live!”
We crossed blades. His skill, I perceived at once, had grown with time. There was fighting about us, but we ignored it. This was our moment, and I was remembering that awful night on the high moors when he had come so close to killing me.
He fenced coolly, skillfully. He was a man with greed only for power, a man born to dominate—or die in the attempt. If he had one love, this was it. This crossing of blades, the art of the sword. And he was a man created to fight.
For all his great size and strength, he moved with the speed and ease of a dancer, on his toes, poised, smooth. For every move of mine, he had an answer. I felt he was toying with me, and yet…
“Ah!” he said, as I parried his blade. “You have learned!”
He feinted for my head and attempted a flank cut. I parried and thrust to the right cheek. He parried the blow easily, again attempted a head thrust and then to the chest. Again I parried and my point tore his sleeve near the shoulder, but touched no flesh.
The fighting around us ceased, but neither of us noticed nor moved except toward each other. He attacked suddenly, coming in fast with a style I had never encountered before, a whole series of thrusts and cuts, baffling in their speed and unexpectedness. It needed all my skill to escape them. His point, needle sharp, touched my thigh. I parried his next blow and with a quick riposte, drew blood from his cheek. For an instant his eyes flamed with anger, then it was gone.
“You are good!” he said. “Very good!”
Yet I was not to be misled. That he flattered me to lead me into taking unnecessary chances I was sure, yet I fenced cautiously, studying his methods, yet careful not to take anything for granted, for he was a shrewd blade and meant to kill me. He was very sure of himself, fencing with the absolute confidence of a man who had never been bested with a blade. Several times he lunged, yet each time I managed to deflect his blade. Steadily I retreated, circled a little, but fell back. He was constantly upon me, and time and again I had the narrowest of escapes. Once he nicked my shoulder, then he grazed my cheek, drawing blood. He smiled at that. On the instant I moved, grazing his blade and with the slightest flexing of the wrist pressing it out of line, then instantly lunging. My point went two inches into the latissimus muscle, reached by a thrust that went between arm and body.
Recovering instantly, I pressed the attack. Blood stained his shirt and ran down his side. And now his coolness was gone. He had been hurt; I had actually drawn blood. In a fury he came at me and for several wild minutes I was hard put to defend myself.
As he came on fast, I circled and stepped in a spot of blood. I slipped. Instantly he was upon me, his sword lifted for a killing thrust.
As he stabbed downward I threw myself at his legs, and he staggered back. Coming up fast, I grasped his sword arm and pressed him back.
He laughed, and deliberately began to force his arm down. The strength of the man was prodigious. He was laughing at me now, laughing with a terrible rage as he forced my arm down and down, bringing his blade closer and closer to my throat. Yet the years had done much for me, and I was no longer the boy he had fought that first time. The long months of fencing with Fergus MacAskill, the climbing in the mountainous crags of the Hebrides, and the years in the wars, all had conspired to make me a different man.
Suddenly I began to shove back. Harder and harder I pressed and my arm ceased to move downward. His blade stayed firm and then inexorably I was pushing him back.
He could not believe it. Nothing in his life of continual triumph had prepared him for what was happening now. My strength was not only equal to his, but was surpassing it. His arm went back, and suddenly he sprang away, jerking his wrist from my grip and striking out with a wild slash that ripped wide my shirt and left a bloody gash across my stomach.
Swiftly he pressed his attack. He thrust hard and I felt the point of his blade in my side. Another twist of the blade and he had cut my cheek. He was a fighting fury now, filled with hatred of the threat I presented to him.
Nothing I could do seemed to stop him. He came on, pushing hard. Suddenly I gave way, and he came in, closing the distance. My next lunge took him by surprise. I risked all…but the blade caught him coming in and thrust deep.
For a moment he stared, unbelieving. Then he leaped back. For an instant he swayed, drenched now along his lower side and leg with the red blood of his wound.
He lifted his sword, threw it in the air and caught the blade, then threw it like a spear!
Yet my blade lifted and caught his, throwing it aside. I went at him then, standing close to the rail, and he stood, braced to meet me, no weapon in his hands. Then his left hand went behind his back to his belt and came from under his jerkin with a knife, a sword-breaker such as Fergus had carried!
I feinted, and he moved to catch my blade but I swept it down and then up, ripping the inside seam of hi
s breeches and cutting half through his wide leather belt.
Blood was pooling beneath him. He crouched, teeth bared in anger. Then suddenly like a flash he turned and threw himself over the rail and into the water!
Leaning over the rail, I saw blood on the water. His body had gone down, his blood mixing with the bubbles of the sea.
The pinnace had stopped not fifty yards off. Our guns were bearing on her; our men stood with lighted matches ready for a broadside.
The pinnace held still, and for an instant I believed they might chance it.
Long I stared at the water, yet I saw no further sign of Rafe Leckenbie. He had gone down, bleeding profusely, into the depths. Then, as if impelled by his disappearance, the pinnace began slowly to back off.
We held our fire, waiting.
CHAPTER 33
THE HOUSE OF gray granite sits in the hollow of a green hill with all the bay and the rocks below it. A strong walker may climb to where the old fort lies, its black stones made blacker still by the blood of those who died there, and the burning of the fires that ate away its heart more times than one, yet each time by a son rebuilt.
Ours is a quiet place with the gray sea before us, rarely still, and the black rocks and islets rising from it. Here and there lies a patch of green where the grass grows or a tree.
To this place have I come after my wandering years. My father died somewhere near but where his body lies no man knows. It matters not, for his spirit haunts these gray rocks, resting or moving among them as he forever did. By now he knows that I have come again, bought back the old place and some of the land around. And if my name is another’s the hearth at least is mine, and my sons will grow tall from the same deep roots.
You have not failed me, Father, for you gave much, asking only this in return: that I come again and rebuild the old fires that the name and the blood shall live.
Guadalupe is here, and my firstborn, and a fine lad he is, named for you, my father.
The chests I brought back from America were fatly filled, and the Irish folk know me for who I am and say nothing, but greet me gently as they pass. The English whom I also love, although it seems traitorous to some, think of me as a sailor from the days of the Armada, a sometime prisoner in Spain, and a wanderer come home.
My fine Irish horses graze on the salt green grass, and there are cattle here, and sheep. The chests are not empty although I have bought lands here and some in France. And we live quietly but well, going only now and again to Dublintown or Belfast, and mayhap to Cork or London.
Long ago there was a lady left money with me. She has never returned and when I tried the name she gave me and the place, nothing was known, but someday needing it, she will seek me out. She will find lands she owns and a house here and there, and each year I study the money and judge what must be done with it, for she was a woman who trusted at least one man and shall not regret it.
Yet when the gray geese fly west for Iceland, bound on to Greenland and then to Labrador, there is sometimes in the heart of me a longing for distant shores and the beat of waves upon the long golden sands, and the distant view of mountains, far and blue against the horizon, and always the winds that whisper of enchantments beyond the purple ridges.
I shall not go. Guadalupe is here, and my son. My destiny lies here. Like my father before me I shall walk these old paths with my son and show him where the Skelligs lie and old Staigue Fort and the ruins of Derryquin Castle. I shall speak to him of Achilles, Hector, and Conn of the Hundred Battles, of the old kings who lived at Tara and mayhap of a bloody man who went over the rail into the waters behind the cape at Lookout.
Of Jacob Binns I have seen no more, but my door stands open always for him, or for Fergus MacAskill or even for Tosti Padget.
Kory comes sometimes, with Porter Bob and Porter Bill, and we trade a little and lie a little and talk of the old days that are better gone.
Of Emma Delahay I have no word. Gone she was and gone she is, and some small money with her, although most was accounted for by Captain Dabney of the Good Catherine. Was she murdered? Fled? I know not, although sometimes I wonder.
Last year in London a lovely girl crossed the floor, holding out both hands to me. “You are Tatton,” she said, “and I am Eve Vypont, and I wish you to know that our horse came back, and you may walk in my forest when you will!”
Silliman Turley keeps a tavern in Ballydehob and sometimes when the Good Catherine sails into Roaring Water Bay, we meet there to share a bottle and a loaf with Captain Dabney. So all things at last come to an end.
Guadalupe beside me wears her golden medallion that I took from the deck of a long-lost ship in a far place beyond the sea.
Now I shall go back from the hills to sit beside my fire in the house my own hands built, and sometimes I shall lift my eyes to see the firelight play upon the silver handle of a sheathed sword that hangs there above the fireplace. And when the fire crackles upon the hearth I shall look down from the window to where the gray ghosts of the rainstorms sweep across the distant sea, like veiled women to their prayers.
I have come home again, and I go now to where love lies waiting….
WHAT IS LOUIS L’AMOUR’S LOST TREASURES?
Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures is a project created to release some of the author’s more unconventional manuscripts from the family archives.
Currently included in the series are Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures: Volume 1, published in the fall of 2017, and Volume 2, due out in 2019. These books contain both finished and unfinished short stories, unfinished novels, literary and motion picture treatments, notes, and outlines. They are a wide selection of the many works Louis was never able to publish during his lifetime.
In 2018 we will release No Traveller Returns, L’Amour’s never-before-seen first novel, which was written between 1938 and 1942. In the future, there may be a selection of even more L’Amour titles.
Additionally, many notes and alternate drafts to Louis’s well-known and previously published novels and short stories will now be included as “bonus feature” postscripts within the books that they relate to. For example, the Lost Treasures postscript to Last of the Breed will contain early notes on the story, the short story that was discovered to be a missing piece of the novel, the history of the novel’s inspiration and creation, and information about unproduced motion picture and comic book versions.
An even more complete description of the Lost Treasures project, along with a number of examples of what is in the books, can be found at louislamourslosttreasures.com. The website also contains a good deal of exclusive material, such as even more pieces of unknown stories that were too short or too incomplete to include in the Lost Treasures books, plus personal photos, scans of original documents, and notes on the Sackett, Chantry, and Talon family series.
All of the works that contain Lost Treasures project materials will display the Louis L’Amour’s Lost Treasures banner and logo.
POSTSCRIPT
By Beau L’Amour
Between 1959 and 1972, my father wrote ten novels and two short stories featuring characters from his fictional Sackett family. Having had some success with reoccurring characters in his magazine writing days, Louis set out to create this new series for the booming paperback market.
I suspect all he had in mind initially was a number of loosely interconnected traditional Westerns, something a step or two more sophisticated than the Kilkenny series which had helped him make the transition from pulp magazines to paperback originals. But, a few stories in, the plan expanded into using the Sackett family to chronicle the era that started with the fur trade and concluded around the time of the “closing of the frontier” in the 1890s. Occasionally Louis even teased people with the idea of taking the concept further and doing a story about a “Sackett in space.” As you will see, he was definitely interested in keeping his options open!
At the same time, Dad was hoping to use his newfound success in writing Westerns as a springboard into a number of other genres. He had only tentatively committed to the “Western writer” label in the mid-1950s, and had done so mostly to overcome a severe financial crisis. While he loved writing about the American West, he was definitely concerned with being trapped there forever. Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s Dad attempted to write a number of other works, including The Walking Drum. To his great regret, he found no publisher willing to take any of them on.
Eventually, he hit upon a strategy that he hoped would allow him to both expand the audience for his Westerns and train his traditional readers to take some risks and follow him into other genres. The new plan was built on the structure he had already been imagining for the Sackett stories but included two additional families: the Talons and the Chantrys. It also extended the time frame back to the earliest days of European exploration in North America. The more he could redefine the Western, at least for himself, into a genre of “frontier” stories, the more he would be able to write a wider variety of material.
Louis began laying the groundwork for this new agenda in 1971 with a very traditional Western, North to the Rails. In it he introduced his first Chantry character, Tom Chantry, but established the foundation for stories about Tom’s father, the down-on-his-luck rancher turned town marshal, Borden Chantry.
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