Ride the River

"I should say I do! And across country? Dear me!"

"But there was no one else. My uncle was not well, and the trip must be made. Anyway, it is nearly over now. Soon I shall be home."

Irritated, he looked down at his plate. What must he think of me? Yet I could not keep from teasing him. He looked so exasperated, and so handsome.

"You must not worry, sir. I shall be all right, and there will be no need of an escort. I shall manage very nicely."

He was very cool. "I am not at all sure of that. From what I have heard, you have had your bag stolen from you already - "

"I have it back."

"And you disappeared from the stage for several days. I had no end of trouble finding you."

I gave him my prettiest smile. "But youdid find me! I can't thank you enough! I don't know what I'd have done without you!"

He gave me a very cool, level glance. "Miss Sackett, my uncle insisted I see that you got home safely. I shall do my best to do just that."

I glanced at the third table. Timothy Oats was gone. Essie Buchanan was rising. Where was Elmer?

From where I sat, I could see the door to my cabin, but of course, there was an outer door, too. It was locked, I had made sure of that, but such men know how to open locks as simple as that would be. "If you will excuse me ... ?" I pushed back my chair and arose.

Dorian Chantry got to his feet also. "Will I see you at breakfast, Miss Sackett?"

He was certainly tall. "I believe so. Thank you, Mr. Chantry."

As I walked away, I heard the woman who had sat beside me say, "She's very pretty, you know." I did not hear his reply, if he made one, although I very much wanted to.

Our cabin was empty when I reached it, my carpetbag untampered with. I turned and looked at myself in the mirror. That blue dresswas becoming.

I shook my head. I must stop thinking such thoughts. What I must do now is get home with the money. It would do so much for us, make my mother's years so much more comfortable. As for Regal, he was probably recovering very well, but how did we know? Several men who had been clawed or chewed by bears had never really gotten well. A man I knew at the store said it was because bears often fed on half-decayed meat and fragments of it clung to their teeth. Regal should have a doctor look at his wounds, and if I got home with the money, we could afford it.

One side of me did not want Dorian Chantry along at all, but another side certainly did want him to come with me. I knew the woods where we would soon be. I knew how to move like an Indian, but did he? Suppose he got chewed by a bear? I'd never forgive myself.

I had wanted to meet him, and now I had, but I must have left him with a very bad impression. It was obvious that he disapproved of me and that I was a nuisance. Surely he had other plans. He had not wanted to come all the way out here into what was almost a wilderness, just to be sure some silly girl got home safely, somebody who should not be out there alone anyway.

The more I thought of it, the worse I felt. My pretty blue dress! It must seem very plain and dull to someone who saw so many beautifully gowned women, and saw them all the time.

How could I even talk to him? What did women like that talk about? And what did they talk about to aman?

Essie Buchanan came in and stepped into the corner where the washbasin and mirror were. She began fluffing her hair, and glanced at me out of the corners of her eyes. "You shouldn't be back here," she said. "It is much too early! I met a couple of interesting men out there, and I told one of them about you. He would like to meet you. I told him I would try to arrange it."

"No, thanks, I need the sleep. I've been traveling a lot."

"You'll never meet any men back here. They don't permit men aft of the midship gangway, you know. Come on! We'll have some fun."

"You go ahead."

"That man I mentioned. He's middle-aged but he's worth a lot of money. To the right girl he'd be very generous."

Well, I just looked at her. Regal had told me about women like her. "No, thanks," I repeated.

After she had gone forward, I lay staring up at the underside of the deck above me and thinking. It was unlikely that either Elmer or Timothy Oats would attempt anything while aboard the steamer, although they would be watching for their chance. It was when I went ashore that I must move with care. What I must think of was some way to slip away from them. It was then I thought of the Big Sandy.

But that was Indian country, hunting ground for a half-dozen tribes; the Creek, Cherokee, Shawnee, and several others hunted there. I was known to the Cherokee, and the Sacketts were known to them all, I suspected, but I'd be taking a great chance. Still, it was early in the season and hunting parties would not be out in any number.

On the lower Big Sandy there were some fine farms, and a body might even get a horse, or if not that, a canoe. I could make my way up the Levisa Fork into Kentucky, cut across the toe of Virginia, and be right back in my own mountains in no time.

There were Sacketts on the Clinch River, a bunch of rowdy boys but good folks and cousins of ours. If Timothy Oats followed me into Clinch Mountain country, one of those big Sacketts was liable to bounce him up and down all the way back to the Ohio.

First thing tomorrow I had to lay hold of Robinson, that young officer. He could get me a map or at least a layout of the river so's I could see what to do.

In the mountains we work from sunup to sundown, so when day broke I was up, moving very quiet so's not to disturb Essie Buchanan or whatever her name was. I eased out of the room and walked forward to where I could look down the river and feel the wind in my face. It was mighty nice. I had not done much traveling, but if a body had the time, it was a way to live. I could see us chugging away downstream with high bluffs covered with trees and here and there an occasional cabin or farm. I could see those across the river better than on the nearer bluff because they were so high. Then I remembered how Pa had been on the Ohio close to the Mississippi when the New Madrid earthquake hit. He had told me that bluffs like this, a hundred and sometimes two hundred yards of it, would cave off into the river. It must have been a sight.

That earthquake even had the Mississippi flowing back upstream for a while, tilted the whole bottom of the river for miles! Just as I was fixing to go back to the main cabin for breakfast, young Robinson found me.

"A map? A chart, you mean. I guess I could draw one for you."

"Just so I would know where I am on the river," I suggested. "I could pay you for it," I added.

He blushed. "Pay me? I'd enjoy doing it for you," he said. "I really would. I'm proud you thought to ask me."

"I just thought you would know," I said, "you studying to be a pilot and all. If anybody would know the river, you would. Just as far as Cincinnati," I suggested. Then I added, "Do we stop at night? I mean to let folks get on or to take on freight?"

"Sometimes, and sometimes we tie up at night. They do that a lot on the Mississippi and Missouri because of the snags and sawyers in the river that can tear a boat's bottom out. You have to be able to see."

Dorian Chantry was at breakfast, and that surprised me some because I had an idea easterners didn't get up all that early. His hair was combed with a kind of wave in it and he looked neat as if he'd stepped out of a bandbox, as Pa used to say.

"Well? Good morning, Miss Sackett! I hope you slept well?"

"I did, and a good morning to you, sir!"

There were only a few people in the main cabin and nobody at the same table with us. He glanced around, then asked, "Last night you suggested those men who tried to get your money were aboard here?"

"They are," I said, "but stay clear of them. They are rough men."

He stiffened a little. "I can be rough if need be."

"If you have trouble with them, it will be," I warned.

"What happened back there? I mean when you lost your bag?"

So I told him a little. I surely did not tell him all, but how I didn't even suspect that little ol' lady and how she switched bags on me and was getting away with Oats when I taken after them.

"By the time I got my bag away from them, I'd gone on down the road a ways, so I caught the stage when it caught up." There was no need to tell him about the house by the road or how I got my bag back. "The stage, I mean."

"They did not follow you then?"

"They did, but I got away from them." He needed a warning, so I said, "There was an Irishman who said he would stop them. He was a big, strong lad, too, but he did not do it. Oats had a couple of bruises on him and some skinned knuckles, was all."

"I see."

Well, now he knew what he was in for. Dorian Chantry was a fine, strong young man but I could not see him in a country brawl with Timothy Oats. Dorian could fight the gentleman's way, not the eye-gouging way of the riverboat men or such as Oats.

"Look," I said suddenly, "why don't you go back and tell your Uncle Finian I am all right? I shall be safe enough once I am into the mountains. I am a Sackett, after all, and Sacketts and rough country are as twins. I shall be all right."

"He sent me to look after you."

"You're a handsome lad," I said honestly. "I'd not see you hurt."

"Hurt?Me ? I shall be all right. No," he said then, "I shall see you all the way home to your cove."

"You'll have to get some other clothes," I warned. "In the brush those you're wearin' won't last at all. You need linsey-woolsey or deerskin."

We ate our breakfast then, not talking much, and other folks began to come in and out. Something about me was a worry to him, I could see that. I was not like the girls he'd known, nor could I talk to him as they might have. I was used to talking with men and boys, used to saying what I meant and no two ways about it.

He was more the gentleman than anybody I'd ever met, knowing all the ways of them, and it was mighty fine, being treated like a lady, like you were something special. All the boys I knew treated me like one of them - I mean, not as if I was special. Although they were respectful enough, it just wasn't their way.

"Mr. Chantry," I said, "that Timothy Oats has something in mind. He means to have that carpetbag from me and I've got to outguess him. If I let him do as he's planned, he'll win, I know he will. Pa used to say, and Regal says the same, that a boy should never play the other man's game. If I stay on this steamboat I will be playing their game, and I think he's got a wheel turning with that Essie Buchanan, who shares my cabin. They've been talking, and - "

"I was going to speak to you about that," he said then. "You should not be sharing a cabin with a woman like that. It's a disgrace."

"It won't be for long," I said.

"It has been too long already. I shall speak to the captain."

"Don't you do it." I had looked up to see a man come into the main cabin. I saw him look around and I saw his eyes meet mine.

"We've troubles enough," I said. "There's Felix Horst!"

Chapter 13

For a minute or two I just sat there. Timothy Oats and Elmer did not worry me much, but Felix Horst was something different. I was afraid of him.

A body could see at a glance this was not only an evil man but a wily one. I would never have tricked him as I had Oats, nor would he have bothered to fight with that young Irishman. He would simply have killed him and chased after me, wasting no time. He wanted that money I carried, and meant to have it.

Oats had no doubt gotten Essie Buchanan to keep an eye on me, so if I got away, I had to slip away from her.

"Mr. Chantry," I said, "you have to help me. I am going to leave the steamer. I am going to get away. You can help me."

"How?" He was cautious, not trusting me or my ideas.

"You've got to ask me out to take a walk on the deck after supper. I mean" - I blushed a mite - "like you were courting me."

He studied me coolly. "And then what?"

"I slip off the boat. I get ashore and take off up the Big Sandy. I figure I can rent a horse or buy one. Or maybe a mule. Then I head for home."

"Not without me."

"Are you up to it? That there's rough country, Mr. Chantry. It won't be like riding to hounds. You'll be sky-hootin' it along ridges, dippin' down into hollows, you'll be pushin' through woods and brush and maybe have a mite of Injun trouble."

"Indians?What you are talking about isn't exactly the far west!"

"No, sir, but there's Indians. The Cherokee mostly know us Sacketts. Some of the others do, by reputation. The ones that know the Sackett name won't do us harm, but there's Shawnee around, too, and they aren't friendly with the Cherokee right now. The Creek, too, sort of go their own way."

I tried my coffee and it was still hot. "Have you got a rifle, Mr. Chantry?"

"A rifle? No, of course not. Not here."

"You'll need one, and so will I. I left mine at a tavern on the way, but it is some little distance. Regal an' Ma, they convinced me young ladies in Philadelphia do not carry rifles as a reg'lar thing."

"Can you actually shoot a rifle? You're serious?"

"Yes, sir, I have shot a rifle."

He did not take that seriously, I could see. In his world womenfolks danced, rode to hounds, partied around, and wore pretty clothes most of the time. Well, that was all right, but in the mountains things weren't quite like that.

"Mr. Chantry," I said after a bit, "we should smile more, like we were enjoying each other's company. Let Horst and them think something's going on betwixt us. If we act too serious, they are apt to get suspicious."

He smiled beautifully.

"There! That's better! A body would think you'd never courted a girl before."

"I am not exactly courting you, Miss Sackett. If you wish to deceive them, of course - "

"We've got to. We can't let them guess we're going to duck off this boat and head upcountry. I've got a map coming to me. A young officer promised he'd find one for me, or draw it."

"A young officer?" He raised an eyebrow. "You do get acquainted, Miss Sackett."

"Yes, sir, when it's necessary. He's a right handsome lad, too."

"You've talked to him?"

"Of course. Several times. He's the tall blond officer."

"I haven't noticed," he replied somewhat sharply.

"No reason why you should. You noticed Essie Buchanan, though, didn't you?"

"She intends to be noticed. She dresses to draw attention."

"And she gets it." I swallowed some coffee and then added, "She wanted me to meet some men. One of them, she said was very well-off."

"You didn't accept, I hope?"

"Well, no. But a girl has to think of her future, and most of the boys back in the hills are spoke for. You see, I am sixteen, and where I come from, that's almost an old maid."

"As I have said, I do not think Essie Buchanan is fit company for a young girl." He glanced at me in a very professorial manner. "She's what is known as a shady lady."

"Well, what do you know? I always wondered what one of them would look like. Regal's told me a good bit about them."

"And who is Regal?"

"I thought I told you about him. He's my uncle, and he goes round and about from time to time and is quite a man with the ladies. Right now he's laid up. Had him a little go-around with a bear."

"You mean he shot a bear?"

"Not exactly. This was a notorious bear, a trouble-making bear, and he tackled Regal, not knowin' he was a Sackett, so Regal had to kill him. Not until they'd disputed the subject, however."

"Killed him? How?"

"Mostly with a knife. He's got him one of those Tinker knives and he cut that bear up considerable. Finally did him in with his ax but not until the bear chawed on his leg and arm and clawed his ribs."

"You mean he killed a full-grown bear with a hunting knife and an ax?"

"Wasn't no other way. The bear wouldn't wait for him to fetch his shootin' iron, so they just had at it, an' Regal fetched him."

She looked at him seriously. "You ever eat much bear meat, Mr. Chantry? Grandma Sackett, she says there's no other way to raise a boy. Got to feed 'em bear meat when they're young. Ever' two, three days she'd take down her rifle-gun and fetch home a bear from the woods. Got so we had to move."

"Move? Why?"

"No more bears. She either killed 'em all or they just got tired of dodging her and taken off out of the country. Grandma, she was a caution.

"If you do come to the mountains with me, we'll feed you some bear meat. Good for you. Puts hair on your chest, Regal says."

He looked shocked. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything about hair on his chest. Young ladies didn't talk that way, I guess. No doubt where he lived young ladies weren't supposed to know that a man grew hair on his chest.

"I got to go now. I have to meet that young ship's officer. He should have that map for me."

He stood up, his features stern with disapproval. "I could have gotten a map for you," he protested.

"Here? On this boat? A chart of the bends and of the places they will stop?"

Walking forward to the rail which was just above the steps leading down to the cargo deck, I waited, watching the river. Suppose there was no stop? Could we leave the steamboat while it was moving? We would need a boat, of course, or a raft.

Robinson came along shortly. Hewas good-looking in his uniform coat and cap. He glanced around to see if we were watched, but there was nobody in sight.

"Here's the Big Sandy, right after we make the bend, after passing the Guyundat. The Indian Guyundat is a creek on the right side." He gave me a sharp look. "What d' you want to know all this for?"

"Mr. Robinson, you must tell nobody.Nobody , do you understand? I have to leave the boat and I do not want anyone to know.

"Mrs. Buchanan will certainly be asking. Tell her I've gone forward, tell her anything, but try to make her believe I am still aboard."

"But, ma'am, there's nothing there at Big Sandy! I mean, there's a landing. We'll nose into the bank there and load some freight, but it won't be more than five minutes."

"That's all I need. But please! Don't tell anyone! Not even the captain!"

"Somebody will see you."

"Maybe, maybe not. I hope not."

He had drawn a dark line on paper showing the river and where the various creeks came into it. I studied it for a few minutes after he was gone, and then returned to my cabin. Essie Buchanan was not there, so I looked through the carpetbag to make sure everything was all right. I did not know what they intended, but suspected they planned to rob me when I left the boat in Cincinnati.

Our arrival at Big Sandy would be very late. If I could I would smuggle the carpetbag out of the cabin when Essie had gone to supper, passing it through the outer door to Dorian Chantry.

What did the arrival of Felix Horst mean? Had he received some knowledge that the others had failed? But how could he know that?

No, Horst must have some plan of his own. Perhaps he wanted me to be far enough away from Philadelphia or Pittsburgh and in a place where it would take time for word to get back, if it ever did. People were often lost on the river, and the Cave-in-the-Rock had been a hideout for outlaws for years.

Horst was no fool and he would not want to risk being taken by the law again. He would know how much money I was carrying and he would choose his time very carefully.

The day passed slowly. Green Bottom Ripple, a dangerous place, was negotiated with care. I watched the creeks to check them off in my mind; then I went back to my cabin and lay down on my berth. I wanted to rest before the coming night.

Essie Buchanan came in. "What's the matter, dearie? Not feeling well?"

"I've a headache," I lied, "Just not feeling well, I guess, or maybe it's ague. I've had fever an' chills all the morning. I think I'll just lie here."

"Want me to bring you something?"

"No, thanks. I'll just rest."

At suppertime I went to the main cabin, and as Essie was at another table and could not observe, ate well enough. Dorian Chantry sat across from me.

There were folks sitting close by, so we could not talk of what we planned, nor about ourselves. There was time to look around and see those who traveled with us. One was an Englishman, interested in western America, who wanted to know everything. He asked a sight of questions and it seemed like he was suspicious of answers. He evidently had a different idea in his mind than what he was discovering to be true, and was uneasy about it.

He was surprised to find so many people reading Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, and the lot, although I don't know why. A lot of western folks were readers, and books were precious things, hard to come by and much treasured.

"Miss Sackett? Do you read? I mean for pleasure?"

"Of course."

"You have books in your home?"

"Mighty few. Pa used to lend books, and somehow they never seemed to come back. My Uncle Regal, he took to Scott. When I was no bigger than a button he was always recitingLochinvar or something fromMannion ."

"From memory?"

"Of course. We Sacketts all have good memories. Part of it comes natural, part of it is from learning. When folks don't have many books, they have to learn their history by heart. We learned the way ancient people did, like the bards of the Irish or the Welsh.

"It is a good deal like traveling across country. A body lines up on a peak or a tree or something in the way of a landmark, then as he walks, he checks the backtrail, which always looks different. We learn to pick out a tree here, a rock there, or something of the sort to guide us. Once seen, we don't forget it.

"Pa, he started teaching us that when we were youngsters, as his pa did before him. It was the same with history or the folks in our family. We learn about the principal Sackett of a time, and all the folks connected to him. You mention any one of the family back three, four hundred years and we can tell you who he or she was married to and what happened to their get. Their children, that is."

"I never heard of such a thing!"

"You mention Barnabas, now. He was the first of us in this country, and any Sackett can tell you what ship he crossed on, who his friends were, where he settled, and how."

"It must have been some such means that was used by the druids."

My eyes were wide and innocent. "I suspect so." I purposely sounded vague. I had talked as much about that as I was going to.

Dorian asked me many questions, and I noticed he was listening carefully. From time to time he glanced at me curiously, as if wondering about some of my answers. Ginery Wooster was setting back in his chair, seeming to pay us no mind, but he was listening, too.

"We all remember that way, after a fashion," I said. "Somebody says 'George Washington,' and right away you think of Mount Vernon, of 1776, of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, Valley Forge and all that, and each one of those things tips you off to another set of memories.

"Well, we just extended that, a-purpose. We didn't just kind of do it by happenstance. We sort of extended it out further and further, and as youngsters we were taught not just to learn something but to learn something else that went with it. Pa, he used to say that no memory is ever alone, it's at the end of a trail of memories, a dozen trails that each have their own associations.

"There's nothing very remarkable about it, or even unusual except that, like I said, we do it a-purpose."

"But there must be limits!"

"Maybe, we just never found one yet."

Dorian, he pushed back his chair and got up. "Miss Sackett? There are many lights in the sky. Can you come and tell me their names?"

"Well," I said, "I can start you off right. That big round white one is called the moon. Does that help any?"

Chapter 14

Bright was the moon upon the narrow waters, black and silent the shores except for the occasional lights from a settler's cabin, blinking feebly from the trees or some meadowed bluff. There was no sound but for the chugging of the engines, yet we were not alone upon the deck, for others had come from the main cabin to enjoy the night.

Essie Buchanan was there, accompanied by a heavy-set man with muttonchop whiskers. Was she watching me?

"I had not realized the Ohio was so large a river," Dorian said aloud, but under his breath he whispered, "I wish they'd all go to bed!"

"We must wait them out," I said, not at all unhappy about it. Then I added, "The step to the bow is right behind us."

"Archie will be down there waiting for us," he said softly. "He has your carpetbag hidden there." After a moment he said, "I still believe we should stay aboard until Cincinnati."

"They are waiting for us there," I said. "If we move now, there will be fewer of them. We may even get away unseen."

"If there's trouble," Dorian said, "stay out of it. Leave it to Archie and me."

"Maybe I could help."

"You? You're just a girl. What could you do in a fight?"

"Probably not very much," I agreed meekly, "but I could try."

"Stay out of it. I do not want you hurt." Then he took the fun out of it by adding, "Uncle Finian would never let me hear the last of it."

There was a rustle of water about the bow, the low murmur of others' voices.

"Are you going into law like your Uncle Finian?"

He shrugged a shoulder. "I haven't decided. I've thought of raising horses. I like the country life."

"You will see some beautiful country in the next few days. Not the best of Kentucky, but some of it. If you wish to raise horses, there's no better place to go."

"Maryland," he objected, "Maryland or Virginia. Who would wish to be out in this wilderness?"

"But it isn't wild anymore. Only in the mountains."

He turned his back to the rail and rested his elbows on it so he could see what the others were doing. "But some of the people even live in log cabins!" he protested.

"I live in one. I love it."

He was astonished. " You? In this day and age?"

"My grandfather built our cabin. It was the third one built on the spot or close to it. The first two were burned by Indians during the War of the Revolution."

"A log cabin?In 1840 ?"

"It is warm and snug and we have a beautiful view of the mountains."

He glanced at her face in the moonlight and the slight glow from the main cabin windows. Shewas pretty. But living in a log cabin? In these modern times?

"We have a log barn, too, and we churn our own butter, bake our own bread. Mostly we make do with what the land provides, barrin' a few things from the pack peddler, like needles an' such."

"But don't you ever want to get away? Don't you think of leaving? Coming to the city?"

"Oh, yes! I've thought of it, and talked of it, too, with Regal. Only we Sacketts have lived in the mountains for quite a spell.

"You've got to wake up of a mornin' with the clouds lyin' low in the valleys between the mountains, the tops of the peaks like islands. You've got to see the mountains when the rhododendrons are all abloom, or the azaleas or mountain laurel. We don't have much in worldly goods, but we're rich in what the Lord provides."

"Have your family always stayed in the mountains?"

"No, I reckon not. There was Jubal Sackett, a long, long time back. He taken off to the west, crossin' the Mississippi. He returned once, but when he left the second time, it was reckoned he'd never come back. Jubal had the Gift."

"The 'Gift'?"

"Second sight. He often knew things before they happened."

"I don't believe in that."

"Some don't. I never had the Gift, but it runs in our family."

"It's superstition."

"I reckon so, but it has played a big part in our family story." Glancing around, I whispered, "They are going in."

"But we shall have to wait. From the sketch you showed me, it must be some distance yet."

"An hour or more, with the current." I hesitated, then added, "When the stage is lowered, we must go ashore at once, before anybody will think to watch."

"We'd be better off to wait for Cincinnati," he protested. "We will be better off where there are people."

No use telling him I wasn't used to people caring for me. Where I came from, a body took care of himself and did not look to other folks for protection or even help. If it came, and among mountain folks it often did, then you accepted it and returned the favor when you had the chance, only you did not look for it or expect it.

Once we got ashore along the Big Sandy, I could make myself mighty hard to find. Out there where the forest brushes the sky, that's my kind of country.

Something stirred in the shadows and I put my hand on his sleeve. Surprised, he looked down. I was standing very close, and I liked it. "There's somebody there," I whispered, "near the ladder from the Texas deck."

Maybe we had done all the wrong things, waiting out there until everybody else turned in. Being wishful of standing in the moonlight with him, I'd forgotten they might not wait for Cincinnati or anywhere. We were here, in the night and alone, and they were coming for us.

"I hope you can fight," I whispered. "We've got it to do."

They were between us and the main cabin, which would be empty at this hour. We were closer to the steps leading down to the main deck, where cargo was stowed. Minute by minute we were drawing closer to the Big Sandy. There was no way we could get off now without them knowing, but I had an idea they just intended to kill us both and throw us into the river.

They came out of the shadows, and there were not three of them, but five. They moved toward us, moving in a sort of half circle. None of them looked familiar. Horst must have hired himself some thugs.

Dorian Chantry spoke, and I must say he was cool enough. "Come, Miss Sackett, we must be going in. I promised the captain I would speak to him before I turned in."

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 mid-stride. 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 obvious. 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 tavern-keeper 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."

When I started to reach for money, he put up a hand. "No, don't worry about money. I heard them call you Sackett, was that right?"

"It is. I am Echo Sackett, from Tuckalucky Cove, or thereabouts."

"Before we started the inn," he said, "there was a time down on the Big Sandy when I was laid up. I was almighty sick, with a wife and two young-uns. There was a man came through, found us hard up for meat, and he stayed around for a week, huntin' for us, cookin' until we got well, and carin' for us generally. Then he taken off and I haven't seen hide nor hair since. He was a Sackett. So you just take that canoe and do what you've a mind to."

"Bread on the waters," I said, "and thank you."

Outside, Dorian was squatting on his heels, looking off down the street. Timothy Oats was down there with Elmer, talking to another man.

"Come on," I said. "We've got a canoe."

We moved fast, slipping away and into that canoe. A stroke or two of a paddle and we were out of that inlet and turning upstream against the current. I was a fair hand with a paddle myself but I had to admit it, Dorian was better. Of course, he was bigger and stronger. Archie took to a paddle like he was born to it.

How long it took them to discover what happened to us, I wouldn't try guessin', but I've an idea we were long gone before they figured it out. We taken off up the Levisa Fork and we made good time, but I was worried.

We weren't getting away that easy. They would be after us, and they could ride the river too. They would be coming and we'd be getting into wilder and wilder country. There were scattered towns along the Levisa Fork, but there were long, lonely stretches in between and had an idea they'd gone about as far as they wished.

What worried me even more was Felix Horst. Where was he? So far he'd kept from sight, but I was sure he was around, but bidin' his time.

Timothy Oats or Elmer might just take our money and run, but not Horst. He would leave us dead. He was that kind of man, and I didn't want to die, nor see Dorian Chantry laid out for burial. The thought gave me a twinge, and he saw it.

"Somebody step on your grave?" he asked.

"Not mine," I said.

Well, he just looked at me, and when I looked over my shoulder at him again, he was dipping his paddle deep, his face serious.

When this was over, all over, I hoped there'd be time to talk, to just set by the river and talk, boy-girl talk. I blushed. Who was I to think such thoughts?

Chapter 16

The river was up but the current was slow and easy-like. We had us a start on those who followed, and we'd best take advantage of it. There was one thing workin' for us they wouldn't know. The further we went, the closer we got to Sackett country.

Dorian had laid aside his coat and was workin' in shirtsleeves. I will say for a city boy he had muscles a body wouldn't expect. Before the morning was over I spelled him on the paddle and got a glimpse of his hands. He hadn't said a word, but blisters were beginning to show. I suspect it had been a while since he'd been that long on a paddle.

The Levisa Fork curved around some, so we couldn't see very far, but I had an idea they were comin' up behind us.

The banks were forested right down to the water in most places, although here and there was a farm and sometimes cattle were down along the river. It was late afternoon before we turned into a little cove and went ashore to make coffee. I found some Jamestown weed and took some leaves from it.

"Put this on your hands," I said. "It will help."

"Thanks," he said, and glanced at the leaves curiously, then at me. But he used them, holding them in his hands.

We ate some bread and slices of meat brought from the tavern. "This will be a killin' fight if they catch up," I warned. "Horst an' them won't be for travelin' any further. They figure they're in wild country now and whatever happens won't be brought home to them."

Dorian said never a word, but I had an idea he was beginning to realize the seriousness of it. Archie, who had been up the creek and over the mountain a few times, he had no illusions.

"How far to the next town?" Dorian asked.

"Few miles. A place called Paintsville. We've been makin' pretty good time," I added, "maybe three miles to the hour or a mite less."

We'd be goin' slower from now on, I suspected, with Dorian's hands blistered the way they were. My hands were used to hard work and I'd spent a sight of time in a canoe on the Holston, the French Broad, and the Tennessee at one time or another. My brother Ethan was a great one for the water, and he'd taken me along many a time when huntin' or fishin'. He had a taste for catfish. I said as much.

"They're in here," Archie said. "Given time, I could catch us a bait. You fix 'em proper an' there's nothin' better. Unless its yellow-jacket soup."

"What?" Dorian looked around at him. "Did you say yellow-jacketsoup ?"

"It's a Cherokee dish. Et it many a time when I was a boy." He glanced at me. "You must've had it too?"

"A time or two. We were friends to the Cherokee since the first Sackett moved into the far blue mountains. Half the youngsters I knew when I was knee-high were Cherokees. Although all the folks didn't find them so friendly. It was Cherokee and Shawnee who did for the Wiley family. Ever'body," I added, "knew the story of Jenny Wiley."

"Who was she?" Dorian asked.

"Injuns attacked their station whilst all the menfolks were off huntin'. They killed Jenny's brother, and three of the youngsters were killed and scalped. They taken Jenny an' her baby prisoner, finally killed the baby by bashing its head against a tree because it cried too much. Jenny got away finally, and barely made it to safety, with Injuns right after her." I gestured at the country around. "It happened right up the creek from here near a place they called Harmon's Station. It's been gone a long time now."

We paddled on, nobody talking much, and the shadows darkened the ground under the trees, and the tree trunks lost their shapes in the darkness.

Ahead of us a light showed, then another, and we saw a house and a man walkin' from the barn carryin a lantern. He went to the house and a door opened and he went in and the moment of light was gone. He would be settin' down to supper now, with no worries of trouble behind him, like us.

"All around here and back the way we've come was Lew Wetzel country. Jessie Hughes, he was mostly further east over in West Virginia. They were Injun fighters. Had folks killed by Injuns, and they declared a vendetta against them. Never let up. Wetzel, they say, let his hair grow long a-purpose to tantalize the Injuns with his scalp.

"They wanted his hair but they were scared of him, too. Some of them didn't believe him human."

I taken up a paddle against to spell Archie. "Village ahead." He spoke softly. "We'd better get some grub."

A man was down by the river, watering a team. He looked up as we nosed in to the bank. "You be travelin' late," he commented.

"We're riding ahead of trouble," I said, "and wishful of avoidin' it."

"Ma could put somethin' on." He pointed toward the nearest light. "I'm behindhand with cultivatin'," he explained. "I was laid up with a fever.

"You go on up to the house. Ma will enjoy the comp'ny. She's a great one for comp'ny." He turned his team away from the water. "I can do without, m'self."

A dog ran out, barking fiercely. "Shep," the man said, "you be still. These are folks."

A woman came to the door, a ladle-spoon in hand. "Who is it, Jacob?"

"Strangers, Ma, right hungry ones. I said we'd put somethin' on."

There was a basin on a bench by the door, and a roller towel. We washed up there, and Archie went down by the river again to listen into the night.

"They followin' close?" Jacob asked.

"We don't know, but they'll be along." Archie looked at him. "You be careful. They ain't kindly folks."

"We never turned anybody away," Jacob said.

"I'm not suggestin' it, just you be careful. These are mean folk."

Jacob looked over at me.

"You know the Natchez Trace?" I asked. Of course he did, we all did. "One of these men worked the trace like the Harpes an' Murrell. Only nobody ever caught him at it. The one time they did catch him over in the Settlements, he hired a good lawyer an' went free."

"All right. You have you somethin'." He turned to his wife. "Ma? Fix them a bait of that hog meat. The roasted meat, somethin' they can carry off with them."

He went to the barn with his horses and stripped the harness from them. I was standing tired in the night, and I knew the others were, too. When he set up to the table I could see weariness in their faces. If only we could lay up and rest!

I thought for a minute of takin' that new rifle-gun and layin' up on a bend of the creek with it. I could fix a man dead at two hundred yards with that. Maybe five hundred. But I was not wishful of killin'. Yet I remembered what Regal had said: "There's times when a body must defend himself, Echo, an' when that time comes, you'd better win."

There was a fire going on the hearth, and the table had been spread with a cloth, honorin' the company. "Ain't often we get folks from the river," the woman said. "They don't travel the waters the way they did when I was a girl."

"They're beginning to cut timber up yonder. Logs will be floated down to the Ohio soon."

"It's cash money," I said, "but I hate to see the trees go down."

"We need the money," the woman agreed. "Jacob may take to cuttin' an' fallin' hisself. Not many cash crops in this here country lest a man goes to moonshinin', an' we don't hold with that. Not that we're teetotalers. Jacob likes his nip, time to time."

When we'd eaten, we got up and Archie wiped his hands on his pants. "Thank you, ma'am. I am obliged."

"Don't forget the bait I put up for you. Take it along in case of need."

"We will need it," I said, "but take our warning. Those behind us ride with the devil. They are not kindly folk."

"We never turned anybody away," Jacob repeated.

"Don't turn 'em away, but keep a gun handy."

We went back to the canoe, hesitated, then got in and shoved off upon the dark, dark water. All of us ached with weariness.

"Up ahead," I said, "we'll find a place. We've got to sleep."

Maybe it was because we were tired. Maybe it was the idea that men followed us to steal what we had, but I had a sense of foreboding, a sense of evil.

Where was Felix Horst? It wasn't like him to disappear and leave the stealing to such as Timothy Oats and Elmer. That man worried me.

"Don't worry about him," Dorian said. "He's away behind us, probably in Cincinnati or some such place."

We paddled more slowly now, moving carefully on the dark water because there were occasional floating logs and sometimes masses of debris and drift stuff all rafted together. By day a body could see them easy enough; by night it was another thing. Even a projecting root or branch could rip the bottom out of a canoe like ours.

"Hey!" Archie was peering into the night. "There's a landing of some sort."

"Let's see what's there," I said.

Archie guided the canoe in alongside the dock, and as we steadied the boat, he climbed out.

"Cabin up yonder," he said, "all quiet. I think it's deserted."

We tied the canoe and climbed out, bringing our gear. Somewhere back in the darkness an owl hooted a question to the night.

"Pull the canoe under the landing," I suggested. "If somebody comes along, they aren't apt to see it."

There were big trees here, tulip, sycamore, oak, and suchlike. There was a smell of decay and a sense of emptiness about the place. There were no cows in the lot, no smell of hogs or horses.

"Deserted," Dorian said. "I wonder why."

"They couldn't cut the mustard," I said. "Many try, only a few make it. Some find the work too hard, some can't stand the loneliness."

"Let's see what's in the house," Dorian suggested.

"Leave it be," I said. "If anybody comes a-lookin', that's where they'll go. We can sleep under the trees yonder, and if anybody comes, we'll hear them."

Archie had taken a stick he found leaning against a tree and was brushing around. "Snakes," he explained.

When we sat down and listened, here and there things rustled in the far-off leaves, branches rubbed one against the other, and now that we were quiet, the frogs started to talk it up again. Occasionally we saw a bat dip and swoop, chasing bugs.

Stretching out on the ground with my arm for a pillow, I stared into the night, wondering where Regal was and if the family worried about me.

It was very dark but our eyes became accustomed to it and we could make out the dim outlines of the cabin, a shed, and a corral. Somewhere we could hear water running, from a spring or a branch, no doubt.

My eyes opened suddenly. I had slept, I do not know for how long. I could hear the breathing of Dorian Chantry, and somewhat father away, that of Archie. The night was still. Yet, what had awakened me?

Something, some sound, some ...

I listened, and seemed to hear something moving near me; there was a faint smell. Then the movement sound ceased, but the smell remained.

What was it? It smelled, faintly, like something wet and slimy. A crocodile? Or alligator? I doubted if there would be one this far north, but a body never knew, and they had been found in swamps and bayous off the Mississippi, but the smell was unlike what I would expect from them.

A wet smell, like a wet dog.

That was it! It was the smell of a wet dog, yet what would a dog be doing here, alone? Or was it alone? A dog was rarely a soliatry creature; dogs liked people, were happiest when with people.

My new rifle-gun lay beside me, my pistol was close to hand, the other Doune pistol was still in the carpetbag, also close by.

Something stirred among the leaves and I drew my pistol. I did not want to shoot, for a shot in the night can be heard a far piece, yet ...

A few stars were out. I could make out the shadows of things, and through the leaves I could see the silver gleam of the river. I listened, straining my ears. All was quiet.

I wanted to be at home. I wanted to be in my own bed, getting up in the morning to familiar chores. I wanted to sit and talk with ma, I wanted to sew, to darn socks, I wanted to behome!

I was tired of running, tired of being hunted, tired of being forever watchful. I wanted to sit with a cup of coffee beside me and watch the shadows lift from the hills of home.

Regal seemed far away now, and Finian Chantry was in another world. I wanted to be home, among decent folks, I wanted to stand beside Ma in church of a Sunday and sing one of the old hymns or maybe set by the fireside of a night and sing "Greensleeves," "Lord Lovell," "Black Jack Davy," or "Rickett's Hornpipe."

Something moved again, and I could just make him out. It was a dog, and he was lying near us, seeming to want company.

"It's all right, boy," I whispered. "Go to sleep now."

And I did.

Chapter 17

He was a shepherd dog, mostly black and brown but with some white on his chest and legs, and he looked like he'd been seeing hard times.

"Where'd he come from?" Dorian wanted to know.

"Joined us in the night. Looks like he's been missing some meals."

Archie was putting together a fire. "Coffee in a bit," he said, "and we can broil some meat."

The landing where we'd left the canoe was made of home-cut planks and was old, all gray and silvery and no place for a body to walk with bare feet. There was moss growing on the pilings and every sign it had been there for a long time.

What happened here? I wondered. It was a good place to live, with water and fine timber. Some fields had been cleared but lying unused for a long time now.

We fed the dog some scraps and when we climbed into the canoe he whined, wanting to come. Dorian looked over at me. "What do you think?"

"Why not?" I said, and Archie spoke to the dog and he hopped into the canoe like he'd ridden in one all his life.

"We may be stealing somebody's dog," Dorian said.

"He's homeless," Archie replied. "I can see it in him. Whoever his folks were, they're gone."

Dorian and Archie did most of the paddling but I'd spell first one, then t'other from time to time, giving them some rest. Once in a while there'd be a long straight stretch and we'd look back and see nothing. Nevertheless, I was worried.

"I'd like to ride this river down, sometime," Archie said, "get back some of the work I've put in goin' upriver."

"There's easier ways to go back," I said, thinking of the steamboats that sometimes came up the river from the Ohio to Nashville.

"I can't wait to get back," Dorian said, and I just looked at him, not wishing for him to go at all.

"Have you a girl back there?" I tried to keep my voice casual.

"A few," he said. "It's a wide field and I play the field."

Well, I told myself, that's better than if there was a particular one.

"We'll have you home soon," he added. "Right back with your folks where you belong. Then I'm catching the first stage, steamer, or whatever back to Philadelphia."

Archie glanced at me but he said nothing, nor did I. Maybe Dorian would be better off in Philadelphia. He did not look as handsome as when he started. His clothes were shabby now, and he hadn't shaved in several days. He always combed his hair real careful and he took time to clean up from time to time.

"Even with the water runnin' high," I said, "we're not goin' much further with this canoe. This turns into just water runnin' over rocks a mite further along."

It was that shep dog who saved us. We'd swung wide to come around some drift-logs 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. There 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.

They came out of the woods then, seven or eight of them, and a rough, rough lot. Felix Horst was there, Tim Oats, and Elmer, but there were others I'd not seen before, except for one. He was the last one to come out and I recalled seeing him down to the Cove one time. His name was Patton Sardust and he had been one of the Natchez Trace thieves. A big man, and mighty mean.

Horst looked from Dorian to Archie. "Where is she?"

"Who?" Dorian said.

"Don't give me lip!" Horst's features sharpened. He was a man of no patience; you could see it in him. That was a notch against him. In the wild country, a body needs patience.

Horst stared at Chantry. "Who are you?"

"Dorian Chantry, sir. Not at your service."

"Chantry? Related to Finian?"

"He is my uncle, sir."

Felix Horst swore; he swore slowly, viciously, and with emphasis. He glanced over at Oats. "How'd he get into this? What's he doing here?"

"I told you," Oats insisted. "I told you he was along. I expect the old man sent him."

Horst glanced at Archie. "Runaway slave, eh? Well, you're worth something, anyway."

"He's a free man," Dorian said. "He has always been free."

Horst smiled. "We'll change that. If he isn't a slave, he should be, and I've got just the place for him. They'll teach him who is free."

"What about him?" Patton Sardust said, indicating Chantry. "We don't need him."

"He's Finian Chantry's nephew," Oats protested. "Anything happens to him, we'd never hear the last of it."

"Him?" Sardust scoffed. "No Finian scares me. I'll cut his throat myself."

"You could try," Dorian said.

What could I do? If I started shooting, they'd probably kill the two of them right off. Yet something was going to blow the lid off, I could see that. Whatever else he might be Dorian surely wasn't scared. Might have been better if he had been. Archie, I noticed, had quietly shoved his pistol back of his belt when they first closed in, and nobody had made a move to disarm them.

Where I stood I had a good field of fire and I was no more than thirty yards back into the trees.

"If they moved," Horst said, "kill the white man. That black is worth money."

Then he gestured. "Hans? You, Harry, an' Joe, you scout around and find that girl. Bring her here to me."

What to do? I could ease off through the brush, I could wait right there so we'd all be together, or ... They were coming; one of them headed right at me, although I knew he couldn't see me.

They'd stirred up the fire, put wood on, so the place was lit up. If I moved, that man was going to see me, and if I didn't, maybe ...

He came around the tree. "Ah!" he said. "I am the lucky one."

The rifle was close by my side and he was not looking for a woman to be armed. Regal had taught me a thing or two, so when he loomed over me and stepped close, I just jerked up the muzzle of that rifle and caught him right where his chin backed into his throat. I jerked up with it, and hard.

It caught him right and he gagged, choking, and taking the rifle two-handed, I gave him what dear old Regal taught me, a butt stroke between the eyes.

He went down like a poleaxed steer, falling right at my feet, out cold as a stepmother's embrace; then I just faded back into the brush.

The others were closing in on the spot where I'd been, and suddenly the one called Hans gave a yell. "Horst! For God's sake!"

Horst came into the woods. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"It'sJoe ! Look at him!"

Horst came through the trees, then stopped. He swore again. "Bring him into camp," he said brusquely.

"What hit him?" somebody asked. "Look at his face! And his throat!"

"He's still alive," Oats said matter-of-factly, "but he surely ran into something."

Felix Horst straightened up from the injured man. "Chantry? Who's out there? Who did this?"

Before he could answer, there came a weird, quavering cry, an eerie cry that rose and fell, then rose again. It was like nothing they had ever heard, and nothing I had ever heard, either, but I knew what it was.

"What'sthat ?" Elmer gasped.

"A ghost," Dorian said. "You've aroused the ghosts that haunt these mountains. You're in trouble now."

"Shut up!" Oats said viciously, anxiously looking around.

"The ghosts," Dorian said, "Echo told me about them. They don't like strangers."

He had called me Echo. He had used my first name!

Chapter 19

From where I was I could see into their camp. The fire was blazing now and the men were drawing toward it but keeping their guns on Dorian and Archie.

That cry had come from afar off-how far, a body couldn't guess on a night like this and in those mountains. It came again, suddenly, wavering, weird, a distant sound in the night.

"A banshee!" Dorian said. "A warning of death to come."

"Yours, more'n likely," one of the men said.

I'd never heard that sound before, but I'd heard tell of it, although there was only one man left who used it. Long ago some of the Clinch Mountain Sacketts had used that cry to warn enemy Injuns they were about, and some Injuns thought it was a death spirit out there in the forest, haunting them, waiting to steal their souls away. The only one I'd heard of using that cry in my time was Mordecai.

He was a long hunter Sackett, not given to the life of today but clinging to the wild old life of mountains and hunting. Long hunters was what they called those men who went off into the mountains alone to be gone for months, sometimes even years. Dan'l Boone had been one of them, but there'd been a sight of others. Jubal Sackett was one of the first, he'd gone west a long time back, never seen since, although there'd been rumors, stories, and the like.

"Leave him lay," Horst was saying of Joe. "He's been knocked out but he'll be all right."

"But who knocked him out?"

"Maybe 'what' is a better word," Dorian said.

Horst turned on him. He lifted a hand and slapped him across the face. "I told you to shut up!" he said.

If Dorian had struck back, they'd have killed him. He never moved, he just smiled, and that young man went up some notches in my estimation. Maybe he had something to him.

"I thinkshe done it," Elmer said.

"A woman? A slip of a girl? To Joe? You ain't serious."

"You don't know her," Elmer said.

Horst looked at Chantry. "Where's that carpetbag? Where is she?"

Felix Horst was mad, I could see that, but worse than that, he didn't know what to do. I could see that in him, too. His instinct was to kill, but he was afraid Dorian was his only clue.

He turned on Dorian. "That Sackett girl? Is she sweet on you?"

Well! There was an answer I strained my ears to hear. "Her? Of course not. She's never thought of me that way."

Little did he know!

"Travelin' through the woods together?" Sardust scoffed. "Who'd believe that?"

"I would," Archie said. "She's a lady."

Bless him!

Somebody added fuel to the fire and brought out a coffeepot. Some of this I could see; the rest I could surmise.

They moved suddenly and disarmed both men, then sat them down against a log.

At the foot of a stump, in a hollow under the roots, I cached my carpetbag, leaving the Doune pistol in it. I kept my rifle and the pistol with the sawed-off barrel. I worked around through the trees and listened, watching. If they made a move to harm either of those men, I was going to go to shooting, no matter what it cost me.

"When daylight comes," Horst said, "we will find her tracks. No use to go off half-cocked. She can't move fast in those skirts, and you can bet she's not far away. No matter what they say, I think she's sweet on Chantry here."

"You had better think about him," Elmer said suddenly. "If anything happens to him, old Finian Chantry will never let up. He'll track down every one of us."

"What I want to know," one of the men said, "is what screamed?"

"Panther, more'n likely. I've heard they have a funny cry, like a woman's."

"That didn't sound like no woman I ever heard," Sardust said.

"There was a man roamed this country years back, an' Injun hunter name of Lew Wetzel. He had a cry like that. Like a ghost in the woods, he was, and could run like a wolf."

"That's been years ago," another man protested.

They drank coffee and munched on some hard biscuits and meat. My stomach growled, a most unladylike sound. I sat down where I could watch their camp and kept my rifle where it could be used. There was a little blood on the sight. I wiped it off.

Several of them stretched out to sleep, but not Patton Sardust. "When killin' time comes around," he said to Horst, "I want him." He pointed a middle finger at Dorian.

"Who will help you?" Dorian said. "You couldn't do it alone."

Sardust grinned, showing some broken teeth. "We'll see about that." He drew his knife. "Right across the throat, ear to ear, with this."

The mutter of their voices lowered as several men slept, and I could no longer hear. Felix Horst sat with his back against a tree, staring at Chantry, but he was listening, too, so I did not move.

Dead tired, I sat watching their camp, wondering what I could do to get them free, what I could do to fight back without endangering them, and me so tired I could scarcely lift a hand. With the coming of daylight they'd be fanning out in the woods, and I could not avoid them all. Daylight would be a killing time. I could see it coming.

Suppose that weird cry had been Mordecai? But how could he know about me? Maybe it was a painter, a panther, that is. Or maybe it was Mordecai just a-travelin'? I didn't know those Clinch Mountain Sacketts, although we were surely in their part of the country.

Worst of it was, if anything happened to me, my folks would never get that money, and the Good Lord knew they needed it!

What could I do? Whatcould I do?

It would be growing light soon and those men would be after me, yet I dared not run away into the woods for fear of what they might do to Dorian and Archie.

Maybe if I just went to shooting, those boys could make a break for it? But what would their chances be of gettin' into the woods without being shot? Mighty slim.

I didn't even know rightly where I was, or whether I was still in the state of Virginia or had crossed into Tennessee. I knew the direction I had to travel if I got away. For that matter, I could dig up my carpetbag and head off down the country and maybe get away, but I'd be leaving them in the lurch and I couldn't do it.

Day was coming and I'd better get set to make my fight. Maybe I was only a girl, but I was a dead shot and I could nail one of them and maybe reload before they got to me. I could get one, and when they rushed me, I could get another with the pistol, and then they'd have me. And I had no doubt what would happen then, me bein' a girl and them the kind of men they were.

I was scared for Dorian and Archie, and I was scared for me.

Elmer got up and walked to the fire. He taken up the pot and started to fill his cup. I could see Horst and Oats and three others, one of them the sick man whom I'd hurt. Something jumped inside me.

Where were the others?

Had I dozed? Had they slipped out of camp? Were they coming for me now?

Something stirred in the brush and I came up fast and they were on me, two of them, a long, slim dirty man with a scraggly beard, and a younger one, grinning at me. Too late for the rifle. As the long thin one grabbed at me, my hand went into that slit pocket in my skirt, and I said, "Who is first?"

He hesitated just for a moment, caught by my words, and I let him have seven inches of blade right in the middle of him.

He let out a gasp and his face turned kind of greenish white and I shoved him free and taken a long, swinging swipe with my blade at the second one. He jumped back, then picked up an arm-long branch and swung it at me. It missed, but he was coming on in when I heard a yell from camp, then a shot and a crashing in the timber.

"Get them, dammit!Kill them!"

Guns exploded, but that young one was coming at me with that club.

Then somebody was running up on us and he turned sharp around to see, and it was Dorian who came in swinging a fist. The fellow with the club drew back for a swing, but Dorian, just like he'd fought somebody with a club before, went right into him, slugging him on the jaw, and then, as the fellow went down, Dorian grabbed me. "Come on!" he said, and I grabbed up my rifle and we ran.

We ran into the deeper woods. We heard guns firing, and one bullet knocked bark from a tree close by, spattering us with fragments.

We ran, we fell down, scrambled up, ran some more. In a dense growth of trees, all tall, towering yellow poplar, we pulled up, gasping.

"You all right?" he asked.

"I am. You?"

"I guess," he said. "What happened to Archie?"

He was asking himself more than me, because I wouldn't know. All was suddenly still. Not a sound in the forest. We weren't scot-free by any means, and we knew it. I had my rifle in my hands and somehow he had come up with one, evidently one that had belonged to one of the two men who attacked me.

"That other man?" Dorian whispered. "What happened to him?"

"He must've run into something," I said. "It wasn't quite light yet."

"I've got to go back for Archie," he whispered.

"You stay out. He knows a sight more about woods fighting than you do. Maybe he got away."

He was restless, but he waited. "We saw a chance," he said, "and made a run for it."

"You done right," I said.

They would be coming for us soon. He looked over at me. I was crouched down behind the trunk of a big sycamore partly shielded by a limb that was almost as large as the trunk, all mottled kind of gray and yellow.

Resting my rifle, I studied the brush and the trees, looking for a target. They had not located us yet, but they would. There were large trees all around, most of them yellow poplar.

We'd been shot with luck. Undoubtedly back there I'd closed my eyes for a moment and those men had slipped out of camp and closed in on me. Then the boys had made their break.

"We've got to shorten the odds," I said. "We've got to cut down a few of them."

"I've never killed a man," he said.

"Neither have I, but these here don't seem to be leaving us much choice." I paused a moment. "That money may not seem like a lot to you, but it is a change of life for we-uns back in the hills. It can make things easier for Ma and can ease things for all of us. I came down from the hills to get what was rightly mine and don't intend for it to be taken from me."

Something moved out there, and my rifle came up, resting on that thick branch. Dorian, he slipped a mite further away to take another stand.

Nothing stirred; then something did. Taken me a minute to realize what I had sighted. It was a knee.

The man was well hidden by a slanting log, but he'd drawn up his knee and exposed it. He was sixty yards off and the light was bad but better than that on many a wild goose I'd killed for meat. I taken a bead and squeezed off my shot. The rifle leaped in my hands and that knee disappeared. Only there was a red splotch of blood on the leaves.

"You hit something?" he whispered.

Me, I was reloading. "I never shoot unless I do," I said. "I don't like to miss."

He just looked at me, and I figured: Echo, you're doin' what Regal warned you against. So I said, "His knee was out there, so I tried. He's one they'll have to carry back."

"I wish I knew what happened to Archie."

"So do I, but I think we'd better fetch ourselves out of here before they surround us." I got up. "Let's go."

We eased out of those trees and found a game trail angling down through the woods. We taken it careful, keeping low and heading as near to south as we could, south and west.

"Only way we can help Archie," I said, "is to stay alive. If he isn't dead already, they will try to keep him alive and sell him. We'll find him then and see he's freed, if I have to bring all the Sacketts down from the hills."

"How many are there? Of the Sacketts, I mean?"

"Nobody rightly knows, but even one Sackett is quite a few."

We walked along the creekbed, which was scarcely ankle-deep, then crossed to the other side and went into a stand of slender trees. After a bit, finding a place where we could remain hidden yet see all that approached us, we sat down to rest.

We had come several miles, and neither of us was up to further travel, and we were hungry.

"You catch some sleep," Dorian said. "I'll watch."

For a moment there my eyes were open, and then they were closed and I slept and dreamed, all sorts of wild dreams. It was dark when he shook me awake.

"It will have to be you," he said. "I can't keep my eyes open longer."

Sitting up, I drew my rifle across my lap. It was dark and we could see nothing but the shadows and the stars. In the moment his eyes closed, I heard that scream, that same wild cry, rising and falling weirdly.

Dorian opened his eyes. "There it is again!" he whispered. "What can it be?"

"Sleep," I said. "All's well here. You just rest."

I didn't like to even think how hungry I was, but what worried me most was that cry. It was nearer this time, and it sounded like the cry of a hunter - hunting what or who, I did not know.

"You sleep," I said aloud. "I'll keep watch."

Yet my eyes were heavy. It was hard to stay awake.

Chapter 20

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. So 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 cast 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."

"We haven't got it," Dorian said. "Two of your crowd have it."

"You're lyin'!"

"Where's Elmer?" Dorian said. "And where is that big fellow, Sardust?"

Oats was staring at Dorian. "You've got too much lip."

Dorian smiled. "You're supposed to be some kind of a fighter," he said. "Why don't you see what you can do about it?"

"Dorian!" I said.

"This is something I have to do, Echo," he said. "It won't take long."

Timothy Oats took off his coat and laid it on a stump. He put his rifle across it.

"You," I told Hans, "stay out of it."

"Why not? Tim will make mincemeat of him."

I was afraid of that myself, but the way they were looking at each other, like two prize bulls in a pen, I knew nothing I could say would make any difference. Dorian had shucked his coat, too.

He was a shade lighter than Oats, but just as broad in the shoulder. "You won't find him so pretty when I get through with him," Oats said.

"You take care of yourself, mister. Pretty is as pretty does."

Oats tried a left, drawing Dorian out, or trying to. Dorian ignored the left, moved to the left. He feinted a left, and when Oats moved to counter, hit him with a solid right that shook Oats to his heels. It surprised him, too. He had not expected that, and I could see his expression change. Now he knew he was in for a fight.

Oats was the wilier, ducking, slipping away from punches, hitting hard in return. Twice he landed hard to the body and I winced for Dorian, but he seemed to pay it no mind.

Then they were at it, hammer and tongs, both of them slugging, toe to toe and neither backing up a bit. Oats was hitting Dorian, but Dorian was taking them standing, and suddenly he feinted a left, and Oats, too eager, stepped in and took a right on the chin. It staggered him, and Dorian followed up, swinging both fists to the body.

Oats backed up, tried to get set, but Dorian gave him no chance. The less experienced of the two, he was younger, in better shape, and just a little quicker. Oats rushed, tried to butt, and Dorian hit him with an uppercut, and when the head came down again, he grabbed Oats by the hair and jerked him forward, kicking his feet from under him. Oats came down hard, landing on his face.

At that moment Hans lunged forward, and I put a bullet through his ear. The shock and the pain stopped him, and his hand went to his bloody ear. I had the pistol in my hand.

"The next one kills," I said. "Just back off."

"You missed," Hans said.

"I didn't want to kill you. I wanted an ear and I got it. You now have one ear. Do you want to try for none?"

The blood was covering the side of his face and his shoulder. He backed off warily.

Oats was getting up, and Dorian was letting him. Suddenly Oats dived at him, grappling for Dorian's knees. He got one of them, right in the face. He staggered and went to a knee. Maybe that boy could fight after all, I thought. This wasn't party games.

Hans had backed off, trying to stop the bleeding. "I'll kill you for that!" he said.

"You haven't done very well so far," I replied. "You just better look at your hole card. You aren't holding very much."

Dorian was bloody himself. He had a cut on his cheekbone and his lip was puffy, but he seemed happy. He was standing, ready for Oats to get up.

"You're a smarter fighter than I am, Mr. Oats," he said, "but you've had too many beers."

"Dorian? We've got to get out of here. We've got trouble coming."

He picked up his coat and put it on, then got his rifle. Oats had reached his coat and was standing over it, about to pick up the rifle he had laid down.

"Go ahead," I told him, "if you feel lucky."

"Horst will be coming. He will have heard that shot."

Dorian made no reply, nor did I. We backed off, watching them as we left. Oats was wiping his bloody face.

"Have you got their trail?" Dorian asked.

"They will have heard that shot too," I said.

"But they won't know who shot, or why. They may travel a little faster."

Elmer and Patton Sardust. I wondered how long Elmer would last. He was just a big gawky boy, and Sardust was a mean man, a hard man, a man who had been through it. They must be near the river by now.

We did not talk, being wishful to make no sound. The tracks were easy to follow, as nobody was trying not to leave a trail. They were headed down the steep slope toward the river. If we could get that carpetbag back, we could just keep going. The direction was right.

There was no need to track them now, as they were on a trail down to the river. I squinted away toward the river. I did not know rightly where I was, and that might be the Powell or it could be the Clinch. We'd been switching back and forth in the mountains, and all I knew was my general directions.

During a pause to catch our breath, I reloaded my rifle-gun. This was mostly new country for me. There was a path along the river that had been followed by both men and game, and their tracks were there.

Elmer clutched the carpetbag, switching it from his right to his left hand. He wished they'd never found it. He knew the big man walking with him intended to kill him, he knew Sardust wanted it all. For a moment Elmer was inclined to turn and simply hand it to him, but there was a deep stubbornness in him that refused. Anyway, it might not suffice. Sardust might kill him anyway. Tree shadows fell along the path. He wished he could be walking here alone, without Sardust. He liked the sound of the river.

He stopped suddenly, and Sardust stopped. "What's the matter?" The big man was irritable but watchful.

"I thought I heard something."

"The wind, maybe. Or the river."

"Something else, somebody moving."

"You're crazy!"

"Patton, we should give this back. To that girl, I mean. We should give this carpetbag to Echo Sackett. It's hers."

"Youare crazy! There's money in there, boy. Money for both of us. Give it back? Why?"

"It's hers. It will mean a lot to her. I know, I was all for stealin' it myself. I didn't like her one bit, but she's got nerve. And she needs this. Ever since I got down in this country, I been wonderin' about all this. I figure we're doin' wrong."

Patton spat into the dust. "Well, of all the weak, mollycoddlin' ... !"

"I mean it, Mr. Sardust. I don't feel the same no more. Men have been hurt over this. Three men down and hurt, an' everybody is for just leavin' them. I don't feel right about it."

"You just give it to me. I'll take the blame. You can run off an' do what you like. I'll just let you off the hook. Give it to me."

"No, Mr. Sardust, I may be a damn fool but I'm takin' it back to that girl. Maybe it's this country, maybe it's her, maybe it's those men back there, dyin' maybe. I don't feel right about it no more."

"You give it to me. I'll shoulder the blame. You run off an' have a good cry. You an' your conscience." Patton Sardust spat contemptuously. "You're nothin' but a damn mollycoddle!"

"No, Mr. Sardust. I am takin' it back to her."

"Shut up! Just give me that bag!"

"I think he's right, Mr. Sardust." The voice came from the trees near the trail. "I think he's right. I think you better leave him go, Mr. Sardust."

A man stepped into the open trail, a very tall, very lean man with a rifle.

Patton Sardust turned slowly. Whatever Elmer did was of no immediate concern. He had never seen this stranger before, but his every instinct told him he was in trouble, deep, serious trouble.

His heart was pounding slowly, heavily. His rifle was by his side, held in the trail position. His hand was almost in the right place. If he could only get his finger on the trigger ...

"Who the devil are you?"

"Not the devil, Mr. Sardust, but like him, I can open the gates to hell. I'm Mordecai Sackett. You ready to go?"

Chapter 22

Elmer walked back up the path toward the clifftop. He walked easier, and he felt better. He stopped at one point and looked down through the trees at the river. He just stood there, light and shadow falling over him, and no sound but the trees. He had never known such quiet, never such peace.

From behind him and below there was a shot, closely followed by another.

So that was the end of that, and it might have been the end of him, too. He had looked into that stranger's face and he had no doubt about who killed whom.

He was dipping down again now, as the track he was following returned briefly to the river before starting up again. He stopped once more, putting the carpetbag down.

He would not know how to get along in country like this, but he could come back to visit. He could walk this trail again, but with no worries. She came along the trail toward him and he picked up the bag and held it out to her. "This is yours," he said.

"Thank you, Elmer. You are a nice man."

He blushed. "Well, it's yours. I just thought ..."

"Thanks."

Dorian came down the trail behind me. "We heard a shot."

"Yes, sir. It was him, I believe. I think he killed Patton Sardust."

"Killed him? Who did?"

"He came out of the woods like a ghost. He looked like a ghost. He said his name was Mordecai Sackett."

"Mordecai!"

Dorian glanced at her. "Is he related to you?"

"He's a Clinch Mountain Sackett. A cousin, sort of."

"There were two shots. I'll go see if he's been hurt." Dorian hesitated. "You'll be all right."

When he had gone, I just stood there staring after Elmer, who was walking away up the trail. Whatever had come over him? What would he do now? Could he go back to working with James White? Or would he want to go back?

Now I could go home. Now I had money again, and what I could do would brighten all their lives. I picked up the carpetbag, and Felix Horst was standing there. His pistol was in his hand and he indicated a dim trail toward the river.

"Walk that way. If you call out and he comes, he'll never know what hit him."

"He's not alone down there."

"Get along! Don't try any tricks on me. Just move!"

"Mordecai Sackett's with him. He killed Patton Sardust."

"Get along. Right down the path. You walk easy, and maybe you'll be alive tomorrow."

I walked along, carrying the bag. I had left my rifle on the ground where they would find it. Horst had seemed to pay no attention. Maybe if I had tried to pick it up, he would have shot me. Dorian would be coming back. He would find it right there at the path down which Horst was taking me.

It led to the river. There was a clearing there, cut off from the water by a stand of black willow, partly shaded by sycamores. Drawn up in the reeds I could see the bow of a skiff. Had he known it was there?

"You're making a mistake," I said quietly. "Mordecai is here. You will never get out of the hills."

He laughed without humor. "Don't be silly! Just drop that bag and back off."

"Look! Please! My blue dress is in there! Let me have that, at least! It's the only pretty dress I ever had!"

"All right, get it out and be damned. But hurry! I haven't time for any more nonsense!"

I opened the bag and thrust my hand in, pulling out the blue dress and bonnet with my left hand, and the Doune pistol with my right. I was going to shoot right through the dress but couldn't stand the thought of ruining that beautiful gown.

I threw the dress aside, revealing the Doune pistol.

There was a moment of frozen silence; Horst's own pistol was in his hand, but lowered. There was shock in his eyes. He stared at me with awful realization. Then I shot him.

He stood for just an instant, trying to lift his pistol, but the gun slipped from his fingers into the dust and he fell, knees first, buckling slowly, and then sprawled in the dust and leaves. After a moment one of his legs straightened, the toe digging into the earth.

I walked over to a big sycamore and sat down abruptly, leaning my head back against the tree. I was sitting like that when they came down the trail to the river, Mordecai Sackett and Dorian Chantry.

Dorian came to me and helped me to my feet and put his arms around me. "It's all right," he said. "Everything is all right."

"I want to go home."

"All right." He folded the blue dress and bonnet and returned them to the bag. Then he picked it up. Together we started away, but Mordecai stopped us.

"Foolish to walk when that skiffs handy. You might as well float down."

"Thank you, Mordecai, for coming."

"Trulove an' Macon, they come too. They're up yonder cleanin' up what's left. We come when needed, cousin. We come when needed." Mordecai glanced at Dorian Chantry and said, "I found a black man in the woods."

"Was he hurt?"

"He'd been shot. Grazed his skull, knocked him out, I guess. When I saw him, there was a dog lyin' beside him, sort of watchin' over him. He's on his feet now, an' will be comin' along directly."

Mordecai glanced again at Dorian, then at Echo. "You sparkin' him?"

I glanced at Dorian, but he blushed. "You might say that," I said. "You might just say that."

"I hope she is," Dorian said. "I'd hate to go back to Uncle Finian and tell him I lost out."

Regal and Ma were settin' on the porch of an evenin when we came up the trail from the Cove. They were settin' together and Regal stood tall to shake hands and greet Dorian and give me a little squeeze with an arm about my shoulders.

"We missed you, honey. Have a nice trip?"

"Took me longer than expected," I said.

"Come mornin', I'd have been comin' after you. A man stopped by who said he saw you on a steamboat and you seemed to be in some kind of trouble. His name was Ginery Wooster. He said he had passed the word to Mordecai on his way across the mountains."

"We saw Mordecai."

"That's more than I ever did. Come on inside." We paused a moment on the step, looking off toward Cligman's Dome. The clouds were gathering there. A nighthawk swooped by and Dorian and I turned toward the house.

"See? I told you it was a log cabin!"

Author's Note

There should be, within the next few years, at least ten more novels involving members of the Sackett family. These upcoming books will not only close the gap between the novels of the early Sackett generations (Sackett's Land, To The Far Blue Mountains, andThe Warrior's Path ) and the novels of the later generations beginning withThe Daybreakers , but will extend the Sackett's story in several new directions. The present novel,Ride The River , helps to bridge that gap since Echo Sackett is the aunt of the Sackett brothers William Tell, Orrin, and Tyrel whom we first meet inThe Daybreakers andSackett .

The next Sackett novel will beThe Saga Of Jubal Sackett dealing with the area west of the Mississippi, the Great Plains and the Rockies in the years after 1630. At that time this area was the great unknown. Coronado and other Spanish explorers had touched upon it, but their limited explorations were not known to the rest of the world. Even the Indians, who were only beginning to acquire horses, knew little of that vast land in the interior. The distance between streams and known waterholes had restricted their travel until horses were available.

Into this world, teeming with game of every variety, Jubal Sackett travels with one Indian companion seeing it all when it was fresh and new. They hunt buffalo, elk, deer, antelope, bear, and other animals, some of which were believed to have been extinct, all at a time when every step they took was into unknown land.

Later, there will be another story of William Tell Sackett, going back to his earlier years when he first left the Tennessee Mountains to fight in the Civil War. This story will also relate the great romance of his life, or at least the first chapter in it, a romance about which he has told no one, not even his brothers.