Henry

For a moment I stood still, thinking. Madame Legare taken! She had escaped them once, but she would not do so again, and her husband, a good, well-meaning man, was probably not the kind to deal effectively with Bauer. Yet it was my responsibility, for it was I who had brought her to his attention.

Turning to my belongings, I dug out two pistols and loaded them and tucked both into my belt. To leave Port Royal for Santiago de la Vega and the mouth of the Rio Cobre was simply to cross the entrance to the bay. In my mind's eye I pictured the distance.

Two miles? Or a bit more?

I would go now, at once.


Chapter XIV

The boy I found on the shore who would take me across the harbor entrance was slim and very black, his eyes large and soulful. "A shillin', suh. I does it for a shillin'."

"Make good time and keep your eyes out for trouble and there'll be another shillin'," I said.

"A shillin'," he said. "An' I see anything you should know, I tell you."

He pushed off as soon as I was seated, and we moved at once out over the dark water. Dark water where no wind blew, and two dozen ships lay at anchor, pirate vessels most of them, some bulging with cargo freshly looted from vessels on the Spanish Main. Nor was the harbor quiet because night had come. A lighter, piled high with bales and casks, passed us. There were lights in the ships, and from a galleon, still bearing marks of fire and cannon balls, there came drunken singing. A man lurched to the rail and waved a bottle at us, inviting us for a drink. From shore there was the sound of music and drunken singing. It was a wild night in a wild port upon a wild sea with the island looming high and dark behind it.

"Lived here long?" I asked.

"No other place," he said. "I like it, suh. This is what I like, the boat, a man to take across, a shillin' comin' when you step ashore, an' sometime a cabin on the slope of the Healthshire Hills."

He was silent, and the oar chunked solemnly in the oarlock at the stern. There was not wind enough for a sail, although beyond the ships at anchor there might be.

"I been ast to go upon a ship. More'n one time. I don't want that. I don't want no gold bought for blood. I like a quiet time with the sound of my oar or water past the hull. I like a man settin' quiet like you. I like the smells on the other side, yonder. I like it over on Galleon Bay."

For a long time he was silent, and after a bit I said, "I am from the mountains of America, far away to the north. I have a cabin there where the flowers bloom and where the mountain edges reach up to the sky. I know what you mean."

He set me ashore after a while on a sandy spit near the river, and I gave him his shilling. "You have a family?" I asked. I could see the whites of his eyes in the darkness and the white scarf tied about his head.

"I once had. Maman died when I was tall as her waist. Papa an' me, we put her down and marked the place. He done stayed on wi' me, but his eyes were always a-looking at the sea, and ever' time a ship sailed, I think he's heart go wi' it.

"One day I was fourteen, an' papa he say I am man now, an' I say you go, papa. You go down where the ships go because I see he's heart is with them, and he went away, and I have my boat and sometimes a shillin'."

"What name do you have?"

"Andrew, suh. I am called Andrew."

"No other name?" I saw his teeth when he smiled.

"I have no need for other name. I am Andrew. It is enough. If I had another name, too, I might feel big about me, and it is not good. A boy named Andrew who has a boat. Good-by, suh."

I put the shilling in his hand, and he pushed off and went into the darkness, standing tall and quiet in his boat. I stood alone in the darkness, unmoving, until the night lost the sound of his oar.

All was black about me; a loom of jungle-covered hills and only a narrow strip of white shoreline stood close. I walked up the beach and stood to think, to decide which way I should go, but there was a soft rustling and a sound near me.

"Captain? It is Henry."

He came from the shadows. Several others moved near him, and I kept a hand on a pistol. "It is well, Captain. They are maroons and my people."

"They have taken Adele Legare. Where are they now?"

"Not far." He laughed softly. "They do not know, but they are watched. My people are like the Indians of your country. They are quiet in the forest."

"Are they camped?"

"They move slowly, I think, as if waiting for somebody or for a time. They now are near the Salt Ponds, but I think they go to Galleon Bay. It is a good place for boats to come and not to be seen."

He led the way, and we moved swiftly. There had been a shower earlier, and the leaves dripped, yet I think it helped to obscure the sounds of our passing, and we had been going but a few minutes when a man came from the jungle. We stopped briefly while he talked to Henry; then he faded into the jungle and was gone.

"They are but minutes away." He glanced at me, as I could dimly see. "There will be fighting, I think."

"How many are they?"

"Seven now, and a light was seen on Galleon Bay, a signal, we believe." He led the way sharply downhill. The earth was muddy under foot, and several times I slipped but each time caught myself before falling.

Suddenly the water was before us, a goodly stretch of it with the darkness of land beyond. Henry touched my arm. "We walk easily here, for there is a swamp along the shore."

My boots were ill fitted for such travel, and I longed for a pair of my moccasins, which suited me better. We emerged upon solid footing, a stretch along the shore, and we walked along the sand.

Suddenly a voice spoke, "Sheer off there! Belay it! We want no visitors here!"

"But you have them, my friend," I said quietly. "You have many visitors, and we wish the young lady. You may release her now, or we will have your blood first."

"Sheer off!" There was anger in the voice and maybe a shadowing of doubt or fear.

"Are you there, madame?"

"I am," she replied.

There was the sound of a blow, and I said, "Your life shall pay for that," and we closed in around them.

A man came at me, cutlass swinging, but I fenced as my father and Jeremy had taught me. I moved back, and sure he had me, he came in swiftly. He cut sharply at me and missed; my point did not. My blade touched the point where his neck met his chest.

He fell back, coughing, and my eyes, accustomed to the darkness now, saw a man turn on Adele, and I had a pistol from my waistband and a shot.

He fell.

There was a shout from the boat coming in. "Lashan?"

The maroons were armed with cutlasses, and but two or three had muskets. They turned and fired toward the incoming boat, and there was a curse, and then the boat began to back water swiftly. I thrust my empty pistol into my waistband and held my sword ready, but the fighting was over. On the sand were dark bodies, stretched and still. A maroon moved to stop one who was crawling away. "Let him go," I said. "If he lives, he can tell them how foolish they were."

Adele came to me across the sand. "You came in time. I knew you would."

"It is Henry who deserves the thanks," I said. "May we take you home now?"

At least three of her captors had fled, but we did not pursue. To find them in the darkness would be difficult, and my first task was to take Madame Legare to her home.

"It is arranged for," Henry said. "We borrowed a carriage from a plantation."

"Henry, no one must know of this. I hope you did not--"

He smiled. "I did not. They do not even know their carriage is being used, and before they do know, it will be back in its place, wiped clean as if never used."

Hours later, we drove into the winding, palm-lined lane to the plantation house.

As we came near the house, a man walked out on the wide verandah. I rode on in advance. "Master Legare?"

He was a man in his thirties, not unhandsome and with a kindly but worried face. "Yes?"

"Madame Legare was taken by pirates, slavers, or something of the sort. We have brought her home. She was not harmed."

"You are?"

"Kin Ring Sackett, of Virginia. The others," I added, "are maroons."

"Maroons?" He was startled. "But--!"

"They are our friends," I said, "and without them we could have done little."

The carriage drew up, and he ran down the steps to help her down. "You are all right?"

"All right." She smiled suddenly, her hand still resting in his. "And I am home."

"Will you come in?" He paused at the door, looking about. "Why! They are gone!"

Glancing back, I saw it was true. They had faded into the jungle and the planting as if they had never been. I had no need to ask where Henry might be. He knew, as I did, there was much to be done and that most of it must be done in Port Royal or in Santiago de la Vega.

The room into which I was shown was large and high of ceiling. Wide windows looked out over green lawns flaming with tropical flowers, whose names I knew not.

"You must rest, Captain," Legare said, "but first something to eat."

"There is little time--" I started to say, but he lifted a hand.

"Enough. We have much to talk of, you and I." He glanced at me. "You have known my wife long?"

Briefly I explained my meeting with her and why I had come to Jamaica. I added, "In the Cape Ann district Madame Legare was a friend to a girl whom I know. A girl I--"

I caught myself up short. What was I saying? I hardly knew the girl, and she knew even less of me. A servant came in bearing a tray with coffee, eggs, ham, and a melon, of which I knew nothing.

"Adele does not wish me disturbed," Legare said, "and she knows I am a quiet man who prefers a quiet life. I have books, I read much, I oversee my plantation myself, and I engage in a bit of trade. I also"--he took up a slice of toast and broke it in his fingers--"dabble in the governing of the island.

"Often," he said, "I find it best to do what must be done without going through the usual channels. Adele is not yet familiar with my methods of operation. She does know that I prefer our life here. It is quiet, pleasant. We have a few friends and a graceful, easy life."

He put down his glass. "I understand very well how you feel and agree that something must be done. I have thought so for some time. Now--suddenly--they have brought it home to me."

"I have heard," I suggested, "that Joseph Pittingel has many friends in high places, that he moves as he wishes."

"To a point ... only to a point. Unfortunately for him, he has never known how shallow are the roots of his power, nor has he ever been able to temper his greed. Continual success has led him to believe there can be no failure."

Legare smiled, refilling my glass with coffee. "As to that, Captain Sackett, I agree."

"I have been called 'Captain' but I have no claim to the title," I said. "I am captain of nothing."

He shrugged. "No matter. It is convenient. There are many such in the islands. It is a courtesy title as much as anything else, so grant those who use it their pleasure."

He changed the subject suddenly and began talking of trade between the islands and Carolina and the Plymouth colony. "I have been content to plant and reap, but lately I have been thinking of branching out, building a three-cornered trade between the islands, England, and Carolina. I have hesitated because it demands a trip to England to find an agent there."

A thought came to me, and I suggested, "I have a brother there who is a student of law at the Inns of Court. He is young, but he would be pleased to act for you."

"His name?"

"Brian Sackett. I hear he has established very good connections there and has already a considerable background in the law."

"Excellent! I can give him the chance, at least, and if he does well, there can be much business. The trade is growing, and I foresee much settlement in Carolina and Virginia and with it a growing demand as well as a need for a market for their produce, whatever it may be."

"My father shipped several cargoes of mast timbers and potash while he was yet alive. Furs, of course. There is gold in limited quantity and some gems--very few."

Legare got to his feet. "And you? What of you?"

"I am for the land," I said. "All of this"--I gestured about--"is well and good, but I am a man of the forest and at home there. I have no great desire for wealth, and where I wish to live, there would be none to admire it.

"On the west of the blue mountains I have a cabin. I have a crop of corn which badly needs my attention now, and when this is done, I shall return. There is fruit and nuts in the forest, if one works hard enough, and there is fresh meat to have if one has the powder and lead.

"I have never wanted fine clothes or such a home. All I want of people are books. I love much to read, although a life in the wilderness leaves too little time for it. Still, by the firelight, and of an evening--"

Yet even as I spoke my thoughts were out there in the darkness. Where was Max Bauer? What now were the thoughts of Joseph Pittingel? And what had I done but frustrate them one more time, bringing us no nearer a conclusion.

They wanted me dead, and I was not dead. Not yet. Would they be out there in the dark? I thought not. They knew now of the maroons, our good friends, and they were no match for them by night.

They would await the coming of the day. They would suspect--

"I can offer you a carriage," Legare said, "to carry you back to Port Royal or whatever you prefer."

"Two hours of rest," I suggested, "and then a good horse."

"But--?"

"They will expect me to come by day, or they will expect me now. A carriage would be a death trap."

So it was arranged, and I went up to the bed they provided in a high-ceilinged room with mosquito netting all about the bed. The night was warm, but I slept well.

At an hour after midnight a black man came quietly to my bedside. "It is time, Captain. You will have coffee?"

It was waiting for me in a small, pleasant room, a slice of melon, a thick piece of bread, and some cold meat. I ate, drank the coffee, and the black man led me down a narrow passage. "The slaves' quarters," he said apologetically. "We will not be noticed this way."

"You have spoken to Henry?"

He glanced at me. He was a tall man, quite thin, with graying hair. "I have not," he said quietly. "You have helped the mistress. It is enough."

He paused a moment. "She is very good to us," he added simply.

In the shadow of a stable a black horse waited, restive, eager to be off and away. He was saddled and bridled, and two horse pistols were in scabbards on either side of the saddle.

The black man pointed the road for me. "There is no safety anywhere," he said quietly, "but you do not seem a man who is used to safety. Ride well."

He turned away and walked to the house, not looking back. For a moment I waited, shadowed by the black bulk of the stable. There was no sound in the night Inside the stable a horse stamped restlessly; I turned the black and rode past the corral and at the roadside paused, listening to the night

It was very hot and still. Frogs talked in a pond somewhere not far away, and there were countless small noises, made by creatures unknown to me.

Walking the black into the trail, I started for Santiago de la Vega, some distance away. My right hand touched a pistol, loosening it in the holster. Before we reached town, I should have need of it. This was not simply something I supposed. I knew it.


Chapter XV

The narrow road was a dim path through dark jungle broken here and there by open country turned from jungle to planting or grazing. The moon was rising, still unseen. The rail fences at some places took on a skeletonlike appearance.

A night hawk or some such creature flitted by overhead. Aside from the vague night noises there was no sound but the clop-clop of my horse's hoofs. Uneasily I kept turning in my saddle to look back, and my eyes searched ahead for a warning of any attack.

The jungle walled in the road on either side, no tree distinguishable from another. At last we cleared the jungle, and open fields lay on each side, all white and gray in the moonlight, yet I could not relax. Long ago I had learned the most innocent-seeming places were often the worst. My horse's ears pricked, and he broke stride a bit, then continued on. I drew both pistols and hoped my mount was familiar with shooting from the saddle.

At least he had warned me. They came suddenly from a bend in the road, one that scarcely seemed to be there, and some low-lying brush. But my horse had warned me in tune, and as the first man came off the ground, I shot him.

He loomed up just at the right place for me, and I shot into his chest at no more than twenty feet. The heavy slug knocked him back, and I dropped the gun into the scabbard, swinging my horse sharply away and clapping my heels to his flanks. He was a good horse, and he leaped away in fine style. From behind me a gun bellowed, and something whisked past my skull. Turning in the saddle, I held the other pistol for a moment, looking down the barrel at a looming figure in the trail behind me.

When I actually squeezed off the shot, I knew not, but the big pistol leaped in my hands with an angry bellow, and the man missed a step and fell. Then I was away and holstering that gun.

How many there had been, I could not guess, but I surmised at least four. They had expected a complete surprise, but I was too much the wilderness man not to trust to my horse, and a good one he was, so I had been warned in time.

He seemed eager to run, so I let him have his head, and we went down the road at a good pace, the wind in my face and with the comforting knowledge that my two pistols were still loaded and ready if trouble came again.

After a bit I slowed to a canter, then a walk, then a canter again to let my horse have his tune in cooling down. There was no sign of pursuit, so they were not mounted men. When light was gray in the eastern sky, I saw the first of the outlying huts that preceded Santiago de la Vega.

Riding by the King's House and turning into an open, paved court, I stepped down before a small inn whose sign invited travelers. A black boy took my horse, and I tipped him a shilling and suggested he feed and water the black.

" 'Tis the horse of Master Legare," he said. "I know him well, and he knows me."

It was spacious and cool inside, evidently an older house, and there were several bare tables about, and a man came along to the table where I sat and brought a tankard of rum.

"Very well," I said, "but it is food I want, and the best. But not," I added, "too heavy." For I had seen that these Spanish men and what Frenchmen there were around ate too heavily for the climate. My father had learned this from Sakim, that to remain cool it is better not to eat too much meat and food of richness.

He brought me some slices of cold meat then and some boiled eggs as well as slices of melon and plantain. I only tasted the rum, and it was not bad, but strong for my taste and too heady for a man in my position. From here on I must have my head about me, for whatever had been done until now showed little evidence of the fine hand of either Pittingel or Bauer. They had been clumsy efforts at assassination and ambush, but now they would know better, and their efforts would be more devious.

Nonetheless, all I wished for now was to have the business completed and be on my way back to Carolina and my own mountains. The air was heavy, hot and still, with a suggestion of storm. Mopping the perspiration from my face, I looked out the window.

Had I visited here at any other time, I was sure I would have enjoyed this island of Jamaica, but there was no time to see more than the lush beauty of the place and some of the people. There was only time to think of keeping alive while I tried to end the trade that was ruining the lives of innocent girls. Slavery itself must end, although it was worldwide. At this time many Europeans were enslaved in North Africa and elsewhere. Africans were enslaved here, and slavery of one kind or another existed over much of the world. Even the poor of Europe lived lives but little different from those of slaves, and in many cases they were worse off. Slaves were at least fed and clothed by their masters, and the poor of Europe had no such care.

Finishing my meal and still alone in the room, I took time to recharge the saddle pistols that I had carried into the room in their scabbards, no unusual thing for travelers in that day and time.

The proprietor came in, glanced at the pistols. "You are a friend to Master Legare?"

"I am."

His manner warmed visibly. He was a stout man with a round, pinkish face and a fringe of red hair. "A good man," he said, "and a shrewd one, although his quiet manner leads some to misunderstand him."

"You know the pistols?"

He smiled. "And the horse. I saw you ride up." He glanced meaningly at the pistols. "There has been trouble?"

"The roads are unsafe everywhere," I commented. "It was nothing."

"There have been strangers about," he advised, "some of that scum from Port Royal, I think. You had best be on your guard."

"Aye," I got to my feet. "I shall be ready."

It was but six miles from Santiago de la Vega to the little cluster of huts and a fort that stood at the mouth of the Rio Cobre. "Leave the horse and the pistols with Senor Sandoval if you wish to ride there," the innkeeper advised. "I shall see them returned."

Dropping the guns into their scabbards, I mounted and turned the black horse down the trail toward Rio Cobre. Black people passed me, great bundles or baskets on their heads; most of them gave me greeting in their quiet voices. Several obviously knew the horse, and they looked from him to me, knowing I was a friend of Legare.

Where was Henry? For hours now I had seen nothing of him. A rider passed me going in the same direction. There was something familiar about his back and shoulders, yet nothing I could place. A moment later I heard horses behind me, and glancing back, saw two men riding together who were not over fifty yards behind.

Up ahead of me were several black people walking along the road with their bundles. A carriage coming toward me drew up and stopped, and a man got down from the driver's seat and went to the horses' heads and began adjusting something.

Glancing back, I saw that the two riders were now closer, not more than thirty yards back. The rider who had passed me had stopped and was talking to somebody in the waiting carriage.

It was a lonely stretch, yet by now we could be no more than three miles, perhaps a bit less, from the Rio Cobre. Then I noticed something else that I had not seen before. Just beyond the carriage two men sat beside the road sharing a bottle. A bundle lay on the bank beside one of them.

What was the matter with me? I was getting altogether too jumpy. I eased myself in the saddle, loosening one of the pistols a bit.

As I drew up to the carriage, the man standing beside it turned to look at me, and the man on the horse did, also. Both of them were smiling. The man on the horse gestured. "Something here to interest you, Captain."

"What?" I was startled and turned to look.

Diana! Diana Macklin, her face white and strained, and in the seat beside her, Joseph Pittingel.

"I thought you should see that we had her," he said, "before you die."

It was not a time for speech or for thinking, nor could I have thought fast enough. My heels slammed into the ribs of the black horse, and I leaped him straight at the rider, who was broadside to me, blocking the way.

My black was the larger horse and was driven by the leap; smashing into the other horse, it knocked it sprawling, its rider falling free. Turning the black on his hind legs, I grabbed at the door of the carriage, and it came open.

"Out! Out, Diana!"

Men were closing in. The two on the bank had leaped to their feet, but they had to come around the fallen horse, which was kicking and struggling. The man at the horse's head turned toward me, but I leaped the black at him, and springing back to avoid the lunge, he fell.

Diana had leaped from the carriage, leaving a part of her dress in Pittingel's frantically clutching hand. As I swung the horse once more, I dropped a hand to her, and she caught it, managing a toe in the stirrup as I swung her up. We leaped the horse past them, and I grabbed a pistol, firing at the first man before me. He staggered and went back; whether hit or not, I did not know.

Down the road before me were four men, spreading out now, obviously more of Pittingel's lot. I dropped the pistol into the holster and put the black up the bank. He went up, scrambling, barely reaching the top, then over and into the trees beyond. It was a wild tangle, no place to ride a horse, so we dropped from him and squirmed through the trees. I wished only to make the shore. We ran, fell, scrambled up, and ran again.

Behind us we heard shouts and curses, the loudest of them from Pittingel himself. "Get them, damn you!" he screamed. "Get them or I'll have you flayed!"

The jungle was thick. Underfoot there was mud. It was a tangle of creepers and vines. Turning at right angles, I led the way through what seemed to be an opening. I still held the remaining horse pistol, which was unfired. We moved quickly.

There was no chance to speak to Diana, only to escape if such we could do at all. Only my reflexes, trained by much trial and danger, had saved us, and now the moment was past, we had small chance. Even as we moved, I knew this. We were close to the water now. Suddenly we emerged upon a rocky, pebble-strewn shore. Beyond the bay lay Port Royal, and several fishermen's boats lay not far off, but to my wild waves they paid little attention.

Suddenly, far off, I glimpsed one. Surely that--I waved wildly. The boat seemed to fall still in the water, then turned abruptly toward us.

Waving, I gestured him on. Diana released my hand suddenly. "Kin, they are coming. It is too late."

Four men had come from the jungle, four men who immediately spread out and started for us. A dozen yards farther along another appeared and then another. My pistol came up, and they hesitated, then came on, and I threatened first one and then another with the pistol.

They were not fifteen yards away now, the closest of them. "Diana," I spoke softly, "you cannot help me, and your presence will make me protect two rather than just myself. Can you swim?"

"I can."

"Then swim out to him. Swim to the boat. It is Andrew, and I know him."

"All right."

She wasted no time in pleas or farewells but went down to the water's edge and stripped off her outer gown. Then she walked into the water.

There was a shout of rage from one of the men, and they started to run. Instantly I fired at the nearest. He threw up his arms and fell to the rocks. Throwing the pistol to make them dodge, I drew one of my own from my waistband. This they had not suspected, and they halted suddenly. They were close enough for me not to miss, and they knew it.

One of them drew a pistol, also. I suspected their orders had been to take us alive if possible but not to permit us to escape in any event. Behind me I could hear the chunking of the oar. I had two pistols of my own now that Legare's heavy horse pistols were gone, but I also had a sword.

Taking a step back on the slippery rocks, I drew the second pistol, holding one in either hand. The man with the pistol hesitated no longer but lifted his to take careful aim. That was all very well, but we who lived in the forest and must ever be ready for attack by the red men often had no time for such things. I shot from where my gun was held, and the man dropped his pistol and went to a knee. He started to grope for the fallen gun, and I fired again. Then, thrusting both guns back into my waistband, I drew my sword and backed into the water.

None of the others seemed to be armed with firearms. The water raised about me, and I heard a voice say, "Here, Captain, behind you."

The boat was there, and Diana, very wet, was already aboard. I climbed in over the gunwale and dropped to the bottom. Instantly Andrew pushed us away, and I sat up slowly.

"One shillin', suh," Andrew suggested, "I will need to have a shillin'."


Chapter XVI

And now suddenly all changed.

Legare came into the room as I ate breakfast, and Henry was with him. My gesture invited them to join us, and they did so. In many places in the islands the presence of a black at the table would not have been permitted, but in the pirate city of Port Royal there were no distinctions as to race.

"Adele has spoken to me of your need for some kind of a statement," he said. "She thought only of protecting my good name, but there is more at stake here, and despite her wish to protect me, my good name rests on no such shaky foundation. I married Adele, and she is my lady, and that is enough. If more is wanted, there is a field of honor where I can bring those who question my judgment.

"Now--" He drew from his pocket a rolled sheet of parchment. "A statement sworn to before a notary. This is her story. Names are named here, that of Joseph Pittingel among them. If you need more, I shall myself come to Cape Ann or Shawmut or wherever and make my statement."

"Thank you. I am sure this will be sufficient." At that moment there was a tap at the door. "You are in time to meet Diana Macklin, who was taken for the second time by Pittingel's men."

Opening the door, I admitted Diana and a maid I had hastily secured for her through the good offices of Augustus Jayne.

Legare bowed over her hand. "Adele has spoken of you," he said. "May I express my regrets for all that has happened? With the statement he now has, Kin Sackett may soon put an end to all this."

She turned quickly to me. "Please! Can we go home? My father was wounded when they took me, and I have no idea if he is alive or dead."

"We will go. My friend John Tilly will be in port tomorrow, returning from the outer islands. At least, so he has planned."

"You are sure you will not need me?" Legare asked.

"I think not," I said. "And I am sure Adele will."

He smiled quickly, shyly for a man who had proved to be so unexpectedly bold and swift in action. "She is my first and greatest happiness."

"And you?" I looked over at Henry. "You are among your people now. Will you stay here?"

He shook his head. "My place is with you if you will have me along. These people are of my race and my blood, but I have always been a man alone. I like the way you fight and the way you think. Mayhap our roads are the same."

"If you wish it," I agreed. He was a good man and a strong man, and wherever I would go, such would be needed.

Legare extended his hand. "Enough, then. They know me in Port Royal, and what you need, you may have if you will but speak. I cannot thank you enough."

When they were gone, and Diana and I were alone but for the maid, I said, "Have you eaten? I had just begun."

"I waited for you. I thought ... well, I thought you might not wish to eat alone."

I held a chair for her. "I hope," I said, "never to eat alone again."

Her face was faintly pink, and she looked up to meet my eyes, hers twinkling a little. "That might be taken as a proposal."

"I hope it is," I said seriously, "because I would not be very good at such a thing. I'm afraid I'd be clumsy. You see, I know very little of women. Ours is a lovely land but a lonely one and a hard one, and such a life leaves very little time for thinking of women or learning about them."

We sat long over breakfast and talked of many things, none of them important, I fear, but each one a means of learning about each other. Yet as we talked, I could not help but remember Joseph Pittingel and Max Bauer. They were both about, both free, and there was no authority in Port Royal to take exception to what they had done. I must be on my guard, for they must kill me to survive themselves, and they would now wish to kill Diana.

John Tilly might arrive within the next few hours, but much as Pittingel worried me, I had no wish to remain penned up in this room. Outside there was much to see in this wild, unruly, rich, and bloody town. And I had a wish to see it for myself.

There was much else to see, including the Walks, a well-known drive along some rocky cliffs that I had promised myself to see. Yet a worry lay upon me, for I knew that Max Bauer was somewhere about, and I knew only one or two of his men by sight.

Diana wished to do some shopping, and the maid Jayne had sent would accompany her. I must needs go to the waterfront to inquire after John Tilly and the Abigail.

The maid, whose name was Bett, had gone out and bought a few things for Diana. As she had served ladies before, she knew well enough what was needed, but Diana wished to choose clothes for herself, beyond her immediate needs.

While they prepared themselves for the shopping, I went down to the lower floor and looked out upon the street. It was crowded as usual, but I saw a tall, slim black man loitering near the door. He looked familiar, and I gestured to him. He had the look of a maroon, and I was sure he had been placed there by Henry.

He came into the room when I gestured to him. "Can you get two or three stout fellows to be around while Mistress Macklin goes among the shops? Our enemies are still about."

He smiled. "Henry speak to us, suh. They may go where they wish. We will be all about."

"Good! I have much to do along the shore."

He gave me a sidelong glance. "It is no good place to be, suh. It is bad-man place."

"I must go."

"Ships come, ships go. Who know what happen, suh? Sometimes man go. Never again see. You take short steps, suh."

Upon these streets all men wore arms, and I would not be without mine. To learn of the Abigail was my first wish, but I will not deny it was in my mind to see Port Royal with my own eyes, for this was ever my way, to see, to know, to learn. To go from place to place and taste the food and wine of the country, to look about, to see.

We who walk the woodland paths know that although all men look, not many see. It is not only to keep the eyes open but to see what is there and to understand. Jamestown I knew but little else. I had seen no towns, although my father and Jeremy talked much of London and Bristol, and Kane O'Hara was forever speaking of Dublin and Cork. This was the first town of my experience that was wider than a village.

When I had donned fresh garments, I looked upon myself in the glass and admitted myself pleased. Not with myself, for I was, as always, a tall, tanned young man with the wide shoulders hard work had earned for me and a shock of curly black hair. My face was wedge shaped, cheekbones high; my eyes were green. The outfit I wore fitted me well, and that was the important thing. I looked the gentleman without any of the flash and color of the pirates I'd seen. Not that I did not look upon their clothes with some envy but would have been embarrassed to wear the like myself.

Thinking of that, I chuckled at the thought of Yance. He would have outdone the flashiest of the pirates, for he was a lover of color in his clothes, although we'd little enough chance for anything of the kind, living as we did. I felt regret for him now. He'd have loved this wild, unruly, pirate town, its dark streets, its motley population, its crowds, tinkle of glasses and clink of coins, a town of blood, gold, gems, and lust, and all of it clad in silk and leather, often enough soiled, sometimes stained with blood, for the pirates I'd seen were rarely overclean.

It was a shouting, swearing, wine-guzzling, rum-swilling town with more powder than brains and every hand ready to grasp a blade. Murder was a small thing. A man might be stabbed and killed on a dance floor, and not a man would stop for his body, nor would the music cease to play. They'd merely dance around him. Every night bodies were found in the streets, and no man inquired whose they were or how they came to be there. It was every man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.

The black man who was one of those who would guard Diana was waiting at the door. He looked around at me. "Have you a knife?" he asked.

"I have a sword," I said, "and a pair of pistols when it comes to that."

"It is no place for either, although you may use them." From his waistband he drew a knife and scabbard. "Take this." I observed two more in that same waistband. "It is a good blade. At close quarters, in a dark place, it is better than a sword."

He handed it to me, and I tossed it up and caught it deftly by the hilt, wishing to get the feel of its weight and balance. It was a lovely thing, a two-edged blade and long, with a point like a needle.

"I am grateful," I said. "It is a lovely thing."

He flashed white teeth at me in a quick smile. "Ah, yes, suh! Lovely, indeed."

With the knife in my sash I went down the street to the waterfront where the long ships lay.

Sails furled, dripping a little from a quick shower, creaking as they rode the tide, fine, long, lovely ships, like things alive, made for speed and all lined with guns. I remembered the time long since when Yance and I had slipped aboard the pirate ship of Jonathan Delve, that old enemy of my father, and spiked his guns as the ship lay in the river at Jamestown.

The docks and beach, for many ships unloaded on the shore, were stacked with barrels and bales, mostly covered with spare sails or tarpaulins to shield them from the rain. Men moved among them, working, buying, selling, drinking. Here and there I paused to listen to idle talk, and having the gift of tongues, I recognized words in several languages. We at Shooting Creek in my father's time had men from all the world, Sakim, who spoke any language you might wish, and my father, who did a bit in several, and my mother, too, who had sailed with her father on his trading ship, sailed to India, the Malabar Coast, the Red Sea, and the far coast of Cathay. I knew a lot of words, few languages well, but the sense of many.

Yet all was not gold and excitement here. I noted a number of men missing legs or arms or hands, men with patches over an eye, with fingers missing, with faces twisted by scars. These were the casualties of piracy and the sea, those who did not go down to Davy Jones's locker or fiddler's green, who did not walk the plank or dance from a yardarm but who had been so maimed that they went no more to sea, although many an injured man did if he was a known gunner or the like. A good gunner was literally worth his weight in gold.

I stopped by one such, who sat on a bollard looking at the ships. "A fair evening to you," I said.

He was a stalwart, sun-browned man of forty-odd years, looking hard as a knot of oak but minus a leg and a hand. His eyes were glassy blue and uncomfortable to look upon, and I trusted him not even though he had but one hand.

"It may be," he said grimly. "I've no seen the bottom of a glass yet."

"You may see the bottom of several," I said, "if you've news of the Abigail."

"Ah? The Abigail, is it? I don't know your lay, nor can I make you out by the cut of your jib, but I'd say a canny man would have nothing for the Abigail. That's a cool lot aboard there."

"They are," I said, "and friends of mine. They are due to come into port, and I'd like to know when, for I am to sail with them."

"Sail? Aye, there's a good word! Once I swore I'd never off to sea again, but now that I cannot find a berth, I'd give an eye to be aboard a good ship now, with a prize in the offing. But they've no place for me." He held up the stump of an arm. "Look, man! Eleven year at sea and never more than a scratch or two, and then one ball from a Long Tom and flying wood, and I am torn to bits."

"You're lucky you made it," I replied. "Many do not."

"It depends on the view." He looked out over the water, then spat viciously into it. "I am a proud man, and one who worked hard and who fought well, damned well. Now all is gone and only to wait for dying."

"Nonsense!" I said irritably. "You've one hand and two eyes, and you look to have been a sharp man. Such a man should find something he can do, can make, can be. If you quit at this, it's because you've no guts in you."

He glared. "It is easy to talk. You're a whole man."

"Easy it is," I agreed, "but in your spot I'd not quit. There's always something."

From my pocket I took a gold coin. I showed it to him. "If I gave you a shilling," I said, "you'd buy a drink or several, but if I give you this, you could live a month on it if you did not drink. It will give you time to look about and use your head for something besides hanging those gold rings on."

"Who do you want killed?" he asked, glancing at the coin.

"I want an eye kept out for the Abigail and any report of her, and when it comes, take the word to Augustus Jayne. He will pass it to me. My name is Kin Sackett--"

"Sackett? Aye, I know that name! I knew a bloody tough man by the name once, a long time back. Saw him whip our skipper in the street. Whipped him well, he did, and easy as that. His name was Barnabas Sackett."

"My father," I said.

"Aye, you've the look of him, though taller, I think. Well, I should have sailed with him but didn't. The Abigail, is it? All right, I'll keep a weather eye out for her."

He reached a hand for the gold coin, and I slapped it in his palm. "I'd have done it for the shilling," he added. "I'm that hard up."

"I know you would have," I said, "but look about, see what you can find. There's many a berth ashore for a man who kens the sea. So find it."

So I walked away from him along the shore, and it was not until then that I realized it was almost dark. Shadows had found their way into the streets and lingered there, waiting the chance to rush out and engulf even the alongshore.

It was time I was getting back, but a sound of music drew me, and I went up the shore toward a place where the sailors were, and in the door I lingered, looking on at their gambling and carousing. A burly, bearded man grasped my arm. "Come! A drink! A glass of rum for old times' sake!"

"Old times?" I smiled at him. "What old times? I never saw you before."

His grin revealed a missing tooth. "So? Who cares? It is for old times we both have had, old times we should have had! Come! A drink?"

He thrust his way through the crowd, and amused, yet reluctant, I followed. It was a noisy, not unfriendly crowd, and many seemed to know him, for they shouted invitations at him. Resolutely he shook his head and went on until we found a table in a corner.

"Rum? It is a raw, bold drink. Not bad, either, if aged. But we will have something else, you and I, for I know you now whether you know me or not. I know you, lad, and it is a bit of the German you will have, a delicate wine from Moselle."

"You can get it here?"

He looked over his shoulder at me from under bushy brows, beginning to gray. "Aye, you can have that and whatever you wish. It's me whose standing for it, too, get that in your head."

It was a bare plank table, and the benches on either side were crudely made. It was a rough place, thrown roughly together for a rough trade. A big man brought a bottle to the table, but my host waved it away. "White wine from Moselle, a good wine, a delicate wine."

"For you," the waiter said grudgingly, "although we've little enough on hand."

When the waiter had gone, he looked across the table at me. For the first time I looked at him, to really see him. He would be thirty pounds heavier than me and four inches shorter, but little of the weight would be fat. His beard was dark and streaked with a bit of gray. His face was brown, wide and strong, with contemptuous, amused eyes, as if all he saw about him was ironically amusing. His hands were thick and powerful, hands that had done a lot of work and some fighting, too.

"Put it down that we're two ships that pass and show our flags and each goes on his way. I like the way you carry yourself, lad, and I'm not one to drink alone nor talk to myself, although God knows it is all there's been a time or two."

He looked at me sharply. "You're no seafaring man, although you could be. Are you here for long?"

"A day or two more," I said.

I'd chosen the seat in the corner, and he sat opposite, but neither had a back to the room, for we sat in a sort of corner off the main room.

"Where are you for, then?"

"Plymouth. It's a place on the coast of what was once part of Virginia. They be calling it New England now, or they are starting to."

"Aye, I know the place. A psalm-singing lot, isn't it?"

"That's the latecomers. The first ones were an easier folk." The wine bottle was cold and the wine nicely chilled. He filled my glass, then his. "Yet it is not my country. I live in the mountains in the west of Carolina."

He shrugged. "Names! I have heard them used but know nothing of the land. How do you live?"

"We hunt. There is much wild game. We plant crops. It is a wild, beautiful land."

"Savages?"

"Aye, if you wish to call them so. They have their own way of life, which is good for them. I could live it, although I should miss books."

"Ah! There speaks a man of my own heart! I sensed it in you." He lifted his glass. "You would not guess, but twenty-odd years ago I studied at Cambridge and was nearly always at the head of them all. I was destined for the church."

"What then?"

He shrugged again. "What? A woman. I was young, and she was older but not wiser. We were discovered together ... Nothing had happened, worse luck, for we were not believed, and her husband set some ruffians on me to kill me."

He finished his glass and filled it again. "I was alone when they came; but I was strong, and they believed me a harmless student, and I killed two of them with my blade and had to fly. And here, after more than twenty years, I am."

He looked at me across his glass, eyes twinkling with that same ironic amusement. "You should know my name. Or at least the one by which I am known. It is Rafe Bogardus."

"A good name. Mine is Kin Ring Sackett."

He smiled. "It is too bad, you know. You are a man I could like."

"Too bad?"

"Aye, and if I did not need the money, I'd not do it. I really wouldn't."

"Do what? I am afraid I do not know what you are talking about."

"No? You of all people should know, Kin Sackett, because you see, I have been paid to kill you."

I was astonished. "To kill me?"

"To kill you. Here ... tonight."


Chapter XVII

It was my turn to laugh. "Finish your wine," I said.

His eyes were cool, suddenly wary. "You think I shall be drunken?"

"Of course not! But you so obviously enjoy it, I think you should have your fill of it before you die."

The laughter went from his eyes, and he measured me coolly, carefully. "Sackett, it has been said that I am the greatest swordsman in Port Royal, perhaps the greatest in Europe."

"I do not doubt it, but you are not now in Europe, nor are all the great swordsmen in Port Royal. After all"--I gestured widely--"they are mostly rabble. They cut and slash. What do they know?"

"And in Carolina?"

"Swordsmen are rare. We live by the musket and pistol there."

"So?"

"We shall see. And a pity, too, for you are a rare companion, and I was looking forward to talking to you of books and writing men, of magicians and satyrs, of gods and heroes. You spoke of a family?"

He dismissed them with a gesture. "That is long ago. They have forgotten me."

"Then I shall not have to worry."

"Worry?" He was scowling now.

"About sending word to them that you are dead, nor disposing of your belongings--if you have any."

"You are a fool," he said irritably. "You speak like a child."

But half my glass was gone, so I lifted it to my lips, tasted the wine, and put the glass down, and I took my time. No doubt he was a superb swordsman. No doubt he was confident. There were few good swordsmen in Virginia, Carolina, or Plymouth in these days, for men who were swordsmen had not yet begun to come across the sea. There were fighting men like Capt. John Smith, only he had returned to England. No doubt Bogardus, if that was his name, felt sure of winning.

I had rarely fought with a sword, yet from earliest childhood my father had trained me as his father had trained him, and I had the added advantage of working as a boy with Jublain, Jeremy Ring, and, above all, with Sakim. Not only was the Moslem a superb swordsman, but his style was entirely different from that of Europe. Therein, I hoped, would lie my advantage, if such it was, for he would be unprepared, I hoped, for that style of fencing.

But that I must conceal at first. I must seem orthodox and careful, defending myself as best I could and allowing him to believe I was more clumsy than skillful, then suddenly to try a trick upon him unused in the West.

The difficulty might be that at some time he had served in the Moslem countries and knew all that I knew. It was a risk I must take. Even if he knew, he might not expect such moves from me.

"Do you do this sort of thing often?" I asked. "I mean, do you kill men for money?"

"Why else? I am not such a fool as to kill them for amusement or just to be killing. It is simply I have found it more restful than piracy and an easier means to a living. If it is conscience you are thinking of, I have none. Men enter the world to die. I merely expedite matters."

"Or have them expedited for you."

He shrugged. "So far I live."

"Shall we order something to eat? If you are to die, I would not have it said you were hungry when you went out."

We ordered a meal, and I sat back in my chair and looked at him. He seemed undisturbed, but this I did not believe, for I was accepting the situation with more ease than he could have expected. He had thought to surprise me, and he had, yet my recovery had been swift and complete, and I was much less disturbed than he must have expected.

Now I was proposing that we dine, and he must have been puzzled by my reaction.

"You see," I continued, "your comment that you intend to kill me can be nothing but mildly interesting. Since I was a child, those of my family have been constantly threatened with death. I was born on a buffalo robe in the heat of an Indian battle with a swordsman standing above my mother to defend her during her labor.

"Since that day I have never known one in which my life was not in danger. Naturally you cannot expect me to be alarmed by your statement that you intend to kill me. Actually it greatly simplifies matters."

He scowled at me. I expect he had believed his calm statement would frighten or alarm me, and my manner irritated him. "Simplifies? What do you mean by that?"

The wine was good. I was no judge of such things, lacking experience, but to me it tasted well. "It is obvious, I should think. Here I have been attacked a number of times and from all sides, unexpectedly and in numbers. Now I no longer have to concern myself with that. Now I know my attacker. I know where the attack will come from and by whom. It makes it very easy."

"You will die nonetheless."

I laughed. "Who can say? You know what you can do, and that is very helpful. You are no doubt skilled, or you would not have survived, but I, too, have survived, and I think in a harsher world than yours."

"We will fight with swords. It is my weapon."

"Shall we? If this is to be a duel, then I am the challenged party and have the choice of weapons."

He glared at me. "I have chosen the weapons. When I kill you, it will be with a sword."

Our food was served, but Rafe Bogardus seemed in no mood to talk. On the other hand, something had loosened my tongue, though normally I talked little. Now, here, I talked over much, perhaps because I could see that it got on his nerves.

"Have you ever fought Indians, Bogardus? They are remarkably good. Not so muscular as some of us but wiry and supple, very quick to move and deadly at close-in combat with tomahawk or knife. They have no discipline, fighting much as they will, each man on his own, so they are rarely a match for us in sustained combat, but for the sudden attack, the quick raid, they are remarkable."

"You talk too much." He stared at me with no liking. "It will be a pleasure to kill you."

Finishing my meal, I pushed back the trencher and emptied what remained of the wine. "Then let's have at it, shall we?" I believed I had him off balance a mite and meant to keep him so. "I have no more time to dally." I stood up abruptly and with a gesture swept the dishes into his lap. The crash made people look up, and he sprang to his feet cursing, but I slammed the table against him, pinning him to the wall. Reaching across with my left hand, I took him by the throat and smashed his head hard against the wall. "You talk of killing! Why, you paltry fool! I am inclined to--"

My sudden shoving of the heavy table against him had caught him unawares, and my left hand, powerful from much swinging of an axe, held him tight to the wall. With my right I drew my knife and held the point of it under his nostril. "I've a notion to let you have about four inches of this up your nose," I said, "but you're hardly worth it."

We had spectators then, a room full of them. I turned my head slightly. "He's been paid to kill me," I said conversationally, "and I don't think he can do it. I am going to turn him loose now, for, after all, he took the money, and he must make his try."

"Kill him," somebody said. "Have done with it. I know the man, and you'll never have him by the throat again."

"He shall have his chance to run or fight," I said, and I flicked his nostril only with the very point of the blade, but it drew blood, which trickled slowly down his lip and his chin. Then I stepped back and dropped the knife into its scabbard.

Rafe Bogardus shoved back the table. The way he moved showed the strength of the man. Surprisingly he was calm.

"All right, you have had your bit of amusement. Now I shall kill you."

"Like I said," the same voice said, "you should have killed him while you had him trapped. Never give them a second chance."

Men pulled back from us, and their women, too. The light had a reddish glow, and there were shadows beyond the tables and chairs. The room, despite its size, was crowded. The atmosphere was hot and close, smelling of the crowded, often unwashed bodies. There was also the smell of rum and tobacco smoke.

Bogardus drew his sword. He was very cool now, and had I ever doubted his ability, I could not do so at this moment, for he held himself with an absolute certainty, sure that he could make his kill.

He discarded his coat, and I did likewise. I drew my own blade with less confidence. The only fighting I had done with a sword had been in these past few days, and little enough that was. My father had been said to have been a swordsman of uncommon skill and the others, also. I had good teachers, but were they really that good?

What possible standard of comparison could I have? Grimly the thought came to mind. In the next few minutes I would know.

He saluted me. "Now, Sackett, you die!"

He lunged swiftly, and I parried his blade. I think it surprised him, for he may have planned to end it all with that first thrust.

He was more cautious then, discovering that I knew a little, at least. He began to fence, working toward me, pushing me back, deliberately testing me, and I had the good sense to be clumsy, or was it actually that I was awkward? What skill I had I must hold in keeping, and I must fend off his attacks while watching for my chance, nor must I appear to be defending myself with skill.

He was strong. I could feel it in his blade, and he had the delicate touch of the master. He lunged again, and a quick skip back was all that saved me. As it was, the point of his blade ripped my shirt. I heard a gasp from some onlooker, and someone else said, in the almost total silence, "Good, isn't he?"

Aye, he was good. I discovered that quickly enough and was hard put to defend myself, having no need to feign awkwardness with the speed and skill of his attack. Had it not been for the few fights of the past days, I might have failed, but often it takes little time to recall old skills, and I had fenced hour upon hour with my teachers.

The art of the sword had developed greatly in the past few years, but as in all such things, it had come to be highly stylized. The weapon was controlled largely with the fingers; the cuts were made with the first few inches of the blade. The endeavor was to make light, slicing cuts and not to overpower with great slashing cuts. He was swift, sure, and very strong. My own efforts were largely to stave off his attack, and somehow I managed it.

Sweat began to bead on my brow, but as I warmed, I felt the old skills returning. He was better than Jeremy Ring, I thought, perhaps as good as Jublain, but not, I believed, as good as my father had been. Sakim? Ah, Sakim was another sort of man, and his style of fencing was much different.

My style was not orthodox, and I could see that disturbed him while it gave him added confidence, for to him it meant only that I did not know what I was doing or knew it not well enough.

The room was hot, the air close. He pressed me hard, striving to work me into a corner, which would impair my movements, for my speed afoot had surprised him. He thrust; I parried and slid my blade along his. He leaped back just in time, or I might have knicked his wrist. He shot me a sudden sharp glance and made a cut to my cheek that I parried with difficulty. He kicked a small bench toward my feet, and as I sprang out of the way, he lunged, his sword point tearing my shirt at the waist.

We fought savagely then, all pretense thrown aside; it was thrust, parry, head and flank cuts, and he drew first blood with a sudden thrust to the head that opened a thin red cut on my cheek. An instant later, and his point found my ribs, just an inch below the heart but wide of it. He grinned wolfishly. "Soon!" he exclaimed. "Soon you shall be dead!"

He pressed hard, and I fell back, working desperately to ward off his continual attacks. He dropped his blade a little, an invitation I declined to accept, but instantly he moved in with a dazzling series of movements that had the spectators cheering. A thrust followed by cuts to the arm, right cheek, head, and chest. How I parried them I will never know, but as he drew back, momentarily overextended, I thrust suddenly and sharply for his throat. The thrust was high and a hair wide of the mark. It ripped the ruffle at his collar but merely scratched his neck.

He was dangerous, too dangerous. I was in serious trouble and knew it. The man was good, very good. He made a riposte to the head following a parry of my thrust. He was intent now, ready for the kill. Each fencer tends to favor certain moves, those that are easy for him, to the exclusion of others, and a skillful man with a blade will soon determine which of these his opponent is apt to use. Knowing this, I had deliberately been responding to certain moves of his with the accepted counter. Yet to continue to do so would be to let myself be killed, and the trap, if trap it was, could be used but once. His responses were quick and easy, and at any moment now, having learned what he believed I would do to each move of his, he must be ready.

So far I had been lucky. My face was streaming with perspiration. Twice he glanced at my eyes. Was he trying to find fear there? Believe me, there was enough of that, for the man was good, and it had been long since I had fenced enough to matter.

Around us men crowded, gold gleaming from their ears. One huge bearded man had a heavy gold necklace that must have come from looted Inca treasure. They watched, intent, and I was conscious of them only as a backdrop to what happened here. The gleaming blades, the movement in and out, the circling, the darting steel, as in some weird ballet of death where I was at once the participant and the observer. The tricks I knew seemed to find no place here, for the man left no chance. For all his strength, he moved lightly, easily, and with confidence. My arm would grow weary; my strength would go.

He was smiling now, his eyes bright with purpose. He feinted a head cut and then thrust at my ribs. My parry was quick, but I was too far from him for a good thrust at the body, so with a flick of the wrist I cut him along the inner sword arm with the back of the blade.

It sliced, and deep. I saw him wince, saw him start to step back, and attacked instantly. His parry was slow.

There was blood on his sleeve now. Somebody gasped and pointed. There was a splash of blood on the floor. I feinted for the head; he tried to parry, and I thrust hard for the ribs. He stepped back quickly, and I moved in.

He was a swordsman. Even now, his arm badly cut, he fought beautifully. Yet there was death in his face. I could see it, and he knew it. I feinted, held my thrust, then, on the instant, followed through. His parry was started too soon; my point slipped past it, and his recovery was slow. The blade slid ever so neatly along his ribs, through the hide and between the bones, and withdrew almost as if there had been nothing but a shadow there.

Bogardus missed a step, his whole side now stained with blood, red blood in a widening blotch on the side of his shirt.

My point lowered a little. "I have no wish to kill you."

"I am dead. Finish what you have begun."

"Have done. You have chosen a poor profession. If you live, choose another."

"I took money to kill you."

"Keep the money. You tried."

Taking up my coat with my left hand, I turned my back on him and went into the crowd, and with my naked blade still in my hand it opened before me.

When I was on the street again, I looked carefully about. This was no time to be careless, but of one thing I was sure. My sightseeing in Jamaica as well as my business were over.

Tomorrow I would find John Tilly, and tomorrow I would take Diana Macklin home.


Chapter XVIII

Strong blew the wind, dark the angry clouds, vivid the lightning. Upon the deck, near the mainmast shrouds I stood, one hand upon them to steady me, my eyes out upon the sea, its dark, huge waves lifting like great upthrusts of black glass, ragged along the breaking edge. My father had gone to sea in his time, but I had no love for it. He had bred a landsman, whether he preferred it or not.

There was a challenge in the storm, a magnificence in the power of the sea, and I rode the deck like a gull upon the wind and confessed inside me that while afraid, I was also drunk with it. Salt spray stung my face; my tongue licked it, tasted it, loved it. She put her bows down and took a great sea over them, and the water came thundering back, the decks awash, the scuppers sucking and gasping.

John Tilly came down upon the deck and stood beside me. " 'Tis a raw night, lad, a raw night! We be sailing north with the coast out yonder, and many a proud ship gone down in weather no worse than this!"

"I'll be glad when I'm ashore," I told him frankly. "I want my feet upon solid earth."

"Aye!" he said grimly. "So think we all. We think ofttimes in the night that once the storm is over and the storm gone, we will go ashore and stay there. We'll tell ourselves that in the night watches, but when the day has come, and our money is spent ashore, then we go seeking a berth again, and off to sea it is."

"I am a man of the hills and forest."

"It may be so. Your father made a good seafaring man, though, and belike you could do the same, given time. You are a strong one and active, and you've a cool head about you. I saw that ashore there."

"Ashore?"

"In the fight with Bogardus. Ah, lad, I feared for you! I've seen him with a blade before, but you had him bested--"

"My father taught me, and the others."

"It showed. I could see your father's hand there, but you've the greater reach and height. He never beat a better man than Bogardus. But you did not kill him."

"I have no wish to kill. A man's life is a precious thing, though he waste it. A life is greater than gold and better than all else, so who am I to take it unless need be?"

"He intended to take yours."

"He has not my thoughts, nor my wishes nor my desires, and if he lives, life may bring him wisdom. Who knows? It is a good thing to live, to walk out upon such a deck as this and feel the wind, to walk in the forest on a moonlit night or out upon some great plateau and look westward--"

"You, too?"

"What do you mean?"

"Ah, you are your father's son! He looked to the westward, too! To his far blue mountains. But was it the mountains? Or was it that something beyond? We need such men, lad, men who can look to the beyond, to ever strive for something out there beyond the stars. It is man's destiny, I think, to go forward, ever forward. We are of the breed, you and I, the breed who venture always toward what lies out there--westward, onward, everward."

We were silent then, riding the deck as it tipped and slanted. She was a good ship, even as she had been in my father's time, and she bore a good name.

"I wonder if I shall ever see her again?"

"Who, lad?"

"My mother. She went to England, you know, so that Noelle would not grow up in the forest among wild men. My father sorely missed her."

"Aye, he did that. But she was wise, lad, wiser than all, and you'll be proud of the lass when you see her. A fine lady she is, although but a girl yet, and Brian! What a gentleman! They tell me at the Inns of Court that he has a rare way with words."

"It is the Welsh in him. When did they not?"

"And Jeremy, lad? And Lila? Fare they well?"

"How else? Athough it be months since I have seen them. When I go south again, I shall go calling. Jeremy is a fine woodsman now and an owner of wide lands, and Lila serves no longer but is mistress of her own estate."

"What of the lass below there?" Tilly asked. "She has eyes for you, lad."

I felt wary and uncomfortable. "It may be. We have talked a bit."

"She's a fine lass, a brave, tall girl. You'd be wise to take her, lad, if that is the way you both feel. I deem there's been trouble behind you?"

"She comes from Cape Ann ... on the coast of what they are calling New England. They thought her a witch there, and she was twice taken by slavers, the last time through sheer vengeance, dropping down of a sudden, knocking her father about and carrying her off. It was Pittingel. He wished me to see her with him, for to kill is not enough. He wanted me to suffer in my mind as well."

"And now?"

"To her father again if he lives. What else will come we shall talk of then, but if I take her home with me, it is a far travel for a lass, far through woods and the places where savages are."

"She'll stand to it. There's a likely craft, lad, and one to sail any sea. You can see it in the clear eyes of her and the way she carries her head. Give me always a woman with pride, and pride of being a woman. She's such a one."

We talked then of ships and the sea and of the old ways of men upon the water, of how men measured the altitude of a star by the span of a wrist or a hand outstretched before them and how they guided themselves by the flight of birds, the fish they saw, and the way water curls around an island or a cape and shows itself as a special current in the sea. "Ferns will fly far out to sea and rest upon the water when they wish, but the herring gulls never get more than seventy-five or eighty miles from land, and at eventide they fly toward shore to roost. When you see them winging all one way toward evening, there's land there, son, land. It has saved many a seafaring man, knowing that. Men steered by the flight of birds and found their way by the stars for these thousand years or more."

At last I went to my bunk, but once stretched upon it, I lay long awake. Was Diana indeed the girl for me? Or was I, too, to have that westward feeling?

Jubal Sackett had it. Where was he? How far westward had he gone? Did he live yet, that brother of mine? Or did his body lie in the rich black earth beneath the trees out there near the great river of which he spoke?

We Sacketts wandered far upon the face of the world. Was there something in us truly that moved us ever westward? Did we fulfill some strange destiny? Some drive decreed by God, the wind or the tides that move across the world? Why Jubal, of us all? Why not Brian, who had gone again east? Yet I knew within me that Brian's way was westward, too. Knew? Was it the gift of which our father had spoken? The gift of second sight we sometimes had?

My father lay buried in the hills that he sought, but he died bravely there and no doubt rested well. The red men who killed him knew where his body lay, and sometimes they came there and left gifts of meat upon the grave, offerings to a brave man gone, a man who fought well and died well.

Where, in its time, would my body lie?

Westward, a voice told me, off to the westward.

So be it. Only that I lived well and strongly before that time came and left my sons to walk the trails my foot would never tread. For it is given that no man can do it all, that each must carry the future forward a few years and then pass the message on to him who follows.

There must be fine strong boys and goodly women to do what remained to be done, and Diana? Who else to be the mother of them? And the woman to walk beside me on the hills where the rhododendron grew?

Soon.

The dark shore lay off there, somewhere beyond the black wings of night; it lay there, that long white beach upon which I played as a boy. And somewhere, not far from here, was that place of which I had heard, that place upon the open sea where may lie the gates to another world. My father in his time had seen them, or was it a trick of the sun upon the sea? A mirage, perhaps? Who could know. For now we sailed off the Carolina coast. Bermuda lay off to the northeast.

When my eyes opened again, there was a shaft of sunlight falling across the deck, a shaft of sunlight that moved slowly and easily with a gentle roll of the ship. The storm had gone.

Rising from my bed, I looked out--a fair day and a fine breeze blowing.

John Tilly was on the quarterdeck when I went out to get a smell of the wind. He seemed preoccupied, so I asked no questions. Several times he glanced aloft as if expecting some signal from the lookout at the masthead.

A cabin boy came up the ladder to the quarterdeck. "The lady, maister," he said, "she asks if you would break fast wi' her?"

"I will be along at once." I turned to Tilly. "Captain? Will you join us?"

He threw me a quick, impatient glance. "No, eat without me. I shall be busy here."

Diana was at the table when I came into the cabin, and I had never seen her look more lovely. John Tilly had gone into his stores and found some captured clothing taken in one of the constant sea battles. Attacked by pirates, they had proved too stiff a foe and had taken the pirate ship as prize.

There was sunlight through the stern light, and we sat long over our food, talking of many things. The cabin boy served us chocolate, the drink from Mexico of which we had heard much. Yet even as we talked, I was disturbed by Tilly's manner. Usually the most gracious of men, he had been abrupt and obviously worried.

The weather was fine. Did he sense a change? And the lookout aloft? What would he--

An enemy ship? Pirates?

Joseph Pittingel had ships, several of them. And we had evidence enough of his hatred. Had that lookout seen something? Or had John Tilly himself?

When our meal was finished, I got up. "Diana, change into something--anything--I do not think our troubles are over."

She wasted no time asking for explanations. Too often in emergencies had I seen people who took the time to ask "Why" not live long enough to receive an answer.

As for myself, I went to my chest and took my two pistols and charged them anew. Then I laid out my sword and thrust a knife into my waistband. What was happening I knew not, but it was best to be prepared, to stand ready for whatever.

Off to the westward would be the Virginia or Maryland coast, how far I did not know and had best learn. Ours was a good vessel, manned by sturdy men, but the best vessel and the best men can meet their match.

When I appeared on deck, the lookout was talking to Captain Tilly. Avoiding them, I walked to the rail and looked all about. I was perfectly aware that the distance one can see from a ship's deck was limited indeed, not nearly so far as one would believe. At fifteen feet above the water I could see perhaps four and a half miles, and the lookout from the topmast could see no more than ten.

John Tilly left the lookout to return aloft and walked across the deck to me. He noted the arms. "You do well to go armed," he said quietly. "I believe we shall have trouble."

"The lookout has seen a ship?"

"No, and that worries me, for there was one close to us in the night."

"You are sure? What could have become of him?"

"Ah, that is what bothers me, Master Kin. What, indeed? And why? It lacked but an hour or so of dawn when I was awakened. I came on deck, and Tom Carboy--he is my mate--pointed out to me a black shadow of something against the sea. It was some distance off, and by the time I reached the deck, indistinct. I could not make her out, only that there was something.

"Carboy is a good, steady man. He had been watching ahead, for the gale was still blowing, although it had begun to ease somewhat, and some bad cross-seas were running. This is the devil's own stretch of water, you know, and there are currents that create a very mixed-up sea in some storms. He was alert to what happened, to see her ease into those big seas and not take them on the beam.

"He had his eyes glued to those big ones, and his helmsman was ready to meet them across the bow when he happened to turn around and look astern. It seemed it had been only minutes since he had done so, but there was a ship coming up, overhauling him rapidly, a ship without lights.

"He called me, but something must have alarmed the dark vessel because it seemed to fall back, and by the time I reached the deck, it could not be identified."

"I do not believe in ghost ships," I said, "although in these waters--"

"I do not believe in them, either. Yet why a ship showing no lights? Why did she fall back?"

"Where is she now?"

"My lookout can see nothing. Once, when he went aloft for the first time and just after daylight, he thought he glimpsed a topm'st."

"Then if it is a ship, she may be following us? Hanging back, over the horizon, waiting?"

"That is what I fear. She waits until the darkness of another night, then overtakes us for a sudden surprise attack."

"A pirate?"

"It may be, or your old friend Pittingel following you still. The Abigail is a good sailer and by most accounts a fast ship, but she is nowhere near as speedy as some of the pirate vessels. Joseph Pittingel has one--the Vestal--that is very fast."

Again I glanced astern. If she lay back there, twelve or thirteen miles off, she would need three hours to close in, perhaps four. Yet as soon as it became dark, she could begin to move closer, and we would not see her until she was just a short distance off, within cannon shot or nearly so. I liked it not and said so.

"Is there no way we can evade her? Sail toward shore, for example?"

He shrugged. "It might be, but we draw too close in, and we might get caught against a lee shore, and no sailor wishes to sail too close in because of the hazards."

We stood silent then, each busy with what thoughts he had. Suddenly the bright sea had become a menacing place where danger lurked just beyond the horizon.

"We shall try," Tilly said at last, "but 'tis a bad shore yonder, and many a fair ship has been trapped there. He would not fall back unless he was sure of his speed."

"Why did he not attack this morning?"

Tilly shrugged. "It was late. By the time he overtook us, day would be breaking, for as he moved toward us, we were moving away. His chance for surprise was gone."

Throughout the day we sailed, yet we did more. We cleared the deck for action and made ready the guns. She had fewer guns than in my father's time, for the weight of them deprived her of cargo.

Tilly kept a man aloft, but he saw nothing, reported nothing. Dusk came, and we made ready. Darkness came at last, and Tilly sent word forward to extinguish all lights. I went below. "Diana? Trouble comes. The light must go out."

"It is a bother," she protested. "I was remaking a dress." She put out the light and in the darkness said, "I shall fix the curtains, then mayhap a little light?"

"None," I warned her. "None at all. There is a dark ship yonder that will attack, we think, this night. We will move in toward shore, and anything may happen, so be ready."

She was silent for a long moment. "What shore is it, Kin? Where are we now?"

It irritated me that I had not thought to ask Tilly, for it was always important to have a location, and I could only surmise it was somewhere north of that coast of which I knew a little. Perhaps north of the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay.

After saying as much and warning her we might be in a boat erelong and to dress warmly, taking whatever she might need that could be easily carried, I went on deck.

It was cold and windy there. The sails pulled well, and we were tacking across the wind, working in toward shore, and well I knew how a mariner dreaded sailing along a shore at any tune, let alone at night. When landsmen write of such things, they always tell of the first mariners hugging the shore, which is utter nonsense and something no seaman in his right mind would do. The open sea has fewer dangers.

John Tilly loomed near me. "She's back there and closing in. I saw a mast draw a black thread across a star."

"It might have been a bird."

"Might have been, but it was not."

"Is not Maryland somewhere about here?" I asked.

"It is, and a coast of which I know little. Always along here I am well at sea and wanting only more sea room. Yet I hear there are islets and reefs, offshore winds. Who knows?"

No darker night had I seen and no blacker a sea. The wind held steady, and the Abigail was sailing well. I walked to the taffrail, standing over where Diana must be, and looked astern.

Nothing.

Only the night, only the darkness, only the wind and the sea. Occasionally a star showed among scudding clouds. And then, suddenly, she was there coming up alongside like a black ghost from a black and glassy sea. She was at our stern, her bowsprit dangerously near, and I saw a huge man with a black beard making ready to swing a grapnel. They would board us then.

He swung the grapnel, and I shot him. I never recalled drawing my pistol, only the flare of the gun and the startled look of the man as the ball took him in the chest. He fell forward, his grapnel going wild, and then she was alongide us, and her men were swarming over.

Somewhere I heard Tilly shout, and from our guns there was a belch of flame. I saw a section of bulwark go flying, heard a man scream, and then all was flames and fighting. I fired again, my second gun; it was knocked from my fist, and I smashed the man in the mouth and drew a knife, plunging it deep in his side.

Then I had a sword out, shifting the knife to the other hand, Italian style, and I went among them, cutting, slashing, thrusting. Men were all about me, and it was a wild corner of hell we were in.

A man went down beneath my feet grasping wildly at my legs, and I kicked free and fought clear of the mass. Tilly had rallied some of his men around him, and they were encircled by attackers. Yet the broadside had done its work, delayed though it had been, for flames were leaping up from fires aboard their ship, and I could see men dancing about fighting the fire that suddenly leaped to the sails, which went up in a great billow of flame like an explosion from a powder magazine.

Flaming bits of canvas fell, and one man, his clothing afire, leaped over into the dark, rolling sea. One glimpse I had of him, musket raised to fire when the sail caught and the flame leaped up at him like a great hand with a dozen fingers. I saw his eyes distended with horror, and then the flame was all about him, and he plunged from the topmast into the sea, screaming all the way.

Desperately I fought my way to the ladder and down it to the door that opened from the great cabin to the deck.

It swung wide, and I plunged through. A man opposed me, a man with rings in his ears and broken teeth, a man who swung a cutlass at my head. I parried the blow and went in with the dagger, and it took him in the ribs. His foul breath was an instant in my face, and then he slid down me to the deck, and I stepped over him into the cabin.

Diana stood there, her back to the bulkhead, tall, lovely, and perfectly still. Eyes wide, she faced a man whose back was to me, but I recognized him instantly. It was Joseph Pittingel.

"So now," he said to her, "I shall kill you!"

"First try to kill the man behind you," she told him coolly. "I think him too much for you."

"Such a paltry trick!" he sneered. "I think--"

Then something in her eyes did make him turn, and he reacted instantly. Foolishly I had expected him to speak, to warn, to threaten, to beg, I know not.

He lunged, sword in hand, and the blade might have taken my life but for the pistol I had thrust empty into my belt. The blade struck it, and before he could move again, my own blade had smashed his aside. He thrust wildly at me, eyes bulging with hatred and fury. My ringers turned the blade off mine, and I held my blade up and ready. He came at me again, then stopped suddenly, and turning his sword, raised it to slash sideways at Diana!

She stood, back to the bulkhead, nothing between her and the swinging sword edge. I struck swiftly up between arm and body, and my blade caught him only in time, cutting deep into the muscles that held arm to shoulder. His blade flew from his fingers, narrowly missing Diana, and fell with a clatter to the deck.

He turned on me, blood streaming down his half-severed arm.

Ignoring him, I held out my hand. "Diana? Shall we go now?"


Chapter XIX

We reached the deck, and Tilly was there and a half-dozen others he had rallied about him. The fighting was over, and a body rolled in the scuppers; another hung limply on a bulwark, and even as I looked it slid off the bulwark and lay sprawled upon the wet deck.

The black ship was blacker still and far down in the water, her decks awash. She lay there, a cable's length away, and we could see a few men about the deck.

"How is it, John?" I asked Tilly.

"Bad--bad," he said. "She's been hulled, I think, and will go down."

Our deck had an ugly feel to it, a heavy, sullen feel that I liked not "Will she make the shore?" I suggested. "If we could get some sail on her--?"

"Aye, I was thinkin' o' that. Would you take the chance? It would be safer than the boats, and at least we can have a go at it."

He started to give the orders, but the crew were already moving.

"What of them?" I asked.

He glanced toward the sinking Vestal, if that was indeed who she was. "They've the same chance we have, and they came looking for it. Let them bide."

Leaving Diana on the quarterdeck, I went along forward, picking things up and making her shipshape. The two bodies left on the deck were only that, the life gone from them, so I dumped both overside. I found a pistol upon the deck and thrust it behind my waistband. We were moving, and the man at the wheel had put the helm over.

We were taking on water, and it was a wild chance we took to make for the shore. What if we hung up on a sandbar off the coast? Yet there was a chance to save both crew and ship as well as the cargo, and the ship was the Abigail, almost a part of our family.

Yet she had a sullen feel to her, and I liked it not. "Stand by," I told Diana. "I must know where you are if the worst comes. We'll make the shore together."

"Or drown," she said.

"We'll make the shore," I said, "for I am wishful of taking you to my cabin in the mountains yonder, the far blue mountains, as my father called them. And we'll make it, too. I will need sons to seed the plains with men and build a country there, a place with homes."

She could carry but little sail, but we moved, and somewhere off to the westward was land, a lee shore but a shore. Once the canvas was set, there was little we could do except to wait. Slowly the remaining sailors came on deck, each with a small parcel of his belongings.

"Make the boat ready," Tilly suggested. "Store her with food and water, what bedding we will need, and arms as well as powder."

"You expect more trouble?" one of the men asked.

Tilly glanced at him. "To be prepared, that is the price of existence, lad. Help them pack the boat now."

He took the wheel himself as we neared shore. The sky was faintly gray behind us, but the dark, low line of the shore offered nothing, promised nothing.

Of the sinking Vestal, we saw nothing. It was likely she might sink where she was, but she might float as well, might float for some time.

Suddenly I bethought myself of Pittingel. The man was below in the cabin, whether dead or dying, I did not know. Yet when I went below, sword in hand, he was gone.

There was much blood upon the deck, and there was blood on the sill of the stern light. He had dropped into the sea, when or where I did not know, or even whether he had done so of choice or been dropped by somebody.

Gone. It made me uneasy to think he might still live. Yet he had been badly cut, if not fatally. That he had lost much blood was obvious, yet his disappearance left us with one less thing to worry about at the moment, and the moment was all important.

For me the shore loomed near and vastly to be desired, for as fine a seaman as my father may have been, I knew that I was not. In time I might have become one, but there was to be no such time if I could help it. My destiny lay in the mountains of my own homeland, and the shore yonder was the first step. Once ashore, I could go anywhere. At sea I was at best uncomfortable.

Fortune seemed to be with us now that our vessel was sinking beneath us, for the wind had lessened, and the waves were nothing to speak of. Slowly but steadily we moved toward the coast. Now we could hear the beat of it upon the long, sandy shore. It was a familiar sound, for it was upon such a barrier of sand that I had played as a child, on the Carolina sounds.

"There's enough sea to carry us in. She'll hit hard enough to wedge herself in the sand."

"It is my fault, John," I said. "Had I not come to you, none of this would have happened."

He brushed my comment away with a gesture. "Your father gave me this ship. Owned a piece of it, actually, although I never had a chance to give him his share. She's a good vessel, and I'd like to save her."

"We can try," I offered.

He considered that. He was a thoughtful, careful man, and to lose his ship hurt him hard. He eased her speed by taking in some canvas, not that she was making any speed to speak of, but he kept on just enough to give her a little help with the steering.

There were no toppling combers, no welcoming crowds, no fanfare of trumpets when we came in to the shore. The sea had quieted still more, and the dawn had turned the sand from dull gray to pale flesh color, and we came in easy like bobbing flotsam on the tide, and we bumped our bow into the sand and stayed there.

We had the boat over and got some men ashore, and with a sigh of relief, I was first to put a foot on land. On land I was my own man again, subject to no vagaries of wind or sea. Yonder was the forest, here was the shore, and both were matters I understood. Somewhere far off, beyond the sand and the trees, there would be mountains, the blue mountains of home.

We unloaded what we could on the shore and at my advice moved back into the forest's edge where we not only would have fuel but would be less easily seen and our numbers estimated. Then we got a line ashore tied about a buried log or "deadman."

The cook made a meal over a fire of my building. I loaded a musket and my two pistols, and leaving all close by the fire, I scouted a bit. We had landed on a narrow barrier island, but the mainland was but a short distance away. I found tracks of deer and glimpsed some wild turkeys but did not shoot. We had food enough for the time; and it was of no use to warn anyone who might be within hearing of our presence. I went back and sat on the sand with my back against a great driftwood log and watched the fire.

John Tilly and some of his men were going over the vessel.

"Hulled twice," Tilly said, "and she took on a bit of water, but if the weather holds, we can pump her out and float her again."

"I am a fair hand with working wood," I said, "and a better hand at what needs a strong back, so I'll stand a trick at the pumps."

We talked it over, weighing this and that in conversation as we ate. Nor would we wait until dawn, for who knew what might develop with the weather. "And the Vestal?" I said. "Do you think she sank?"

"I do, but Hans--he's a fo'c'sle hand--said he saw them get a boat or two free of her. So we'd best keep a sharp lookout."

"Aye." We could see the beach for a good stretch in either direction, but there were woods behind us. Yet I fancied myself in the woods and feared naught but an Indian.

"If they get her afloat again," Diana said, "what will you do?"

"Turn inland," I said. "It is a far piece to where my home lies and almost as far to Shooting Creek, but we'll be for it.

"John?" I spoke suddenly, remembering. "There's an island in a bay not far from here where a man named Claiborne has a station. He does a bit of trade, has a pinnace or two. You might sell him some of your cargo if all is not spoiled or trade for furs. He's a good man. Cantankerous but good."

"Aye. I know the name."

Several of the crew were already at work on the hull; others were already manning the pumps. Leaving Diana to get together what clothes she could, for Tilly had told her to take whatever she found that was useful, I went to the pumps. Any kind of physical work was always a pleasure. I was strong and enjoyed using my strength, and the pumps were a simple matter that left one time to think.

For hours we pumped, and the water flowed from the hull in a steady stream. By nightfall we had lowered the level considerably, and one of the holes in the hull had been repaired. Other men, while not busy at the pumps, went about repairing damage to lines and rigging that had been incurred during the brief fight.

We had lost four men: two had fallen over the side, and two had been struck down on deck. How many the Vestal lost we had no idea. Our sudden broadside as they came up to use their grappling irons had been totally unexpected.

The day remained quiet and the sea calm. The sunlight was bright, not too warm, and the work went forward swiftly. In the late afternoon I went ashore and gathered fuel for the night, taking the time to scout around while doing so. The long stretch of beach and shore was empty, nor could I see any smoke or sign of life to the shoreward.

None knew better than I that while thousands of square miles of land went unoccupied and unused except by the casual hunter, Indian war parties were constantly coming and going through the country. If we escaped a visit, we would be fortunate indeed.

Over the campfire we sat together. John Tilly spoke of floating his ship on the morrow, then asked of our plans.

"I am ashore," I said, "and it is my world. I think we will go inland from here."

"It is a long way." Tilly glanced at Diana. "Are you prepared for such a walk?"

"Where he goes, I shall go." She smiled. "I have walked much, Captain. At Cape Ann there were no horses nor carriages."

"There will be savages. You understand that?"

"I do."

Henry had come up close to the fire. I had seen but little of him these past days aboard ship, for he had stayed much by himself, leaving Diana and me to talk when we could. It was a thoughtfulness I appreciated.

He spoke now. "And if you wish, I shall go with you."

"We wish it, Henry," I said. "You will like my mountain country."

He shrugged. "I have no home now. There is no use returning across the sea, for much would have changed, and I have changed, also. If you will have my company, I will come with you."

"There is one thing that yet must be done, John. As you did for my father, so I would have you do for us."

He raised a quizzical eyebrow. "Marry you? Aye, I will do it, lad, and be glad. She's a fine lass."

Tom Carboy had also come up to the fire, leaving behind the work on the ship to drink a bowl of broth. "If the lass will have me, I would be glad to stand in her father's place, to give her away."

She looked up at him very seriously. "Tom, had I no father of my own, I'd be glad to claim you for mine. Would you stand for him?"

The old sailor looked around, suddenly shy. "I would, miss, I would indeed."

"Tomorrow, then?" Tilly suggested. "At the nooning, to give all a chance to make ready."

I went for a walk along the shore. Was this the right way for me? Something inside me said it was so, yet I did not know. I had small experience with women and knew little of their ways except what I had observed when Lila and my mother were about, to say nothing of Noelle, young though she was, and the wives of Kane O'Hara and some others whom I'd seen. Yet being a husband could be no more difficult than some other things I'd done.

The shore was quiet, with only the rustle of the surf along the sand and the mewing of the gulls. I sat on a driftwood log and watched the water roll in and saw the moon rise over the sea.

She would be well received amongst us, and Temperance, Yance's wife, was her old friend. It was a good thing, a very good thing.

The sky was cloudless. It would be a good day on the morrow, a good day. We would launch the Abigail again, with luck, and Diana and I would be married.

There was a faint sound in the sand behind me, and I came swiftly to my feet, taking two quick steps forward before turning, a hand on a pistol.

Three Indians stood there in the moonlight, their hands by their sides. Each carried a spear, each a bow and quiver of arrows slung over a shoulder.

The nearest one, a broad man with a deep chest, spoke. The tongue was familiar.

"You are Catawba?" I asked in his tongue.

Immediately they were excited, and all began to talk until the first man lifted a hand for silence. "You speak our words. How is this that you, a white man, speak to us in our tongue?"

"I have a friend," I said, "who was the friend of my father before I was born. His name was Wa-ga-su. Many Catawba have fought beside us."

"Wa-ga-su strong man, great warrior. I know."

"You are far from home," I said. "What can I do for you?"

"Eat," he said. "We are much hungry."

"Come," I said, "and walk beside me that they will know you for a friend."

Surely fortune was with me, for now we should have company on our long trek to Shooting Creek, for our way was also the way of the Catawba.


Chapter XX

The way of our return to the home of my people must be devious, for the Catawba had enemies, as did we. Yet I was told by the Catawba there had been no raids since the death of my father, that the Seneca bided their time. "They will come," he said, "for they will wish to know if the sons are as strong as the father."

"Let them rest beside their fires, in the lodges they have built," I said. "We wish to kill no more of them."

The Catawba added sticks to the small fire. "The old men know that times change, and they would be content with peace, but what of the young men who wish to test themselves? How better than against the sons of Barnabas?"

In the morning we would float the Abigail, and the Catawba would help. They were six strong young men, for although but three had come to the fire, three others had remained behind until it was known how they would be received. Had they known I was a son of Barnabas, they would all have come at once, for had not the Catawba always been the friend of the white man? And did not the sons of Barnabas know this?

"Many white men do not know the Catawba are friendly, and to them all Indians look alike, so be careful whom you approach."

The Catawba smiled cheerfully. "So we came to one man alone. If one man is unfriendly, he is easier to kill than many."

They looked at Diana. "She is your woman?"

"Tomorrow she becomes my woman. You have come in time."

"What do they say?" Diana asked.

My smile was wide when I told her the question and my answer. She flushed. "You have not asked me!"

"But I did ask!"

"Not when we would marry. It cannot be tomorrow. I am not ready."

"John Tilly," I explained, "is not only a ship's master but an ordained minister. As such, he married my mother and father, and he can marry us.

"Tomorrow we will float his ship. He cannot linger on this coast. It would be foolhardy to trust the weather another day, and as it is, he has been unbelievably fortunate. Only a little wind could pile sand up behind her so she might never be floated.

"I regret that we must hurry, but unless you wish to go into the forest traveling with a man and unmarried to him, then I think it would be wise if tomorrow was the day."

"Oh, you do, do you? Have you thought that I may have changed my mind?"

"If you have," I said, growing irritated, "now is the time. Captain Tilly will take you home. He is planning to stop by Shawmut, and he would be glad to take you there."

One of the Indians asked a question, and I replied. They stared at her with admiration and many grunts and exclamations. "What is that all about?" Diana demanded.

"They wanted to know how many blankets I traded for you."

"Blankets? For me?"

Chuckling, I told her, "I said I traded five muskets, one hundred pounds of lead, a keg of powder, and ten blankets for you."

"That's a lie!" she objected. "You have done noth--"

"Ssh!" I admonished. "What I told them is an enormous price. I told them you were the daughter of a great chief, a wise man, and that you were a wise woman, a plant woman, and a medicine woman. That makes you very important by their standards."

"And not by yours?"

"Of course! I wish them to respect you, and to do that I must speak a language they understand. Now they think of you as a princess."

Long before daylight we gathered on the beach to attempt the floating of the Abigail. She had been pumped free of the water she had taken on, and some of her cargo had been landed on the beach. The sand had not begun to pile up behind her, and with a line run out to a boat and twelve good men at the oars, we went to work. Yet it was midmorning before we worked her free of the sand and got her fairly afloat. And it was nearly dusk before her cargo was reshipped and she could set her sails. While she lay off the shore, Diana and I, standing upon the beach, were wed.

It was a scene I shall never forget. The long sweep of the glistening sands, the vast marches of the ocean nearby, the low stunted growth inland, and about us the small group of British sailors and Catawbas.

When all was over, John Tilly held out his hand to Diana, but she ignored it and kissed him lightly on the cheek. A moment we lingered, saying a few last words, with a last minute message from Diana to her father, whom we soon hoped to see, and then they shoved off and were taken aboard.

We waited only a moment longer to be certain she cleared, but her sails filled, and she bore away to the open sea. We walked inland then, going toward the place where the Catawbas had left their canoe, and only once did we look back. Only her topmasts were visible against the red afterglow of the sunset.

Diana was quiet, as well she might be. She had trusted herself to a man of whom she knew, after all, very little and to six Indians of whom she knew nothing.

Their canoe was large, a birch-bark canoe such as the Hurons make, far better than the heavier dugout canoes of the Iroquois. That it was a captured canoe, I had no doubt. The inland waters were calm, and we made good time, moving up a bay called the Sinepuxtent. The Catawbas, great wanderers and warriors, now wished to be home. We swept to the head of the bay, had a brief glimpse of the open sea again, and then moved across a wider bay and into the mouth of a river.

We made camp there under the loblolly pines and some scattered hardwoods, and one of the Catawbas killed a deer that had come down to the river to drink in the late dusk.

At daybreak we went up the river until it became so shallow we had to walk in the water and pull the canoe behind us. The river flowed from a swamp called the Pocomoke, and we crossed the swamp moving west and south, then up another stream, a long portage, and gradually we worked our way westward. We saw much game but few signs of Indians. Coming at last to a wide bay, we followed it down until we entered the mouth of another river.

Diana and I talked but little, and the Indians spoke only a word here and there, alert for all the sounds of the forest or swamp. From time to time I took my turn at the paddle, for I had long been familiar with canoe travel.

From the Abigail I had come well armed, with a musket, two pistols, powder, and ball. We had also brought a good stock of food from the ship so that little time would be lost in hunting.

Our first destination was the trading station of the man named Claiborne in the upper part of the bay, or so I had heard. This was the place where I had suggested Captain Tilly might sell or trade a part of his cargo, but I doubted that he had made such a decision, being eager to get on to the north and hence to Newfoundland.

At the Claiborne station I was sure I could obtain knowledge of what was happening in the country about and what supplies we might further require. The Catawbas knew of the station but had not been there.

Those first days, despite the swamp and its mosquitoes, had been idyllic. The weather was fair, the water smooth, and our progress steady. All about us the land gave evidence of fertility, but it was largely uninhabited. Several times we saw distant smoke, as from campfires or perhaps a village, and once, far off, we saw a canoe with three Indians. As we were the larger number, they shied off and vanished into an inlet on the eastern shore.

To deny such country to the impoverished of England was criminal, and when I thought of the crowded, sweaty, ragged people of the European cities of whom my father, Jeremy, and Kane had told me, I knew this must indeed be their promised land.

Surely the two peoples had much to learn from each other, yet even as I thought of this, I shrank from it, for I could see no common ground of meeting. The exchange of ideas and methods offered much, but I had dealt with Indians enough to know that our ways and theirs were poles apart. It would be no easy thing to bring them together.

We moved along at a goodly speed, slowing our pace as we neared the southern tip of Kent Island, wishing not to surprise them into hostilities, for they knew not who we were. On the shore we saw several men armed with muskets and with them a few Indians. I lifted a hand, waving to them, and we came on in, moving slowly so they might see who we were.

The fort, if such it might be called, sat back from the shore on a slight rise of ground. The great gate was closed; only a smaller door that would admit the passage of but one man at a time stood open.

A thickset man with a wide, florid face came down to the small-boat landing they had built into the water. He stared at us curiously, obviously surprised to see a white girl amongst us.

"Claiborne?" I asked.

"I am Deal Webster," the man said, "a trader here. William Claiborne is not here at the moment."

"We would trade," I said, "and buy supplies. I am Kin Ring Sackett, of Carolina, and this be my wife. She is newly from Cape Ann."

"Come ashore! Come ashore!" he said cheerfully. "You be welcome here, and seldom it is we have visitors." He glanced at the Catawbas. "I do not know your Indians."

"They be Catawbas, from Carolina, and friends to all white men."

"Ah? Yes, I have heard them spoken of. Fighting men, I hear."

"If need be," I replied cautiously, "but they come now in peace, escorting me to my home in the mountains."

I stepped ashore and offered my hand to Diana, who followed me, stepping easily to the small landing. The Catawbas drew their canoe up on the shore near the small pier, disdaining to even glance at the Indians who stood about. Those Indians needed no introduction to the Catawba, I knew, for their fame was wide.

Webster took us to a cabin built against the outer palisade and utilizing its logs for a back wall. It was a pleasant room, with a fire blazing on the wide hearth and a general air of comfort and well-being. Seated at a table, a servant brought us food, well-cooked venison and some pieces of fish of a kind I knew not. The bread was fresh and warm, and there was butter, real butter.

"We have two cows," he explained proudly, "and the only ones anywhere about. William Claiborne brought them in, and they do well upon the grass near the fort, yet we must keep them close, for there are Indians out there who would kill them for meat." He seated himself opposite us with a tankard of ale. "You wish to trade? I saw some furs--?"

"They belong to the Indians. I shall have to pay in gold," I said.

"Ah, well!" he smiled. "You will have no trouble in that respect! Gold is a rare thing." He looked at me carefully. "Know you Lord Baltimore?"

"I do not."

"We have trouble," Webster said. "William Claiborne recognizes only the government of Virginia, and Baltimore insists we sit upon his land and will have us out of here."

"I know nothing of such things," I said. "We live far from government and have our own, such as we need."

We talked long and ate well, and in the end bought what we needed of powder and shot as well as what food we would need for our travels.

"Inland there," Webster asked, "where you live. What do you there for powder and shot?"

"We make our own. There are lead mines in the mountains, and we have heard of others farther to the west. Our powder, too, we make. We have skilled men amongst us, and we have found deposits of iron ore as well."

"No gold?"

I shrugged. "Such a little it is scarcely worth the time, yet we hear of great mines of copper far to the north, and I suspect there is much wealth of which no man knows."

At daybreak we again were afloat; our canoe not proving sufficient for us, we had purchased another from Deal Webster, leaving four persons and what supplies we had purchased from Webster to each canoe.

Down the bay we went to the mouth of the Rappahannock. But on the first day we but crossed from Kent Point to the mainland shore and down to a wide bay where Webster had assured us there was much herring to be taken. We camped there near the mouth of a creek and gave up a day to fishing and smoking the fish.

Once, as we paddled offshore, nearing the mouth of a great river, we beheld a sail off to the east of us, some small craft sailing up the bay toward Kent Island. Yet it was far off, and we lay low in the water and against the shore, so they saw us not. Yet the sight of that sail left me uneasy, for there were all manner of men about, pirates and such, and many who walked a borderline between piracy and trading, ready to loot and kill where it could be done with safety to themselves.

It was with relief that we came to the mouth of the Rappahannock. Once upon the river, our days became idyllic. We had smoked fish and venison, we traded with some Indians for additional corn, and we had what supplies we brought from Kent and the Abigail.

We had only to be wary, for no man or woman traveled in safety where war parties roamed as they did upon these rivers. Yet we met none. Our days were spent moving up the river and to the mouth of the Rapidan and thence westward along that river.

From Wa-ga-su I had learned much of the Catawba tongue, and traveling with the six warriors, I soon learned more. Diana learned quickly. She had a quick, active intelligence and an interest in all things. Here and there she collected herbs that might be of use, and the Indians showed her others that they themselves used.

Reserved though she was, she had a natural, easy manner with all people and talked to these Indians as though they were her brothers. Most tribes, I knew, had a tradition among them of certain special women, endowed with unusual gifts of leadership or wisdom. Among the Cherokee these were usually referred to as the Beloved Woman, or some such term, and many times their prestige was such as to overrule the tribal council. I could see our Catawbas were accepting Diana in that way. Part of it was her quality of stillness and inner repose, for whatever happened, she maintained her poise. As the days went by, I began to see this girl I had married was even more than I had suspected and in every way.

Yet absorbed as I was in my bride, I began to see there was increased wariness on the part of our Catawbas. They spoke no word, but from time to time all would lift their paddles from the water and listen. One such time I took up my musket and looked to its charging.

"Is something wrong?" Diana whispered.

"Aye. Unless I mistake them, there is trouble about. We must be silent now."

They dipped their paddles more carefully, moving with deep, powerful strokes, and I looked carefully about, scanning the river itself, the trees, and even the occasional glimpse of the blue ridge of mountains that lay before us and toward which we moved.

The water itself held my attention, for many a floating object could speak of what lay before us. I saw nothing, heard nothing. If sixth sense I had, like my father before me, it was not in working order just then.

When it came my turn to take the paddle, the Catawbas shook their heads and gestured to the musket. They preferred me armed and ready with the musket than using a paddle I must put down before I could fire.

We had come, in these past days, higher and higher toward the blue distant mountains, just as blue now but no longer so distant. The current ran stronger, but the river had grown more narrow, and there had been times, for one or another reason, when we had to take the canoes from the water and carry them about some obstruction.

It was such a place to which we now came. Several large logs or trees had fallen into the water, blocking a part of the stream. Around the end of these logs the water rushed with tremendous force, far too strong a current for three men with paddles.

The Catawbas wasted no time in debate. He who was in the lead canoe promptly turned the canoe sharply to the left and into the mouth of a small creek. He led the way up the creek to where it widened in a sort of swamp. Taking the canoe in toward the shore, he gestured for all to land.

"No more canoe," one of them said to me. "We walk."

Swiftly the canoes were taken into the swamp and hidden by vines; others, including myself, worked to assort the goods we carried into packs, Diana taking a somewhat smaller one without hesitation.

One of the Catawbas slipped away into the woods, going back toward the Rapidan. The rest of us started out, walking swiftly along the flank of the mountain, taking a dun trail southward.

No attention was given to he who had left us, the Catawbas taking it for granted he would take care of himself and catch up when he could. It was apparent that he had gone to have a look down the river to see who, if anyone, might be following us. On that subject I had my own thoughts, private though they were. What Diana thought, I knew not, nor did I ask.

One name hung in the back of my mind, the name of a man who knew how to hate, a man who would not be frustrated, our enemy always.

Max Bauer.


Chapter XXI

We hastened on into the gathering dusk and at last came to a hollow among great trees where boulders lay about and there was a spring from which a small branch flowed. The place was shadowed and gloomy when we entered, and the fire we made was small, for hasty cooking. Among themselves the Catawbas muttered, and I knew from a word I caught it was of their brother they spoke.

"What is it?" Diana whispered.

"The other one has not come. They talk of it now."

She was silent. We ate then and put out the fire. About us the dark columns of the trees lost their shape in the shadows, and only overhead could we see the black fringe of leaves against the starlit sky. A wind stirred. In the aisles of the forest, leaves skittered, and cool was the wind from off the high ridges.

Three Catawbas slept, and two remained awake. After a time I, too, slept, yet for minutes only, awakening with eyes coming wide and ears stretched to hear the slightest sound.

At dawn we awakened, chewed on jerked venison, and moved swiftly away. There was no sign of him who had left us.

"He is dead," one said when I spoke of him. "If he has not come, he is dead."

"You wish to go back? We will go, also."

"No. There is another time. There is always another time."

We crossed over the mountains at Swift Run Gap and descended into a lovely valley beyond and turned south once more. Diana, although the hard travel left her tired, made no word of complaint, yet I was worried, fearing for her but hating to be driven by whoever it was who came behind us. If the young Catawba had been killed, the blood feud was mine as well as theirs, for he had been acting for us. It was all very well to say they would have come this way, and all might have happened, anyway, yet I liked it not. Had Diana not been with us, I would myself have turned back to see who our enemies were and to take toll of them.

Yet there was wariness in me, too, for if the Catawba had been killed, someone among them was a woodsman, and one skillful indeed. To hunt down and kill a Catawba warrior was no small thing; of course, even the best made mistakes.

We held close to the mountains, traveling in the forest when possible.

On the last morning I came upon a tree that I myself had blazed upon a trail my feet had often trod. "We will be home soon," I said to Diana, and she put her hand on mine, touching it lightly.

The trail opened upon a meadow where fresh-cut hay was stacked and beyond it a cornfield. Melons lay on the ground among the rows of corn. This would be a good harvest.

We saw the palisade before us, low upon its knoll near the creek. The gate stood open, and two men faced us, shading their eyes to see us. I lifted a hand, and there was an answering wave.

The first to reach me was Yance.

"Where you been, lad?" he asked, smiling. Glancing at Diana, his smile widened. "I told Temp you'd be bringin' a lass with you, but not who it was. She's been devilin' me for a name, but I haven't told her a thing!"

"There's somebody behind us, Yance. Somebody who wants us real bad. He's killed one of our Catawba friends, or must have."

"It is a bad time, Kin. Two of our men are down sick with chills and fever. Will they be many or few?"

"Few, I think, but not easy men."

He grinned widely, cheerfully. "When have they ever been easy? We were born to hard times and hard men, Kin, and I am thinking we are hard men ourselves." He glanced at the Catawbas. "Where did you come by them?"

So I told him as we walked, and he listened, nodding from time to time. He shook his head. "You took a long chance going to the islands, Kin. A long chance."

"White women are not so many, Yance, and they are noticed. Yet without Henry I could not have done it."

"He is a good man and welcome amongst us." He nodded toward the settlement. "They know you are coming, and they have prepared a feast for the prodigal."

"Me? A prodigal? It should be more likely you."

They were wailing for us, and Temperance ran forward when she saw Diana. "Oh, Di! You're my sister now! If I could have chosen, it would have been you."

"Come within," Lila said quietly. "There is food upon the table, and you be hungry folk."

My eyes went to her, this woman who had once served my mother and had married one of my father's best friends. The size of her never ceased to astonish me, for she was nearly as tall and broad as I, who am larger than most. There was a little gray in her hair now, and it pained me to see it. Yet she was older than my mother.

My mother, would I ever see her again? She was gone across the sea to England with Noelle and Brian, but I remembered her well.

Jeremy came up from the field, his hand hard from the work there but his smile as bright as ever. "It has been too long, lad. You must stay now."

This man had stood over me when I was being born during a battle with the Senecas, guarding my mother during her labor. He had been my father's friend and had left England with him, a down-at-heel gentleman, a wandering swordsman, and a farmer now but holding broad acres with excellent crops and a good trade in furs with friendly Indians.

"I have brought trouble," I said, and explained.

"The men are coming from the fields," Jeremy said.

They started within where the food was upon the table, but I lingered to look about. There was a place where some of the logs were blackened near the ground, a place where fire started by Indians had seared the logs before being put out. My father and his men had come into this country when no white man was nearer than the coast and had remained here until he went beyond the mountains scouting for fresh land. For this was our way, bred into us, and we knew it well, always to go beyond the mountains to open new lands.

Within all was bright and cheerful--sunlight through the windows upon burnished copper pots and the dull shine of pewter. The floors were spotless as always and the windows hung with curtains. Muskets stood in their racks near the walls, and the heavy shutters were thrown back now but could be drawn quickly shut.

A strongly built man with a shock of flaxen hair pushed back from the table. "I go to the wall," he said.

When he had gone, Jeremy said, "He is Schaumberg, a German. He heard of us and came looking, one man and his woman with a baby son. They came through the forest alone."

"He belongs here, then," I said. "He is a good man?"

"He works hard, and he is handy with tools. He seems to fear nothing."

"It is better," I replied, "to fear a little. One is cautious then."

"Aye, but he is a careful man."

One by one they slipped away to the walls, and when I looked again at the rack of muskets, it was half empty. I started to rise. "Sit you," Lila said. "There will be time enough when the fighting begins, if fighting there is to be."

She filled my glass again and stood across the table from me. "I like her. Does she have family?"

"A father. A good man. He should be amongst us. He would make a teacher," I added, "and we will need such."

We talked long then and of many things. Yance came in and sat beside us. When I asked about our enemies, he shrugged. "We have seen nothing, but they are there. A fawn was crossing our field where they always cross, and suddenly it turned sharp away and trotted back almost the way it came."

"If it is Max Bauer," I said, "he will want victory without cost. He will wait, or he will find a way."

I turned my head to Yance. "I want him," I said. "I want the man myself."

Yance shrugged. "Let it happen, Kin. If he comes my way or Jeremy's, so be it."

My hackles rose at the thought of him. There were few men I disliked, none that I hated but him. But this went beyond hate, for we were two male creatures of strength who saw in the other an enemy. No matter how we met, we should sooner or later have fought. It was in our natures, deeply laid, and he knew it as well as I. We ached to get together; we longed for the moment.

The man was a monster of cruelty, a savage man but cold and mean in his savagery. I had hated no Indian whom I fought. Warfare was their way of life, and they fought because it was their way. They were splendid men, most of them, and although they had slain my father, he himself would have felt no hatred for them. They were men, opposed to him but men, and warriors. They fought, but there was respect there, also.

It was not so with Max Bauer and myself. We must fight, and one must destroy the other, and each was aware.

Lila needed no urging to keep me from the walls, for it was in my mind that he would not attack. He would come, he would look, he would go all about us in the forest, and then he would try to find some way he could hurt or injure me or mine before he killed me. He was that sort of man, and he knew that death can be an end to suffering. He wanted me dead but only after I had suffered all a man can suffer. It was his advantage, perhaps, that he wished to kill and I did not. I wanted to fight him, to destroy what he was, to break him. I did not care about killing.

Jeremy came back and sat down opposite me. "Kin," he said, "since the death of your father, you are the accepted leader here, but we have troubles coming that you have not, perhaps, considered.

"The settlements along the Virginia coast are growing. People are moving into the Carolinas. This you know."

"I do."

"This land we occupy is ours only by right of settlement, which in the courts of England would be no right at all. Think you not that we should take steps to establish a claim to our land?"

"But how? My father dared make no such claim. He was flying from the queen's justice, a wanted man. Falsely charged though he was. We have held our land for many years now."

"Be wise, Kin. Explore the chances. Perhaps you might write to Brian? Or to Peter Tallis? Believe me, we can wait no longer."

What he said was, of course, true. Although I would not say anything of that to Jeremy, I had been worrying over just that very thing and worrying even more since I saw men moving out from Cape Ann and Plymouth, looking for land. The troubles of Claiborne over Kent Island had been explained to me, for although Claiborne had settled there, Lord Baltimore's grant took in all Claiborne occupied, and he might be thrown off at any time. So it could be with us.

I worried not for myself or for Yance. There was always the frontier for us. Yet my father had brought men with him, and those men held land because of his urging. Some of those men, Jeremy Ring included, had become well off from the trade and the produce of their land, yet they might lose the land itself if something was not done.

"I shall write to Peter Tallis," I said, "and to Brian as well."

There was a packet of letters awaiting me and a press of business that needed my attention, for our plantations had grown and their demands upon my time as well. Glancing over the receipts and payments, I could see our small colony was doing very well indeed, but soon it would come to the attention of the tax collectors and of His Majesty's officials, who were ever greedy for themselves as well as for the Crown.

In the months that I had been gone in the mountains as well as to Jamaica three shiploads of mast timbers had been sent down the river and loaded aboard sailing ships. Thirty-two bales of furs had been sent, seventy tons of potash, fourteen buffalo hides, twenty fine maple logs for the making of furniture.

Our enemies awaited us in the forest, but each thing in its time, and the time for our enemies would come when they attacked or made some move against us. In the meantime I would trust to Jeremy and those others and would be about my business here.

It had never been easy for me to write a letter. I was a man of the forest or of the plow. I could kill a deer for meat, fell a tree, or break ground for a field. I could hew timbers, build walls and houses, but a letter was a painstaking thing that required putting thoughts into words.

First I wrote to Peter Tallis. My father had told us much of him. From a booth in St. Paul's Walk where he dealt in information and all manner of things that could be done with inside information or knowledge of where lay the powers, he had become a wealthy and respected merchant. He was the middleman, the man to whom one could go if one wished to approach a minister or anyone in a position of power. If there was merchandise to be sold by some stranger or foreigner, Tallis was the man who could tell the best market, the best price. He was our friend in London, our agent as well.

Explaining our situation, of which he was no doubt aware, I also expressed my wish to establish legal title to our lands. Brian was in London, undoubtedly seeing Peter Tallis, and together they could develop a solution. That my father had been a fugitive from the queen's men posed a problem.

Next I wrote to Brian. As a student at the Inns of Court, he would understand better than I the legal complexities of our situation and those who depended upon us. Of Yance's marriage he knew. I now told him of mine. At the same time I told him of Legare and his need for a representative in London.

How strange are the fortunes of men! My father, a strong young man with ambition, had found on the Devil's Dyke a rotted wallet in which were several ancient gold coins. Their sale had given him his start in life and led to his coming to America. Yet they had also brought much trouble, for the queen's officers, inspired by his enemies, believed my father had found King John's treasure, the lost Crown jewels of England, among which there had been some old coins of gold. The find and the fact that my father lived in the fens not far from the Wash where the treasure had been lost was all that was needed. My father had been seized, questioned, and imprisoned. Despairing of making anyone believe his story, he had escaped from Newgate prison and fled to America.

Our plantations now did well. Our trade with Indians prospered. Each year more and more people came to America, and we knew a time would come when they would press hard upon us, so already Yance and I had gone beyond the mountains and had explored lands there, building our two cabins and planting crops where only Indians had been before. Or so we originally supposed. Now, from discoveries there, we knew that others had been before us.

My hand was tiring from the unfamiliar writing, so I placed the quill upon the table and sat back and stared off into nothing, thinking.

Our father was gone, killed by the Seneca along with his good friend Tom Watkins. My mother was in England with Brian and Noelle. And Jubal? What of Jubal, my strange, lonely, wandering brother?

For years now there had been no word of him. Each season I watched the trails, hoping he would come again to see us, if for a few days only. He was ever the lonely wanderer, ever the remote one, loving us all and being loved, yet a solitary man who loved the wild lands more. He had gone westward, and he had returned from time to time with tales of a great river out there, greater than any we knew, and of wide, fertile lands where there was much game. And then he had come no more.

Yance came to the door. "Kin? Better come to the wall. There's somebody out there with a white flag."


Chapter XXII

Outside the sun was warm and pleasant. It felt good to be back in buckskins and moccasins again. Pausing a moment, I took a long look around and about, and as far as I could see, we were ready. The men had come in from the fields, and those on the outlying farms would have closed up shutters and barred doors by now.

Since I was hoe handle high, I had been taught to be ready, and so with all of us. A body never knew when the Indians would be coming down upon us, especially the Senecas, who had selected us for their foes. I won't say enemies because we had nothing to fight about except to make war or protect ourselves. The Senecas lived a far piece away to the north, and it took them days to get where we were. As long as I could remember, they had been coming.

Mounting the ladder to the walk along the inside of the wall, I looked out over the palisade, and there was the white flag.

Turning, I looked at the back wall, but Jeremy Ring was there, and Jeremy wasn't about to be taken by surprise. There was always a chance that under cover of talk they would try to close in on us.

We had sickness amongst us, so we were short-handed on the walls, but there were six of us up there, and at the first shot the womenfolk would be out to reload for us, and we had two dozen spare muskets, all of which could be kept loaded and ready for use.

"If you wish to talk," I shouted, "come out in the open! But no more than one of you or we start shooting!"

What Bauer had in mind, I had no idea, but by this time he had scouted our position with care. Our fort was well situated, but scattered up the valley were a dozen other cabins occupied by members of our little colony, often enough by families. Each was prepared to defend itself, and each was built in such a way as to receive support from at least one other cabin. In other words, when attacking one cabin, the attackers must in most cases expose themselves to fire from another.

Yet I doubted if he had any true estimate of our strength, nor had I any of his. Whether he had a half-dozen men or many more I had no way of knowing. We ourselves must do some scouting.

It was Lashan who came forward.

He strode into the open and stood there, feet well apart, hands on hips. He wore a cutlass and a brace of pistols but carried a musket as well.

"You folks in there!" he called. "You give us Sackett and that Macklin girl and we won't burn you out. If you don't surrender them, we'll kill you, every one!"

"Diana Macklin is now my wife," I replied, "and we have no intention of surrendering anything. As for you, I would suggest you start back to the coast while you still have supplies enough to feed you."

No doubt he had brought his men along with a promise of loot and had never expected to face an established fortress surrounded by what would be to them a trackless wilderness. It seemed the odds were with us, yet I was wary. Max Bauer might hate me enough to follow and kill, but he was a canny man with an eye to enriching himself always.

Nor was an attack by him to be compared to an attack by Indians. Max Bauer would know something of siege warfare and might many times have attacked such positions as ours. Indians, on the other hand, had not learned how to attack fortified positions. No doubt time would change that. Clouds hung low around the Nantahala Mountains to the east, and the nearer slope of Chunky Gal Mountain was dark with foreboding.

"Going to storm," I commented idly to Yance.

"Threatenin'," he agreed. He shifted his musket. "What you reckon they'll do?"

Lashan was still there, standing in the same way, and somebody might have been talking to him from the trees. He called out sharply. "You got an hour. You best make the most of it."

"Stalling," I said. "They've something in mind."

It was very still. Then, back over the Nantahalas, I heard a mutter of thunder. Rains could be mighty sudden here, sometimes a regular cloudburst. They had better find shelter for themselves.

Bauer knew, of course, that I had not yet been to Shawmut or Plymouth with whatever evidence I had obtained. He also knew that once I put such evidence before the authorities there, such as they were, his profitable trade was ended. The trade in young white girls was a specialized trade, yet it involved no costly transportation across the ocean, only rare losses at sea, and top prices. No doubt some of his trade had been with the Indians for captives they had taken, but once the word was out, all ports would be closed to him, and he would be a fugitive.

My first intent had been to get Diana to a place of safety. The trip overland to Plymouth could be a fast one, and Samuel Maverick would put his influence behind the evidence I had. The bare fact that such things had happened was enough to destroy the chances of it happening again.

So Max Bauer, both for his own safety and the continuance of his lucrative trade, must eliminate me. Somehow or other he must lure me from the fort to be killed or destroy the fort itself with me inside.

Lightning flashed back over Chunky Gal Mountain, and thunder grumbled in the canyons. A few spatters of rain fell.

"They aren't likely to try anything now," Yance commented. "Get their powder wet."

"I was thinking about my cabin," I said, "and my corn crop. Be a while before we get back out that way."

"Likely." We were both huddling under the eaves of the blockhouse, watching the forest. "I've been thinking," Yance said, "of that long valley the Cherokees told us about. This here"--he covered the area with a gesture--"is all right, but that sounded mighty nice."

"That's the trouble, Yance. There will always be a place somewhere that sounds nice. Some of us should stay and build here."

He chuckled. "But not you an' me? Nor Jubal. Wonder where ol' Jube is about now? Yonder by his great river?"

The rain fell hard. "Get yourself something to eat, Yance. I'll stand watch."

The rain had drawn a veil over the Nantahalas and over Piney Top, and it was falling now on the Tusquitees and in the dark canyon of the Nantahala River where the Indians said they had killed the great horned serpent they called ulstitlu and taken the gem from between his eyes.

It was a deep, narrow, dark canyon where the sun reached only at midday. The Cherokees said that was the meaning of Nantahala, "the Land of the Noonday Sun."

Jeremy Ring came and stood beside me and watched the steel mesh of the rain.

"I miss your father," he said suddenly. "Barnabas has been gone for several years, but his stamp is upon everything. He was an extraordinary man."

"He made big tracks," I agreed.

"You will do as much, Kin. I have no doubt."

I told him about Jamaica then and of my fight with Bogardus. Swordsman that he was, he must have every detail, and we refought the battle, move by move. Yet as we talked, we scanned the edge of the forest all around.

"I must go again to Shawmut," I told him. "I must take the statement I have from Adele Legare as well as the letters I have written to Brian and to Peter Tallis. You are right. We must wait no longer about establishing a legal claim to our lands."

"We must consider alternatives, too," he said. "Although I should hate to give this up, it may be necessary."

"Aye, but there are lands to the westward. Good lands. Yance and I have seen them."

"The place you have now? Is that good?"

"It is not the best. It is too high up. It is only beautiful, with just a little corn land. Down below in the flat lands is where we must have land. The soil is rich and deep."

"Do not wait too long."

"It will be a hundred years before men get over there unless it is the French. Jubal saw Frenchmen over there, and they claim it all."

"Settlers?"

"Trappers and hunters like us. I do not think the Indians would let anyone settle. There has been much fighting there, and some parts of it they shy from. They say it is haunted ground."

After a while I went below to my own place, and Diana was there. The table was set, and she was standing before the fireplace, a long spoon in her hand.

"I wonder," I said, putting my hands on her shoulders, "how I was so lucky."

"You married a witch," she said, smiling.

"Why not? We did not have a witch. Every community should have one. I wish you would put a spell on Max Bauer and make him disappear."

She dished up a bowl of stew and put it before me. "Eat," she said. "I do not think he will wait until the storm is over."

"His powder will be wet."

"His blades will not, and if they are, it will not matter. Do not take him lightly, Kin."

She sat down across from me. "I worry about father."

"We will know soon. When this is over"--I gestured toward the outside where Bauer was--"we will go north and bring him down to join us."

We talked long while I waited for sounds from outside that did not come. At last I went again to the wall to allow Yance to eat.

The clouds were lowering, and there were occasional drizzles of rain. There was no sign of movement from the forest, and I expected none. He would wait. Perhaps Max Bauer had decided upon his course of action, but if he was the woodsman he seemed to be, he could live, at least for a while, on the forest around him. He would know that we had crops. We had much work to do outside, and we would weaken ourselves in scattering out to attend to it. Or so he hoped.

Yet the game would lie quiet while it rained, and to come upon anything worth hunting, he would have to startle it into movement. Nor would the immediate forest offer much. We knew that, for we now hunted far afield despite the fact that we had tried not to disturb the game close by, wanting to allow the deer to range freely until some emergency. Buffalo had become scarcer with each year in the areas east of the mountains.

Kane O'Hara came along the walk to me as soon as I returned. "I don't like it," he said irritably. "We've work to do. We're losing time."

"There's no help for it," I said. "He knows our situation, and he will use it. He wants us to become careless."

"We've fought too many Senecas for that."

"That worries me, too." I watched the woods as I spoke, my eyes straying along the tree front. "Suppose he manages to meet them and set up a joint attack?"

"What kind of a man is he?"

"Big, very strong, very tough, a good woodsman, and a shrewd, dangerous man. He wants me and he wants Diana, but he wants all we have here that is portable. By this time he knows our strength, and he knows we've done a lot of trapping. He will know we have bales of furs here, and we have women."

Kane stared gloomily over the wall. "This looks like our best crop," he commented. "It should not be neglected now."

After a pause, he asked, "How's that country out west? Where you and Yance have located?"

"Beautiful, but the soil is average. We could do better down in the bottoms, but you know how it is with Yance an' me. We like to be high up and where there's game. In the bottoms along the creeks there are meadows where the grass grows knee-high to a man on horseback."

"I'd like to see that," Kane said enviously. "How far does it go, Kin? Is there no end to it?"

"There's always an end. At the Pacific sea, more'n likely."

It was very still. The rumbling of thunder was occasional but distant. The rain had become a fine, soft rain, and the air smelled fresh and cool. In the forest no leaf moved, nor was there a sound or any sign of smoke unless a faint blueness in the air to the eastward might be smoke.

A stealthy attack by night was likely when some of my men must sleep. No more than two could be on the walls at once and must not follow prescribed patrols but must be careful to set no pattern Bauer might recognize. Yet there was no way we could, with only two men, keep a proper watch. Fortresses and walls have forever distressed me. I am not inclined to defense, for it is better to be the attacker. We had women, children, and goods to defend, so we had no choice, yet I would have preferred being out there in the forest.

The thought held my attention. What was it father had advised? "Attack, always attack. Whether you have one man or fifty, there is always a way of attacking. No matter how many his men, the enemy must be attacked."

Of course. But how?

"Tonight," I said, "I may go into the forest."

"Aye," O'Hara agreed. "It has been on my mind, but we can ill afford to lose a man, and especially you."

The crops could not wait, nor could my letters to Peter Tallis and Brian, for the more I considered our situation, the more it disturbed me. Our approximate location was known to some in Jamestown, although none of them had been so far inland. They also knew we were shipping bales of furs; occasionally gems were sold by us, and we were self-sufficient. It could be no more than a matter of a short time until settlers came around us, and some one of them might have the power to get a grant from the queen, even of our lands. We had no legal right to them, only that of first settlement and occupation.

It was the experience of William Claiborne that came to haunt me, too. He held lands, traded in furs, and was doing very well until Lord Baltimore's grant took in even the island on which he resided.

Kane walked on around the wall, and Diana came from the house bringing fresh coffee. It tasted good, and we stood together under the eaves.

"I have brought trouble upon you," she said. "Were it not for me--"

"I will not have it," I said. "You have no reason for blame. What happened has happened. Now we must do what we can."

We walked along the wall together and from time to time stopped to study the forest out there. Since I was a small boy, I had watched that forest for enemies or for game, and I knew its every mood and shading, how the sunlight fell through the leaves and where the shadows gathered. It held no mysteries for me but much of memory. I had played there as a child with Yance, Jubal, and Brian, later with Noelle. We had climbed its trees, picked berries there, and played hide-and-seek under its branches.

My father had ever been a pillar of security. He was always there, ever kind, ever considerate, always strong. He had a temper, and I had seen it from time to time, but we all relied on him, not only we children but the adults as well.

Now it must be I who was strong. I must be the one to hold our little community together, to provide reassurance. That was why I could no longer wait for an attack, for Bauer was too shrewd a man. He would contrive some ruse, some stratagem, some trick.

"Never let an enemy get set," my father had said. "Attack, worry, keep him off balance. Never let him move from a secure position or give him time to move his pieces on the chessboard."

It was never a part of my thinking to shelter women from the truth. I had learned from my father to trust their judgment. "Tonight," I told Diana, "I am going out there."

"But what can you do?"

"I won't know until I see, but I must do something."

"What about Yance?"

"Yes." I knew what she meant. "Yance might be better than I. He is very wily. But the responsibility is mine. For whatever reason they are here, it was I whom they followed. Although he is attacking all of us, he is my enemy, and it must be up to me to do something about it."

"But what can one man do?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "I must just go out there and see."

Oddly enough, I wanted to go. Lurking behind walls was uncomfortable for me, for I was a man of the forest and the mountains. To let an enemy have the time to choose when and how he would attack had never been my way, and now that I had resolved to go out there, I was enormously relieved.

"You'd better rest, then," she said. "I'll get Yance."

She went down the ladder, and I waited while the rain softly fell; under the low clouds the forest was a darker, deeper green, a richer green.

There was no way to plan for what lay before me; only when I was out there and found their camp could I decide what would be best to do. Out there in the forest at night, yet it was a forest I knew well from the slopes of Chunky Gal and the Nantahalas to Piney Top and the Tusquitees, from Compass Creek to the Gap and Muskrat Branch. And even far beyond from the Chilowees to the Blue Ridge I had roamed and hunted, fished the streams, and lived off the fruit of the land.

I had fought the Senecas there, too, the warriors of the northern lands, the snakelike, wily, crafty, and very brave Senecas.

Tonight I would go.

Tonight.


Chapter XXIII

Then the rain fell no longer, but the forest dripped. Heavy were the leaves with rain, soft the grass beneath the moccasins. The narrow door opened; wraithlike, I slipped through and stood against the wall. Silent in the darkness, listening.

Black and still was the night. Water dripped from the branches, and I crossed the open acres about the fort and went into the trees. Among them, my body close along a slim dark tree, I waited again and listened. I did not know where lay their camp, but this night I thought they would have a fire, burning low now.

Only slightly blew the wind, a baby's breath of wind, but I moved across it, my nostrils ready for the slightest smell of smoke.

Nothing.

How many watched the fort? Or had they all withdrawn to rest? My hand felt for a leaf, which was wet, and I put the wet fingers to my nose, for a wet nose smells better. A smell of rotting vegetation, for I was near the bank of a creek where there was a bit of marshy ground.

The tree beside which I stood was a chestnut. My touch upon the bark told me that, but this mountainside, as all through the hills, was covered with a variety of trees: chestnut, oaks of several kinds, tulip trees, red maple, sourwood, and many others. Some I knew by the smell, all by the touch. Careful to make no sound, I worked my way into the forest, working my way deeper and swinging in a rough half circle, always alert for that telltale whiff of smoke.

It did not come.

Before me the forest thinned. Only a few yards farther was the trail that led along the west side of Piney Top to Tusquitee Creek. Pausing, I listened. My ears heard nothing; my nostrils found no smell of smoke, only the faint sweetish smell of crushed magnolia, not unusual, for there were many about, and their leaves often fell and were crushed underfoot. None of our people had been out, however.

It was probably nothing. I waited, and then I heard faint stirrings. How far off? Carefully I worked my way through the forest. The sounds had ceased. Ahead of me was thick brush. Wary, I avoided it.

With the rain, wild animals and most birds had taken shelter, so I could rely upon none of them to give me warning of a foreign presence. Yet as boys we had been taught by the Catawba to develop our sixth sense and to be always aware. We would take turns at staring at one of us until he turned suddenly, becoming aware of our attention. By continual practice we had become as sensitive to this as any wild animal.

Often our father, when in the woods with us, would suddenly stop and ask that we describe some area just passed or the tracks of animals or insects we had just glimpsed in the dust of the track. With time our awareness had grown until we missed very little.

In the wilderness attention to detail was the price of survival.

Abruptly I paused. A faint smell of wet buckskins and wood smoke. I held perfectly still, then turned my head this way and that to hear the better and to catch any vague smells. Primitive man, I suspected, used his nostrils quite as much as his eye or ear, but civilization, with its multitude of odors, soon distracts the attention until the brain no longer registers them on the awareness. It was different living in the wilds.

Careful to permit no leaves to brush my shoulders, I worked my way through the brush and trees, pausing often to listen. It was a murmur of voices I heard and then the stronger smell of wood smoke; a moment later, the glimpse of fire.

At that moment I stood very still, alert to every sound. Now I was close. I had found them, but what was to be my next move, I did not know. At least one of them, Max Bauer himself, was a skilled woodsman, not to be trifled with. I wanted to see, to hear, to estimate their numbers, but not to be heard myself.

After a moment I edged closer, not over a few feet, and could see into their camp. I took care not to look directly at Bauer, although I could see him, or at Lashan, who was lying at one side.

"Not at daybreak," Bauer was saying. "Indians often attack then, but after daybreak when they have decided there will be no attack and they have relaxed. Some will be eating, some will be beginning their day's work. Not more than one, probably, on the walls. Lashan, you are good with a lance. Can you get that guard for me? Kill him instantly?"

"I can. At thirty feet, which is the closest I can get, it will be easy."

"Then kill him. I want him dead. If we cannot strike when the gate is open, we will go over the walls. Toss loops over the tops of the poles, and up you go, but I want at least a dozen men going up at once. The surprise will be complete. No looting and no women until every man is dead, you understand? Any man who does otherwise answers to me."

Lashan suddenly got to his feet. "Max? There's somebody out there!"

Turning swiftly, I slid through the brush and hit a path on the run. So far I thought I had made no sound, but behind me I heard a shout.

"All of you! Out there! Get him! Alive, if you can, but get him!"

Down the path I fled, knowing not where it led except that the general direction was toward Compass Creek. Turning from the path, I slid through a gap in the trees and ran desperately. Pulling up sharply, I heard a rustliing in the brush before me. Turning, I ran on, but slower, not knowing where to next expect an enemy.

A narrow, natural avenue through the trees opened. The clouds had broken, and there was a faint light. Dimly I could see, and I plunged on. If they took me now, it meant not only death but that they would use me, somehow, to force an opening of the gates.

Turning sharply right, I ran up a track that ran along a creek bed. The Tusquitee, I thought. The sky had clouded over again. Turning again, I started up a steep, rocky slope. I was hurrying, wanting to get back, to warn them of the impending attack. I saw an opening and plunged into it. Suddenly there was a sickening feeling of collapsing earth; a bank gave way, and I fell.

A sickening sense of failure and fear. I brought up with a terrific jolt, my skull rapped a rock, and that was all.

A groan, and a groan stifled. A feeling of chill, a sense of being wet, and a dull throbbing in my skull. My eyes opened on a gray world, low gray clouds, a grayish-black bank of mud rising above me and the crumbled edge over which I had fallen. It was not much of a fall, and I had landed in soft earth and water at the creek's edge. If only my skull had not rapped against that rock.

Heaving myself to a sitting position, I sat there while my head buzzed. It was daylight. What hour I knew not. Our enemies had not found me, or I should be either dead or a prisoner.

Shakily I got to my feet. The trail where I had been running was obviously long unused and had been undercut by the creek at high water. My head ached frightfully, and my neck was stiff. One knee had been bruised, also.

Looking around, I judged that the creek beside which I had fallen lay somewhere on the north slope of Piney Top, and to get back to the fort by the quickest route would be over the top of the ridge, roughly a climb of some two thousand feet, the last thousand feet very steep indeed.

Carefully I looked all around. The place where I had fallen was a small creek bed littered with stones and logs and scattered debris from the mountains above. The creek was only a couple of feet wide, a few inches deep. It was thickly walled with timber and brush right to the edge of the bank, and the mountain rose abruptly just beyond a curve in the stream bed.

There was no sound but that of a mockingbird singing in a tree a short distance off. I turned and started toward the mountain and almost fell. My knee was hurt worse than I had believed. My eyes swept the ground for a stick to be used for help in walking. Seeing nothing of the right sort, I staggered on, rounding the bend to find a broken branch about six feet long and an inch to two inches thick lying at the stream's edge. Taking it, I started on.

It was slow going. My head throbbed at every step, and my knee was stiff. It hurt when I walked, but there was no help for it.

Was I too late? Had Bauer made his attack? In an agony of fear, I pushed on, working my way through the laurel and up the slope. It was slow, painful work, with my leg so stiff it was awkward to walk. Yet at last I came to a low saddle with Piney Top on my right.

Grasping a branch for support, I stared through the leaves at the valley of Shooting Creek. The fort was still there. Slow smoke rose from its chimneys, and all was still. From where I stood, no scene could have seemed more peaceful with the slow smoke rising and the sound of the creek stilled by distance. The fields lay easy under the sun, an island of cultivation in the vastness of the wilderness around.

Nothing yet. Or had it all been done? Had the fort been taken, our people slain? I could not believe it. Surely there would be some sign, some evidence of it, and there was none; But I was still far away, at least two miles in crow-flight distance but more than three miles on the ground and the way I must go. Not less than an hour, perhaps more.

Painfully I hobbled on, seeking the best route down the mountain. My knee had swollen, binding my pant leg as it stretched the buckskin.

To return was all I now thought. My venture had been for nothing. I had hoped to find some way, some means for creating havoc among them. I had done nothing but get myself hurt, and the news that they meant to attack would come too late to be of help now.

The mountainside was steep and the forest thick. It was at least two thousand feet of descent, but carefully I eased through the laurel and stopped under a huge old maple, lightning struck in some bygone time. Listening, I heard nothing. Soon the noise of the creek would make it doubly hard, for they did not call it Shooting Creek for nothing.

There was much fallen wood here, dead branches from the tree, and some great slabs of bark. A signal fire? It would only serve to let Bauer and his crew know where I was, and my own people might misread the signal and think me in trouble. They might try to reach me and so expose more of our strength to disaster.

What I did I had to do alone. And I had to trust to Yance and Jeremy, to Kane O'Hara and the others, to keep the fort. My task now was somehow to get down the mountain and into the fort.

Ferns grew waist high about me, and there was a tangle underfoot that I managed badly with my game leg. The continued silence from below worried me. There was no sound, no shot. Nothing.

What could have happened? When I stopped again, it was in a clump of yellow birches growing around an outcropping of rock. Sitting down on a rock, I took my knife and cut a thin slit in my legging to ease the swelling and constriction. It helped.

Wary, I studied the mountainside below me and tried to see into the trees beyond the creek, but I saw nothing. A wood thrush skimmed past me and lighted on a branch almost over my head, regarding me with curiosity.

The clouds seemed to have broken, and here and there sunlight streamed through. Rising, I started again to limp my way through the forest. My move to somehow attack Bauer and his men had come to nothing, and I would be lucky to get back alive, all because of that fall into the gully.

Already the day was fading, and with darkness my chances of getting to the fort were greater, my chances of getting in much less. My fears grew. What had happened?

So far as I could see, and my vantage point permitted me to see into the enclosure, I saw no movement either in the yard or on the walls. Yet at the distance it was unlikely I could make out the figure of a man unless he was moving, and then only the movement would be visible.

Taking up my staff, I worked my way down the slope, traveling diagonally along it through the timber and brush. By the time I neared the bottom, shadows were long in the narrow valley.

Our fort lay no more than three hundred yards away now and scarcely half that distance from the edge of the trees, yet that was where Bauer's men would be if they had not begun their attack.

My leg throbbed, as did my head, although that ache had dulled as the day went by. Yet even my leg had loosened up some due to the constant movement and the release of constriction by slitting my legging.

Longingly I looked toward the fort. There were no lights. I told myself it was too early, yet it would be dark in the cabins, and there should be lights if anyone were alive to light them.

The valley around the fort was empty. Nothing stirred, nor was there any suggestion of movement.

Now was a time when I could use the help of the Nunnehi, the immortals that dwell beneath the mountains and rivers of this strange, wild land. The Cherokees spoke of them, whispered of them rather, with many a glance over the shoulder and into the shadows, for none knew when they might be about.

Suppose the fort had been deserted? That Yance had led the others into the forest? Yet that made no sense, as we had too much at stake in that small fort, all our families; our stored grain, jerked meat, whatever we had gained by our hard years on the frontier, were there or in the scattered cabins.

Yance was a shrewd one. Deliberately he might be playing possum, watching for a chance to make a strike that would destroy Bauer and all that he stood for.

Aware that I had been in one place too long, I moved, easing my way through the tangle of brush and trees near the clearing. A faint whisper of movement alerted me. Knife in hand, I looked all about. Something was moving nearby. Some crawling sound. Drawing back, I put my back against the trunk of a huge old maple and waited.

Waited, knife in hand.


Chapter XXIV

My body was flattened against the maple, a big old tree at least three feet through, so my back was well covered. I gripped the staff in my left hand, but the knife I carried low, cutting edge up.

Whoever was coming was a woodsman. I knew that by the way he moved. Something stirred in the leaves not three feet away. A sudden lunge and I could have the blade into him, but I was never one to start shooting or cutting on something I didn't see. There are would-be hunters who will blaze away at anything that moves, but I must see and identify.

He was rising from the ground, and I knew he sensed my presence. He knew something or someone was close by; it is a feeling one gets.

I took a careful step forward with my left foot, putting the end of the staff firmly on the ground, ready to cut upward with the knife.

A hand, then the rough outline of a head. Starting forward, I suddenly froze in place. I knew that-!

"Yance?" I breathed the word.

He came through the leaves as though materializing from them. He was grinning widely. I could not see his eyes, but his white teeth showed his smile.

"Worried about you, lad. Where've you been?"

"Waiting for you," I replied softly. "What's happened?"

"Jeremy's holding the fort. We're hoping to get them out in the open. Get them to thinkin' maybe we've slipped away. No fires, no lights, everything quiet and ready.

"Me an' the Catawbas, we didn't take to bein' cooped up, so we slipped out. We're all here, holdin' fast. If they rush the fort, we'll take them from behind, and I think they're fixin' to."

He moved closer. "You all right?"

"I took a fall."

We waited together, listening. It was good to have Yance there beside me, for we had been a team since we'd been old enough to travel together.

"How's Diana?"

"Worried about you. She's got herself a couple of pistols hard by, an' she's ready." He turned to look at me. "You picked a good one, Kin. She'll do."

It was dark now, but the clouds were broken, and here and there we could see a scattering of stars. The air had grown suddenly cool. I sheathed my knife for the moment, drying my hands on the front of my buckskin shirt. The night was very still, and we waited, listening, our ears seeking out the unnatural, unexpected sounds, but there were none. It reassured me that the Catawbas were out and around, for they were good men and great warriors.

We could but dimly see the stark black line of the fort against the sky and the huge old trees that lay just beyond it. From where we now lay the fort was only slightly more than a hundred yards away, the ground open. Only on the north side had we allowed the trees to grow close to the fort, as the half-dozen trees left standing there provided shade during the hotter months.

It was quiet. Yance put his lips close to my ear. "Kin? I'm scared. Something's wrong!"

My eyes were on the line of the wall against the sky. A breeze stirred the branches in the chestnut trees beyond the wall. I could see the branches move slightly against the sky.

Suddenly I swore bitterly. The branches moved! But there was no breeze!

"Yance! They're coming over the wall!"

And then I was running. My injured leg forgotten, I lunged from the ground and ran for the fort, Yance only a step behind me.

As we ran, we saw several men round the corner of the fort just as the gate swung wide. "In here!"

There was a shot from inside the fort, then a scream and another shot. Men were crowding at the gate, and Yance and I reached it on the run.

A burly bearded man, pistol in hand, turned to shout. At that moment there was a flash of light from inside, a pistol that missed fire, and I caught a fleeting glimpse of his shocked expression as he recognized me, and at that same instant I ripped him, low and upward. He let out a gasping cry, and I shoved him back, grabbing for his pistol with my left hand. He let go of it, falling back, and then I was past him and in the gate.

Yance was at my shoulder. "Sackett here!" I yelled not wanting them to shoot into us, and I heard Jeremy's answering shout.

How many there were of them I never knew. It was cut and shoot. I fired my pistol, then threw it at a head that loomed before me and had the satisfaction of seeing it bounce off a skull. Yance was down, then up. A wicked blow, a glancing one, opened a gash in my skull. My head rang with the blow, but I kept my feet.

Pulling back, I looked wildly around, seeking Bauer, but he was nowhere in sight. The door to my house stood open, and I sprang past the fighting and ran to it.

"I wish he was here," Bauer was saying, "to see you die."

He held a pistol in his hand, and he was facing Diana. "I am here, Max," I said, and he turned sharply.

He was not one to dally but was ready for instant action. His eyes caught me as his ears registered my voice, and as he turned, he fired.

Yet his shot was too quick; anticipating it, I had lunged to his right. I felt the heat of the blast and the fiery sting of powder grains on my cheek.

He turned sharply as I lunged at him and struck down with the pistol barrel. Missing my skull, the blow came down across the top of my shoulder, and only the thick muscles there kept me from a broken bone. As it was, my right arm was stricken numb for the moment, and the knife dropped from my hand.

He came at me then, a small smile on his lips, for he was sure he had me. The look in his eyes was almost amused. He had his knife low and ready, the pistol in the other hand now. Warily I backed away, watching my chance.

The room was large for the time and place, but the fireplace, where lay fire tongs and poker, was across the big table from me and hopelessly out of reach. There was no nonsense about him now. He was coming in for the kill, and I had only my bare hands with which to face him. He worked me into a corner, and there was no chance to elude him, although I had brought him away from Diana.

One thing I knew. Somehow I had to kill him, for if he killed me, Diana would die in the next moment. From outside there was a confused sound of fighting, shouts, and the clash of arms. There were several shots. They needed me out there, too.

Bauer took a wicked slash at my stomach, which I evaded by a leap backward that brought me up hard against the wall. He lunged with the knife, but I sidestepped away along the wall and got into the open again. I feinted a rush, but he merely smiled. He moved quickly, cutting left and right. He ripped a gash in my hunting jacket and scratched my arm. The numbness was almost gone now. I backed away again, and he came on and thrust hard.

Slapping his knife hand aside with my left hand, I grasped his wrist with my right and threw my left leg across in front of him and spilled him over that leg to the floor. Desperately I tried to wrench the knife from him, but his grip was strong. We rolled over on the floor, and I was up first. He was too strong and too heavy on the floor. To fight him, I had to be on my feet.

He came up fast, and my kick missed his head. My heel hit solidly against his shoulder, but he only missed a step and came on. He slashed at me, and I hit him across the mouth, throwing a kick at his kneecap that missed, and then he was on me. I went down before his attack, and then he was atop me and holding my throat with one hand and coming down with the knife. Somewhere he had lost his grip upon his pistol.

The knife came down hard, and I twisted my head only in time. The knife hit the floor, and I hit him with my fist with a blow that turned his head and momentarily stunned him.

Throwing him off, I leaped to my feet, and he came up, knife in hand. Diana suddenly called "Kin!" and tossed me the poker from the fireplace.

I caught it deftly. It was two and a half feet long with a point and a hook, also sharply pointed. Holding it ready, I moved in. He leaped at me with the knife, and I thrust hard with the point of the poker. It caught him coming in, and the point went in all of two inches low on his right side. He jerked back, but twisting the poker, I caught the hook in his clothing and jerked hard. His shirt ripped, and the hook tore a bloody gash--not deep-- across his belly.

From outside the noise of fighting had ceased. His smile was cool. "It is too late now," he said. "My men have won. Give her to me and that letter and you shall go free and we'll not burn your fort. After all, there are other women."

My poker held ready, I made no reply. His knife was not a small one but a fifteen-inch blade, thick and heavy. Blood was staining his shirt from the wound on his right side, and there was an angry streak of blood along the thin cut on his belly.

The poker, for all its usefulness, was unwieldy, and if his wounds bothered him, there was no evidence of it. He was an unusually strong, agile man and obviously was no stranger to hand-to-hand fighting. Suddenly Diana screamed, "Kin!" Lashan was in the doorway, pistol in hand. As my eyes caught him, his pistol was lifting to take dead aim at me. I could not hesitate nor even take the time to think, I simply tossed up the poker, caught it by the middle, and threw it as a spear.

The poker struck him even as he fired, deflecting his shot by only a hair. The ball struck behind me, and I saw Lashan fall, and the next instant Bauer was on me, thrusting and stabbing. Whether he had hit me, I did not know, but his blade was bloody. Back hard against the wall, I grabbed his head by both ears and jerked his face down as I butted up with my skull. I felt his nose crunch, and then I shoved him off and swung a right fist at the point of his jaw. It caught him off balance, and he fell backward to the floor.

He had lost his grip on the knife, but he lunged up from the floor and came at me. I struck straight and hard to his already broken nose. Both of us were bloody, but neither had time to realize whether we were hurt or not. I struck him again, and he grabbed at my throat with both hands.

Stepping aside, I hit him again. He closed with me and got a hand up, clawing for my eyes. Twisting my head, I got my shoulder under his chin and jerked up hard. Again I shook him off. He was weaving now, exhausted as I was, but I gave him no chance. I struck hard with my right, and as he staggered, I knocked him back against the doorjamb.

Lashan was up, his face bloody from where the thrown poker had struck him, but before he could join Bauer against me, Yance loomed in the door. Lashan turned, and Yance, gripping a pistol, shot him. He fell backward, turning as he fell, and Bauer broke off the fight and plunged past Yance through the open door. The gate yawned opposite.

Some of his men lay dead; others were fleeing across the open ground toward the forest. He was running toward the gate, blood flying from his wounds, when Diana tossed my knife. I grasped it by the point and threw.

The knife struck him in the middle of the back, and he took on last leap forward, then sprawled on the ground just outside the gate.

For a long moment I simply stood there, staring at his fallen body, hands hanging empty at my sides. There was no more fighting. Our Catawbas had scattered into the woods, and I knew there would be no stragglers reaching the coast, not even to report what had happened. I could only stand, exhausted and empty, staring at the man who had brought so much trouble to so many. That he was dead I had no doubt, for my knife must have severed his spine, and it had been thrown hard.

A bad man but a damned good fighting man. Almost too good.

"Kin?" It was Diana. "Come, you're hurt. Let me see to you."

Dumbly I let her lead me inside and to a seat. Now, of a sudden, I began to hurt. My bruised leg, oddly enough, hurt the most.

Outside I could hear the mumble of talk as our people cleared up, carried away the bodies of the dead, and once more closed our gates against the world.

Yance came in. He looked at me, worried. "You all right there, big Injun?"

"All right. How about the others?"

"Wounds--mostly scratches. We were lucky. And waiting for them."

Lila came in and watched Diana's skillful fingers. "You're like your pa," she said. "You fight well."

"And Jeremy," I said.

One of the candles had been knocked over during the fighting but had luckily gone out. Lila lighted it again, adding more light to the room. Outside, the lighted bundles of brush that had given light in the yard were slowly burning down. Leaning my head against the back of the chair, I closed my eyes. Diana was putting something cooling on the places where I had been cut and stabbed. She was using some concoction made from herbs that she kept ready for such things, and Lila was beside her. Apparently I had been stabbed at least twice and had several bad scratches, yet at the moment I wanted only to rest.

Yance and Jeremy came in. Then, as they talked, Kane O'Hara joined them. Three men, they said, had been killed from Bauer's party. There might have been more who got away into the shelter of the forest. If so, I did not envy them, for the Catawbas were great hunters, and we had long been their friends. The most hospitable of people to friends, against enemies they were ruthless.

"We will go for your father," I said, "or send someone."

"I know," Diana replied. "Don't think of it now. Just get some rest."

My eyes closed again. Something was cooking at the fireplace, and it smelled good. Warm, friendly smells were all about me.

Tired as I was, I did not want to sleep. I wanted simply to enjoy.

I was home again.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The Shawmut, where Diana takes refuge, was, of course, a part of what is now known as Boston. The Reverend Blaxton (sometimes written Blackstone, but in the one signature I have seen, it is Blaxton) was much as he appears here. The same is true of Samuel Maverick, who was helping to establish a family that has contributed much to our history, to say nothing of having added a word to our western vocabulary.

Contrary to general opinion, slave raids from Africa to the coasts of Europe were not uncommon. The raid on the village of Baltimore, a town in West Cork, Ireland, took place in 1631. More than one hundred people were carried away into slavery.

The Warrior's Path led, with many branches and offshoots, from the far south to the towns of the Iroquois and even farther north. The Iroquois used it to attack the Cherokees, Creeks, and so on, and vice versa. The route was also used by traders and other travelers, as it was undoubtedly the best, following the contours of the land through areas in which there were water, fuel, and game.

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