To the Far Blue Mountains

1570-1602

John Quill recovered, though wounded sorely, and told us a little of what had transpired.

They had come suddenly in the dawn, killing a Catawba who had brought meat to the fort, and the gate had been closed against them before they could take his scalp.

Then began a desperate fight, two men against thirty, and they ran from wall to wall, firing here, firing there. The Catawba warriors were far from the village on a hunt, but the old men fought and the women fought, and John Quill and Matt Slater defended the fort.

It was after sundown before they came over the wall and Slater went down fighting four men, and John Quill retreated into the blockhouse where they had gathered food and powder for a stand. Alone, he fought them all through the night and another day. They tried to fire the blockhouse but the timbers were damp from recent rains and would not bum.

"Six men I know I killed," John Quill said, "and mayhap another went, and finally they gave up and one shouted at me in English and told me to come to them, that the tribe would welcome me. They told me I was a great warrior-" John Quill looked at me. "Captain, I am only a farmer. It was all I ever wished to be, like poor Matt, who had his land only to lose it."

"He will never lose it," I said. "He had it when he died, and he had the memory of it in his soul. Nothing can take that from him."

"He was a brave, fine man," Abby said gently, "as you are, John. Our country needs such men to build it and make it grow. God help us always to have them, men who believe in what they are doing, and who will fight for what they believe."

"Aye," I said, "no man ever raised a monument to a cynic or wrote a poem about a man without faith."

So we came back to the fort after our journeying, and with my own hands I carried on the farming of Slater's crops. He'd planted them well and cultivated them a mite before passing on, and it was no trouble to keep up the work he'd begun.

We were all of us growing into the land, finding our living from it, and learning where the berries grew thick upon the bushes and where the nuts fell and the pools where the trout loafed in the shadows.

Man is not long from the wilderness, and it takes him but a short time to go back to living with it, and we had the Catawbas to guide us. Peter Fitch took an Indian girl to wife, a tall well-made girl with four warrior brothers.

We went often to the far hills that spring, wandering deep into the mountains and living off the country, for there was always fresh meat for a man good with a gun, and there was no need to be belly-empty if you could shoot.

One day Kane O'Hara asked leave to be gone awhile. He took his musket and went over the mountains, and some said that would be the last of him, but I thought it would not and said so, but the womenfolk worried.

It was many weeks later when he came back, and when we saw him coming down the mountain, straight and tall as always, we saw he wasn't alone. Somebody walked beside him, and when he came closer we saw she was a Spanish girl from a Florida settlement.

"Kane," I asked, "did she come willing?"

"She did," he said, '"That you can ask her yourself. I took meat to her town, and I speak her tongue from a time when I was a prisoner there, and I broke some wild horses for them-"

"Horses?"

"Aye, they've horses; I made to fetch some, but hadn't nothing to trade for them and they are wary of letting them go. Toward the end they got suspicious of me and did not believe what I said. Only Margarita believed me and said so, and when I left she came with me."

He looked at Abby and smiled. "It is all right, Mistress Abby. We stopped at an Indian village where there was a priest, an Irish priest from the Spanish lands who was teaching the Indians the ways of God, and he married us, all fitting and proper."

"What of her folks?"

"We sent them word by the priest. He was stiff about a marriage without her father saying it was proper, him knowing the family and all, but a nudge with a pistol and a reminder that if he did not marry us we'd be wedded Indian fashion, and he came through shining with a proper ceremony."

When the year ended we went down the river again, all of us going this time, with Kin doing his own walking and Abby having her hands full with Brian ... named for her father ... whom she carried when Lila could bear to let go of him.

Kin walked along with us, and bawled when he was picked up to be carried and insisted he carry his own pack, so we made a small one for him.

One of our boats was gone when we came to them, but we took the other two and went down the river after a few repairs. There were more of us now but we knew the country better and knew woodland travel.

We built a raft to tow our load of furs, for it was large, and we'd more pearls, mostly gotten by trade with the Indians, and some by capture. There'd been fights with the Cherokees, the Creeks, and the Tuscarora, and one day a captured Shawnee told us there had long ago been a great bunch of white men who lived on a river across the mountains, but they had fought often with the Shawnee and the Cherokee, too, before the Cherokee came so far south. Finally, the white men had been killed, but some of their women had been kept by Indian men, and a few of the survivors had come to live with the Shawnee.

It was a long story, but there were many such, and from time to time we heard stories of white men who had been in the country before us.

We had come down all the way to the Outer Banks again when we saw a canoe coming toward us. It was Potaka again. He had a strange-looking creature with him, a long, thin man with a beard who kept saying over and over, "Barnabas, Barnabas."

And it was Jago, who had sailed with us on the fluyt.

The Indians had found him, months before, roaming in the woods, and had cared for him as they did all mad men, for so they thought him to be. And truly, he was wandering in his mind.

"Jago," I said, "I am Barnabas."

"You said to ask for you," he said simply, and was content.

That he had been through some terrible ordeal was obvious, and his body bore the scars of torture, most likely by Indians. And from where he had been found and what he could recall it must have been the Tuscarora ... but there was no certainty of this.

After he had rested with us, he slowly began to recover. Always a hard worker, he was no different now. Bit by bit we learned a little. He had been on a ship that somehow had been attacked by Indians when laying off shore. Some of the crew, including himself, had escaped. Some of the Indians had been carried out to sea on the ship, and when his own party ashore had somehow been separated, he had wandered in the forest, subsisting on nuts and roots until captured by the Indians. How he had gotten free of them, we could not learn.

For three weeks we waited, and saw no sail. Yet once again we enjoyed our sojourn upon the beach, and the change of diet provided by the sea. It was a pleasant, easy time. There was game in the woods and the fish were running well and the only Indians we encountered were friendly and inclined to trade.

Kin, I think, was the happiest of us all. He ran along the shore ... miles of almost straight beach, all open to sun and sky. He was brown as an Indian, tall for his age, and a quiet, serious child.

On our fourteenth day we saw a sail, but it passed us by. Several days later we saw another. Warily, it came closer, and through our glasses we could see a man studying us through his own spyglass. He took soundings, then anchored and put a boat over.

Several men took to the boat and, when nearing shore, one of them suddenly stood up and waved.

It was John Pike.

When the boat came closer he leaped over the side and came splashing to us, his face lit with pleasure. "Barnabas! And Mistress Abigail! It is good to see you!"

We welcomed him to our campfire and he sent the boat back for wine and ale.

"I have done well," he said after awhile. "The fluyt is now part mine and I also own another ship now, which trades abroad."

He held Brian on his lap as he talked. "Barnabas, if you'd like the boys to go to school in London, let me have them. I'd treat them like they were my own."

That Pike had done well was obvious. He was a man of business, prosperous, yet still adventurous. But he should have known I would not thus part with my sons.

Later, he took us aboard his ship. He lingered for several days, taking on fresh water, trading with Indians and with us, and catching a supply of fresh fish as well as some game from the forest.

To Abby and Lila he gave some bales of assorted dress goods, and to me, canvas, tools, and seed for grain and vegetables. He had planned well, and what we might have thought of needing, he could supply.

On the last day, Jeremy Ring said suddenly, "Captain Pike, I would be pleased if you'd fetch your Bible."

Pike looked up, surprised, at Jeremy.

"I want to get married," said Jeremy quietly, "to Lila."

Astonished, I looked at her. She was blushing, her head hanging.

"Lila!" Abby exclaimed. "Is this true? Why didn't you tell me?"

Blushing furiously, Lila said, "I didn't know. He didn't ask me."

"You knew how I felt," Ring said.

"Yes, yes, I did." She glanced at him, suddenly shy. "I did."

"Well, then?"

"Yes ... I will. Of course, I will."

The ceremony was brief, and we all stood on the shore with a light wind blowing, ruffling our hair and blowing the women's skirts, and Captain Pike read from the Bible.

When it was over I said to Pike, "You'll send the news? You know the Icelanders?

They will take the word of Lila's marriage to Anglesey. Tell them she has married a good friend and a good man."

"I will that."

"And John Tilly? What of him?"

"Why, we're partners! I thought I had told you. He commands the fluyt when she's at sea. We trade in the Spanish Indies. It's risky, but we've some friends who like to profit a bit in the trade themselves, and although we have to avoid Spanish warships we make a good thing of it."

"Slaving?"

"Not us. The Arabs and the Portuguese have that business, and we wish for none of it. They intrigue with the warlike African tribes who sell them their prisoners ... the ones they themselves used to enslave or kill.

"But I am a free man and would see all men free. John Tilly believes as I do, so we have no conflict. Slaves are not an easy cargo. I prefer sugar, rum, or timber ... fur if they can be had."

He sat on a hummock of sand. "You have been to your mountains? And what lies beyond?"

"More mountains, and then lowlands again, and lovely timbered valleys and meadows. These I have not seen, but the Catawba tell me they are there."

"There is much fighting among the Indians?"

"An Indian boy is not a man until he is a warrior. To be a warrior he must fight, take scalps, count coup. And they do not forget old enmities."

At last he got up. "Now we must sail. This coast makes me nervous, too." He looked at me with keen, thoughtful eyes. "You will stay here? Raise your boys here?"

"Now, at least. When they grow older we will see the bent of their minds."

He took my hand, then started to leave. He had gone several steps when he stopped and turned.

"Barnabas? Do you remember Delve? Jonathan Delve? He was with you awhile, I believe?"

"What of him?"

"Around a year ago he came down to the coast and was taken aboard a vessel as a castaway, he and several others. He told the ship's master of a valuable wreck of which he knew. When he got the captain ashore, some more of his men were there and they ambushed and killed the captain and several of his crew. Two escaped."

"So?"

"He took the ship, and since has become a pirate and a dangerous man. It is reported that when drinking he talks often of you. For some reason you are on his mind."

"We will be careful."

Pike walked away over the sand, and I stood and watched him go. He had ships at sea, a reputation as a successful man, no doubt. Would I trade that for what I had?

I would not.

Feeling better, I walked back to Abby. "We will go home now," I said.

Chapter 30

Where go the years? Down what tunnel of time are poured the precious days?

We are young, and the fires within us burn bright.

All the world lies before us and nothing is too great to be done, no challenge too awesome.

Then suddenly the days are no more, the years are gone, and the time that remains is little, indeed.

Kin has grown tall, as fine a woodsman as I know, and as good a man. Brian is the thoughtful one. Each book I have he has read and reread, and soon, I know, he will go from me to a wider world. Regret is in me that he would leave, yet happiness, too, for he has his own life before him in a bigger world if not a better one.

Yance? What shall I say of Yance? His heart is pure, his strength the greatest of them all, I think. Yance is strong, he is rough, he is always wrestling, fighting, climbing, doing, changing.

He is a good son, faithful to his mother and to me. To his brothers, he is loyal. Yet he acts before he thinks. He is a bundle of muscle and impulse, a swift runner, a dead shot with any weapon, and a dangerous man because of it.

He listens when I speak, and he obeys. Yet sometimes he acts before I have a time to speak.

And then there is Jublain ... named for my old friend but called Jubal.

He is the truly quiet one. A ghost in the woods, he moves like a shadow, and lives much with the Indians. He is gone for weeks, then comes and squats against the wall and listens to the talk and is gone again.

To me he gives love and respect, to his mother, adoration, and that is as I would have it.

We none of us know how far he has gone or what he has seen, for he rarely speaks of it. Sometimes stories come to us ... an Indian from the west once came among us, looking for him. Jubal had been gone for weeks, and the Indian told us by sign language that Jubal had been far beyond the great river that divides the country in two ... we had not known that.

Kin has no wife, nor has Brian or Jubal. Yance does, of course. He went far to the north last year and came upon a colony that had settled there several years before. For days he scouted about, watching the people go about their work. He had done the same at Jamestown when he grew old enough to go so far from home, for Raleigh had at last planted his colony and my boys used to go down to the place where they were and lie in the woods and watch them to see how they lived.

Yance had done the same at the place in the north, the place they were calling "New England."

That group landed in 1620 ... thirteen years after the Virginia colony was finally established at Jamestown. Yance had been curious, as were all the boys, for the tales they heard from their mother and me, as well as the others of our group, were not enough. Only Yance went so far north.

He usually went alone or with a Catawba or two. He had gone several times with their war parties against the Iroquois or the Cherokee ... with whom, in fact, the Catawba were often friendly.

Yance found the place called New England, already scattering out from the original settlement. He went into the village bringing meat. My boys always brought meat when they went anywhere, including their home.

He made friends, for he was genial, agreeable, and a hard worker, but for them he was too filled with good spirits, too energetic, and not Godfearing enough in their way. So one day when he had offended they put him in the stocks. It took nine men to do it, but they did it.

Only that night a girl stole her father's key and came down and set him free. He built a careful fire against the stocks and burned them down, but by the time the fire was discovered Yance was in the hills, and being Yance, he took the girl with him, and she, being the kind of a girl he would choose, came willingly.

Oh, she was a lovely one! Gay, filled with good spirits, singing always ... and not always hymns, for she took readily to our wild English ballads of lost loves, highwaymen, and the fairs.

For we sang much in our hills, the gypsy songs, the Scotch Highland songs, the Irish songs.

There was always the fighting, for the Indians came against us, and no morning sun arose without its risk, no day in the field without its danger.

The Catawbas were firmly our friends as they were to be the friends of the white man always. As warriors came from afar, hoping to kill a Catawba and have the scalp to boast of in the villages, so they came to fight us also as our name grew.

We were fighters all. John Quill, who had made his great defense of the fort after the death of Slater, was remembered by our enemies, for they gloried in the strength of any fighting man, enemy or friend.

But time has a way of stealing strength from a man, and even before that, his swiftness and agility. One day they came upon Glasco, working at his forge.

The boys were off hunting. I with my wife and our new daughter was at the river ... only Tim Glasco was there. Usually an uncommonly wary man, that time he was not wary enough, and they came very close. He heard them, got off a quick shot and laid about him with his hammer and tongs.

They got an arrow into him, but he did not drop. They rushed him, and he swept two of them, right and left, into the dust. One went down from the red-hot tongs, another from a freshly sharpened spit for roasting meat.

Still they came, and they killed him.

We heard the shot from afar-Wa-ga-su, Pim Burke, and I, leaving Kane O'Hara with the women.

Too late. Glasco was down and his scalp taken. He was not quite dead, and somewhere he had picked up some Indian thoughts. "Get them," he whispered hoarsely, "and my hair back. I'll have my own hair upon my head when I cross the divide."

With Jeremy, Pim, and Kane O'Hara we set out after them, and we fled them down the nights and down the days, and across the rivers that men had given names, over the Broad and the Wateree, across Rocky River and Coldwater Creek to a skirmish on Long Creek, and then on to the Yadkin.

Suddenly, on the Yadkin, they turned to fight, and outnumbered we were, but better shots. And two warriors died and lost their hair before we moved again.

Through the woods and across the savannas, through blackberry patch and under the hickory trees, and suddenly before us we heard a burst of firing, and then another, and we closed in swiftly to see the Senecas trapped in a bend of Lick Fork of the Dan. We saw one man down in the water, another trying to crawl a bank in a trail of blood, and we closed in swiftly.

From the bank beyond, a huge warrior suddenly stood up and shouted a challenge, and from the brush leaped Yance. He rushed forward, knife in hand, and the two met there in the open glade in a fierce and desperate fight. The big Indian threw his tomahawk. It caught Yance on the shoulder and the big Indian went in as Yance started to fall. But as the Indian charged, Yance kicked up both feet and boosted the Indian clear over his head. Then, swift as a striking snake, Yance turned on him and buried a knife in his chest.

The Catawbas, who ran the war trail with us, took many a scalp that day, and evened the score for their own people slain. And when the scalps were taken, we turned our backs and started slowly home.

My sons had been hunting the Blue Ridge, looking for caves of which we had heard, caves in which white men were said to be buried ... men from some long-ago time before the beginning of years.

An Eno found them there and told of the war party of Senecas heading south upon a raid, and so they had come down from the high-up hills, too late to help defend our settlement, but in time to intercept the Senecas' return.

From far away they had heard shooting, then saw the Senecas coming across a savanna, and moved to meet them on Lick Fork.

Yet when we returned, Glasco was dead, only hours before.

"I wish he could have known," I said. "We brought back his hair."

"He knew," Lila said. "I told him. For I saw it as in a dream, saw Yance come charging with a knife in his hand, saw blood upon his shoulder, saw him go down, then come up and turn, and saw his shoulder move."

She went to Yance and uncovered his shoulder. There was a deep gash there, the bleeding stopped with moss. "Come," she said, "we will make it clean." And he went with her, as he had when a child.

Abby stood waiting, her face still, her eyes round and serious.

"Barnabas," she said, "we must go down to the river. I would speak with you there."

I knew it would be a serious talk, for long it had been since she'd called me aught but Barney.

And when we sat together on the bank, she said, "We have a daughter, Barnabas, and she will be a beautiful girl."

"She is your daughter," I said.

"It is a wild land here. What will be her future?"

Uneasiness stirred within me, and for the first time I truly felt fear. "I do not know," I said, "But by the time she is grown-"

"It will be too late, Barnabas. Our daughter will not become a hunter or a fighter of Indians. She must have education, she must know another world than this."

My fingers felt the grass. I pulled a blade and tasted it and waited, my heart beating slowly.

"You have your sons, and they will grow your way. I want our daughter to have another choice. If she stays, who will she marry? One of your wild wilderness men? Would you have her curing buffalo hides, growing old before her time?"

"What else can we do?" I asked, though in my heart I knew the answer.

"In all things, Barnabas, I have done as you wished, for in all things they were what I wished as well. In this I do not know, and you must help me. I do not know, Barnabas, but I am filled with misgivings."

"You would take her from me? Soon Brian will go to England to study law. Already Sakim has taught him mathematics and logic, government and philosophy. I have learned much from Sakim, for I, too, have listened when he taught Yet I am no scholar, and but a simple man."

Abby put her hand over mine. "Not so simple, Barnabas, but so wise, so strong, and yet so gentle. You forget that I have known you for a long time. And a good time," she added quietly, "a very good time. And I do not want to leave you."

It was there. The word had been said.

"Where would you go?"

"To London, at first. Perhaps to Paris. I would need time, Barnabas, for I have been long away. I would need to learn again how to behave as an English lady."

"You have always been a lady."

"You could come with us, Barnabas. You could come. Elizabeth the Queen is dead.

A man sits now upon the throne. The old suspicions would be forgot."

But even as she spoke, we knew I would not go. I would never leave again for so long the shadow of those mountains I had found at last.

"After this?" I swept my hand at the mountains, fields, rivers. "No, Abby, our duties divide. Yours will take you to England with our daughter, mine will keep me here.

"Perhaps the boys no longer need me, but they know I am here. I am an anchor, I am a single, positive thing. I am a focal point, if no more. A balance wheel, a hub about which they may revolve, and I will be here for them to come to if they are hurt. I would not have them without that.

"They may never need me, but as long as I am here, they are not lost. If I can be no more to them, I will be their Pole Star."

"The Senecas will come again, Barnabas, and the Shawnees."

"Of course ... I know that. I would miss them if they failed to come, and they would miss me if I was not here to greet them."

I stood up, slowly. "Abby, we will arrange it. We will go down to the sea once more, and we will find a ship, and you may go to England.

"When she has seen the world, when she has learned what it holds, then bring her to me again and let me see what my daughter has become.

"At least ... do not let her forget me."

Chapter 31

Yet suddenly there came news of such evil portent that new fears beset our colony. On the 22nd of March, the Indians had raised up and killed several hundreds of the colonists in the land called Virginia.

That particular colony was some distance from us and we had but little knowledge.

From time to time we had word of them from Indians passing, or the observations of Kin or Yance, and we knew of harsh times they had, with a shortage of food and much illness. The site of the town they had formed, called Jamestown, was not the best one and, as we had discovered to our cost, there was much fever on the coast close to the swamps.

After some beginning trouble between Powhatan, of whom we often heard but knew little, and these colonists, troubles between them had simmered down, largely to the strong stand taken by a Captain John Smith, a man of Lincolnshire who had fought in wars upon the continent.

The story as we heard it from the Catawbas was thus: A war captain called Nemattanow, who was called by the colonists "Jack of the Feather," because of his feather adornment, had persuaded a man named Morgan to go into the woods with him for trade or hunting or something of the kind. Nemattanow had often been in Morgan's house, and coveted many of the things he saw there. Later, in the woods, he murdered Morgan and returned to the cabin wearing Morgan's cap.

Morgan's boys suspected what had happened and tried to entice the Indian to the presence of a Master Thorpe.

An altercation developed and Nemattanow was shot and wounded. The boys put him in a boat to take before the governor. Feeling his death was near, Nemattanow, who the Indians believed could not be hurt by a bullet, pleaded with the boys not to tell how he was killed, and to bury his body in the white man's cemetery so his death would not become known.

Oppecancanough, who was king of those Indians, was much angered when he heard of the death of Nemattanow, but made great signs of love and peace to the colonists so that no danger was felt, and due to the fact that no war had been entertained for some time, few of the colonists were armed, there being few swords, and fewer guns except for fowling pieces.

Yet Oppecancanough informed his people of what was planned, sending presents of venison and fowl to various colonists with much evidence of good will, and sometimes sitting to breakfast with them. Then, suddenly, on the 22nd of March they arose and slaughtered three hundred and forty-seven men, women, and children, striking so quickly that few knew what happened, killing them often with their own tools, then hacking and defacing the bodies.

One Nathaniel Causie, who had come with John Smith, seized upon an axe when attacked and clove the head of one of his attackers, whereby they fled, and he escaped, though injured, for they hurt none who did stand to fight or were upon their guard, killing only those they caught unawares and unarmed.

By this time the colonists were established for one hundred and forty miles along the river, on both sides, and the Indians, because of their nature of living off the country, must themselves be in groups of thirty, forty, or sixty.

Yet the whole plot had been so carefully arranged that each group of Indians was aware, and many more than the three hundred and forty-seven might have been killed had not one Indian, friendly to a man named Pace, informed him of the plot. Pace had informed the governor, after rowing in haste down the river.

Six of the council were slain, George Thorpe, Nathaniel Powell, John Berkeley, Samuel Macock, Michael Lapworth, and John Rolfe, this Rolfe having married an Indian named Pocohontas.

The unrest occasioned by this disaster was sure to put many Indians to flight, and there would be trouble along the paths.

Yet the news included more than the story of massacre and that was that several ships had arrived, bringing more settlers. It was a chance that could not be missed.

"We will go, Abby. Peter has two boats finished and a third well along in the building. If we all pitch in to help, that boat should be ready for the river in a few days. We will go down the river ... the Cape Fear, I believe they call it now ... and go up the coast to Jamestown.

"Peter wishes to sell his boats, and there should be a market for them there. We can carry our furs, robes, and grain."

We were three large boats and one canoe when we started, with Kin, Brian, and Yance in the canoe, Jeremy, Pim, and myself in the first boat with the women, Kane O'Hara and Tom Watkins in the second, Jubal and Wa-ga-su in the last and most heavily loaded.

We went up the coast from the rivermouth, staying inside the banks when possible, and came finally to the Bay of Chesapeake and the Potomac River.

We came to the landing at Jamestown to see three ships in the river and much busied they were with lowering cargo to boats-and one ship lying close in alongside a dock, being a craft of such shallow draft.

A man of some presence watched us come close along and called out, "What have you there?"

"Corn and hides," I said, "and some furs. We be seeking out someone who would buy."

"Corn? You will be speaking to the governor of that. We have had losses here."

"Aye," I said, "we heard of that and came along to help. We ask but a fair market price. As for that," I added, "we would sell the boats, too."

Climbing up on the dock, I was followed by Brian and Kane O'Hara. He glanced from one to the other of us. "It is that you plan to settle here?"

"No. We've good places yon, and crops put in, but we heard your troubles and had this grain put by."

"If you sell your boats, how then will you get home?"

"Overland," Brian said. He was a fine, handsome lad who spoke well, indeed.

"That is, some of us would, sir. My mother, sister, and I would ship for England."

"I am Captain Powell," he said, "William Powell. We are on short rations here, and the governor will be pleased to see you."

He bade me come with him to meet the governor, Sir Francis Wyatt, an uncommonly shrewd man, and intelligent enough to ask few questions. I spoke him fair, using my own name, and hoping the years would have erased it from memory, as it seemed to have done.

"We are obliged, Captain," he said to me. "You could have come at no better time. Now what are you asking per bushel?"

"As I told Captain Powell," I said, "we came to help, not to profit by your troubles. We will take the fair market price and no more."

"Commendable," Wyatt said dryly, "and unusual." He turned to Powell. "Will you see they are put up properly?" Then he smiled at me. "If you would wait outside?

I wish to speak to Captain Powell."

Here it comes, I thought. The next thing is an order for my arrest. We went outside, but I did not move from the door. Inside, I could hear Powell say, "Do you believe them, Sir Francis?"

"Believe them? I have no idea whether they are telling the truth or not, Captain. I have a colony on the verge of starvation, and am not inclined to ask any questions at all. They have grain. We need grain. They will sell it at a reasonable price. I will pay their price. Furthermore, I will let them go back to their homes with thanks, and hope they come to us again. Such men we can use."

"I could use them," Powell said grimly. "Did you look at them, Sir Francis?

That's the strongest, toughest, most able lot of men I've seen in many a year.

At least two of the older ones have been soldiers or I miss my guess."

He shook his head. "I have an idea who they are, Sir Francis. I think it's that lot we've been hearing about, from up at the edge of the mountains."

"It well may be." Sir Francis got to his feet, for I heard his chair shove back.

"Make no report on this, Powell. In London they will only want to know that we fed our people. How it was done will not interest them.

"We will buy their grain. We will house them at the expense of the colony, and we will speed them on their way. Who knows when again we may need help?"

Powell chuckled, then said, "Sir Francis, if we've to fight the Indians again, just let me recruit that lot. I'd ask no more."

Powell came out. The cabin he then took us to was well-built and strong, and there was a small tavern, or what passed for one, close by.

"Captain Sackett," Powell said, "there are presently three ships in port, two of them loading for the West Indies. The third has just recently come in, but I don't much like her looks. I'd hesitate, if I were you."

"What's wrong with her?"

Powell studied his nails thoughtfully, then he said, "She's too heavily armed for a merchant ship, and if I ever saw a craft with a pack of rascals for crew, that's it. And that Captain Delve-"

"Delve, did you say? Jonathan Delve? A kind of a taunting look to his eyes?"

"You know the man?"

"I know him," I said grimly, "and I don't like him. I'd heard he was a pirate, and I agree with your judgment of him."

Powell looked thoughtful. "We're not heavily armed here, and a ship like that could be a trouble to us, so I want nothing more than to see him gone."

When Powell was gone I explained to the boys who Delve was. That he had survived so long was evidence of his cunning.

"Kin," I suggested, "the man does not know you or Brian. Go down along the river and see what you can learn, but stay away from him and don't get into trouble."

"He's an evil man," Abby said.

"He is that, and I would like it better if you and he were not on the same sea.

He has been a pirate, and probably is yet, and more than likely has come in for supplies while he looks over what ships may be worth the taking."

"Did you see his vessel?" Jeremy asked, wryly. "She's got thirty-six guns, and she's fast."

"Fast she may be," Yance said quietly, "but she's at anchor now. They don't move very fast with an anchor in the mud."

"What are you suggesting?" Pim asked.

Yance grinned slowly, looking up from under his thick brows. "Well? If she worries us, let's take her, and remove the worry."

I shook my head. "That would be piracy on our part. So far as we know he has done nothing."

"If you'd have sent me," Yance said, "I'd have seen to it."

"That's why I didn't send you, Yance." I smiled at him.

Yet but part of my thoughts at this moment were upon Jonathan Delve. The presence of the man and his ship were but a minor irritation compared with the fact ... and it was a fact ... that Abby and I would soon be apart.

My mind almost refused to accept it. She had been so much a part of my life that I could scarcely imagine being without her, though I fully understood how she felt.

Noelle was but ten. Her feminine associations had been good. Yance's wife, although a gay, fun-loving girl as exuberant as he himself, had come from a sedate, religious upbringing. Kane O'Hara's wife, of Spanish background, was even more so.

Peter Fitch's Catawba wife moved with a grace and conducted herself with a decorum that would have done credit to any great lady. She had taken on European ways easily and naturally while losing none of her own, and it was a rare thing, I thought, who had little experience after all, that so many women could live together ... or near to each other, without friction.

John Quill had been almost a second father to Noelle. A man married to his farm, he thought of little else, yet he was forever bringing her the largest strawberries, birds' nests, or flowers from the woods or the edges of his fields.

It had been a good life we lived, and what school we had was conducted by the various wives and by Sakim, whose depths of knowledge none had ever plumbed.

Like the boys, Noelle had grown up on stories known to the Catawba and the Cherokee, to the Irish (from Kane O'Hara) and Sakim's stories of Scheherazade.

Sakim read also from the Katha Sarit Sagara, the so-called "Ocean of Story" as gathered together by Somadeva, a court poet to King Ananta of Kashmir, and his queen, Suryavati.

Often I wondered what their vision of life must be, learning, as they had, from such oddly dissimilar storytellers. They had learned the Catawba story of the beginning of things. Kane O'Hara told them stories of Cuchulainn or of Conn of the Hundred Battles, and of the Irish longs who lived on Tara. From Jeremy they had stories of Achilles and Ulysses and of Xenophon's retreat of the Ten Thousand. From Sakim, stories of Ali Baba and Sinbad, of Rustum and his fabled horse, Raqsh, who killed a lion to protect his sleeping master.

From Abigail they had the story of God and of Jesus and Mary, and from Sakim, of Allah and Mohammed, and from Sweet Woman the story of Wakonda the Sky Spirit.

From Barry Magill they learned something of weaving, from Peter Fitch a love of good wood and the uses of it, and from John Quill a love of the earth and the magic of making things grow.

What was left for me? A little of each, and the pointing out of things along the trail, and something of England's history, of the Normans, the Danes, and the Celts, of the Norsemen and their raids and wanderings.

Yet there were strange gaps in their knowledge, realized suddenly when after hearing the story of Rustum and Raqsh, Noelle asked me, "Papa, what is a horse?"

Chapter 32

The cabin with which they provided us was no place for a man, what with all the sewing and stitching, and the talk of the women as they stitched skirts and petticoats, and tried on and fitted, and exclaimed over this and that. For neither Abby nor Noelle had the proper clothes for shipboard nor for landing in England, either.

Kin returned and we sat against the log wall outside the cabin. "Jonathan Delve has something on his mind," he said, "But nobody has a notion of what. This much I did learn. He was taken by a British warship and was in Newgate for a time, and somehow bribed his way out."

"He is not idling here for nothing," I said.

"Aye, that he is not. Brian is just now sitting over ale with a sailor who's been aboard her, and if I know Brian he will soon have all the man knows."

Kin ran his fingers through his long hair. "Pa, we may be late tonight. There's some looking about we'll do."

"Be easy with it, son. The British are no fools, and are sharp upon the form and manner of things."

A thought came to me. "Where's Yance?"

"Him?" Kin said, almost absent-mindedly. "He's helping the blacksmith who is behind in his work. You know Yance. He must be busy all the time."

Aye, I knew him. Busy indeed he was, but with what? Yance was never one to be idle but often enough his business was trouble.

However, the day was a quiet one, and I enjoyed sitting in the sun and watching what went on about us, for it had been long since I'd seen any settlement but our own. From time to time some of them would stop to pass the time with me, and so I heard much of the story of the early settlement of Jamestown, which had been only a shadow-tale until now.

Indians had told us a bit here or there. How the colony came near starving, and how many had died. And how at last John Smith was given the command he should have had at the beginning and then all began to come right. They told us also of some of his explorations up the coast, and how he had gone to islands far off the north coast to another settlement for supplies.

That night, warm, bedded down, I lay awake beside Abby and looked up in darkness at the hand-sewn rafters. A knowing hand had shaped them, a knowing hammer drove the pegs. There is a quiet beauty in such things as these, a beauty more than paint or chisel make, the beauty of quiet men, making strong things for their own use, shaping each piece with loving fingers.

At last I slept, awakening slightly when the boys came, and wondering in my half-sleeping way why they came so late when the dawn was in the sky.

Captain Powell came the next morning.

"If there's trouble," he asked, "will you and your lot fight with us? For Captain Delve is with us still and a ship comes in this morning with a thousand weight of powder aboard, and as much of shot and lead. She'll have clothing aboard, and seed and much for which we've waited."

"When she leaves, where does she sail?"

"To London, Captain Sackett, straight to London town."

"Will she carry my wife and my daughter and my son Brian?"

"She will if you help us. For I fear that Delve means to take her. We've lately discovered he's low on powder, and needs all she carries for whatever it is he's about, and he has put his ship around this morning and his guns aim at the town."

"We'll stand by you," I said.

"Aye," said Kin, "that we will, if needed. But do not worry, Captain Powell. Arm your men and have them stand by, too. But they need fear no cannon fire."

"No cannon fire? He has thirty-six guns, man. Can you mean to say no cannon fire and him with thirty-six guns?"

"Aye." Kin smiled his slow smile and looked up, his gray-green eyes alight in his lean brown face. "And not a one of them will fire. Last night we went aboard, my brothers and I, with O'Hara and Jeremy Ring and Mr. Burke, and while two of us guarded the doors just in case, we spiked every gun!"

"Spiked them!" Powell exclaimed. "How could you, with men on watch, and-"

"We be woodsmen, Captain Powell, who move quietly even among Indians. They heard us not. One man on watch was put quietly to sleep. The other ... well, I regret to say it, but one was strong and made a fight and took the blade like a good lad. He's down in the river now, drifting toward the sound.

"Some guns we merely spiked and in some we wedged cannonballs tight against the base of the bore, and hammered them home snugly with wooden wedges. Oh, we made a few sounds then, but those aboard were snug asleep after all their rum, and we not too much worried.

"What's needed now, Captain, I leave to you, but if it were me I'd draw Delve's teeth by taking what powder he has left. We'd not want him chasing after a ship that carries our mother and sister, although Brian can care for himself."

"Whose idea was it," I asked, suspiciously, "to go aboard at all?"

Kin smiled, "Why Yance's of course, but it appealed to us, too. Would you have had us done other than what we did?"

"You might at least have awakened me," I grumbled.

Kin chuckled. "It would have worried Ma. Then, too, you older men need your sleep."

He ducked when I struck out at him, and laughed at me with tender eyes.

I thought of my father, of Ivo Sackett. He would have loved them, too.

"Captain Powell?" It was a soldier at the door. "Captain Delve is coming ashore, and he has twenty men with him."

"Summon the company. Muskets charged and ready. I will meet them here."

So we took up our muskets then and went down to the water with Captain Powell, and when the men came ashore we moved in around them, with muskets and pistols, sixty men to their twenty, and all armed and ready.

Jonathan Delve was an older man now and the mark of Satan was on him. He started to bluster and threaten, but I spoke to him quietly.

"You'll surely remember me, Delve. You served under me once, and a poor sort of man you were. And by the look of you, you're no better now."

He started to speak but I cut him off.

"You'll threaten no man here, nor raise your voice on the streets of the town.

You and your men are prisoners, and Captain Powell will provide you with comfortable quarters while they go through your ship. We hear you've a spot of powder left, and we'll be having it."

"You'll be damned if-!" He started to bluster.

"It is you who'll be damned, Captain Delve. Don't threaten us with your guns. By now your men will have discovered that your guns are spiked."

"Spiked!" His voice was hoarse with rake. "You're a liar, Barnabas Sackett! How could-?"

"My boys are woodsmen, Delve. They were aboard last night." A movement caught my eye, and turning my head from him I saw a ship coming up the river. "Here comes your quarry now, with cargo for Virginia. You'll not mind waiting ashore until she's gone, will you, Delve?"

Now there was a hint of panic in his eyes. "What are you trying to do, Sackett?"

"It is not me." I indicated Captain Powell. "You must speak to this officer, or to the governor."

So they were disarmed and taken away to be locked up. We walked to the riverfront, the boys and I, to watch the ship come in, yet there was no joy in me to see her, fine craft though she was, for Abby would be going away, and my little girl with her.

Would Noelle have the gift? We had never talked of it, although sometimes she looked at me so solemnly, so strangely that I was sure she knew.

In the better of the several ordinaries that had sprung up, I was invited to a glass of wine with the governor, Sir Francis Wyatt. He gestured to a seat opposite him. "Captain Sackett, I hear you will be leaving us soon?"

"I will."

"Your wife, I hear, is returning to England?"

"With my son, Brian, and my daughter, Noelle. This is not the land to bring up a young woman, and my son wishes to read for the law."

"Commendable." He turned his glass on the table. "Sackett, if you will permit me? I have asked no questions as to your background or your reasons for settling here. You realize, of course, that the land you occupy is the King's?"

"I suppose that is the official interpretation," I replied quietly. "However, I must suggest a thought. The land lies in the realm of the Catawba. So far as I am aware none of that land has to date been purchased, nor has it been yielded.

Moreover, the Catawba has been a friend of the white man. At least," I added, "to the Englishman."

"What you say is true, no doubt, yet the grant given stretches to the western ocean. I do not wish to create an issue where none yet exists, Sackett, and certainly you have been most helpful. Most men under the circumstances would have demanded the highest price for their grain."

"It is not our nature to take advantage."

"You wish no favors in return?"

"None. If you wish, however, you might write some letters of introduction for my family, and especially for my son. It is not easy for a young man to make his way without friends."

"It shall be done. My family home is at Boxley Abbey. A letter will accompany your ship to England. I shall also address several members of the company on your behalf."

He leaned back in his chair. "None of us knows what the future holds, and by all appearances I shall be governor here for several years. It may be that we will again need your help."

"You have only to ask."

"Thank you. I would also take it kindly if you would keep me informed on any exploration you do into the mountains, or beyond them. And perhaps you can help us develop our relationship with the Catawba. I understand they are a strong people."

"They are among the most noted fighting men in the country, Sir Francis. And, as it happens, most of their enemies are our enemies, too."

I paused. "You understand, Sir Francis, that I left England rather hurriedly."

He lifted a hand. "Please! No more of that. You are a settler here. You have proven useful and helpful. I wish to know nothing more. I am a practical man, Sackett, and I am interested only in the interests of the colony." He glanced at me curiously. "You have been here a long time?"

"More than twenty years."

"You realize that, officially, no one has been here so long?" He refilled his glass. "Of course, for some time there have been stories of white men in the back country. You knew that, I suppose?"

"There were such rumors when first we came here, Sir Francis. I am sure that we were not the first. We found initials carved upon trees, and stories among the Indians of white men. And such stories were here before the lost colony of Roanoke vanished.

"Juan Pardo heard such stories. It is likely that Ayllon's captain, Gordillo, also did. Estevan Gomez was along this coast in 1525, and contributed much to the mapping of it. And I have had access," I said, "to many maps. No matter how far back you go, you still find rumors of white men. It is obvious the sea was crossed many times, perhaps continually over long periods of time. The Phoenicians never divulged their sources of raw material or trade goods."

We talked long, and Sir Francis asked many searching questions about the soil, the game, the minerals. I told him we had found but little gold, but several mines of both iron and lead, and that we cast our own musket balls and manufactured our own powder.

When I returned to our cabin, Pim Burke was waiting for me. He looked uneasy, and that was unusual.

"What is it, Pim?"

He looked shame-faced, then said, "Barnabas, I-" he paused. "Well, I have been offered a post. I shall be clerk and interpreter, and do some trading as well.

There's a grant goes with it, Barnabas, and I'm growing no younger."

"None of us are, and I'd advise you to accept."

He looked relieved. "I don't want to seem disloyal-I mean, just when you are losing so much."

"Nonsense! If I had heard of it first, I would have suggested it to you. By all means, Pim, take it. You may be of more use to us here than at the colony.

Besides, I am thinking of going over the mountains."

"Well ... if you do not object, Barnabas. My first loyalty is to you."

I put a hand on his shoulder. "We have come a long way together, Pim. We are friends, you and I, and where we are you will never find a wife, and you should have one. You deserve one."

"Well, to tell the truth-"

"There's a girl?"

"A widow, Barnabas. Young, and with a bit put by, and I've a bit, as you know ..."

"By all means! But Pim ... ?"

He looked at me. "The emerald? I've told only one person." He suddenly looked shy.

"So be it, then," I said. "Let us keep in touch, and wherever I may be, Pim, you have a friend."

We shook hands and he went his way, hurrying a little as if he feared he might turn back.

That night I lay awake, having said nothing to Abby of Pim's going. She would regret him, regret his being from me, for he had been a good friend and loyal but I had been much put out these past months, seeing no future for him in what we did.

Land, yes. We had bargained with the Catawba for land, and he had his piece as I had mine, yet it is an empty life for a man alone, although it seems not so when a man is young.

Yet I wished he had not mentioned the emerald. We had found several ... he had one, I had four. Three of these I had given to Abby and one to Brian. They would serve as something in case of need, and any one of the stones was rich enough to buy an estate if need be.

Pim's emerald was not a large one, but struck me as exceedingly fine.

We had heard rumors of a few small diamonds being found in the lower foothills, but of this we had no positive knowledge.

At last the day came. Several times I had met with the master of the Eagle, a solid man, and by all accounts, a good seaman. I had twice been aboard his ship, and she was finely kept with a competent-appearing crew.

At dawn I was up and outside, looking at the weather. A fair day ... yet a gloomy one for me.

Abby came out shortly afterward and walked beside me. We stood at the river, saying nothing, my hand touching hers or hers mine. But no words came to us.

We talked of her returning, yet I think neither of us believed in it. There was still a chance the warrant for my arrest might lie dusty in some drawer to be taken out and used, and both of us knew that a frontier girl of ten does not become a great lady in three years or four.

At the end, we kissed lightly and she said, "Be careful, Barnabas," and little Noelle clung to my hand with tears in her eyes.

Brian stood tall, as I expected him to, and gripped hard my hand. "I will make you proud of me, Father."

"I am already proud," I said quietly. "Take care of your mother and sister."

The other boys stood around, looking awkward and feeling worse. Lila kept saying over and over that she should be going with them.

"You've Jeremy to think of," Abby said quietly, "and your own children."

"Come back, Abby," I said. "Come back."

"Wait for me, Barney, for I love you. I do, I always shall, and I always have since that very first night when you came in from out of the storm."

I stood on the bank then, and watched the Eagle sail down the river, and suddenly I knew in my heart with an awful desperation that I would not see any of them again.

Lila took my hand and gripped it hard. "They will be all right. They will be all right. I see a safe voyage and a long life for them."

She said nothing of me, or of my life.

Chapter 33

The place on Shooting Creek was not the same. Time and again I found myself turning suddenly to exclaim over a sunset, the dappled shadow of tree leaves upon the water or the flash of a bird's wing ... and Abby was not there.

The blue of the mountains seemed to draw closer, and more and more my eyes turned westward ...

Yet there lay the mountains, vast and mysterious, with unknown valleys and streams that flowed from out of dark, unbelievable distances, and always beyond, the further heights, the long plateaus, the sudden glimpses of far, far horizons.

Jubal slipped silently into the cabin as I sat over Maimonides, reading.

"Pa? There's talk in the villages. They're coming after you again."

"You'd think they would tire of it."

"You're a challenge, Pa. You don't realize how much, for their best warriors have tried, and they have been killed or suffered from wounds. You have become a legend, and some say you cannot die, that you will never die, but others believe they must kill you now, it is a matter of honor. They will come soon. Perhaps even tonight."

Jubal nodded, then he spoke suddenly, as if with an effort. "Pa? You don't mind it? That I am not like the rest?"

"Of course not. You're a good man, Jubal, one of the very best. I love you as I do them."

"Folks crowd me, Pa. I like wild, lonesome country. I like the far-looking places. It ain't in me to live with folks. It's the trees, the rivers, the lake and wild animals I need. Maybe I'm one of them ... a wild animal myself."

"I'm like that, too, Jubal. Almost as much as you. And now that your mother is gone, I could walk out that door and keep going forever."

We were silent for a time. The fire crackled on the hearth and I closed my book.

The firelight flickered on Jubal's face, and moved the shadows around in the back of the room, and my eyes wandered restlessly over the stone-flagged floor, over the hide of the bear I had killed in the forest on the edge of the rhododendrons. I remember I had recharged my musket and then slid down the rugged slope, where flowering sand-myrtle cluug to the crevices, to stop beside the carcass of the bear.

My shot had gone true and the bear had dropped. They were never so difficult to kill if the shot was placed well, and a raven had flown over, looking with a wary eye at me and on a second flyby with a hopeful eye at the bear's huge size.

For that raven well knew I'd take the hide and some choice cuts, but I'd never carry that six hundred pounds over the ridges between myself and home.

"Pa? Aunt Lila told me once, you had the gift."

"We are of the blood of Nial, Jubal." I glanced at him. "Do you have it, too?"

"The Indians believe I do."

"Do you know about me?"

"I ... think so, Pa."

"Do not speak of this, Jubal. It is enough for you and me and Lila. I am not distressed, for there is a time for each of us, and we are rarely ready.

"One thing I know. I am still too young to rust. When spring comes and my crop is in once more I shall make a pack and walk over to see some of your western lands before I die."

"I've been beyond the mountains," said Jubal, "and have ridden the rivers down.

I've been to a far, far land where the greatest river of all flows south and away toward the sea, sometimes I think I'd like to get a horse and ride off across those plains forever, going on. and on just like that river goes.

"Beyond the bunch-grass levels where the buffalo graze, there are other mountains, or so the Indians say, mountains that tower their icy summits into the sky, and I've gone that way, but not yet so far.

"The Indians there live in tents of buffalo hide, and I've fought with them, hunted with them, slept in their lodges, and I could live their way and find happiness, I think. They've got horses, the southern Indians do, got them from the ranches down Mexico way."

"They do not have horses further north?" I asked.

"Not yet, but they'll have them soon, and Pa, when an Indian gets a horse he becomes a different man. I've seen it. The Comanche and the Kiowa have the horses, but the Kiowa haven't been long upon the western plains, for they have just come from the mountains further west.

"The Indian in America is like the people you told us of in Europe and Asia, always at war with one another, always pushing into new lands and pushing off the people who were there, or killing them."

"People are much the same the world around, Jubal. We are no better and no worse ... nor are they. The Picts were in England and the Celts came, and long after them, the Anglos, Saxons, and Danes. And when they settled nicely down, the Normans came, took all the land from the people of England, and handed it out in parcels to the men who came over with William the Conqueror. It is the old story. To the victor belong the spoils.

"For the Indian has done the same thing to other Indians. In Mexico the Aztecs were a savage people who conquered an older, more civilized people, and then marched out like the Romans and tried to conquer all about..

"Cortez found willing allies because many of the Indians of Mexico hated the Aztecs.

"It was the same in Peru. The people we call the Incas suddenly went on the march and welded together a vast empire of tribes and peoples, and it was done by conquest. Yet it is not only men who do this. Plants do it also. When conditions are right a new type of plant will move in and occupy the ground."

"Pa? There's been white men out yonder. After I crossed the big south-flowing river I went by canoe up a river that flows down from the west, and in wandering the country north of there, I found some great stones with writing on them, writing just like on some of the old, old maps you have from Iceland."

"Runes?"

"Yes. No two ways about it, Pa. They've been there."

Long we talked while the fire burned down and the coffee turned cold in the cups. It was the most Jubal had ever talked, I think. The sound of his voice was warm in the room, and when at last he stood, he said, "Sleep lightly, Pa, for the Indians will come when their medicine speaks, and those who sleep too soundly may never awaken."

He went outdoors then, for he rarely slept inside even in the coldest weather.

Taking wood from the bin, I built up the fire, and when the wood caught I went outside and walked over to Jeremy's.

Lila was kneading dough. Jeremy was weaving some cloth, for Barry Magill had been teaching him the trade.

"Sit you," Lila said. "The pots on. It's sassafras tea, if you'll have it."

"I will," I said, and then to Ring, "Jubal's here. He says there's been a gathering of warriors to the north and the talk in the villages is that they will come again ... perhaps tonight."

"We will need two men on the walls, then. Barry and Tom for the first watch?"

"Aye, and Sakim and Kane for the second. We'll save the last for ourselves."

" 'Tis then they'll come, Barnabas. I was thinking back, just now. Do you remember the sailor's wife who let us rooms? Mag, wasn't it?"

"I think so. Aye, I recall her well. I hope her man came back and that she had a dozen sons. She was a good woman."

"I'd like to see Jublain again. He was a good man with a blade, Barnabas. The best I ever know ... excepting you."

"And you."

"Well ... it was a skill I had. I could ride, too, but how long has it been since I've seen a horse?"

"You'll be seeing them again. There's a Spanish man below the Santee who has nine horses to sell or trade. He's going back to the old country and he wants to live well. He cannot take the horses for the trouble and the expense, and nobody would wish them to go, yet his own people cannot pay the price. He has said he will bargain."

"When?"

"I've sent Kin and Yance."

Jeremy Ring gathered up his work and put it aside, drinking the last of his tea.

"I'll go over to John Quill's now, but I do not think he'll leave his place.

He's built three cabins now, two burned by Indians, and his crop burned three times, so he's sworn that the next time he will stand them off or die."

I went to warn Black Tom. He had been early asleep, and he rolled out and pulled on his clothes, a cutlass, two pistols, and a musket, and climbed the walls.

Sakim followed, for he would stand the watch until Barry was up.

The night was cool. The stars were out but clouds were moving in. It would be a dark, dark night.

Kane O'Hara and his wife came in from their cabin at the edge of their fields.

Kane had taken to smoking tobacco, having been taught by Wa-ga-su, who was still much with us.

It seemed strange, at such a time, not to have Abby to think of.

The wind seemed unusually cool off the mountain. Was this to be the night?

"No ... not yet." I spoke aloud, and Kane O'Hara, who stood near me, glanced over.

"Just thinking aloud," I said.

He nodded. "I do it, too, when my wife is from the house."

We watched the stars disappear beneath the oncoming clouds. The night was dark and velvet with stillness. I moved, and the planks beneath my feet creaked slightly. A vagrant breeze stirred the leaves of the forest, then passed on. We listened to the sounds, for these were our woods and we understood them well.

For never are the sounds of the forest quite the same, one place to another, and if the ear is tuned to listening it distinguishes each whisper from others in the night.

Leaving Barry and Tom on the wall, I walked back to my cabin.

On the wide bed I lay alone, thinking of Abby, of Abigail. I remembered the things she had said, the lift of her voice and the quiet, intimate sound of it in the night. I thought of the times when our children had been born, and how frightened I was when the second one came.

Why it was, I never knew, but upon that night I felt suddenly isolated, terribly alone, and I tried to get someone to stay with me-even a little longer, for Abby had been lying in Lila's cabin where she could be cared for better and watched over in the night.

All the terrible aloneness I had ever felt crowded around me then, for this was her time, and there was nothing I could do, I who would have done everything.

John Quill had stopped by that night with a piece of venison from a kill and I talked to him until he almost had to pull himself away.

There was no reason for my fears, for the child came easily, with no complications.

Sometime I fell asleep, and was awakened by Sakim's hand on my shoulder. "It is time, I think."

"Is there any sign of them?"

"Perhaps ... a little change in the sounds ... but very little. Come! I have coffee."

Coffee was still a rare thing, but we had acquired a taste for it from our captured cargo, long ago, and when that was gone we had gotten our supplies from slave ships bound for the West Indies. Sometimes we were without, but used ground beans or whatever was available.

Our kitchen table was scoured white. That had been Abby's doing and I had done nothing to mar its perfection since she had left. My meals I had taken on a bench outside the door, and used the table only when writing or reading. Which led me to think ... I had to see if John had poured candles for us. Mine were getting fewer and fewer.

Sakim filled our cups. "It is good, old friend, that we are together. I see you have been reading Montaigne. Earlier it was Maimonides ... I wish I might introduce you to Khaldoun ... Ibn Khaldoun. His Muquaddimah! That you must someday read. He was of the greatest of our thinkers ... not the greatest, perhaps, but one of them. A most practical man ... like you."

"I? Practical? I only wish I were. There is a madness in me at times, Sakim, and much of the time I am the least practical of men."

"Drink your coffee. There is bread made from the meal of corn here. Lila would be desolate if she thought you had ignored it."

"Not Lila. You forget how she is. She does what needs doing and is not hurt by being ignored. I learned long ago that in her own way our Lila is a philosopher."

"Well ... I only hope Jeremy realizes. Yet it is easy to philosophize about marriage when one is unmarried. Let us eat our cornbread. If we are to talk nonsense it is better to eat while doing so, then the time is not entirely wasted."

Sakim put down his cup. "Our good Khaldoun has much to say on the subject of eating. He maintains that the evidence shows that those who eat little are superior to those who eat much, in both courage and sensibility.

"Yet we readily accept the idea that a fat man is wise. Was he not wise enough to provide for himself? But we hesitate to ascribe piety to any but the lean. A fat prophet could never start a new religion, while a lean, ascetic-looking one could do it easily.

"A prophet should always come down from the mountain or out of the desert. He should never arise from the table.

"Also, he must have a rich, strong voice, but not one too cultivated. We tend to dislike and be suspicious of too cultivated a voice. A prophet's voice should have a little roughness in the tones."

"We had better get to the walls," I said, a little roughness in my own voice.

"It grows a little thick in here. At least, when I read Montaigne I can close the book when I am tired of listening."

"See? I drop my pearls and they are ignored. Well, so be it."

We climbed the ladder in darkness, feeling our way from rung to rung. Kane O'Hara loomed beside us. "Nothing," he said. "But the crickets have stopped."

As he left, he added, "If you need me, raise your voice or fire a shot. I shall not sleep, only nod a little over the table."

"I'll remain here," Sakim said, to Kane. "But don't eat all the cornbread."

The posts that made up the palisade were of uneven lengths and were deliberately left so, as that made it more difficult for attackers by night to recognize a man's head. The poles averaged between fifteen and sixteen feet above the ground with a walk running around the wall ten feet above the ground except at the gate itself. Two ladders led from the ground to the walk, and there were two blockhouses projecting from the walls to enable defenders to fire along the walls. The second blockhouse had been added sometime after the first, as we were continually trying to improve our situation. Jeremy was charging the extra muskets.

No stars were visible now. The wind was picking up, which made the detection of any approach a doubtful thing. It was intensely dark, yet our eyes were well accustomed to the night. So far as I had been able to learn, no Indian had succeeded in taking a fortified position such as ours, but I knew the dangers of over-confidence, and tried to imagine how they might attempt it.

A dozen times they had attempted this fort with no success. If they tried again, it must be because they believed they could succeed.

Something struck the palisade below me... .

Further along something else seemed to fall, and something snake-like whisked along the walk and disappeared over the wall.

Not quite over. It was a knotted rope, and the knot caught in one of the interstices between two posts. Instantly, I heard moccasins scrape against the logs outside, and almost at once a head loomed over.

His weirdly painted face was just inches away from mine and my reaction was instantaneous: a short, vicious smash in the face with the butt of my musket.

He had not seen me at all, and had thrust his head forward to look, so he took the full force of my blow and hit the ground with a thud.

"Ropes!" I shouted. "They're climbing ropes!"

Reversing my musket, I fired at a second head that was looming over the wall some twenty feet away, and which I could scarcely make out.

It was hand to hand then, and a bitter fight it was. Three Senecas, for such they proved to be, actually made it over the wall. One we shot as he dropped to the ground inside, another was killed with a sword thrust.

What was happening beyond my vision I'd no idea. It was no time for looking about. A big Indian leaped over the wall just before me, a lithe, splendid-looking rascal, although dimly seen. He no sooner lighted on the balls of his feet than he lunged at me, knife in hand.

My musket was empty and I'd put it down. There was no chance to draw a gun from my belt, and he held the knife low and came in fast. With a slap of the hand I drove the knife-wrist aside and out of line with my body, grasped the wrist, put a leg across in front of him, and spilled him to the walkway.

He hit hard, but was up with a bounce and came at me again, more warily this time. There was time to draw a pistol, but he had no such weapon. So I drew my own knife, the knife of India given me by my father long since. The Indian thrust well, but I parried and also thrust. He'd some knowledge of knife-fighting but none of fencing, and the point of my blade nicked his wrist.

He pulled back suddenly, blood upon his hand, then feinted and dove at me, grabbing at my legs. My knee lifted and caught the side of his head as he came in, and the nudge was enough to put him over the edge.

He fell ten feet but landed standing up. He came back up instantly, and I leaped at him. He sprang back, but not soon enough and I hit him and knocked him back to the ground. I jumped down to continue the fight. I hit him with my fist under the chin.

He staggered. The force of my fist had hurt him. I hit him twice more. He was totally unused to the boxer's style and the blow in the wind hurt him anew.

Again I hit him and he fell back into the dirt. I grabbed him up by the lot of necklaces at his throat and slammed him hard against the gate.

He hit with tremendous force, and I thought he was out. I found his knife on the ground.

The first light of dawn was in the sky and I saw him plain. He had got up and was running away. I took the knife and threw it at him, yelling, "You'll need that!"

He turned and caught it from the air as one might catch a ball. "I will bring it back!" he shouted, and was gone.

For a moment I stood stock-still, staring after him. He had yelled in English!

"Wait!" I shouted, but he was gone and away.

My shout was the fight's end, and I walked slowly around, making a circuit of the walls. Kane had taken an arrow through his upper arm and Black Tom Watkins had a bad knife cut. Jeremy hadn't a scratch but it developed that I had three-a slight puncture wound and two slight cuts, troublesome if not cared for.

We believed that three of them had died, but as they had taken the bodies away we could not be sure.

What had turned the tide was not of our doing. For just at the moment of the hardest fighting, Kin, Yance, and a dozen Catawba, aided by Wa-ga-su, had come storming up and broke the back of the attack upon us.

Moreover, Kin and Yance were riding horseback!

Chapter 34

How swiftly roll the years! How lonely keep the nights!

At last I am westward going, over the blue mountains into the land beyond, and long have I dreamed of this! How many, many times have I looked with longing at those smoky mountains against the sky?

Pim Burke is back, if only for a little time. His fair lady proved unfair. She took his emerald and what gold he had and fled upon a ship for England, and may no good come to her.

Yet he is back, and for that I am grateful. He will stay but for a little while, for he returns to the coast to set up an inn in one of the new towns. It is a business at which he will do well.

John Quill has been to Williamsburg to make a claim for his grant of land. He has spoken for his piece here, and for another on the Chowan, and has persuaded Jeremy to do the same.

Kin and Yance have again gone beyond the mountains following a path of the Indians, worn by the feet of centuries going yonder. Soon I shall be meeting them, for it is into this land I am going at last.

Not in two years have we seen Jubal. Somewhere he roams beyond the great river of De Soto, somewhere across the vast plains that lie yonder toward the sun, and I think he will stop no more until he walks the shining western mountains of his dreams, and this I understand, for I have followed my dream of mountains, too.

And so must it be for each generation, for they must ever look to the mountains, ever seek to pass over them. Their bodies will mark the trails, their blood will feed the grass, yet some will win through and some will build and some will grow ...

Brian is reading law at the Inns of Court in London, a handsome gentleman, they say. And Noelle is a young English lady now, a beauty and a girl of spirit. A fine horsewoman, an elegant dancer. Does she ever remember our blue mountains?

Or long for her father, who remembers her small hands in his hair, the first tears in her eyes, and the laughter never far from her lips? When William dies, the old fenlands will be hers.

We write, our letters crossing on the Abigail and other ships. And I continue my trade with Peter Tallis.

And Sakim, our teacher, our physician, our friend ... one day word came from his own land, and I know not what it said, but he came to me with a farewell, and between two suns he was gone.

Now, I Barnabas Sackett, no longer a young man yet not quite an old one, am bound, west again. Black Tom Watkins rides with me. My old companion from the fens now rides the high ridges where waits the wind. At the last, when Jeremy would have come, Lila would have none of it, and for once he listened well.

Now the shadows rise from the valleys, and another night comes creeping. We have all day followed a trail made by buffalo, who wind the contours of the hills and seem ever to find the easiest way.

The Shawnees speak of this as the dark and bloody ground, and no Indian now lives here, although they come to hunt. Yet there are evidences of ancient habitation ... stone walls, earthworks, and some things found in caves. In one of the old forts Tom found a Roman coin.

Preposterous, you say? I only say he found a coin, lost by someone, not necessarily a Roman, yet perhaps someone who traded with a Roman, for the greatest myth is that of the discovery of any country, for all countries were known in the long ago, and all seas sailed in times gone by.

We are alone, Tom and I. Soon we will camp. Yet I am restless upon this night and if there were a moon would be for moving on.

Twice in the past few minutes I have glanced along our back trail, yet have seen nothing ... yet something is there, bear, ghost, or man ... something.

Ah! A wind-hollowed overhang, a sort of half-cave, with great slabs of broken rock lying about, and some few trees and many fallen ones. "Tom? If there's water, we should stop here."

While he searched about, I sat my saddle. Dusk was upon us and the trails were dim ...

Tom came from the darkness. "There's a good spring, Barnabas. This is the place."

Ah? This is the place? The words have a sound to them. Tomorrow we will meet the boys in the cove that lies ahead, the cove where grow the crabapples of which they have spoken.

Swinging down, I stripped the gear from my horse and drove deep the picket pin to let him graze. While Tom gathered wood for the fire, I staked out his horse.

Firelight flickered on the bare rock walls. The broiling venison tasted good.

Kneeling, I added fuel to the blaze. The warmth was comforting, and suddenly I was glad to be resting, for we had come a far piece since the dawning.

No sound in the night but the wind, no whisper but the leaves. The higher ranges lay behind us. The crabapple cove lay just below. Beyond that a long, long valley that ends or seems to end at a river, a strong-flowing river that goes, they say, to the great river of De Soto. Jubal has ridden that river down. He has spoken of it to me.

Tom handed me a chunk of venison. "Indians say there were white folks here, in the long ago time. Cherokees say they wiped 'em out. The Shawnees say the same.

Likely somebody from one tribe married into the other an' carried the tale, or maybe they came together on the war party."

The wind moaned in the pines and the land was dark around us. The fire fluttered in the wind, and I added fuel. I should not be looking into the flames ... the eyes adjust too slowly to darkness, and somebody, I think, is out there, waiting.

Somebody, perhaps, and some ... thing.

This was my land. I breathed deeply of the fresh, cool air from off the mountains. This was what I had come for, this wide land, those tall boys who rode down the mountain paths toward me. It was a land for men. Here they could grow, here they could become, here they could move on to those destinies that await the men who do and are.

My father had given me much, and I had given them a little of that, I think, and a wide land in which to grow. Had I done nothing else, I left them this birthright ... for I knew that out there beyond the great river, beyond the wide plain, beyond the shining mountains ... beyond ... there would be, for the men of this land, forever a beyond.

Many would die ... do not all die, soon or late? Yet many would die in combat here, many would die in building, yet each in passing on would leave something of himself behind. This land waited long for the hard-bellied men to come, waited, snugged down for destiny. Hard though the years may be, and the moments of doubt, there will always be the beyond.

I looked again to the stars. Even there ... even out there, given time ...

Black Tom Watkins stirred the fire again. He added sticks. "You got the notion something was behind us out there?"

"Bring the horses close, Tom. Yes, I think there is something out there. Yet even so, I'd like an early start. We are to meet the boys in the cove where the crabapples are."

He looked around at me. "D' you reckon we'll make it, Barnabas?"

"Do you wonder, Tom?"

He was silent, and the fire crackled. Somewhere out there the wind moved through the trees. "I reckon not, Barnabas. I reckon I knew from the moment we straddled a horse for this ride that we wasn't goin' but one way this time."

"We've ridden a good trail together, Tom, a long ride since that night on the edge of the fens."

"Aye, an' the boys are old enough now to git on without us." He looked up at me, embarrassed. "Barnabas, I hope you won't mind, but sometimes I think those boys are my own."

"That's the way I want it, Tom. You've been a second father to them, and a fine example."

"Example? Me?"

"You're a man, Tom Watkins, a man to ride down the warpath with ... or any path.

You were there when the long guns spoke, and you were beside me when the blades were drawn ... and when they were sheathed ... and you never shirked a job that needed to be done."

"Lila knew, didn't she? That why she wouldn't let Jeremy come?"

"She knew."

He brought the horses closer to the fire, and I walked out in the night and listened. Suppose I was wrong? Well, then ... we'd meet the boys tomorrow.

I went to the spring and drank deep of the cold, cold water.

When I straightened up, I heard the faintest of sounds. My musket lifted and I faded deeper into the shadow of a boulder. A quick glance showed me Tom was gone ... the fire flickered alone. Suddenly, off to my left a shadow shifted and I heard the blast of Tom's musket. The shadow stopped, then fell forward ... and then they came swiftly, silently, and there were too many.

My musket accounted for one. A warrior loomed up from the shadows almost at my feet, and I shot him with a pistol, then ran forward, clubbing my musket to stand over Tom.

An arrow struck me. I felt the blow, then a stab of pain.

They were all around me then. The musket wrenched from my hands. My knife was out ... that knife from India and a gift to my father, and from him to me.

It swung up and in. I heard a gasp and an Indian fell from me. Suddenly, with all my strength I swung into them, stabbing, slashing. Fire was kicked into the grass and a great flame went up, crackling and angry.

A huge warrior loomed before me, striking with a club. I went in quickly, under the blow. I put the knife into his ribs and he fell from me, jerking it from my grip. He fell and I swung a fist and knocked another sprawling, then stooped to withdraw the knife and felt a tremendous blow on the skull.

I was bleeding, I was hurt. I went down again, got up again. I grabbed a pistol, but the hammer clicked. Tom still had one unfired. I lunged for his body, knocked an Indian sprawling and threw three from me. Coming up with Tom's pistol, I fired into the Indians who loomed before me, then clubbed the pistol and struck another. I was down. An Indian loomed over me with a lance. I struck it aside and grasped it, pulling myself up. They fell back in a circle, staring at me, and I stood weaving before them, the lance in my grasp.

They were going to come for me again. I reached down and caught up my powder horn, pulled off the stopper and threw it into the fire. There was an explosion and a puff of fire shot out, and the Indians leaped back.

Tom, who had evidently been knocked out, came up then, and for a few minutes we stood back to back. I retrieved my knife and we fought, working our way back toward the cave mouth.

"Barn ... I'm goin', I-"

He went down again but I caught up his cutlass. For a minute or more I held them off with that swirling, thrusting blade, but I was weaker.

I was bleeding ... I was hurt.

Suddenly, I was down. There was a thrown lance in my chest. I tried to move, could not.

I gripped the knife. "Come on, damn you! I can kill another of you!"

They stared at me, and drew slowly back. I was dying and I knew it.

They knew it, too.

Suddenly one of them dropped to his knees and began to sing a death-song.

My death-song. He was singing it for me.

Turning my knife, I handed it to him, hilt forward. "Th ... anks," I said.

Or thought I said.

"Ah-? Abby? I-I wish-" In the dust, my finger moved ... stirred.

Kin ... Yance ... the boys and Noelle. Had they found a path, as I had? Did they know the way to go?

Who would live to tell the story-our story?

My finger wrote in the dust. I looked, my gaze blurred.

I had written: Give them tomorrow ...

Dead I was, yet not quite dead, for I felt the Indian stoop above me, covering me gently with a blanket.

There was a whisper of moccasins, withdrawing ...

The dawn wind stirred the corner of the blanket. One of the horses whinnied ... for a long, long time, there was no other sound.

In the lodges of the Senecas there was silence. And into the darkened lodge of the old chief the four warriors came and they stood tall before him.

For a long time they stood in silence, arms folded. Then one said, "He is finished."

"You have his hair?"

"We were twelve. Four came away. We left his scalp with him ... and the other, also."

Another spoke. "We covered them with blankets, for they were brave."

"He was ever brave." The old man was silent. "You have done well."

And when they had walked from the lodge the old man took a pinch of tobacco and threw it into the fire.

Then sadly he said, "Who now is left to test our young men? Who now?"

About the Author Louis L'Amour, born Louis Dearborn L'Amour, is of French-Irish descent. Although Mr. L'Amour claims his writing began as a "spur-of-the-moment thing" prompted by friends who relished his verbal tales of the West, he comes by his talent honestly. A frontiersman by heritage (his grandfather was scalped by the Sioux), and a universal man by experience, Louis L'Amour lives the life of his fictional heroes. Since leaving his native Jamestown, North Dakota, at the age of fifteen, he's been a longshoreman, lumberjack, elephant handler, hay shocker, flume builder, fruit picker, and an officer on tank destroyers during World War II.

And he's written four hundred short stories and over fifty books (including a volume of poetry).

Mr. L'Amour has lectured widely, traveled the West thoroughly, studied archaeology, compiled biographies of over one thousand Western gunfighters, and read prodigiously (his library holds more than two thousand volumes). And he's watched thirty-one of his westerns as movies. He's circled the world on a freighter, mined in the West, sailed a dhow on the Red Sea, been shipwrecked in the West Indies, stranded in the Mojave Desert. He's won fifty-one of fifty-nine fights as a professional boxer and pinchhit for Dorothy Kilgallen when she was on vacation from her column. Since 1816, thirty-three members of his family have been writers. And, he says, "I could sit in the middle of Sunset Boulevard and write with my typewriter on my knees; temperamental I am not."

Mr. L'Amour is re-creating an 1865 Western town, christened Shalako, where the borders of Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado meet. Historically authentic from whistle to well, it will be a live, operating town, as well as a movie location and tourist attraction.

Mr. L'Amour now lives in Los Angeles with his wife Kathy, who helps with the enormous amount of research he does for his books. Soon, Mr. L'Amour hopes, the children (Beau and Angelique) will be helping too.