How the West Was Won (1963) (7 page)

Zebulon Prescott was struck with sudden panic. Get out, his instincts warned him. Get out fast.

Son, I think--

The canvas walls of the tent store suddenly fell to reveal four rifles lying across the top of the log wall, four hard-eyed men standing behind them. Rebecca cried out sharply and gathered Zeke to her. Zebulon turned his head carefully. Three more rifles were aimed at their backs.

Now, now! the colonel cautioned. Nobody needs to be scared. There's womenfolks an' children here, an' it seems likely you folks wouldn't want no shootin' to start.

Zebulon Prescott hesitated, fury mounting within him, and Sam glanced uneasily at his father. He well knew his father's temper, for easy-going and friendly as he was, Zebulon was hot-headed and bull-strong when pushed. We'll stand, Sam said quietly.

Almost as if by agreement the men of their party turned to face the river pirates. Zeke pulled away from his mother and stood with them. Briskly, Hawkins, Marty, and Dora began frisking their prisoners for what valuables might be carried on their persons, carefully avoiding the line of fire in the process.

Be of good cheer, folks! Hawkins said genially. Tis in the noble tradition to fare forth and conquer the wilderness with bare hands and stout hearts. We will leave you upon this island, and if you stand quiet, perhaps even an axe might be left behind so you can build new rafts and sally forth in the spirit of your forefathers. Americans just can't be whupped! I'll see you hang, Bedloe! Zebulon declared furiously. I'll see you hang if it's the last thing I do!

Linus Rawlings, guiding an ancient canoe, sighted the island in midstream. Dipping his paddle deep, he shot the canoe toward the brushy shore. There had been no sign on the island when he had passed it going upstream, yet the painted letters had a familiar look. Accustomed to interpreting the tracks left by all manner of varmints, he found something in the shaping of the letters that he thought he recognized. If he was mistaken, it would take but minutes to find out.

Back there at the cave, when he had recovered sufficiently to examine the place where he had been tricked and robbed, he had found the cave abandoned. At the landing there was nothing of which to make a float-everything was gone. It was then he recalled the abandoned trail he had seen on first approaching the cave; and returning, he followed the ancient trail to a hidden, tiny cove. Concealed in the brush he found a battered canoe with a hole stove in the side. He repaired the hole with birch bark peeled from a nearby tree, a patching job that had taken him less than an hour to do. The canoe had been long abandoned, and it was unlikely that the thieves had known of its existence. The paddle he found by the simple expedient of looking in several places where he might himself have hidden one had the canoe been his. Now, having moored his canoe close under the overhang of a tree, he worked his way through the brush toward the landing. Wily as any Indian, carrying only the knife for a weapon, he drew closer.

Men were coming down the trail carrying furs ... his furs. We pullin' out? he heard one of them ask. Kit an' caboodle, Marry said. Pa wants to be shet of this place before others come along. Powerful lot of folks on the Ohio these days, an' you know pa ... he likes to keep movin'. Maybe six months, maybe a year from now, he'll be back along here, workin' the same stands. Marty glanced at the rafts. Turn them loose when you're finished. We'll let em go into the rapids an' bust up.

The men who had carried the furs returned along the trail for another load, and Marty went to a dugout and began stowing rifles. Wraithlike, Linus eased back into the brush and then into the water. Swimming under water, he made for the landing. Only a minute or two later he came up soundlessly in the shadowed space beneath it. For an instant he remained still, catching his breath. Dust and fragments of bark fell from the log landing as Marty worked above him. The stern of a dugout drifted out from the landing and Marty reached out to draw it near.

Coming along the trail with a load of furs, one of the men saw Marty reach for the dugout ... and vanish.

The man stopped, staring and trying to make sense of what he had seen. Marty had been there, now he was gone. A widening circle of ripples showed on the water. Suddenly Marty lunged up from the water, gasping and crying out in a panic of fear. Blood streamed from a wound in his side. Then he fell back into the water. With a frightened yell the man dropped his bundle and fled back up the trail ... but not quickly enough.

Linus lunged from under the landing, and grabbing a rifle from the dugout, he flipped it to his shoulder and fired just as the fleeing man was disappearing from sight. But Linus was too old a hand to miss such a shot, leading his target just enough.

The man threw up his hands and fell face forward, out of sight. Instantly Linus leaped for the brush and, once out of sight, was instantly still. He had neither powder nor shot, and his weapon was now empty, useful only as a club.

Moving swiftly through the brush, he reached the clearing where the store was. Colonel Hawkins stood outside the store, clutching a double-barreled pistol. He was obviously listening, trying to figure out what had happened at the landing. A quick sizing-up of the situation at the store told Linus his best chance for quick action would come from Zebulon or Sam. Drawing back his knife, he threw it into the back of the man guarding them.

Then all hell broke loose. Zebulon grabbed the falling man's rifle by the barrel and drove it hard at the face of the guard close to the wall of the store. The thief leaped back and Zebulon reversed the rifle, and the two men fired as one. The thief's bullet was a clean miss, and it smashed into the wall on the far side, scattering chips of bark. Zebulon's shot killed the guard. Hawkins wheeled and fired simultaneously. His first bullet struck Sam and knocked him to his knees; the second bullet killed Colin Harvey. Hawkins ducked and ran, coattails flying, into the brush. Dora followed him out of the clearing.

Swinging his rifle like a club, Linus had followed his knife into the fight. It was by no means his first experience in such a melee, and he floored the last of Hawkins' men.

Eve, retreating toward the brush with her mother and Lilith, recognized Linus. Her eyes caught his lean, swiftly moving figure even as he left the brush to plunge into the fight. Oh, it's him! she cried out. It's him! As always in such situations, the action ended as abruptly as it had begun. At one instant there had been cries, shots, wild blows, and running men; then there was sunlight and shadow falling over the clearing's edges ... some gasping for breath ... a muffled groan.

Rebecca for once had forgotten Zeke, and was kneeling above Sam. The Harvey boys had gone into the brush, pursuing Hawkins and Dora, while Eve ran to Linus. You're hurt! There's blood on your back!

It's all right, he said. I've got to round up my furs and get goin'. She drew back, dropping her arms stiffly; her eyes searched his face. Then you didn't come back to-? The excitement was gone from her face. No, I see you didn't. Somehow they got your furs and it was them you came after. I might have known.

He avoided her eyes, embarrassed by his own sense of guilt and by the hurt in her eyes. This was quite a woman, he told himself, a woman with the kind of courage he had always admired. He knew what it must have cost her in pride to have come to him that first time. Trouble was, he was no marryin' man. If he was, this would be the girl-she surely would be. The Harveys came plodding back through the brush. Got away, Harvey said tiredly. Had them a dugout hid on the other side of the island. I fired, Brutus said. I think I put lead into him. Can't be sure.

Let them go, Prescott said. Their sins will catch up with them. He avoided even looking at Sam. Rebecca, assisted by Lilith, was doing all anybody could. The thought of losing Sam shook him deeply, and he could not stand knowing how serious his wounds might be. Sam had changed since the trip began, becoming a man almost at once, making his own decisions and moving with a certainty Zebulon had never seen in him before. Perhaps the very act of leaving the farm, Zebulon's farm, had been responsible for that. Now they were just two men together, each standing on his own feet, doing his own share of the work.

For the first time, looking at Sam and at the body of Colin Harvey, Zebulon Prescott began to realize what the cost of this western venture might be. No new land is gained without blood and suffering, and they had been bold to leave all behind to go into the Ohio River country. They might yet pay a high price for their boldness.

They had scarcely begun ... how many would die before the West was won? How many by river, by disease, by blizzard and tornado and flood? How many by starvation and exhaustion? It was a long way to the shining mountains. He was glad they were not going that far ... nor many miles farther, when it came to that. Turning away, he began to go through what was left within the store. There was a little they could add to their own supplies-some food, some ammunition, extra bullet molds, and weapons. With Zeke to help, he began slowly sorting things out. All, or most of it, had been stolen. The owners might now be dead-dead or gone on west. Sometimes it amounted to the same thing. Linus Rawlings piled his own furs on the small landing. He had seen his canoe on the bottom of the cove, only a few feet under the water, and was hopeful it might be repaired. He recovered his rifle, and added to his store some of the stock of powder and lead.

Eve and her mother had made a bed for Sam that was shaded, and Linus helped Zebulon move the wounded man.

Only when all his furs were on the landing did he wade into the cove and remove the stones from the canoe. Brutus Harvey helped him beach it on the slanting shore, and Linus checked it for repairs. It needed only two sections of birch bark, for Marty's efforts to destroy the canoe had been halfhearted at best. Linus swore softly as he went to work. It seemed all he was doing these days was patching canoes. This one was large, and other than the damaged areas it was in good shape and comparatively new. The beat-up old canoe he had found in the brush near the cave was too small for his load of furs, but it had been swift and easily handled.

Footsteps sounded on the path behind him ... he cringed inwardly. Yet even as he did so he felt an odd warmth, a very real pleasure. It irritated him that he should be so confused about himself. After all, what did he want to do? She walked up beside him and stopped, looking down at the damaged canoe. It'll be a job, Linus said, but I can patch her up as good as new. Linus ... ?

Eve, let's talk no more about it.

Linus, I'm telling you. You don't know your own mind. Maybe so, maybe not. I ain't denyin' you been in my thoughts, but I still went to see the varmint with that pirate gal. I'll always be goin' to see the varmint, Eve-I just ain't cut out to be either a farmer or a husband. Linus, I'm not going to bring the matter up again, whether I ever see you again or not.

That's best, and I wish you Godspeed, Eve, and it's been a long time since I said the like to anybody.

Fighting tears, she turned swiftly away toward the path. Linus straightened up and for an instant he was about to call after her. Then, grimly, he closed his mouth.

To himself, he said, You ain't no marryin' man. No sooner'd you squat on some land than you'd start to thinkin' how the wind blows over South Pass, or the way that water ripples on that lake at the foot of the Tetons. All the time you were plowing a furrow you'd be rememberin' the long winds in the pines atop the Mogollon Rim in Arizona, or the slap of a beaver's tail on the water of a pool some place up the Green. No, sir. You ain't no marryin' man, Linus, not by a long shot.

He cut a patch of bark from a birch tree and settled down to remove the damaged square and replace it with the fresh piece, but the girl's face remained in his mind, interfering with his work. He swore softly, scowling as he stitched the patch in its place.

It was time he set off for Pittsburgh ... and the sooner the better. This was no time to be thinkin' soft about any chance pilgrim girl.

Chapter
6

Although it was midday, darkness lay upon the river. The black, swollen waters ran swiftly, warned by lowering black clouds that hung low above. Thunder rumbled down far-off halls, and there was the sound of rain upon the water. A quarter of a mile ahead the Harvey raft raced through the water, seen through the steel veil of the rain. That would be Brutus at the oar ... he was the stalwart one, the stable one. Never excited, never disturbed, when trouble or danger came he simply bowed his head and pushed on, as his sort will always push on, to their last day.

When others panic or shout, when they wail and shed bitter tears, decrying the changing times, there are those like Brutus who simply go on. Changing times, anger, disappointment, defeat-all these they take in stride, living their lives with quiet persistence.

Eve thought of that as she looked from the shelter into the rain. Brutus was a good man, and it was too bad it was not he whom she wanted. Not that he had ever indicated any interest in her, more than a normal, friendly interest. Zebulon squinted his eyes against the rain that hammered his cheeks, staring ahead, searching the river for snags. Lilith was fighting a rope, trying to tie the tent more securely over the frame, for a fierce gust of wind had torn it loose.

Watch yourself, Lil! he shouted, striving to be heard above the rumble of thunder and the rush of rain and wind. You be careful! He could no longer see the Harvey raft, for rain had blotted out everything. The river seemed to be rushing swifter ... was it the rain and wind that made it seem so?