Ride the River (1983) (12 page)

At the third table, Timothy Oats was seated close to Essie Buchanan. They were talking. I did not look at them, not wanting them to realize I'd noticed. I had to get away; I had to get off this boat, somehow, some way.

Suddenly I felt trapped, closed in. I did not trust that woman, and now she was talking to Oats. Probably it was idle conversation, but I dared not risk it.

I glanced across the table at Dorian Chantry. Did I dare ask his help? Did he even know about me? If I could just get off, in the middle of the night, when no one suspected .

I was a fool to be thinking of him. He had not so much as noticed me. It was my family I must consider, and what this money would do for them. We had been poor for such a long time. We lived all right because we could hunt, but now it could be different.

Very different.

What I needed now was time to think, to plan. If I could get off this steamboat now, or soon, I could get a horse and ride south. It was closer to home than Cincinnati, although wilder country, I believed.

If I only had a map of the river! Often the steamboat stopped at small places, sometimes only landings. If I could get off without anybody knowing, get off in the middle of the night ...

That nice young man, Robinson. He would know. He had offered to help.

He wasn't thinking of that kind of help, I warned myself. Still, if I could just get off somewhere ...

I could get Mr. Robinson to show me a chart of the river. I knew they must have some in the pilothouse. Suddenly I was startled from my thinking. He was speaking to me. Dorian Chantry was speaking tome !

Chapter
12

"Did I understand you to say, Miss Sackett, that you are leaving the steamer at Cincinnati?"

"That is my present plan, Mister ... is it Chantry?"

"Dorian Chantry, at your service. I believe you know my Uncle Finian?"

"I've had the pleasure, and indeed it was a pleasure. He is a very fine man, a remarkable man."

"And a stern one, very stern."

"With reason, perhaps?"

His glance was cool. "No doubt he feels it so." He resumed the former topic. "From Cincinnati you go home, I believe? Is not that very rough country?"

"Some might think it is."

"But there is a stage? Or can you take another steamer?"

"There is, I think, but right across country is quicker."

He was irritated. How foolish of her to come so far, unprotected and alone! Because of it he had to leave everything and come on this wild-goose chase, escorting a girl who did not seem in the least grateful. She was pert, almost impudent.

"I am astonished that your family would permit it. Suppose you met a bear? Or a man of evil intention?"

I made my eyes very wide. "I'd take him home for supper."

"What? You'd invite such a man to your home?"

"I meant the bear." I smiled innocently. "Could I do less?"

His expression showed his exasperation. "Uncle Finian said I was to see you safely home. He was quite worried about you. He said there were - "

"They are here."

Startled, he looked up."Here?"

Before he could say more, I said, "It is very nice of your Uncle Finian to worry about me, but I shall be quite all right. I would not want you to go to so much trouble. There are bears where I am going, and quite a few men, but most of them are very nice."

"It is preposterous for you to travel alone." He glanced at the woman who sat beside me. "Don't you agree?"

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

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

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

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

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

"I have it back."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You go ahead."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"They did not follow you then?"

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

"I see."

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

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

"He sent me to look after you."

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

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

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

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