Ride the River (1983) (19 page)

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

"But who knocked him out?"

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

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

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

"I thinkshe done it," Elmer said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Little did he know!

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

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

Bless him!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What could I do? Whatcould I do?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Where were the others?

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

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

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

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

"Get them, dammit!Kill them!"

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

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

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

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

"You all right?" he asked.

"I am. You?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You done right," I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You hit something?" he whispered.

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

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

"I wish I knew what happened to Archie."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chapter
20

Patton Sardust squatted on his heels, rifle in hand, and studied the country below him and to the north. It had been some time since he had hunted this part of the country, but that should be the North Fork of the Clinch down there, and over beyond it, the Sinks.

Felix Horst stood beside him, also staring at the country below. He was hoping for smoke, yet doubted they would be so foolish as to build a fire.

"We been underratin' that girl," Sardust said. "We've got to settle down to trackin', movin' in slow an' easy."

"I don't want that black man killed," Horst said. "He's worth an easy thousand dollars if he's in good health."

"How much is she carryin'?" Sardust asked.

Felix Horst knew, but it was not something he cared to tell. Elmer knew, and so did Timothy Oats. That was already two too many.

"She's carryin'," he said, "enough to make it worthwhile. "

"I think she's cached it," Elmer said.

Horst looked around irritably. "Now, why would she do that? She's on her way home."

"I caught a glimpse of her yonder in the trees. She didn't seem to be carrying a carpetbag. She had a rifle - "