Ride the River (1983) (6 page)

Two dollars and a half a bottle! That was outrageous. In the mountains a body could buy a barrel of whiskey for that price.

"I never paid much mind to it, Mr. Chantry," I said. "Womenfolks in the mountains in our time don't touch whiskey. At least, not in public. There are some who like a little nip on the sly, but not me. None of our family were drinkers, although I've heard tell that wild Clinch Mountain bunch would tap the jug once in a while."

"You must be careful," Mr. Chantry warned. "You'll be carrying quite a lot of money, and I shall be surprised if there isn't an attempt to rob you."

"I came a long way to get this money, and I don't intend to let no thief take it from me. I've got a pistol, and I have my pick."

"Oh, yes. The pick." Finian Chantry had a nice smile. "But be careful. That's a lot of money to most people."

We had mock turtle soup, boiled bluefish with oyster sauce, tomatoes, and eggplant.

Mr. Chantry asked me about the mountains, so I told him about our cabin in the laurel with pines along the ridge above, the clear cold spring that gave us water, and the hole near the spring where we kept our butter and milk. I told him about hunting game and of the Clinch Mountain boys who were raised on bear meat and poke greens.

"There was a time we could have become rich folk. The land was for the taking, but we taken more to hunting along the ridges than settling in the rich bottomlands. Of a sudden the rich land was gone and all that was left was ridges and high country."

Across the room a man had been seated facing us. He was a tall man with high cheekbones, a beak of a nose, and thin, tight lips. When I looked over, he was staring at us, and he turned his eyes away, but I had seen the look. He was a hunter.

"Mr. Chantry, there's a man across the room, just beyond the gray-haired man with the two ladies. I figure him for trouble."

After a moment, Finian Chantry looked over and said, "You are a very perceptive young lady. That is Felix Horst. James White defended him once ... for murder."

Chapter
6

We took our time over supper. There was music playing somewhere out of sight-mighty pleasant it was, too. Most folks dined at home, but there were always a few who wished to go out to eat. The waiters went about their business so quietly a body scarcely realized they were about. Meanwhile, I kept an eye on Felix Horst.

It was unlikely his being here was an accident. He had been sent to prison for murder but James White had got the case reopened and contrived to free him. Maybe it was happenstance that he was having supper at the same time and place as me just after I had come into money, but I didn't believe it.

Murder didn't scare me the way it did most folks. Cuttings and shootings were common back in the hills, and we even had a feud of our own, with some killings over the years.

From time to time folks stopped by our table, and Mr. Chantry introduced me as the granddaughter of an old friend. A good many of them were younger men, mighty fetching in their ways.

Three of them sat at a table not far off, but only two paid their respects, as the saying was. The other young man sat with his back to us, very broad in the shoulders, and he looked to be tall, although I did not see him on his feet.

"My nephew, Dorian," Finian Chantry explained. "He will not come to our table because we have recently had words and he is a very independent young man."

Mr. Chantry smiled suddenly, a mischievous glint in his eyes. "We are much alike, so we do have words occasionally. Lately he has been devoting more time to dancing, riding to hounds, fencing and such things, and not studying law."

"He is a good shot?"

"Excellent, I believe, and a fine horseman, too. He is a great favorite with the ladies and a bit too sure of himself. Nonetheless, he's a fine lad if a little too formal, too stiff."

Mr. Chantry glanced at me. "You mentioned your rifle? Do you shoot?"

"Yes, sir. Pa started me shooting when I was seven. Those brothers of mine had been riding roughshod over me because I was a girl.

"Pa, he said, 'Look, bein' a girl is a mighty fine thing. Don't let those roughneck brothers of yours get the better of you.'

" 'How can I help it? They are older than me and stronger than me.' "

" 'Be better than they are. Learn to shoot better.' "

" 'How can I? Nobody can shoot better than a Sackett!' "

"He laughed at me and said, 'But you're a Sackett too! Just learn to shoot better. Here, I'll teach you!' And he did."

"And did you beat them?"

"Yes, sir. Most of the time. Only Regal ... he's my uncle, although more like a brother. Regal would not shoot against me. I think he did not want to beat me, seeing I just outshot my brothers."

"Maybe that is what Dorian needs, to be outshot by a girl."

"Oh, no! I'd never do that! Regal, he warned me to never let a man know how good I could shoot."

"Good advice, but don't let it stop you. Dorian's a fine lad. What he needs is seasoning. He needs to be taken down a bit, to travel some rough country."

Later, when I glanced over to catch a glimpse of him, he had gone. I felt kind of let down. We talked on for a bit and then Mr. Chantry said, "You surprise me sometimes. You can speak very good English, but sometimes you talk like a mountain girl with no education."

"Yes, sir, but that's the way with most folks, if you think on it. They talk one way to one person, and another way to others."

"Ma insisted I learn to talk proper, and at school it was insisted on, but when around the hills, a body gets to talkin' as they do. But it seems to me we all have several ways of talkin' or writin'. Take you, for example, you bein' a lawyer. You have a set of law words you'd use in court but not over supper like this. And when a body writes a letter, he often uses words he wouldn't use in conversation."

"Down to the store, the men set about talking of politics, planting, the wars, Injuns and suchlike, and most of them can argue the Bible up one side an' down the other. Because a man doesn't speak good English doesn't mean he doesn't have ideas."

"Our atheist, he's a book-learned man. Nothing folks like better than to get him and the preacher talking history and religion. They'll argue sundown to sunup, and folks settin' about listenin'. There's old Mr. Fothergill, he was in the army as a boy and went upon the sea a time or two. He can't read nor write but he's bright, an' he can argue down both of them when he wants."

"Some folks think that being smart in the books is the only kind of smart, but that just isn't so. Men learn a lot by doin', and they learn by listenin' to what others say, but when a man is workin' on a farm or walkin' in the woods or ridin' across country, he can do a lot of thinking. Many a man who reads a lot just repeats what he's read, and not what he thinks."

"It seems to me," I added, "that a body may have a dozen sets of words he uses on occasion. Anyway, lots of men who work at hand labor have read a good bit and can talk of things far from their work."

Given a chance, I changed the subject, because this was about as good a chance as I would get to learn more about grandfather.

"Yes," Mr. Chantry replied when asked, "you are right in what you say. Daubeny Sackett was such a man. He was the finest woodsman I ever knew, and a fantastic shot with a rifle, but when the occasion demanded, he could discuss government or philosophy with the best. He had read few books, I believe, but had read them several times. But that was the way of it in those days."

"He was at the Battle of King's Mountain and at Cowpens also. I last saw him at the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown."

"He knew them all, you know. Washington, Jefferson, Patrick Henry, George Mason ... He was quite a man, your grandfather."

He ordered more coffee and I glanced over at the table where the three young men had been. Other folks sat there now.

"Echo? What are your plans? You could stay here, you know. There are several very fine schools for young ladies, and from the attention you are attracting from the young men, I cannot imagine you would be lonely."

"No, sir. I shall head for the hills again when morning comes. The folks back home will wonder how I am faring."

"You could stay, you know. I have a very large, very empty house, and Mary Brennan - she's my housekeeper - would love to have you to fuss over. I am afraid I demand too little of her time."

"Thank you, sir. I'm a-longing for the smell of the pines, and I want to see the clouds gatherin' over Clingman's Dome."

"You should come a-callin' sometime when the leaves are falling and it gets on to storytellin' time. Most of our young-uns learn their history from stories told by the fireside. It isn't the history you folks know, but it's the story of people we know or our grandfolks knew."

"Wars aren't far-off things to us. Pa fit in the War of 1812. He was with the Kentucky riflemen who stood behind the bales of cotton at New Orleans. When fightin' men were needed, there was always a Sackett to be found."

Mr. Chantry, I thought, was a lonely man, and when we lingered at table it was because he wished to prolong the time. I knew how he felt, because many a time when we'd set by the fire telling stories or singin' the old ballads like "Greensleeves" or "Barbry Alien," I wished it would never end.

"I miss my wife, Echo," he said suddenly. "You are so like her, so very feminine." He glanced at me, a glint of amusement in his eyes. "Somehow, I cannot imagine you with a rifle."

"I grew up with one, used a rifle as soon as a needle. I used to walk the woods to school, or canoe on the rivers, and when a girl's much alone, she becomes independent. I've camped out in the woods when caught by storms. It never worried me much."

"You leave in the morning?"

"Yes, sir. I have already booked passage on the stage."

"You must be careful. You will be carrying what is a great deal of money to some people, and that little iron box could buy you a farm in the flatlands, and a big farm at that."

"Felix Horst is still here, and I do not believe it is an accident. He owes White a favor and he is a dangerous man. I wish you would change your mind and stay with me."

"If Horst comes after me for the money," I said, "I think it will be for himself. He looks like a meaner man than Mr. White. He'd rob a man quick enough, I think, and kill him, too. Once I get in the woods, I won't be worried about such as him."

Mr. Chantry smiled, shaking his head. "You Sacketts! You always amaze me!"

"We live in wild country, sir. I know folks who think all wild things are sweet and cuddly, but they've never come into a henhouse after a weasel has been there. He can drink the blood of only one or two, but often as not he'll kill every one of them. Wolves will do it in a pen of lambs, too. There are savage beasts in the world, Mr. Chantry, and men who are just as savage. We've come upon them now and again."

Well, I switched the subject to pleasanter things and got him to telling me of his courtship and how he proposed and all. When he stopped the carriage at Mrs. Sulky's, it was mighty late. As the carriage moved away, something stirred in the shadows across the street.

The trouble was, when I snuggled down in bed, I wasn't thinking of the stage that would take me west to Pittsburgh, but of the back of that young man's head and those broad shoulders. The trouble was, I'd probably never see him again, or get to know him.

Amy Sulky was in the kitchen when I came down the stairs before daybreak. She was there working with the black woman who did most of the cooking. She was a free woman wedded to a man who was coachman for a wealthy family. They went to the door with me and Amy fretted some. "I don't like it! You going home alone, all that way! And you carrying money!"

"The less said of it, the better," I cautioned. "But don't you worry none. I've been about the mountains more than a bit."

We said our good-byes and I taken up my carpetbag, a good bit heavier now, but nothing I couldn't handle. Back in the hills I'd rustled stumps and logs for the fire more than once, and was accustomed to carryin' weight.

First off, I taken a good look about, but saw nobody watching me.

At the coach house there was a goodly crowd, but it was not until I was seated that I saw that man with the hard gray hat and the houndstooth coat a-settin' in the corner of the mail coach across from me, but in the farthest corner. There were twelve passengers, and the rest seemed what a body would expect. Five were women, aside from me, but only one who was youngish. She was a pert, pretty girl with big eyes and a friendly smile.

Seated close beside me was a little old lady with gray hair and quick blue eyes.

We started at a brisk pace, but the road was rough and we bounced around a good deal, which would have been worse but for the bulky sacks of mail crowded in with us. That little old lady was crowded right up to me, and once, glancing down, I noticed that her carpetbag, a new one, was just like mine.

Several times I sneaked a look at the man in the gray hat and houndstooth coat, but he was looking out the window and paying me no mind. It could be he was on business of his own and I was just too suspicious. Nevertheless, I decided to stay suspicious.

We passed several wagons with families bound to the westward, the men walking, the women and children inside. Mostly they were Conestoga wagons, big, strongly built, and built to float if need be. Mostly these folks, according to one of the men on the coach, were heading for Illinois or Missouri. A man named Birkbeck had been settling folks on land he had in Illinois.