Jubal Sackett (1985) (2 page)

Exasperated, I swore softly to myself. I had been a fool! That sound that had diverted me--he had thrown a stick or a chip, and like a child I had taken the bait.

Moreover, now he had his spear in hand once more and it was, perhaps, his favorite weapon. Certainly he had thrown it with skill, and only my unexpected movement had saved my life. Would I be so lucky again?

Undoubtedly on recovering his spear he had moved, but in what direction? He wanted to kill me, so he would be waiting in ambush somewhere. At the same time it was best for me to move, for he would soon discover where I lay, if he had not already done so. A moment longer I waited.

There was, alongside the great fallen tree, a narrow way that was free of the scattered pine cones, and the branches of the dead tree did not begin for at least thirty feet.

Swiftly, silently, I moved, keeping low alongside the tree and then ducking under it among the hanging bark. Waiting, I heard no sound, and I plotted my next move. Again a swift move and I was among the standing trees, flitting away, an impossible target for a spear ... if he saw me.

Months before I had come this far west, exploring a route to the Great River of which we had heard, and I knew that the trace I planned to follow made a great arc not far ahead, so moving through the thick of the forest I headed for that trace. Hours later, when I reached it, I found no tracks upon the path. Apparently, I was before him. Again I settled down to running.

What manner of man was he who followed me? A wandering hunter seeking a scalp? Few Indians traveled alone. Usually there were small parties of them when they went either hunting or seeking war. Yet this man was alone. A strong warrior, no doubt, sure of his skills, and a man to be reckoned with.

On and on I ran, running easily, smoothly. Several times I glimpsed the tracks of buffalo and once those of a deer. Later, as the afternoon drew on, I stopped for a drink at a small creek. Near the water's edge there were the tracks of a large bear. They were fresh tracks made within minutes of my arrival.

After a careful look around I made four small crosses inside the bear track.

Now I no longer ran, but walked, alert for means of obscuring my trail. I walked upstream in the water for a short distance, pausing to make sure the swift current was wiping out my tracks in the stream bed. Then I followed a smaller stream for a hundred steps, followed a log from which the bark had fallen away, and then stepped off onto a rocky ledge and followed it to the end, careful to disturb none of the leaves or gravel scattered upon it. Then deliberately I changed direction and went back toward my last night's camp, now far away.

There was a path high among the rocks of which I knew, and when I reached it I found no fresh tracks. This path ran along the way in which I wished to go. As I walked I thought of Pa and how he would have enjoyed this, but so would Kin-Ring and Yance, although Yance would have been inclined to try to ambush my pursuer and have it out with him. I had no wish to kill the man even though he had tried to kill me. If it became necessary, of course ...

Night was coming and I was alone. It was time for rest and food underneath three ancient oaks beside a small stream, one leaning far out, on a grassy bank with driftwood scattered along the stream.

A fire, meat broiling over a flame, a time of eating, of listening to the rustle of water and the subdued crackle of flames, and then of sleep. This is what I wished for, but could not quite have, for a man had followed me and might find me again.

He had come shrewdly upon me, and I did not doubt he would work out the trail I had left for him. Many another might have lost it, but not this one, I thought. Yet I would wait, for I had an idea.

My fire was the work of a moment. A handful of crushed bark, a few slivers of pitch pine from an old stump that I had carried with me, then a blow with flint and steel, a spark, then a small tendril of smoke, a puff or two from the lungs, and a flame. It was not always so easy. To light a fire properly one must prepare it well. Fire, man's first and faithful friend, and ever a potential enemy.

He who followed might come to my fire, and something told me he would. He was curious now, as all wild things are inclined to be, and I believed he wished to know what manner of man I was.

Where I was pointed no white man went, although Indians had told me that far to the westward there were men who spoke like those of Florida and who wore iron headdresses. Westward lay the Great River, which some say was discovered by De Soto, but we who know of such things knew it was discovered twenty years earlier by Alvarez de Pineda. Who else might have seen the river we do not know, but there are rumors of others who came, of much fighting and dying.

My fire blazed up, a small, hot blaze but larger than usual. Deliberately I was inviting him in. By now he knew it was not my custom to build large or very bright fires, and he would recognize the invitation. As he was curious about me, so I was curious about him. Who was this stranger who wandered alone where all went in company?

He had tried to kill me, but that was expected where any stranger was a potential enemy. Drawing back into the shadows with a great tree at my back, I waited. My longbow was placed near in plain sight, but a pistol lay in my lap. My visitor would be friendly, I hoped, but if his destiny was to die I would not stand in his way.

Chewing on a bit of dried venison I listened and waited. Then, suddenly, he was there at the edge of the firelight, a man as tall as I but leaner. He was an Indian of a kind I knew not.

With my left hand I gestured to the earth beside the fire. He came forward on light feet, yet before he seated himself he hung a haunch of venison over the coals.

"Meat!" he said.

"Good! Sit you."

With a small stick I pushed coals under the meat and added a few sticks, which began to sizzle pleasantly.

"You go far?"

"To the Great River, and beyond."

"I have seen the river," he said proudly, "and the Far Seeing Lands beyond."

"You speak my tongue."

"I speak much with Englishman. My village."

An Englishman? So far west?

"Where is your village?"

"Far," he gestured toward the north. "Many days." He looked directly into my eyes and said with great pride. "I am Kickapoo Keokotah."

"A nation of warriors," I acknowledged.

He was pleased. "You know?"

"Every wind carries news of Kickapoo bravery. In every lodge a warrior would wish to have a Kickapoo scalp--if he could."

"It is true," he spoke complacently. "We are great warriors and wanderers."

"What of the Englishman? Where is he now?"

"He is dead. He was a brave man, and took a long time to die."

"You killed him?"

"It was the Seneca. They took us both."

"Yet you escaped?"

Keokotah shrugged. "I am here."

Our fire was dying from neglect. I added sticks as did he. He cut a sliver from the venison. "I would learn from the Kickapoo," I said. "You are old upon this land."

"We come, we go." He glanced at me. "You have a woman?"

"It is too soon. I have rivers to cross."

"My woman is dead. She was a good woman." He paused. "The best."

"I am sorry."

"Do not be. She lived well, she died well."

We sat silent, chewing on the venison sliced from the haunch. "You are from over the mountain?"

"Aye."

"You know of Barn-a-bas?"

Startled, I looked up. "You have heard of him? What do you know of Barnabas?"

"All men speak of Barn-a-bas. He great warrior. Great chief." He paused. "He was great warrior."

"Was?"

In that moment my heart seemed to stop, and when again it throbbed it was with slow, heavy beats.

"He is dead now. They sing of him in the villages."

My father ...dead? He was so strong, so invulnerable. No trail had been too long, no stream too swift, no mountain too high.

"He died as a warrior should, destroying those who attacked him. So died he who was beside him."

"Only one died with him? A young man?"

"So old as Barn-a-bas. Older." He looked hard at me. "You know this Barn-a-bas?"

"He was my father."

"A ... eee!"

Again a long silence. I remembered my father and grief held tight my chest, choking in my throat. I stared at the earth and remembered the few arguments we had had and the unkind words I must have said. I had been a fool. He had been the best of fathers and it was never easy to be a father to strong sons growing up in a strange land, each coming to manhood, each asserting himself, loving the father yet wishing to be free of him, finding fault to make the break easier. So it had been since the world began, for the young do not remain young and the time must come when each must go out on his own grass.

I had known he would die, and almost how, but I had not thought it to be so soon.

In silence by the fire with only a strange Indian for company I thought of Barnabas Sackett, who sailed first to this wild land and then returned for our mother.

Our mother? Did she know by some strange intuition of our father's passing? She had gone home to England to rear our sister, Noelle, in a gentler land. It had been a wise decision we had believed, we had hoped.

My brother Brian had gone with her to read for the law in London.

What of the others now? Of Kin-Ring and Yance? Kin-Ring, my strong, serious older brother, born on a buffalo robe in the heat of an Indian battle, with my father's old friend, Jeremy Ring, standing over my mother to fight off the attackers as the child was born.

What of Yance? Wild, unruly Yance, strong as a bear, quick to anger, quick to forget.

Would I see them again?

Deep within me a knell tolled ... I would not. I knew I would not see them again even as both my father and I had known his time was near, for we were of the blood of Nial, who had the Gift.

My brothers had their world, I mine. Theirs was in the mountains that lay behind me, and mine was the westward way.

Keokotah looked across the fire at me. "You are son of Barn-a-bas. I am Kickapoo. We will walk together."

And so it was.

Chapter
Three.

Stark and black were the tall trees, growing misty green along the branches with the budding leaves of spring. I walked to drink water from a running stream and startled a perch, twenty pounds at the least. It swam away, disturbed by my presence. Downstream a deer lifted its muzzle from the water and crystal drops fell back into the stream. It glanced disdainfully at me and walked away, seemingly unworried by our coming.

With morning our wood smoke mingled with the lifting mists and we heard no sound but the soft crackle of our own fire and the slight hiss of some damp wood we used. A movement in the wild clover made us look up to see something vast and shadowy, some monstrous thing, coming toward us through the meadow grass, emerging slowly from the mist.

It stopped, smelling the fire at last, and seeing us. It faced us, massive and horned, a huge buffalo bull with a great mass of wool over its face, shoulders, and hump, wool that sparkled with morning dew. Wreaths of fog hung about it as it stared from small back eyes almost buried in the wool.

The buffalo was no more than fifteen yards away and behind it there were others.

It stared at us, undecided as to our importance. It dropped its head then, pawing at the grass.

"Meat," Keokotah said, "much meat."

With one of my two pistols I aimed at a spot inside the left foreleg and squeezed the trigger. The pistol leaped with the concussion, and I placed it on the ground beside me and took up the second, but held my fire.

The great buffalo stood stock still, staring at us; then slowly the forelegs gave way and the beast crumpled and went to its knees. Then it rolled over on the ground.

The others simply stood, staring stupidly, unalarmed by the sound because, being unfamiliar with firearms, the sound might have seemed like thunder. One young bull came forward and sniffed at their fallen leader, smelling the blood and not liking it. We stood up then and walked toward them, and the young bull put its head down, but at our continued approach it backed off and they began to walk away across the meadow.

Glancing at Keokotah I noted his features were unmarked by surprise. Had he seen or heard a gun before? Later, I learned he had not, but he was a Kickapoo, not to be astonished by such things.

With our skinning knives we went to work, each in his own way but working well together, cutting away the hide and selecting the best cuts of meat. There was fuel here, so we built up our fire and built drying racks for the meat, cutting it in strips to smoke and dry the better. Then we staked out the hide to be scraped and cured.

Nobody in our time could have been better armed than I. For general purposes I carried an English longbow, with which our father's training had made us expert, and a full quiver of arrows. I also carried a razor-sharp twelve-inch blade. My true strength, and one which I had not intended to reveal except in emergency, lay in two long-barreled firearms my father had taken from a pirate ship. Obviously a part of some booty the pirates had themselves taken, the pistols must have been made for some great lord.