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.