upon him at Meeting I had my plans made to leave the mountains, for now he would
not rest until he had me jailed or done away with.
Right now I was risking everything, for if I was caught I would be in real
trouble. Slapping at a mosquito, I swore softly and the Tinker commented, “It’s
the salt. They like the salt in your blood. On jungle rivers mosquitoes will
swarm around a white man before going near a native, because a white man uses
more salt.”
“You’ve been to the jungle?”
“I’ve heard tell,” he said.
That was the Tinker’s way. He would not speak of himself. Right then he was
probably smiling at me in the dark, but all I could see was the glint of those
gold earrings. Only man I ever did see who wore earrings.
His being there worried me some. He was an outlander, and Tinker or not,
mountain folks are suspicious of outlanders. The Tinker was a needful man in the
mountains, but folks had never rightly accepted him … so why had he come away
with me?
When the barnyard noises ceased—the sounds of milking and doors slamming—we went
up to the white rails of that fence and I taken a pickhead from my gear and
pried loose that rail. That one, and the next.
The mare went into that pasture like she knew what she was there for, and
against the sky we saw the jack’s head come up and we heard him blow. Then we
heard the preen and prance of his hoofs as he came toward the mare.
We waited under the dogwood, neither of us of a mind to get shot in another
man’s pasture. We were half dozing and a couple of hours had gone by. Even the
mosquitoes were tiring. Of a sudden the Tinker put a hand to my arm. “Somebody
coming,” he said, and I caught the flicker of the shine on a blade in his hand.
We listened … horses coming. Two, maybe three. The first voice we heard was
Duncan Caffrey’s. “We’ve got to have a good horse or two in those races out
west,” he was saying. “The Bishop wouldn’t like it if he lost money. The Bishop
is touchy about money.”
They had drawn up right beside the grove where we were hidden.
The older man spoke. “Now tell me about that gold. You say your Pa had it from a
man named Sackett? Where’s that man now?”
“He left out of here. Pa thinks he’s dead.”
The Tinker cupped his hands to my ear. “Let’s get out of this.”
The trouble was that my mare was out in that pasture and I didn’t want to leave
her. No more did I want to leave off listening to that talk.
“You go ahead,” I whispered. “I’ll catch up or meet you at the crossing of the
Tombigbee.”
He hoisted his pack, then took up mine. How he disappeared so quick with those
packs, I’ll never guess. And at the time I thought nothing of his taking up my
pack, for I’d have trouble getting it and the mare both out of there.
“What difference does it make?” Dun Caffrey sounded impatient. “He’s nobody.”
“You got it to learn,” the other man said irritably. “You’re a damn fool, Dun.
Falcon Sackett is one of the most dangerous men on earth, and to hear the Bishop
talk about it, he’s almighty important. So much so the Bishop has spent years
hunting down every piece of that Spanish gold to find him.”
“But he’s dead!”
“You seen the body? Nothing else would convince the Bishop. I ain’t so sure he’d
even believe it then.”
“Are you goin’ to talk all night about a dead man? Let’s go get the horses,” and
they moved on.
It was no use waiting any longer. If I was going to get away from here it had to
be now. Stepping through the opening, I started out into that pasture after my
mare and not feeling any too good about it, either. Jacks are a mean lot. If I
was caught in the middle of this pasture by either the stud or the owner I might
be lucky to get out alive.
It was almighty dark, and every step or two I’d hold up to listen. Once I
thought I heard hoofbeats off to my left; but listening, I heard nothing more.
Back behind me I heard rustling in the brush.
Suddenly, something nudged my elbow and there was my mare. All day I’d been
feeding her bits of a carrot or some turnips, so she found me her ownself. More
than likely it was the first time anybody’d ever fussed over her. Hoisting
myself to her back, I turned her toward that opening in the fence.
The Bishop had been mentioned, and he was a known man. Riverboat gambler, river
pirate, and bad actor generally, he was one of the top men at
Natchez-under-the-Hill, and one of the most feared men along the river.
“Whoever went in there,” somebody said, “is still there.”
A light glowed close to the ground as he spoke, then vanished. Didn’t seem no
call to be wasting around, so I booted the mare in the ribs and she jumped like
a deer and hit the ground running—and brother, she had plenty of scat.
She went through that fence opening and when a man reared up almost in front of
her she hit him with her shoulder, knocking him rump over teakettle into the
brush. The other man jumped to grab me and I stiff-legged him in the belly and
heard the oof as his breath left him. He went back and down out of sight, and
the mare and me, we dusted around that clump of brush and off down the pike.
There was no need to meet the Tinker at the crossing of the Tombigbee, for I
came up to him just as false dawn was spreading a lemon-yellow across the gray
sky. He had stopped alongside the road and put both packs down. It looked to me
like he was about to open mine when I came up to him.
“You got the wrong pack there,” I said.
He turned sharp around, braced for trouble. He’d been so busy he’d not heard the
mare coming in that soft dust. When he saw it was me he eased up and let go his
hold on my pack.
“I was looking for the coffee,” he said. “I thought you put it in your pack last
night.”
I didn’t believe he thought anything of the sort, but I was not going to argue
with him. Only it started me thinking and trying to add together two and two,
which is not always as easy as it seems.
“Take it from me,” I advised, “and let’s get back off the trail before we
coffee-up. We may be sought after.”
He pointed ahead. “There’s an old trace runs up over the hills yonder. I was
only down this way once, but I traveled it for a day or so.”
Two days later I swapped my old Ballard for a two-wheeled cart. The Ballard
wasn’t much of a gun but I knew it so well I could make it shoot, and I let a
farmer see me bark a squirrel with it. Now barking a squirrel is a neat trick,
but most mountain boys could do it. A squirrel has little meat, and so’s not to
spoil any of it you don’t shoot the squirrel, you shoot the branch he’s setting
on or one close by. It knocks him out of the tree, stuns him, and sometimes
kills him with flying chips.
“You’ve a straight-shootin’ gun,” this farmer said to me. “Would you be of a
mind to swap?”
We settled down to dicker. He was a whittler and a spitter, but I was
natural-born to patience, so I waited him out. He was bound and determined to
make a trade, and few folks came that way. That beat-up old cart hadn’t been
used in years, but the Tinker and me, we could posh it up. From now on we’d be
in the flatlands where it would be handy.
Between story-telling and talk of the Settlements, we dickered. We dickered
again over hominy grits and sidemeat for supper, and we dickered at breakfast,
but about that time I got awful busy making up my pack, talking to the Tinker
and the like, and he began to think he’d lost me.
Upshot of it was, I let him have that Ballard and I taken the cart, three
bushels of mighty fine apples, a worn-out scythe, and a couple of freshly tanned
hides. The Tinker and me turned to and tightened the iron rims and the spokes,
and loaded our gear.
It took two weeks of walking to reach the river, but by that time we had done a