On the lower Big Sandy there were some fine farms, and a body might even get a horse, or if not that, a canoe. I could make my way up the Levisa Fork into Kentucky, cut across the toe of Virginia, and be right back in my own mountains in no time.
There were Sacketts on the Clinch River, a bunch of rowdy boys but good folks and cousins of ours. If Timothy Oats followed me into Clinch Mountain country, one of those big Sacketts was liable to bounce him up and down all the way back to the Ohio.
First thing tomorrow I had to lay hold of Robinson, that young officer. He could get me a map or at least a layout of the river so’s I could see what to do.
In the mountains we work from sunup to sundown, so when day broke I was up, moving very quiet so’s not to disturb Essie Buchanan or whatever her name was. I eased out of the room and walked forward to where I could look down the river and feel the wind in my face. It was mighty nice. I had not done much traveling, but if a body had the time, it was a way to live. I could see us chugging away downstream with high bluffs covered with trees and here and there an occasional cabin or farm. I could see those across the river better than on the nearer bluff because they were so high. Then I remembered how Pa had been on the Ohio close to the Mississippi when the New Madrid earthquake hit. He had told me that bluffs like this, a hundred and sometimes two hundred yards of it, would cave off into the river. It must have been a sight.
That earthquake even had the Mississippi flowing back upstream for a while, tilted the whole bottom of the river for miles! Just as I was fixing to go back to the main cabin for breakfast, young Robinson found me.
“A map? A chart, you mean. I guess I could draw one for you.”
“Just so I would know where I am on the river,” I suggested. “I could pay you for it,” I added.
He blushed. “Pay me? I’d enjoy doing it for you,” he said. “I really would. I’m proud you thought to ask me.”
“I just thought you would know,” I said, “you studying to be a pilot and all. If anybody would know the river, you would. Just as far as Cincinnati,” I suggested. Then I added, “Do we stop at night? I mean to let folks get on or to take on freight?”
“Sometimes, and sometimes we tie up at night. They do that a lot on the Mississippi and Missouri because of the snags and sawyers in the river that can tear a boat’s bottom out. You have to be able to see.”
Dorian Chantry was at breakfast, and that surprised me some because I had an idea easterners didn’t get up all that early. His hair was combed with a kind of wave in it and he looked neat as if he’d stepped out of a bandbox, as Pa used to say.
“Well? Good morning, Miss Sackett! I hope you slept well?”
“I did, and a good morning to you, sir!”
There were only a few people in the main cabin and nobody at the same table with us. He glanced around, then asked, “Last night you suggested those men who tried to get your money were aboard here?”
“They are,” I said, “but stay clear of them. They are rough men.”
He stiffened a little. “I can be rough if need be.”
“If you have trouble with them, it will be,” I warned.
“What happened back there? I mean when you lost your bag?”
So I told him a little. I surely did not tell him all, but how I didn’t even suspect that little ol’ lady and how she switched bags on me and was getting away with Oats when I taken after them.
“By the time I got my bag away from them, I’d gone on down the road a ways, so I caught the stage when it caught up.” There was no need to tell him about the house by the road or how I got my bag back. “The stage, I mean.”
“They did not follow you then?”
“They did, but I got away from them.” He needed a warning, so I said, “There was an Irishman who said he would stop them. He was a big, strong lad, too, but he did not do it. Oats had a couple of bruises on him and some skinned knuckles, was all.”
“I see.”
Well, now he knew what he was in for. Dorian Chantry was a fine, strong young man but I could not see him in a country brawl with Timothy Oats. Dorian could fight the gentleman’s way, not the eye-gouging way of the riverboat men or such as Oats.
“Look,” I said suddenly, “why don’t you go back and tell your Uncle Finian I am all right? I shall be safe enough once I am into the mountains. I am a Sackett, after all, and Sacketts and rough country are as twins. I shall be all right.”
“He sent me to look after you.”
“You’re a handsome lad,” I said honestly. “I’d not see you hurt.”
“Hurt? Me? I shall be all right. No,” he said then, “I shall see you all the way home to your cove.”
“You’ll have to get some other clothes,” I warned. “In the brush those you’re wearin’ won’t last at all. You need linsey-woolsey or deerskin.”
We ate our breakfast then, not talking much, and other folks began to come in and out. Something about me was a worry to him, I could see that. I was not like the girls he’d known, nor could I talk to him as they might have. I was used to talking with men and boys, used to saying what I meant and no two ways about it.
He was more the gentleman than anybody I’d ever met, knowing all the ways of them, and it was mighty fine, being treated like a lady, like you were something special. All the boys I knew treated me like one of them — I mean, not as if I was special. Although they were respectful enough, it just wasn’t their way.
“Mr. Chantry,” I said, “that Timothy Oats has something in mind. He means to have that carpetbag from me and I’ve got to outguess him. If I let him do as he’s planned, he’ll win, I know he will. Pa used to say, and Regal says the same, that a boy should never play the other man’s game. If I stay on this steamboat I will be playing their game, and I think he’s got a wheel turning with that Essie Buchanan, who shares my cabin. They’ve been talking, and — ”
“I was going to speak to you about that,” he said then. “You should not be sharing a cabin with a woman like that. It’s a disgrace.”
“It won’t be for long,” I said.
“It has been too long already. I shall speak to the captain.”
“Don’t you do it.” I had looked up to see a man come into the main cabin. I saw him look around and I saw his eyes meet mine.
“We’ve troubles enough,” I said. “There’s Felix Horst!”
13
For a minute or two I just sat there. Timothy Oats and Elmer did not worry me much, but Felix Horst was something different. I was afraid of him.
A body could see at a glance this was not only an evil man but a wily one. I would never have tricked him as I had Oats, nor would he have bothered to fight with that young Irishman. He would simply have killed him and chased after me, wasting no time. He wanted that money I carried, and meant to have it.
Oats had no doubt gotten Essie Buchanan to keep an eye on me, so if I got away, I had to slip away from her.
“Mr. Chantry,” I said, “you have to help me. I am going to leave the steamer. I am going to get away. You can help me.”
“How?” He was cautious, not trusting me or my ideas.
“You’ve got to ask me out to take a walk on the deck after supper. I mean” — I blushed a mite — “like you were courting me.”
He studied me coolly. “And then what?”
“I slip off the boat. I get ashore and take off up the Big Sandy. I figure I can rent a horse or buy one. Or maybe a mule. Then I head for home.”
“Not without me.”
“Are you up to it? That there’s rough country, Mr. Chantry. It won’t be like riding to hounds. You’ll be sky-hootin’ it along ridges, dippin’ down into hollows, you’ll be pushin’ through woods and brush and maybe have a mite of Injun trouble.”