“They’re in here,” Archie said. “Given time, I could catch us a bait. You fix ’em proper an’ there’s nothin’ better. Unless its yellow-jacket soup.”
“What?” Dorian looked around at him. “Did you say yellow-jacket soup?”
“It’s a Cherokee dish. Et it many a time when I was a boy.” He glanced at me. “You must’ve had it too?”
“A time or two. We were friends to the Cherokee since the first Sackett moved into the far blue mountains. Half the youngsters I knew when I was knee-high were Cherokees. Although all the folks didn’t find them so friendly. It was Cherokee and Shawnee who did for the Wiley family. Ever’body,” I added, “knew the story of Jenny Wiley.”
“Who was she?” Dorian asked.
“Injuns attacked their station whilst all the menfolks were off huntin’. They killed Jenny’s brother, and three of the youngsters were killed and scalped. They taken Jenny an’ her baby prisoner, finally killed the baby by bashing its head against a tree because it cried too much. Jenny got away finally, and barely made it to safety, with Injuns right after her.” I gestured at the country around. “It happened right up the creek from here near a place they called Harmon’s Station. It’s been gone a long time now.”
We paddled on, nobody talking much, and the shadows darkened the ground under the trees, and the tree trunks lost their shapes in the darkness.
Ahead of us a light showed, then another, and we saw a house and a man walkin’ from the barn carryin a lantern. He went to the house and a door opened and he went in and the moment of light was gone. He would be settin’ down to supper now, with no worries of trouble behind him, like us.
“All around here and back the way we’ve come was Lew Wetzel country. Jessie Hughes, he was mostly further east over in West Virginia. They were Injun fighters. Had folks killed by Injuns, and they declared a vendetta against them. Never let up. Wetzel, they say, let his hair grow long a-purpose to tantalize the Injuns with his scalp.
“They wanted his hair but they were scared of him, too. Some of them didn’t believe him human.”
I taken up a paddle against to spell Archie. “Village ahead.” He spoke softly. “We’d better get some grub.”
A man was down by the river, watering a team. He looked up as we nosed in to the bank. “You be travelin’ late,” he commented.
“We’re riding ahead of trouble,” I said, “and wishful of avoidin’ it.”
“Ma could put somethin’ on.” He pointed toward the nearest light. “I’m behindhand with cultivatin’,” he explained. “I was laid up with a fever.
“You go on up to the house. Ma will enjoy the comp’ny. She’s a great one for comp’ny.” He turned his team away from the water. “I can do without, m’self.”
A dog ran out, barking fiercely. “Shep,” the man said, “you be still. These are folks.”
A woman came to the door, a ladle-spoon in hand. “Who is it, Jacob?”
“Strangers, Ma, right hungry ones. I said we’d put somethin’ on.”
There was a basin on a bench by the door, and a roller towel. We washed up there, and Archie went down by the river again to listen into the night.
“They followin’ close?” Jacob asked.
“We don’t know, but they’ll be along.” Archie looked at him. “You be careful. They ain’t kindly folks.”
“We never turned anybody away,” Jacob said.
“I’m not suggestin’ it, just you be careful. These are mean folk.”
Jacob looked over at me.
“You know the Natchez Trace?” I asked. Of course he did, we all did. “One of these men worked the trace like the Harpes an’ Murrell. Only nobody ever caught him at it. The one time they did catch him over in the Settlements, he hired a good lawyer an’ went free.”
“All right. You have you somethin’.” He turned to his wife. “Ma? Fix them a bait of that hog meat. The roasted meat, somethin’ they can carry off with them.”
He went to the barn with his horses and stripped the harness from them. I was standing tired in the night, and I knew the others were, too. When he set up to the table I could see weariness in their faces. If only we could lay up and rest!
I thought for a minute of takin’ that new rifle-gun and layin’ up on a bend of the creek with it. I could fix a man dead at two hundred yards with that. Maybe five hundred. But I was not wishful of killin’. Yet I remembered what Regal had said: “There’s times when a body must defend himself, Echo, an’ when that time comes, you’d better win.”
There was a fire going on the hearth, and the table had been spread with a cloth, honorin’ the company. “Ain’t often we get folks from the river,” the woman said. “They don’t travel the waters the way they did when I was a girl.”
“They’re beginning to cut timber up yonder. Logs will be floated down to the Ohio soon.”
“It’s cash money,” I said, “but I hate to see the trees go down.”
“We need the money,” the woman agreed. “Jacob may take to cuttin’ an’ fallin’ hisself. Not many cash crops in this here country lest a man goes to moonshinin’, an’ we don’t hold with that. Not that we’re teetotalers. Jacob likes his nip, time to time.”
When we’d eaten, we got up and Archie wiped his hands on his pants. “Thank you, ma’am. I am obliged.”
“Don’t forget the bait I put up for you. Take it along in case of need.”
“We will need it,” I said, “but take our warning. Those behind us ride with the devil. They are not kindly folk.”
“We never turned anybody away,” Jacob repeated.
“Don’t turn ’em away, but keep a gun handy.”
We went back to the canoe, hesitated, then got in and shoved off upon the dark, dark water. All of us ached with weariness.
“Up ahead,” I said, “we’ll find a place. We’ve got to sleep.”
Maybe it was because we were tired. Maybe it was the idea that men followed us to steal what we had, but I had a sense of foreboding, a sense of evil.
Where was Felix Horst? It wasn’t like him to disappear and leave the stealing to such as Timothy Oats and Elmer. That man worried me.
“Don’t worry about him,” Dorian said. “He’s away behind us, probably in Cincinnati or some such place.”
We paddled more slowly now, moving carefully on the dark water because there were occasional floating logs and sometimes masses of debris and drift stuff all rafted together. By day a body could see them easy enough; by night it was another thing. Even a projecting root or branch could rip the bottom out of a canoe like ours.
“Hey!” Archie was peering into the night. “There’s a landing of some sort.”
“Let’s see what’s there,” I said.
Archie guided the canoe in alongside the dock, and as we steadied the boat, he climbed out.
“Cabin up yonder,” he said, “all quiet. I think it’s deserted.”
We tied the canoe and climbed out, bringing our gear. Somewhere back in the darkness an owl hooted a question to the night.
“Pull the canoe under the landing,” I suggested. “If somebody comes along, they aren’t apt to see it.”
There were big trees here, tulip, sycamore, oak, and suchlike. There was a smell of decay and a sense of emptiness about the place. There were no cows in the lot, no smell of hogs or horses.
“Deserted,” Dorian said. “I wonder why.”
“They couldn’t cut the mustard,” I said. “Many try, only a few make it. Some find the work too hard, some can’t stand the loneliness.”
“Let’s see what’s in the house,” Dorian suggested.
“Leave it be,” I said. “If anybody comes a-lookin’, that’s where they’ll go. We can sleep under the trees yonder, and if anybody comes, we’ll hear them.”
Archie had taken a stick he found leaning against a tree and was brushing around. “Snakes,” he explained.
When we sat down and listened, here and there things rustled in the far-off leaves, branches rubbed one against the other, and now that we were quiet, the frogs started to talk it up again. Occasionally we saw a bat dip and swoop, chasing bugs.
Stretching out on the ground with my arm for a pillow, I stared into the night, wondering where Regal was and if the family worried about me.
It was very dark but our eyes became accustomed to it and we could make out the dim outlines of the cabin, a shed, and a corral. Somewhere we could hear water running, from a spring or a branch, no doubt.
My eyes opened suddenly. I had slept, I do not know for how long. I could hear the breathing of Dorian Chantry, and somewhat father away, that of Archie. The night was still. Yet, what had awakened me?