We rested there among the pines, watching the country below us. We were tired, and we were scared. I know I was, and Archie’s face had a haunted look. Dorian, he was white under the flush the sun had been colorin’ him with. Bein’ hunted by men who want you dead is no way to live. If it hadn’t been for that shep dog we’d all be dead. Where did he come from, out of the night like that? Whose dog was he? Looked to me like he’d been on his own a good while, and it might be his home was far from here.
“We’ve got to cut them down,” I said, “make ’em understand there’s a price to pay.”
“You mean kill them?” Dorian was shocked.
“They’re tryin’ to kill us,” I said.
“Your Uncle Finian sure wouldn’t hesitate,” Archie said. “That old man’s a holy terror!”
Dorian looked around at him. “What do you mean? Uncle Finian?”
“He went down to the Dutchman’s,” Archie explained, then repeated the story of the fight in the street.
“Uncle Finian did that?”
“I was with him.”
“I can’t believe it! Uncle Finian!”
“I can believe it,” I said. “That’s a tough old gentleman. I could see it in him.”
We moved on, Shep trotting ahead, and believe me, I felt better with that dog along. Why he adopted us, I’d never guess, but he surely had.
From time to time we saw deer, and we crossed the trail of a coon. It was coming on to night before we found a ledge masked by trees. It was above the trail we’d been following, and with a fine view of the way we’d come.
“It’s a good place to sleep,” Dorian said.
We were wearied by the long day, and nobody was of a mind to talk very much. There wasn’t much left to eat, but we ate it cold, sharing a mite with the dog. We were on a ledge, a sort of notch in the rock wall, and it was a good tight spot.
“Somewhere yonder,” I told them, “is a big ol’ pine tree, stands by itself. They call that way the Trail of the Lonesome Pine.”
They looked where I pointed, but neither had any comment. It was wild, lonesome country with the breaks of the Big Sandy lyin’ close by. Right at that moment I wanted most of all just to be home.
We made us a fire you could put in a teacup, almost, and made coffee. When we’d had our coffee, we left the pot on the coals. “You all sleep,” I said. “I’ll keep watch.”
“You?” Dorian said. “Of course not. You sleep. Archie and I will share it.”
“There’s three of us here,” I insisted. “We’ll take turn about. That dog’s tired too. We shouldn’t trust to him.”
They slept first, and the wind came down through the pines, moaning a lonesome song. I went over to the little branch that flowed down from a crack in the limestone and had a drink; then I went back to a place I could set with my back against the rock wall and my rifle-gun on my knees.
A couple of times I almost dozed; then I tried making memories come back, something to keep my mind busy. I tried wondering what Regal was doing and how far it was to the Clinch Mountains, where some of us Sacketts lived.
They couldn’t be far away. That is, as the crow flies. The trouble was, they had no idea they had kinfolk in trouble. I wished they did. I was scared for me and I was scared for those boys sleepin’ yonder. If anything happened to them, I’d never forgive myself.
Right then I began to think like Pa would, or Regal; I began to think about takin’ my rifle-gun and playin’ Injun down through the woods until I found their camp. If I could catch sight of them, I knew I could leave them with somethin’ to bury. A few days ago I’d not have thought seriously of that, but when folks you care about are in danger, you do get to thinkin’ such thoughts.
This was a part of the country I knew only from hear-tell, but often of an evening when the boys were settin’ around they’d talk of lands where they’d hunted and how the land lay. That’s all we knew of much of the country around, yet it was all we needed.
Suddenly that shep dog lifted his head from his paws, he lifted his head and he started to growl, away down deep in his chest.
“Easy, boy!” I whispered. “Easy, now!”
I reached out with my rifle muzzle and prodded Dorian, hoping he’d wake up quiet. There’s some who grunt and groan or wake up exclaimin’. He didn’t, I’ll give him that. His eyes opened and he followed the rifle barrel to me. I put my finger to my lips and indicated the dog, his hackles all bristled up. Dorian reached out a hand, and Archie sat up, drawing his pistol.
The little fire we’d had had gone out, long since. There was no light but from the stars, and few of them. We sat quiet, listening.
We heard faint sounds from the woods, expected sounds. Then a whisper of movement down below where we lay on the ledge. If we kept silent, they might not even guess there was a ledge or a place for us to hide. I held my rifle-gun ready, but I didn’t cock it. That sound could he heard sharp and clear in the night.
A low wind stirred the leaves and moaned through the pines. My mouth was dry, and I could feel my heart beating, slow and heavy.
Something was moving down there, working its way through the woods. We waited, holding our breath, but it moved off, and after a time we began to breath easy again.
Setting there, to keep myself busy, I rigged a sling with which to carry my carpetbag easier. Something I could hang down my back from a shoulder.
Right back of where I sat was the limestone cliff, topped with pines and a scattering of other trees. On my left the cliff broke off and thick forest swept away down along the mountain.
I stood up, slinging my carpetbag to try it, taking up my rifle. The dog was not a dozen feet away, peering into the darkness. “No, Shep,” I whispered. “Ssh!”
I was standing in the shadows and I moved toward that place where the cliff broke off into the forest. It was darker there and I would be able to see better when I looked back.
Dorian was on his feet; Archie squatted against the rock wall.
Shep came suddenly to his feet, staring at the trees on the other side of the clearing and growling, low and deep.
Archie had his gun out, waiting.
“Don’t you make a move!” The voice spoke from the darkness across the way. “Don’t you make a move!”
18
Three years back, when he saw that wall of water comin’ down the gorge, he thought he was a goner. Thing that saved him was that yellow poplar right there on the rising edge of the gorge, and he taken to it, making a fast jump to the first limb and then climbing higher. The water kept him there all day and part of the night, but he’d not forgotten what he saw.
Big old logs were coming down that gorge like shot from a gun, and later when the water was down he went below where they hit the main river, and there they were, all floating pretty as you please in a little bay.
Trulove Sackett was not a man to overlook a thing like that, so he fetched his calk boots and pike pole and he worked out on those logs, cutting the limbs with his ax and bunching them. When he had a log raft made, he packed some grub and floated them down the river to sell.
When fall came and the leaves were dropping from the trees, he went back up that gorge again, carrying his rifle-gun. Sure enough, it was as he’d remembered, a long slope above that gorge, both sides thick with a fine stand of yellow poplar, with here and there an oak or, lower down, a sycamore.
That first raft of logs had been happenstance. A body couldn’t depend on such things to make a living by, so he fetched his cross-cut saw and double-bit ax and went to work. The cliff was so steep that once he cut a tree it couldn’t do anything but fall, sometimes in the creek but more often on the side of the creek.
Trulove wasn’t worried. Every third or fourth year there would be a high-water flood on that creek and he would cut trees and wait.
When the chores were done and there was a fresh-killed deer hangin’ out on the porch for eatin’-meat, Trulove would fetch his tools to the gorge. It was a long walk, a good ten miles from home, but he’d carry a bait , with him and a jug of persimmon beer.