First he’d set out on a rocky place he knew, and restin’ that jug on the fork of his elbow, he’d have a drink, cork her up again, wipe the back of his hand across his mouth, and give study to that slope, pickin’ each tree real careful so it could get a clear fall to the creek bed.
If a tree got hung up on that slope, he’d have to get down there and cut it free, and when a tree that size, maybe six to ten feet through, when a tree like that starts to move, a body had better be somewhere else, fast. So he chose the trees with care to keep the slope cleared and give them a free fall.
Trulove Sackett was six-feet-six inches tall and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds and had never found anything he could take hold of that he couldn’t lift. The folks down to the forks of the creek said Trulove could jump higher and farther than any man alive, and run faster, although there was nothing and nobody who could make him run. That was what folks said about Trulove, and he just smiled, drank a little persimmon beer, and went back to hand-loggin’, which was what he knew best.
He was settin’ on that rock studying his next set-to with them yellow poplars when he heard somebody halloo at him.
He knew the voice. He looked down the gorge to where a man was hoppin’ from rock to rock to come up the slope. That would only be Macon. Nobody else knew where he was or knew about the loggin’ he was doing on chance of a spring flood some year.
Macon Sackett spent most of his time huntin’ ginseng to be shipped off to China. In between times he trapped a little fur.
When Macon reached the rock, Trulove handed him the jug and Macon taken a pull. “Now, that’s mighty fine drinkin’, but a body has to have a taste for it. I know folks can’t abide persimmon beer nor brandy.”
“That’s most of them. Leaves more for us.”
Macon studied the slope, then glanced at Trulove. “That’s a killer, Trulove,” he commented, “that slope is. One o’ them big logs will get you sometime.”
“Maybe.”
Macon hadn’t come this far to talk logging, so Trulove waited, taking another pull at the jug. If he was to get anything done, it was time he started. Took a while to fell the big ones.
Macon stropped his knife blade on his boot sole. Sized it up, stropped some more. “You mind that nubbin of a girl from over by Tuckalucky Cove? Echo, her name was?”
“The one who outshot all the boys over at Caney’s Fork?”
“That’s the one.” Macon tested the edge of the blade on a hair. “She’s been down to the Settlements to pick up some money due her. Seems like she’s on her way home with a couple of pilgrims an’ there’s somebody after her.”
“They better not catch up.”
“Oh, she can shoot, all right! She can prob’ly shoot better than anybody, but there’s a passel of them.” He paused a moment. “One of them is Felix Horst, from over on the trace.”
Trulove put the cork in the jug and smacked it with his palm to settle it solid. “Where they at?”
“Word come from somebody down on the Russell Fork. He figured we should know.” Macon paused.
“She’ll be headed for the Cove. Where’s Mordecai?”
“On his way, I expect. Gent who passed the word to me saw him first.”
Trulove cached his tools along with the jug, still more than half-full. He picked up a small cache of food, powder, and shot he kept there.
They crossed Big Moccasin Creek and came through the trees to the old Boone Trail. It was not far from here that Boone’s oldest son, James, had been killed by Indians, along with several others. That had been back around ’73, if Trulove recalled correctly.
They were running smoothly, easily, with the swinging stride of the long hunter.
“Mordecai will get there before we do,” Macon said.
“Aye, he’ll have the lead on us.”
When they slowed to a walk after an hour’s run, Trulove asked, “Two pilgrims seein’ her home?”
“A big black man and a Yankee, the way it was said. A big young man.”
“Honey draws flies,” Trulove commented. “As I recall, she was right shapely an’ pert.”
It was coming on to day-down, with shadows gathering. The two ran on, taking time only to pause for a drink at a cold branch that trickled down the rocks. They rested for a moment, thinking of what lay ahead, and then they were off again, running easily.
“Should come up to that country come dawn. Then we got to find them.”
Macon was a long, lean man, a Clinch Mountain Sackett, as was Trulove, a man given to long periods in the woods hunting for ginseng, usually alone. Yet he had done well, as there was always a market for what he found, and a market that paid well.
No matter, a Sackett was in trouble and they were coming down from the hills to see her safely home or bury the ones who brought her grief. Old Barnabas, him who founded the clan, he laid that down as law more than two hundred years back, and since that time no Sackett had ever failed to come when there was need.
“What do you think?” Trulove asked.
They had slowed to a walk again, and Macon took his time, considering. “We’d better cut for sign around the head of Wallen Creek. There over to Stone Mountain or the Powell. If they’ve gotten further, we’ll know it.”
“We’d best watch for Mordecai.”
“He’ll find us. Nobody can find Mordecai lest he’s wishful of it.”
An hour before first light they went off the trail into a thicket and put together a small fire and made coffee. They napped by the fire, drank some more coffee, and they listened. Sound carried a ways in the mountains during the still of morning.
“Mordecai will find ’em. He’s almighty sly.”
“He still make all his own gunpowder?”
“Surest thing you know. He’s got several places, one of them a cave over to Grassy Cove. You recall that place Jubal found on his way west?”
“I didn’t know he still went there. Folks have settled down there, I hear.”
“More’n forty years now. The way Pa tells it, Jubal almost settled down there himself, he liked it that much.”
Macon Sackett sat up. “Mordecai trusts no powder but his own make.”
They finished the coffee and put their few things into packs. Carefully Trulove extinguished the fire, then scooped dirt to smother the ashes. A moment or two they studied the dead fire, then moved down to the trail.
“Today, you reckon?” Macon knew the question’s answer, but Trulove nodded.
From here on they would walk. They could hear better.
When that voice told us not to move, I was in the shadows and I just faded back, easy-like. When I had a big tree betwixt them and me, I waited, my rifle up.
They came out of the woods then, seven or eight of them, and a rough, rough lot. Felix Horst was there, Tim Oats, and Elmer, but there were others I’d not seen before, except for one. He was the last one to come out and I recalled seeing him down to the Cove one time. His name was Patton Sardust and he had been one of the Natchez Trace thieves. A big man, and mighty mean.
Horst looked from Dorian to Archie. “Where is she?”
“Who?” Dorian said.
“Don’t give me lip!” Horst’s features sharpened. He was a man of no patience; you could see it in him. That was a notch against him. In the wild country, a body needs patience.
Horst stared at Chantry. “Who are you?”
“Dorian Chantry, sir. Not at your service.”
“Chantry? Related to Finian?”
“He is my uncle, sir.”
Felix Horst swore; he swore slowly, viciously, and with emphasis. He glanced over at Oats. “How’d he get into this? What’s he doing here?”
“I told you,” Oats insisted. “I told you he was along. I expect the old man sent him.”
Horst glanced at Archie. “Runaway slave, eh? Well, you’re worth something, anyway.”
“He’s a free man,” Dorian said. “He has always been free.”
Horst smiled. “We’ll change that. If he isn’t a slave, he should be, and I’ve got just the place for him. They’ll teach him who is free.”
“What about him?” Patton Sardust said, indicating Chantry. “We don’t need him.”
“He’s Finian Chantry’s nephew,” Oats protested. “Anything happens to him, we’d never hear the last of it.”
“Him?” Sardust scoffed. “No Finian scares me. I’ll cut his throat myself.”
“You could try,” Dorian said.
What could I do? If I started shooting, they’d probably kill the two of them right off. Yet something was going to blow the lid off, I could see that. Whatever else he might be Dorian surely wasn’t scared. Might have been better if he had been. Archie, I noticed, had quietly shoved his pistol back of his belt when they first closed in, and nobody had made a move to disarm them.