“Likely.” We were both huddling under the eaves of the blockhouse, watching the forest. “I’ve been thinking,” Yance said, “of that long valley the Cherokees told us about. This here”—he covered the area with a gesture—”is all right, but that sounded mighty nice.”
“That’s the trouble, Yance. There will always be a place somewhere that sounds nice. Some of us should stay and build here.”
He chuckled. “But not you an’ me? Nor Jubal. Wonder where ol’ Jube is about now? Yonder by his great river?”
The rain fell hard. “Get yourself something to eat, Yance. I’ll stand watch.”
The rain had drawn a veil over the Nantahalas and over Piney Top, and it was falling now on the Tusquitees and in the dark canyon of the Nantahala River where the Indians said they had killed the great horned serpent they called ulstitlu and taken the gem from between his eyes.
It was a deep, narrow, dark canyon where the sun reached only at midday. The Cherokees said that was the meaning of Nantahala, “the Land of the Noonday Sun.”
Jeremy Ring came and stood beside me and watched the steel mesh of the rain.
“I miss your father,” he said suddenly. “Barnabas has been gone for several years, but his stamp is upon everything. He was an extraordinary man.”
“He made big tracks,” I agreed.
“You will do as much, Kin. I have no doubt.”
I told him about Jamaica then and of my fight with Bogardus. Swordsman that he was, he must have every detail, and we refought the battle, move by move. Yet as we talked, we scanned the edge of the forest all around.
“I must go again to Shawmut,” I told him. “I must take the statement I have from Adele Legare as well as the letters I have written to Brian and to Peter Tallis. You are right. We must wait no longer about establishing a legal claim to our lands.”
“We must consider alternatives, too,” he said. “Although I should hate to give this up, it may be necessary.”
“Aye, but there are lands to the westward. Good lands. Yance and I have seen them.”
“The place you have now? Is that good?”
“It is not the best. It is too high up. It is only beautiful, with just a little corn land. Down below in the flat lands is where we must have land. The soil is rich and deep.”
“Do not wait too long.”
“It will be a hundred years before men get over there unless it is the French. Jubal saw Frenchmen over there, and they claim it all.”
“Settlers?”
“Trappers and hunters like us. I do not think the Indians would let anyone settle. There has been much fighting there, and some parts of it they shy from. They say it is haunted ground.”
After a while I went below to my own place, and Diana was there. The table was set, and she was standing before the fireplace, a long spoon in her hand.
“I wonder,” I said, putting my hands on her shoulders, “how I was so lucky.”
“You married a witch,” she said, smiling.
“Why not? We did not have a witch. Every community should have one. I wish you would put a spell on Max Bauer and make him disappear.”
She dished up a bowl of stew and put it before me. “Eat,” she said. “I do not think he will wait until the storm is over.”
“His powder will be wet.”
“His blades will not, and if they are, it will not matter. Do not take him lightly, Kin.”
She sat down across from me. “I worry about father.”
“We will know soon. When this is over”—I gestured toward the outside where Bauer was—”we will go north and bring him down to join us.”
We talked long while I waited for sounds from outside that did not come. At last I went again to the wall to allow Yance to eat.
The clouds were lowering, and there were occasional drizzles of rain. There was no sign of movement from the forest, and I expected none. He would wait. Perhaps Max Bauer had decided upon his course of action, but if he was the woodsman he seemed to be, he could live, at least for a while, on the forest around him. He would know that we had crops. We had much work to do outside, and we would weaken ourselves in scattering out to attend to it. Or so he hoped.
Yet the game would lie quiet while it rained, and to come upon anything worth hunting, he would have to startle it into movement. Nor would the immediate forest offer much. We knew that, for we now hunted far afield despite the fact that we had tried not to disturb the game close by, wanting to allow the deer to range freely until some emergency. Buffalo had become scarcer with each year in the areas east of the mountains.
Kane O’Hara came along the walk to me as soon as I returned. “I don’t like it,” he said irritably. “We’ve work to do. We’re losing time.”
“There’s no help for it,” I said. “He knows our situation, and he will use it. He wants us to become careless.”
“We’ve fought too many Senecas for that.”
“That worries me, too.” I watched the woods as I spoke, my eyes straying along the tree front. “Suppose he manages to meet them and set up a joint attack?”
“What kind of a man is he?”
“Big, very strong, very tough, a good woodsman, and a shrewd, dangerous man. He wants me and he wants Diana, but he wants all we have here that is portable. By this time he knows our strength, and he knows we’ve done a lot of trapping. He will know we have bales of furs here, and we have women.”
Kane stared gloomily over the wall. “This looks like our best crop,” he commented. “It should not be neglected now.”
After a pause, he asked, “How’s that country out west? Where you and Yance have located?”
“Beautiful, but the soil is average. We could do better down in the bottoms, but you know how it is with Yance an’ me. We like to be high up and where there’s game. In the bottoms along the creeks there are meadows where the grass grows knee-high to a man on horseback.”
“I’d like to see that,” Kane said enviously. “How far does it go, Kin? Is there no end to it?”
“There’s always an end. At the Pacific sea, more’n likely.”
It was very still. The rumbling of thunder was occasional but distant. The rain had become a fine, soft rain, and the air smelled fresh and cool. In the forest no leaf moved, nor was there a sound or any sign of smoke unless a faint blueness in the air to the eastward might be smoke.
A stealthy attack by night was likely when some of my men must sleep. No more than two could be on the walls at once and must not follow prescribed patrols but must be careful to set no pattern Bauer might recognize. Yet there was no way we could, with only two men, keep a proper watch. Fortresses and walls have forever distressed me. I am not inclined to defense, for it is better to be the attacker. We had women, children, and goods to defend, so we had no choice, yet I would have preferred being out there in the forest.
The thought held my attention. What was it father had advised? “Attack, always attack. Whether you have one man or fifty, there is always a way of attacking. No matter how many his men, the enemy must be attacked.”
Of course. But how?
“Tonight,” I said, “I may go into the forest.”
“Aye,” O’Hara agreed. “It has been on my mind, but we can ill afford to lose a man, and especially you.”
The crops could not wait, nor could my letters to Peter Tallis and Brian, for the more I considered our situation, the more it disturbed me. Our approximate location was known to some in Jamestown, although none of them had been so far inland. They also knew we were shipping bales of furs; occasionally gems were sold by us, and we were self-sufficient. It could be no more than a matter of a short time until settlers came around us, and some one of them might have the power to get a grant from the queen, even of our lands. We had no legal right to them, only that of first settlement and occupation.
It was the experience of William Claiborne that came to haunt me, too. He held lands, traded in furs, and was doing very well until Lord Baltimore’s grant took in even the island on which he resided.
Kane walked on around the wall, and Diana came from the house bringing fresh coffee. It tasted good, and we stood together under the eaves.