There were four men, and they brushed by Macklin to face me. “You are Sackett?”
“I am.”
“You are to leave—now. We do not need your godless kind in this place. You are to go, and you are not to return.”
“I have come only to help,” I said coolly.
“We do not need your help. You must go—or suffer the consequences.”
“It seems that help is needed whether you believe it or not. Two girls have disappeared. Perhaps they have been taken by Indians, and you do nothing to find them.”
“That is our affair. It is none of yours. One of you was here and ended in the stocks. Make sure that does not happen to you.”
I smiled at them. My musket was in my hand, and in my belt were two pistols. “I must ask your pardon, gentlemen, but be sure I do not end there. If I should be put in your stocks for no more than coming to your town, I can promise it would cost you much.
“I have come only to do what you yourselves should have done. I shall not leave until I have accomplished what I have begun. You are, no doubt, good enough men in your ways, but those ways are not mine. Two girls are missing. I understand others have disappeared before this.”
“Others?” They looked startled. “But that was long ago. It was—”
“Last year,” I answered. “Are you so careless, then? Have you not asked yourself why it is girls who vanish?” I knew nothing myself. I was but giving them that on which to think. “The forests are wide and deep, but are they selective?”
“I do not know what you mean,” the speaker said. Yet he was disturbed. Had he, perhaps, thought of this, also? “It is true—”
“You have suggested I leave. Very well, I go. But I shall not leave until I know what has happened here. You no doubt think of yourselves as Christians, as God-fearing men, yet you call off a search and condemn those girls to death in the wilds, perhaps, just because of your foolish superstition.”
“Be careful!” The spokesman’s face lost its look of indecision. “You do not speak of superstition here! What we have seen is the work of the devil!”
I shrugged. “I go now.” I stepped around them but did not put my back to them. “I shall do what I can do and what you did not do.”
“We could not.” One of the others spoke for the first time. “There were no tracks.”
“There were tracks, but badly trampled tracks, yet any Indian could have found the trail. Any tracker could find it.”
“We have one of the best. He could not!”
“Could not? Or did not?”
Stepping through the door, I closed it behind me. I was angry, and I knew the folly of that. Anger can blind one too easily, and thoughtlessly and foolishly I stepped away from the wall. There was a sudden whoosh in the night and a thud. A knife quivered in the log wall behind me.
I lay on the ground. I had dropped a moment too late, for I had been narrowly missed by a thrown knife but in time to avoid a second. I had not merely hit the ground but had moved swiftly off to one side, then farther. I could see nothing.
The night was dark, but there was starlight, and already my eyes were growing accustomed to it. An attempt to kill me because I was here? Or had somebody listened to what was said inside?
Ghosting away, I reached the forest and slid into its dark accepting depths. In less than an hour I was near where our camp had been; it was there no longer.
Yance was there.
“Had trouble?” At my assent he added, “I figured so. There was some coming an’ going in the woods about, but I moved my camp yonder.
“I found tracks,” he added, “far out where nobody took time to look.”
“Indians?”
“White men, wearin’ moccasins, like you an’ me.” We moved off into the darkness, traveling swiftly for some minutes. When we slowed down again to listen, he said, “You see that Pittingel again?”
“Others.”
“When I was in the stocks, there was a sailor man in them right beside me. He’d been drunk and roisterin’ about, but he was sober enough in the night, and we talked some.
“I’ve been recallin’ things he said, like this Pittingel now. He owns a couple of ships, sends timber to England, corn to the West Indies, and he brings back sugar, rum, and coffee, but that wasn’t all.
“After everybody was asleep, we talked a good deal. It wasn’t very nice, settin’ in those stocks, unable to move more than a mite. He told me Pittingel was a trickster. He said Pittingel had some of his ships lay off the coast until they were all scrubbed down and aired out, but that wouldn’t fool him. He knew a slaver when he smelled it.”
“Slaver?”
“Blackamoors. From Africa. They buy them from the Arabs. Most of the slave dealers are Arabs and some Portuguese. He sells them in the Indies. Folks here don’t take to slaving, so Pittingel lets nobody hereabouts guess, but he’s slaving, all right.”
We were quiet, each thinking his own thoughts. Yance said suddenly, “Macklin will miss her. According to what Temp had to say and from what I saw, Diana spent most of her time with her pa. She read from his books, and they talked about what they read.”
Anna Penney had put by a little food for us, and Yance ate, taking time out, here and there, for the cider. We talked a little in low voices about the country around, and then we moved off to a place he’d found, and there we bedded down for the night. Yance was soon asleep.
A long time after he slept, I lay awake, looking up at the stars through the leaves and listening to the horses tagging at the grass. The woods were quiet, and the town, if such it could be called, was far enough away that we heard nothing. Yet the settlement would be quiet after dark; anyone out after dark would be suspect.
It was but ten minutes” walk to the hollow from which the girls had vanished. It was plain enough that many men had been here, for the grass was trampled. It was no more than we expected.
It was a pleasant enough place, a small meadow surrounded by woods, and on the edge of the woods a small pond of an acre or more. Reeds grew about, and a few marsh marigolds grew here and there. On the pond floated lily pads. On the shore, back at the edge of the trees, there were violets. It must have been an idyllic spot before the searching parties trampled it out of shape.
The east side of the hollow I dismissed at once, for there was a dense thicket of blackberries there. No man in his right mind would have attempted to get through that mass of thorns when other ways remained.
We stood still, looking all around, trying to take in the complete scene, trying to picture what must have happened here. Yet as we stood looking and listening, there was a sound of men coming along the path from the settlement. Yance vanished.
The first I saw was Max Bauer. “Miles away by now,” he was saying. “An army would be needed for the searching, and it is sad, for they were so young. Yet we can try an approach to the Pequots. I am sure that Joseph Pittingel…”
Deep within the forest, an owl hooted. My eyes were on Bauer, and I saw him pause, head turning slightly toward the sound. It was no owl, and I believed he guessed as much, although the difference was subtle.
Yance, telling me had found something.
Penney left Bauer’s side and crossed the meadow to me. “You will seek them, then?”
“I will. You go home now, and leave it to Yance and to me. Remember, Yance is wed to Temperance, and although we are not of one blood, their children will be. Kinship is a strong thing between us, Penney.”
“Sackett, we, Anna and I, we thank you. We—” He choked up, and I turned my eyes from his embarrassment.
My hand touched his shoulder. “Go, man, go home to your Anna, and trust in us. If she be alive, we will find her.”
He turned back to them. Macklin hesitated as if he would speak, then turned away with Penney. Bauer lingered. “If there is aught I can do, call upon me, but I fear you waste your time.”
“It is only a trail,” I said, looking straight at him, “and we have followed many such from boyhood. Where a hound can follow, or an Indian, there we can follow, too.”