away, his arrow wasted into the brush.
Another came at me with a spear, but I parried the thrust with my musket barrel
and sprang close, grasping the musket in two hands, shoulder-high, and driving
the butt into his face. He took the full force of it and went back and down, and
for a moment there was fierce fighting on all sides, but when the attack broke I
called out, “Fall back on the camp! Fall back!”
Some heard my hail and passed on the call, and slowly we did fall back, for I
had no desire to waste our strength by scattering in the woods.
Quill came from the brush near me, and then O’Hara a bit farther along. Glasco,
Peter Fitch, Slater. … Anxiously, I counted them off as they gathered, moving
back, pausing here and there to recharge their muskets.
Barry Magill was the last to come, bleeding from a gash on the face. Now all
were present but Jeremy.
“Ring?” I asked.
“He did not come,” Pim said. “He stayed in camp.”
“Jeremy?” I could not believe it.
“Aye,” Pim said, and there was an odd look to his eyes that puzzled me.
The Catawba came back, too. Not a few of them with scalps. We had struck the
Occaneechee a blow … five men dead, and no losses to us, despite their
surprise. But we had been thinking of this for weeks, and were ready. And the
Catawba were always ready.
Two Catawba were wounded, only one seriously. We had come off better than we
deserved, but somehow the attackers had not known of the presence of the
Catawba, who were old enemies and fierce fighters. It was their sudden attack
that had saved us.
“I want to see Jeremy Ring,” I said, and he heard me speak and came toward me.
He bowed low, sweeping the ground with his ragged plume. “I regret my absence,”
he said with mock seriousness, “and nothing less could have kept me from your
side, but I thought it best to stand by your kin,” he said.
“My kin?” I stared at him, stupidly.
“Your wife,” he said, “and your son.”
24
So my son was born on a buffalo robe in the heat of an Indian battle, under a
tree by the side of a stream in a wild and lonely land, and he was given his
name by a chance remark, a name he would carry forever. For we called him Kin,
and thought of no other, and kin he was to all of us, to the meadow, the
woodland, and the forest.
Abby was healthy and strong, and came from her labor smiling, proud she had
given me a son. For a second name we called him Ring, for the man who had stood
above them, sword in hand, musket and pistols hard by, stood there in case any
Indian should break through our ranks and come upon them.
Kin Ring Sackett … the name had a sound, and it was a sound I loved.
Lila brought him to me, my hands still hot from battle, the smell of powder
smoke about me, and I took him carefully, for I’d no knowledge of babies, and
held him gently and looked in his face, his eyes squinted and dark, his face
still red and pinched, but he looked at me and seemed to laugh and grasped my
thumb and tugged strongly. Oh, he was a lad, that one!
Two days later we left our river camp and moved up the river. For three full
days we moved, but the water was becoming less for the season was late and the
rains had not yet come. We beached our boats at last in a small bayou, unloaded
them upon the shore, then drew them deep into a forest of reeds and hid them
there.
We cached some goods on the spot, and hid them well, then moved out upon the
trading trail, carrying the rest, and my own pack the heaviest of all. Yet
strong I was to bear it, and the more willing that now I had a son, the first of
my name to be born in the new land, a son who would know no civilization, but
only the wilds.
He would grow up on woodland paths, riding rough water in a canoe down lonely
streams and hunting his own meat in the wilderness. Looking about me I knew I
could wish no better life for any man than that I was giving to him. A lonely
life, but a wild, free life.
“There must be more than that, Barnabas,” Abby said. “He must learn to live with
civilized men also, for how can we know who will come to these shores and live
upon these hills?”
The way we went was long, but the Catawbas traveled with us, returning to their
country, and I set myself to learn from them, their language, their customs,
their knowledge of wood and savanna. Never would I learn all they had to teach,
for so much was natural to them that they assumed all would know it, things so
obvious in their way of life that they would never think of teaching anyone,
presuming knowledge.
We traveled slowly with them, for they hunted and gathered along the way, and
late though the season. I relished the slower travel for the chance it gave to
know the country.
The path we took was an ancient trading path that led across the country with
many branches. Traders were usually respected and left to travel unmolested, as
trade was desired by all, yet there were always renegades, outlaw Indians or war
parties from afar that might not respect the trade route.
Wa-ga-su was much with us, and I began to notice a certain aloofness toward him
by the others of his people. He seemed moody, sometimes puzzled, often downcast.
“What is it with my friend that he is troubled?” I asked.
He glanced at me, then shook his head. After awhile he said, “When I went away I
was a great man among them. They loved and trusted me. No man was greater on the
hunt, none brought more meat to the village, and none was greater upon the path
of war. Now all is changed.”
“What is the trouble?”
“They no longer trust me, Sackett. I told them of the great water, and they
shook their heads in doubt, then of the great stone cities you have, and of the
many people who live without hunting … they think me a liar, Sackett.
“My words are no longer heard in the village. When I speak they turn their backs
upon me. They believe me a liar or that the whites have bewitched me.
“You see, they think you a small people, a weak people, even though your
firearms make you great in battle. They say, ‘Why do not they trap their own
furs? Hunt their own game? If they do not, it is because they can not. Therefore
they must be a weak people.’ ”
“I am sorry, Wa-ga-su. It might be the same with my people if I told them of the
vast lands here, with so few people, of the great rivers, the tall trees …
they might not believe me, either.”
“Yes, I think it is so, Sackett. We grow wise, you and I, but in wisdom there is
often pain. No man of my people has traveled so far. None but me has crossed the
great water, none but me has seen the great cities and the horses and carriages.
But if they will not believe what I have seen, if I am no longer great among my
people—then I am an empty man, Sackett.
“Who is it for whom one becomes wise? Is it not for the people? For his people?
Do I become wise only for myself? I become wise to advise, to help … but they
do not believe and my voice is only an echo in an empty canyon. I speak for my
ears only and the sound is hollow, Sackett.”
“You have a place with us, Wa-ga-su, a place as long as you live.”
“Ah? I thank you. But of course, it is not the same, is it?”
We walked on together and the great forest was green about us.
“They believe the horses, do they not?”
“Horses they have seen, or their fathers or grandfathers have seen. The Espanish
men had horses. I have heard it there is a people beyond the mountains have
horses, but only a few taken from the white men or left behind by them.”
“What game lies beyond the mountains, Wa-ga-su?”
“The buffalo are there, the deer, the mountain cat, a still bigger deer, and
there is the animal with the long nose and big white teeth.”
“What?”
“It is true. I have not seen it myself. My grandfather told us of them. They
were a large animal that men used to hunt. They had great teeth … curving like