For a moment I stood stock-still, staring after him. He had yelled in English!
“Wait!” I shouted, but he was gone and away.
My shout was the fight’s end, and I walked slowly around, making a circuit of
the walls. Kane had taken an arrow through his upper arm and Black Tom Watkins
had a bad knife cut. Jeremy hadn’t a scratch but it developed that I had three—a
slight puncture wound and two slight cuts, troublesome if not cared for.
We believed that three of them had died, but as they had taken the bodies away
we could not be sure.
What had turned the tide was not of our doing. For just at the moment of the
hardest fighting, Kin, Yance, and a dozen Catawba, aided by Wa-ga-su, had come
storming up and broke the back of the attack upon us.
Moreover, Kin and Yance were riding horseback!
34
How swiftly roll the years! How lonely keep the nights!
At last I am westward going, over the blue mountains into the land beyond, and
long have I dreamed of this! How many, many times have I looked with longing at
those smoky mountains against the sky?
Pim Burke is back, if only for a little time. His fair lady proved unfair. She
took his emerald and what gold he had and fled upon a ship for England, and may
no good come to her.
Yet he is back, and for that I am grateful. He will stay but for a little while,
for he returns to the coast to set up an inn in one of the new towns. It is a
business at which he will do well.
John Quill has been to Williamsburg to make a claim for his grant of land. He
has spoken for his piece here, and for another on the Chowan, and has persuaded
Jeremy to do the same.
Kin and Yance have again gone beyond the mountains following a path of the
Indians, worn by the feet of centuries going yonder. Soon I shall be meeting
them, for it is into this land I am going at last.
Not in two years have we seen Jubal. Somewhere he roams beyond the great river
of De Soto, somewhere across the vast plains that lie yonder toward the sun, and
I think he will stop no more until he walks the shining western mountains of his
dreams, and this I understand, for I have followed my dream of mountains, too.
And so must it be for each generation, for they must ever look to the mountains,
ever seek to pass over them. Their bodies will mark the trails, their blood will
feed the grass, yet some will win through and some will build and some will grow
…
Brian is reading law at the Inns of Court in London, a handsome gentleman, they
say. And Noelle is a young English lady now, a beauty and a girl of spirit. A
fine horsewoman, an elegant dancer. Does she ever remember our blue mountains?
Or long for her father, who remembers her small hands in his hair, the first
tears in her eyes, and the laughter never far from her lips? When William dies,
the old fenlands will be hers.
We write, our letters crossing on the Abigail and other ships. And I continue my
trade with Peter Tallis.
And Sakim, our teacher, our physician, our friend … one day word came from his
own land, and I know not what it said, but he came to me with a farewell, and
between two suns he was gone.
Now, I Barnabas Sackett, no longer a young man yet not quite an old one, am
bound, west again. Black Tom Watkins rides with me. My old companion from the
fens now rides the high ridges where waits the wind. At the last, when Jeremy
would have come, Lila would have none of it, and for once he listened well.
Now the shadows rise from the valleys, and another night comes creeping. We have
all day followed a trail made by buffalo, who wind the contours of the hills and
seem ever to find the easiest way.
The Shawnees speak of this as the dark and bloody ground, and no Indian now
lives here, although they come to hunt. Yet there are evidences of ancient
habitation … stone walls, earthworks, and some things found in caves. In one
of the old forts Tom found a Roman coin.
Preposterous, you say? I only say he found a coin, lost by someone, not
necessarily a Roman, yet perhaps someone who traded with a Roman, for the
greatest myth is that of the discovery of any country, for all countries were
known in the long ago, and all seas sailed in times gone by.
We are alone, Tom and I. Soon we will camp. Yet I am restless upon this night
and if there were a moon would be for moving on.
Twice in the past few minutes I have glanced along our back trail, yet have seen
nothing … yet something is there, bear, ghost, or man … something.
Ah! A wind-hollowed overhang, a sort of half-cave, with great slabs of broken
rock lying about, and some few trees and many fallen ones. “Tom? If there’s
water, we should stop here.”
While he searched about, I sat my saddle. Dusk was upon us and the trails were
dim …
Tom came from the darkness. “There’s a good spring, Barnabas. This is the
place.”
Ah? This is the place? The words have a sound to them. Tomorrow we will meet the
boys in the cove that lies ahead, the cove where grow the crabapples of which
they have spoken.
Swinging down, I stripped the gear from my horse and drove deep the picket pin
to let him graze. While Tom gathered wood for the fire, I staked out his horse.
Firelight flickered on the bare rock walls. The broiling venison tasted good.
Kneeling, I added fuel to the blaze. The warmth was comforting, and suddenly I
was glad to be resting, for we had come a far piece since the dawning.
No sound in the night but the wind, no whisper but the leaves. The higher ranges
lay behind us. The crabapple cove lay just below. Beyond that a long, long
valley that ends or seems to end at a river, a strong-flowing river that goes,
they say, to the great river of De Soto. Jubal has ridden that river down. He
has spoken of it to me.
Tom handed me a chunk of venison. “Indians say there were white folks here, in
the long ago time. Cherokees say they wiped ’em out. The Shawnees say the same.
Likely somebody from one tribe married into the other an’ carried the tale, or
maybe they came together on the war party.”
The wind moaned in the pines and the land was dark around us. The fire fluttered
in the wind, and I added fuel. I should not be looking into the flames … the
eyes adjust too slowly to darkness, and somebody, I think, is out there,
waiting.
Somebody, perhaps, and some … thing.
This was my land. I breathed deeply of the fresh, cool air from off the
mountains. This was what I had come for, this wide land, those tall boys who
rode down the mountain paths toward me. It was a land for men. Here they could
grow, here they could become, here they could move on to those destinies that
await the men who do and are.
My father had given me much, and I had given them a little of that, I think, and
a wide land in which to grow. Had I done nothing else, I left them this
birthright … for I knew that out there beyond the great river, beyond the wide
plain, beyond the shining mountains … beyond … there would be, for the men
of this land, forever a beyond.
Many would die … do not all die, soon or late? Yet many would die in combat
here, many would die in building, yet each in passing on would leave something
of himself behind. This land waited long for the hard-bellied men to come,
waited, snugged down for destiny. Hard though the years may be, and the moments
of doubt, there will always be the beyond.
I looked again to the stars. Even there … even out there, given time …
Black Tom Watkins stirred the fire again. He added sticks. “You got the notion
something was behind us out there?”
“Bring the horses close, Tom. Yes, I think there is something out there. Yet
even so, I’d like an early start. We are to meet the boys in the cove where the
crabapples are.”
He looked around at me. “D’ you reckon we’ll make it, Barnabas?”
“Do you wonder, Tom?”
He was silent, and the fire crackled. Somewhere out there the wind moved through