Louis L'Amour (11 page)

“You have courage,” Blaxton said, “to face that wilderness. The sea and the woodland … I love them, but I do not venture. I walk these quiet paths, stand
upon these headlands, pick my berries, and sometimes—rarely—I fish. For a few trinkets, an Indian will bring me fish or mussels. It is a good life and an easy one if the demands you make are not too large.”

“You have your books. They are the best companions.”

“Aye.” He glanced at me, and I think at the moment he really liked me, although he was a distant and aloof man. “Within this room I can talk to the Hebrew prophets, to Plato and to Aristotle. It is good company I keep here.”

He stood up. “Let us go to Maverick's place. You will see how well it can be done.”

As we walked along, I said to him, “Then nothing can be done against the slavers?”

He glanced at me. “What slavers? Who is to testify? It is all surmise and wild imaginings. Understand, I am inclined to believe there is something in what you say. To me Pittingel is too smug, too knowing, and too sly. He seems sometimes to hold us all in contempt, yet that may be only an attitude.

“In any event, slavery is no crime, although frowned upon in many quarters. It has been with us, my friend, for several thousand years.

“And if no slavery, how is the work to be done? A man who comes to this country wishes land of his own, and he will rarely stand to a bit of work for anyone else.

“I do not approve of one man enslaving another, yet so it has always been, and the mere fact that Joseph Pittingel transports slaves into the country or to the West Indies, this will be no argument against him. He will lose favor in some homes, will find himself quietly put aside by some of our people, but to others it will mean nothing. You must face reality, my firned.”

“Of course, he was right. Yet, there had to be a way. I thought suddenly of those other girls.

“I knew but one of them,” Blaxton said when I suggested it. “A handsome lass and pert.” After a moment he added, “I feared for her. She was too filled with
zest, and I am afraid—I should not say this—but I am afraid she had too little of the Lord's goodness in her.”

He glanced at me. “I tried to talk to her of God, and she kept reminding me, without saying a word, that I was but a man and she knew it. She disappeared suddenly, and it was suspected she had run off with someone … aboard some ship or other.

“Another case of a maid where many would be inclined to say, ‘Good riddance.' I would say there has been some knowing selection going on here. The mistake was when they took Carrie.”

Maverick's place was a considerable fortress, with a goodly house and several guns mounted on the palisade. He had the sort of men about to defend such a place, a rough and ready lot, for he dealt in furs, and many of these were men who spent much time trapping. With so many of them and his strong place he had nothing to fear from Indians. I knew he was a respected man but one who went against the grain of the congregations because of his easy ways and tolerant views.

It was said he had been close to being expelled on several occasions, but his own forthrightness as well as the fact that his father had been a minister of some influence prevented that.

He welcomed us and put out mugs of cold cider on the table.

“They are here,” he assured me, “and well. Your brother did us well by bringing a haunch of venison with him, and the maids are resting. They arrived last night, and my wife has seen to them.”

“We have talked much,” Blaxton said, “and I think you should hear what he has to say.”

I spoke briefly, having consolidated my argument by talking with the Reverend Blaxton, and Maverick listened while drinking his cider.

“Blaxton is right, of course. It will do no good to speak against them, and it will do you much harm. With all politeness, I must remind you that you are no-body
here. Or less than nobody, coming from the wild lands to the south. Joseph Pittingel is a respected man, and feared as well. I have had few dealings with him except to use one of his ships to freight some mast timbers to England.”

It was bothersome that those who had done this thing should go free of blame and lay ready to perform the same deed again, yet what could be done, I knew not.

“This lass,” I said on a sudden thought, “the lass you spoke of who was taken before this? There has been no word of her?”

“None. She had a way of walking near the shore, and some said it was to give a bold eye to the sailor men, but I know naught of that. One day we saw her no more and her mother came wailing and worrying about her, and we conducted a search, but all felt she had but run off and not been taken at all.”

“Such a maid—” I started to say when Maverick interrupted.

“Aye, I ken her well! A bold lass for her years, and she not yet sixteen! It would take more than a kidnapping to curb that one! I have seen her kind before this, and such women endure. They have a quality that takes them through when others might fall by the way. Bold she may have been, but there was good steel in her, too!”

“So she may be alive,” I said.

“Her?” Maverick snorted. “It would take a deal to dampen her down. I confess, I liked the lass. Trouble she was, trouble for her mother from the first, and a worry to the congregation, for she flaunted herself about, ready to make eyes at any man who looked well to her, although, mind you, I think at that time 'twas all in play, not that she was not ready for something more. Had her good mother been wise, she'd have married her off—”

“It was planned,” the reverend said, “but the lass would have none of it. She wanted none of the local
lads but something more. I do not know what exactly, but adventure, I think.”

“I think—” I spoke aloud, but it was to myself I spoke—“I think I shall go to the West India isles! I think I shall try to find this lass.”

They stared at me. “To find one maid in all the Indies? You are daft. Daft, I say! And if you found her, what then? Do you think you would be permitted to speak to her? And if so, what?”

“An affidavit,” I said. “A sworn statement. Or even the lass herself! Then we would have evidence that might take these men to the gallows!”

I
t was easy talk, yet the thought rankled that such things could be done and that those who did them would go unpunished. A man could say it was none of his affair, but how many would suffer until somebody did make it his business?

Maverick was patient. “You know nothing of the Indies,” he said. “It is a different world than this, and it is nothing like Virginia or the Carolinas. It is a place of pirates, cutthroats, and sharp businessmen. And how would you go about finding one girl? A girl who is probably kept from sight?”

I did not know. All I knew of the Indies was hearsay, and not much of that, yet the more I thought of it, the more I decided that this I must do.

Yance was quiet, and that was unusual for him. Despite his flamboyance, Yance's thinking was sound, and he could see, even as I could, the problems involved. In the first place, there were many islands, and to which one had she gone? Had she survived the trip? Many people died aboard ship and were buried at sea, for the life was rough at best, the food poor, and many a tough sailor man failed to survive a voyage.

Jamaica, Hispaniola, Grenada, Cuba, Martinique, the names themselves were enchanting.

“You would have no chance,” Reverend Blaxton assured me. “It is a fine thing you think of doing, a noble thing, but you would waste time better spent in some other way. We do not even know that she was not taken by Indians or murdered somewhere along our
own shore. It would be like searching for one snowflake in the dead of winter.”

“Anyway,” Yance said practically, “you've got your crop back home, and Temperance will be wondering what happened to us.”

“I did not mean for you to come, Yance. I meant for you to go home and let them know where I have gone.”

There was a deal of talk, which, as is always true in such cases, seemed to arrive nowhere, for there is always a repeating of arguments and a rephrasing of the same ideas and much time wasted. Yet as the talk went on, I listened with half an ear and thought my own thoughts, worrying over the possibility as a dog over a bone.

When first the words came to my lips, they came almost unbidden, yet the idea would not let me abandon it. The Indies were foreign to me, and I should not be treading the familiar ground of the forest or mountains or swamp but at sea and among islands and men of different backgrounds than I, and I would be among cities, which I scarcely expected to enjoy.

Yet what if I found her? From all that had been said, I guessed there was a core of steel in the lass, that whatever else she might be, she was not one to be easily conquered by circumstance or condition.

That she was possessed of more than her share of healthy animal spirit seemed likely, and the restraints of living in a community ruled by the congregation would be irritating and confining to such a one.

Well, to suppose. If she was indeed taken by slavers to the Indies and sold there, what then? What would become of her? Many a girl might give up, accept the life, and sink to the depths, ending when cast out as no longer useful, eaten by disease, or soaked in alcohol. But I could not believe that would happen to such a girl as this one. There was strength in her; for good or bad there was strength, and that must count for something.

Suddenly the door from an inner room opened,
and Diana was there. She moved into the room like a dream of beauty and went to the fire to stir it.

“How is Carrie?” I asked.

She looked over her shoulder at me. “Sleeping, and the poor child needs it. She is exhausted.”

“And you?”

“There is not the time. I have things to consider.” She looked around again. “They will be coming, I think. They have had their time at Cape Ann and some other settlements.”

“What do you mean by that?” Maverick asked.

“She means,” Blaxton replied, “that they will have taken the time to raise the question about Diana as a witch.” He watched Maverick fill his glass and then added, “Joseph Pittingel, if he is involved, is a shrewd man. He would take the time to cast rumors about, even to making a few comments of his own. ‘The maids have gotten free, how else but that Diana is a witch? Also, were they
really
prisoners at all? Was this not some diabolical plot of her own? How could they vanish so utterly but by witchcraft?' He will use the very argument Sackett offered at first, from what I hear, that no Indians had been seen for some time.”

“There is a place amongst us,” I said. “If you like, you may come to Shooting Creek.”

She hesitated only a moment and then said, “It is far, and we are known to none there.”

Maverick interrupted. “Then come to Shawmut. Become our neighbors. Thomas Walford, the smith, who helped me, would surely help you. He is a rough but goodly man.”

The remark irritated me, yet why should it? She would be safer close to Maverick than elsewhere. Was it because she might have accepted my offer had he kept still? I was being the fool again. It was something I was doing more easily these days.

Yance was looking at me and grinning like an ape. At least I had the good sense to say nothing, although Diana glanced once at me as it expecting some word.

Yet what could I say? It was far to Shooting Creek, and what had we to offer that was not here?

“I shall go to the Indies,” I said, “and I shall find her. I shall find that girl, and somehow I will discover what is being done.”

Henry had come in the door as I spoke, and he said, “If you wish, I shall come with you.”

“It is no place for a free man who is black,” I said, “although I'd welcome it.”

“There are freedmen there,” Blaxton offered. “It has been said there are several thousand that do live in Jamaica. As long as he was with you, he would be safe.”

“And I can ask questions where you would get no answers,” Henry said. “Some of my people lived in the hills of Jamaica and some on the other isles. They would know who I am, and they would tell us what they could.”

“What if you ran into some of those you once captured?”

He shrugged. “They would be afraid. No one wishes to fight the Ashanti.”

“We will go, then.”

“There is no ship,” Diana interposed. “None but that of Pittingel.”

“There's Damariscove,” Maverick suggested. “Many a vessel calls there for water or trade. Why, there was a settlement there before the Pilgrims arrived with their
Mayflower!
”

“Aye, Damariscove!” I had not remembered it. “Of course, we will go there.”

“Is there need?” Diana spoke sharply. “Why should you sail off searching for some girl you have never seen? Does she sound so attractive to you?”

“It is for you,” I protested, “and for others like you. This ugly business must be stopped and stopped now.”

“How noble of you!” Her voice held irony, and the tone dismayed me. I stared at her, about to make some
angry retort, but said nothing. That seemed to irritate her even more.

“I have not asked you to do this for me,” she said, “and I would not. It is a fool's errand, going off to find a girl you know nothing of on an island you have never seen and where you'll find naught but enemies.”

She turned around to look at me. “Do you believe for one minute that Joseph Pittingel or Max Bauer would
let
you go? At the first word of such a thing they would have you dead, killed in some manner. You would do better to go back to that far land from which you come and cultivate your corn!”

Her disdain for my sense was obvious, but it only made me resolve the more. “Believe what you will. I shall go.”

I got to my feet, wishing to have no more words with her. Maverick was frowning at his pipe, Blaxton seemed amused by something, and Yance was smiling. What a smug lot they were! I'd be well rid of them, even Yance!