Louis L'Amour (23 page)

I went for a walk along the shore. Was this the right way for me? Something inside me said it was so, yet I did not know. I had small experience with women and knew little of their ways except what I had observed when Lila and my mother were about, to say nothing of Noelle, young though she was, and the wives of Kane O'Hara and some others whom I'd seen. Yet being a husband could be no more difficult than some other things I'd done.

The shore was quiet, with only the rustle of the surf along the sand and the mewing of the gulls. I sat on a driftwood log and watched the water roll in and saw the moon rise over the sea.

She would be well received amongst us, and Temperance, Yance's wife, was her old friend. It was a good thing, a very good thing.

The sky was cloudless. It would be a good day on the morrow, a good day. We would launch the
Abigail
again, with luck, and Diana and I would be married.

There was a faint sound in the sand behind me, and I came swiftly to my feet, taking two quick steps forward before turning, a hand on a pistol.

Three Indians stood there in the moonlight, their hands by their sides. Each carried a spear, each a bow and quiver of arrows slung over a shoulder.

The nearest one, a broad man with a deep chest, spoke. The tongue was familiar.

“You are Catawba?” I asked in his tongue.

Immediately they were excited, and all began to talk until the first man lifted a hand for silence. “You speak our words. How is this that you, a white man, speak to us in our tongue?”

“I have a friend,” I said, “who was the friend of my
father before I was born. His name was Wa-ga-su.

Many Catawba have fought beside us.”

“Wa-ga-su strong man, great warrior. I know.”

“You are far from home,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

“Eat,” he said. “We are much hungry.”

“Come,” I said, “and walk beside me that they will know you for a friend.”

Surely fortune was with me, for now we should have company on our long trek to Shooting Creek, for our way was also the way of the Catawba.

T
he way of our return to the home of my people must be devious, for the Catawba had enemies, as did we. Yet I was told by the Catawba there had been no raids since the death of my father, that the Seneca bided their time. “They will come,” he said, “for they will wish to know if the sons are as strong as the father.”

“Let them rest beside their fires, in the lodges they have built,” I said. “We wish to kill no more of them.”

The Catawba added sticks to the small fire. “The old men know that times change, and they would be content with peace, but what of the young men who wish to test themselves? How better than against the sons of Barnabas?”

In the morning we would float the
Abigail
, and the Catawba would help. They were six strong young men, for although but three had come to the fire, three others had remained behind until it was known how they would be received. Had they known I was a son of Barnabas, they would all have come at once, for had not the Catawba always been the friend of the white man? And did not the sons of Barnabas know this?

“Many white men do not know the Catawba are friendly, and to them all Indians look alike, so be careful whom you approach.”

The Catawba smiled cheerfully. “So we came to one man alone. If one man is unfriendly, he is easier to kill than many.”

They looked at Diana. “She is your woman?”

“Tomorrow she becomes my woman. You have come in time.”

“What do they say?” Diana asked.

My smile was wide when I told her the question and my answer. She flushed. “You have not asked
me!”

“But I did ask!”

“Not when we would marry. It cannot be tomorrow. I am not ready.”

“John Tilly,” I explained, “is not only a ship's master but an ordained minister. As such, he married my mother and father, and he can marry us.

“Tomorrow we will float his ship. He cannot linger on this coast. It would be foolhardy to trust the weather another day, and as it is, he has been unbelievably fortunate. Only a little wind could pile sand up behind her so she might never be floated.

“I regret that we must hurry, but unless you wish to go into the forest traveling with a man and unmarried to him, then I think it would be wise if tomorrow was the day.”

“Oh, you do, do you? Have you thought that I may have changed my mind?”

“If you have,” I said, growing irritated, “now is the time. Captain Tilly will take you home. He is planning to stop by Shawmut, and he would be glad to take you there.”

One of the Indians asked a question, and I replied. They stared at her with admiration and many grunts and exclamations. “What is that all about?” Diana demanded.

“They wanted to know how many blankets I traded for you.”

“Blankets? For
me?
”

Chuckling, I told her, “I said I traded five muskets, one hundred pounds of lead, a keg of powder, and ten blankets for you.”

“That's a lie!” she objected. “You have done noth—”

“Ssh!” I admonished. “What I told them is an
enormous price. I told them you were the daughter of a great chief, a wise man, and that you were a wise woman, a plant woman, and a medicine woman. That makes you very important by their standards.”

“And not by yours?”

“Of course! I wish them to respect you, and to do that I must speak a language they understand. Now they think of you as a princess.”

Long before daylight we gathered on the beach to attempt the floating of the
Abigail.
She had been pumped free of the water she had taken on, and some of her cargo had been landed on the beach. The sand had not begun to pile up behind her, and with a line run out to a boat and twelve good men at the oars, we went to work. Yet it was midmorning before we worked her free of the sand and got her fairly afloat. And it was nearly dusk before her cargo was reshipped and she could set her sails. While she lay off the shore, Diana and I, standing upon the beach, were wed.

It was a scene I shall never forget. The long sweep of the glistening sands, the vast marches of the ocean nearby, the low stunted growth inland, and about us the small group of British sailors and Catawbas.

When all was over, John Tilly held out his hand to Diana, but she ignored it and kissed him lightly on the cheek. A moment we lingered, saying a few last words, with a last-minute message from Diana to her father, whom we soon hoped to see, and then they shoved off and were taken aboard.

We waited only a moment longer to be certain she cleared, but her sails filled, and she bore away to the open sea. We walked inland then, going toward the place where the Catawbas had left their canoe, and only once did we look back. Only her topmasts were visible against the red afterglow of the sunset.

Diana was quiet, as well she might be. She had trusted herself to a man of whom she knew, after all, very little and to six Indians of whom she knew nothing.

Their canoe was large, a birch-bark canoe such as
the Hurons make, far better than the heavier dugout canoes of the Iroquois. That it was a captured canoe, I had no doubt.

The inland waters were calm, and we made good time, moving up a bay called the Sinepuxtent. The Catawbas, great wanderers and warriors, now wished to be home. We swept to the head of the bay, had a brief glimpse of the open sea again, and then moved across a wider bay and into the mouth of a river.

We made camp there under the loblolly pines and some scattered hardwoods, and one of the Catawbas killed a deer that had come down to the river to drink in the late dusk.

At daybreak we went up the river until it became so shallow we had to walk in the water and pull the canoe behind us. The river flowed from a swamp called the Pocomoke, and we crossed the swamp moving west and south, then up another stream, a long portage, and gradually we worked our way westward. We saw much game but few signs of Indians.

Coming at last to a wide bay, we followed it down until we entered the mouth of another river.

Diana and I talked but little, and the Indians spoke only a word here and there, alert for all the sounds of the forest or swamp. From time to time I took my turn at the paddle, for I had long been familiar with canoe travel.

From the
Abigail
I had come well armed, with a musket, two pistols, powder, and ball. We had also brought a good stock of food from the ship so that little time would be lost in hunting.

Our first destination was the trading station of the man named Claiborne in the upper part of the bay, or so I had heard. This was the place where I had suggested Captain Tilly might sell or trade a part of his cargo, but I doubted that he had made such a decision, being eager to get on to the north and hence to Newfoundland.

At the Claiborne station I was sure I could obtain knowledge of what was happening in the country about
and what supplies we might further require. The Catawbas knew of the station but had not been there.

Those first days, despite the swamp and its mosquitoes, had been idyllic. The weather was fair, the water smooth, and our progress steady. All about us the land gave evidence of fertility, but it was largely uninhabited. Several times we saw distant smoke, as from campfires or perhaps a village, and once, far off, we saw a canoe with three Indians. As we were the larger number, they shied off and vanished into an inlet on the eastern shore.

To deny such country to the impoverished of England was criminal, and when I thought of the crowded, sweaty, ragged people of the European cities of whom my father, Jeremy, and Kane had told me, I knew this must indeed be their promised land.

Surely the two peoples had much to learn from each other, yet even as I thought of this, I shrank from it, for I could see no common ground of meeting. The exchange of ideas and methods offered much, but I had dealt with Indians enough to know that our ways and theirs were poles apart. It would be no easy thing to bring them together.

We moved along at a goodly speed, slowing our pace as we neared the southern tip of Kent Island, wishing not to surprise them into hostilities, for they knew not who we were.

On the shore we saw several men armed with muskets and with them a few Indians. I lifted a hand, waving to them, and we came on in, moving slowly so they might see who we were.

The fort, if such it might be called, sat back from the shore on a slight rise of ground. The great gate was closed; only a smaller door that would admit the passage of but one man at a time stood open.

A thickset man with a wide, florid face came down to the small-boat landing they had built into the water. He stared at us curiously, obviously surprised to see a white girl amongst us.

“Claiborne?” I asked.

“I am Deal Webster,” the man said, “a trader here. William Claiborne is not here at the moment.”

“We would trade,” I said, “and buy supplies. I am Kin Ring Sackett, of Carolina, and this be my wife. She is newly from Cape Ann.”

“Come ashore! Come ashore!” he said cheerfully. “You be welcome here, and seldom it is we have visitors.” He glanced at the Catawbas. “I do not know your Indians.”

“They be Catawbas, from Carolina, and friends to all white men.”

“Ah? Yes, I have heard them spoken of. Fighting men, I hear.”

“If need be,” I replied cautiously, “but they come now in peace, escorting me to my home in the mountains.”

I stepped ashore and offered my hand to Diana, who followed me, stepping easily to the small landing. The Catawbas drew their canoe up on the shore near the small pier, disdaining to even glance at the Indians who stood about.

Those Indians needed no introduction to the Catawba, I knew, for their fame was wide.

Webster took us to a cabin built against the outer palisade and utilizing its logs for a back wall. It was a pleasant room, with a fire blazing on the wide hearth and a general air of comfort and well-being. Seated at a table, a servant brought us food, well-cooked venison and some pieces of fish of a kind I knew not. The bread was fresh and warm, and there was butter, real butter.

“We have two cows,” he explained proudly, “and the only ones anywhere about. William Claiborne brought them in, and they do well upon the grass near the fort, yet we must keep them close, for there are Indians out there who would kill them for meat.”

He seated himself opposite us with a tankard of ale. “You wish to trade? I saw some furs—?”

“They belong to the Indians. I shall have to pay in gold,” I said.

“Ah, well!” he smiled. “You will have no trouble in
that respect! Gold is a rare thing.” He looked at me carefully. “Know you Lord Baltimore?”

“I do not.”

“We have trouble,” Webster said. “William Claiborne recognizes only the government of Virginia, and Baltimore insists we sit upon his land and will have us out of here.”

“I know nothing of such things,” I said. “We live far from government and have our own, such as we need.”

We talked long and ate well, and in the end bought what we needed of powder and shot as well as what food we would need for our travels.

“Inland there,” Webster asked, “where you live. What do you there for powder and shot?”

“We make our own. There are lead mines in the mountains, and we have heard of others farther to the west. Our powder, too, we make. We have skilled men amongst us, and we have found deposits of iron ore as well.”

“No gold?”

I shrugged. “Such a little it is scarcely worth the time, yet we hear of great mines of copper far to the north, and I suspect there is much wealth of which no man knows.”

At daybreak we again were afloat; our canoe not proving sufficient for us, we had purchased another from Deal Webster, leaving four persons and what supplies we had purchased from Webster to each canoe.

Down the bay we went to the mouth of the Rappahannock. But on the first day we but crossed from Kent Point to the mainland shore and down to a wide bay where Webster had assured us there was much herring to be taken. We camped there near the mouth of a creek and gave up a day to fishing and smoking the fish.