to the Far Blue Mountains (1976) (38 page)

My shot had gone true and the bear had dropped. They were never so difficult to kill if the shot was placed well, and a raven had flown over, looking with a wary eye at me and on a second flyby with a hopeful eye at the bear's huge size.

For that raven well knew I'd take the hide and some choice cuts, but I'd never carry that six hundred pounds over the ridges between myself and home.

"Pa? Aunt Lila told me once, you had the gift."

"We are of the blood of Nial, Jubal." I glanced at him. "Do you have it, too?"

"The Indians believe I do."

"Do you know about me?"

"I ... think so, Pa."

"Do not speak of this, Jubal. It is enough for you and me and Lila. I am not distressed, for there is a time for each of us, and we are rarely ready.

"One thing I know. I am still too young to rust. When spring comes and my crop is in once more I shall make a pack and walk over to see some of your western lands before I die."

"I've been beyond the mountains," said Jubal, "and have ridden the rivers down.

I've been to a far, far land where the greatest river of all flows south and away toward the sea, sometimes I think I'd like to get a horse and ride off across those plains forever, going on. and on just like that river goes.

"Beyond the bunch-grass levels where the buffalo graze, there are other mountains, or so the Indians say, mountains that tower their icy summits into the sky, and I've gone that way, but not yet so far.

"The Indians there live in tents of buffalo hide, and I've fought with them, hunted with them, slept in their lodges, and I could live their way and find happiness, I think. They've got horses, the southern Indians do, got them from the ranches down Mexico way."

"They do not have horses further north?" I asked.

"Not yet, but they'll have them soon, and Pa, when an Indian gets a horse he becomes a different man. I've seen it. The Comanche and the Kiowa have the horses, but the Kiowa haven't been long upon the western plains, for they have just come from the mountains further west.

"The Indian in America is like the people you told us of in Europe and Asia, always at war with one another, always pushing into new lands and pushing off the people who were there, or killing them."

"People are much the same the world around, Jubal. We are no better and no worse ... nor are they. The Picts were in England and the Celts came, and long after them, the Anglos, Saxons, and Danes. And when they settled nicely down, the Normans came, took all the land from the people of England, and handed it out in parcels to the men who came over with William the Conqueror. It is the old story. To the victor belong the spoils.

"For the Indian has done the same thing to other Indians. In Mexico the Aztecs were a savage people who conquered an older, more civilized people, and then marched out like the Romans and tried to conquer all about..

"Cortez found willing allies because many of the Indians of Mexico hated the Aztecs.

"It was the same in Peru. The people we call the Incas suddenly went on the march and welded together a vast empire of tribes and peoples, and it was done by conquest. Yet it is not only men who do this. Plants do it also. When conditions are right a new type of plant will move in and occupy the ground."

"Pa? There's been white men out yonder. After I crossed the big south-flowing river I went by canoe up a river that flows down from the west, and in wandering the country north of there, I found some great stones with writing on them, writing just like on some of the old, old maps you have from Iceland."

"Runes?"

"Yes. No two ways about it, Pa. They've been there."

Long we talked while the fire burned down and the coffee turned cold in the cups. It was the most Jubal had ever talked, I think. The sound of his voice was warm in the room, and when at last he stood, he said, "Sleep lightly, Pa, for the Indians will come when their medicine speaks, and those who sleep too soundly may never awaken."

He went outdoors then, for he rarely slept inside even in the coldest weather.

Taking wood from the bin, I built up the fire, and when the wood caught I went outside and walked over to Jeremy's.

Lila was kneading dough. Jeremy was weaving some cloth, for Barry Magill had been teaching him the trade.

"Sit you," Lila said. "The pots on. It's sassafras tea, if you'll have it."

"I will," I said, and then to Ring, "Jubal's here. He says there's been a gathering of warriors to the north and the talk in the villages is that they will come again ... perhaps tonight."

"We will need two men on the walls, then. Barry and Tom for the first watch?"

"Aye, and Sakim and Kane for the second. We'll save the last for ourselves."

" 'Tis then they'll come, Barnabas. I was thinking back, just now. Do you remember the sailor's wife who let us rooms? Mag, wasn't it?"

"I think so. Aye, I recall her well. I hope her man came back and that she had a dozen sons. She was a good woman."

"I'd like to see Jublain again. He was a good man with a blade, Barnabas. The best I ever know ... excepting you."

"And you."

"Well ... it was a skill I had. I could ride, too, but how long has it been since I've seen a horse?"

"You'll be seeing them again. There's a Spanish man below the Santee who has nine horses to sell or trade. He's going back to the old country and he wants to live well. He cannot take the horses for the trouble and the expense, and nobody would wish them to go, yet his own people cannot pay the price. He has said he will bargain."

"When?"

"I've sent Kin and Yance."

Jeremy Ring gathered up his work and put it aside, drinking the last of his tea.

"I'll go over to John Quill's now, but I do not think he'll leave his place.

He's built three cabins now, two burned by Indians, and his crop burned three times, so he's sworn that the next time he will stand them off or die."

I went to warn Black Tom. He had been early asleep, and he rolled out and pulled on his clothes, a cutlass, two pistols, and a musket, and climbed the walls.

Sakim followed, for he would stand the watch until Barry was up.

The night was cool. The stars were out but clouds were moving in. It would be a dark, dark night.

Kane O'Hara and his wife came in from their cabin at the edge of their fields.

Kane had taken to smoking tobacco, having been taught by Wa-ga-su, who was still much with us.

It seemed strange, at such a time, not to have Abby to think of.

The wind seemed unusually cool off the mountain. Was this to be the night?

"No ... not yet." I spoke aloud, and Kane O'Hara, who stood near me, glanced over.

"Just thinking aloud," I said.

He nodded. "I do it, too, when my wife is from the house."

We watched the stars disappear beneath the oncoming clouds. The night was dark and velvet with stillness. I moved, and the planks beneath my feet creaked slightly. A vagrant breeze stirred the leaves of the forest, then passed on. We listened to the sounds, for these were our woods and we understood them well.

For never are the sounds of the forest quite the same, one place to another, and if the ear is tuned to listening it distinguishes each whisper from others in the night.

Leaving Barry and Tom on the wall, I walked back to my cabin.

On the wide bed I lay alone, thinking of Abby, of Abigail. I remembered the things she had said, the lift of her voice and the quiet, intimate sound of it in the night. I thought of the times when our children had been born, and how frightened I was when the second one came.

Why it was, I never knew, but upon that night I felt suddenly isolated, terribly alone, and I tried to get someone to stay with me-even a little longer, for Abby had been lying in Lila's cabin where she could be cared for better and watched over in the night.

All the terrible aloneness I had ever felt crowded around me then, for this was her time, and there was nothing I could do, I who would have done everything.

John Quill had stopped by that night with a piece of venison from a kill and I talked to him until he almost had to pull himself away.

There was no reason for my fears, for the child came easily, with no complications.

Sometime I fell asleep, and was awakened by Sakim's hand on my shoulder. "It is time, I think."

"Is there any sign of them?"

"Perhaps ... a little change in the sounds ... but very little. Come! I have coffee."

Coffee was still a rare thing, but we had acquired a taste for it from our captured cargo, long ago, and when that was gone we had gotten our supplies from slave ships bound for the West Indies. Sometimes we were without, but used ground beans or whatever was available.

Our kitchen table was scoured white. That had been Abby's doing and I had done nothing to mar its perfection since she had left. My meals I had taken on a bench outside the door, and used the table only when writing or reading. Which led me to think ... I had to see if John had poured candles for us. Mine were getting fewer and fewer.

Sakim filled our cups. "It is good, old friend, that we are together. I see you have been reading Montaigne. Earlier it was Maimonides ... I wish I might introduce you to Khaldoun ... Ibn Khaldoun. His Muquaddimah! That you must someday read. He was of the greatest of our thinkers ... not the greatest, perhaps, but one of them. A most practical man ... like you."

"I? Practical? I only wish I were. There is a madness in me at times, Sakim, and much of the time I am the least practical of men."

"Drink your coffee. There is bread made from the meal of corn here. Lila would be desolate if she thought you had ignored it."

"Not Lila. You forget how she is. She does what needs doing and is not hurt by being ignored. I learned long ago that in her own way our Lila is a philosopher."

"Well ... I only hope Jeremy realizes. Yet it is easy to philosophize about marriage when one is unmarried. Let us eat our cornbread. If we are to talk nonsense it is better to eat while doing so, then the time is not entirely wasted."

Sakim put down his cup. "Our good Khaldoun has much to say on the subject of eating. He maintains that the evidence shows that those who eat little are superior to those who eat much, in both courage and sensibility.

"Yet we readily accept the idea that a fat man is wise. Was he not wise enough to provide for himself? But we hesitate to ascribe piety to any but the lean. A fat prophet could never start a new religion, while a lean, ascetic-looking one could do it easily.

"A prophet should always come down from the mountain or out of the desert. He should never arise from the table.

"Also, he must have a rich, strong voice, but not one too cultivated. We tend to dislike and be suspicious of too cultivated a voice. A prophet's voice should have a little roughness in the tones."

"We had better get to the walls," I said, a little roughness in my own voice.

"It grows a little thick in here. At least, when I read Montaigne I can close the book when I am tired of listening."

"See? I drop my pearls and they are ignored. Well, so be it."

We climbed the ladder in darkness, feeling our way from rung to rung. Kane O'Hara loomed beside us. "Nothing," he said. "But the crickets have stopped."

As he left, he added, "If you need me, raise your voice or fire a shot. I shall not sleep, only nod a little over the table."

"I'll remain here," Sakim said, to Kane. "But don't eat all the cornbread."

The posts that made up the palisade were of uneven lengths and were deliberately left so, as that made it more difficult for attackers by night to recognize a man's head. The poles averaged between fifteen and sixteen feet above the ground with a walk running around the wall ten feet above the ground except at the gate itself. Two ladders led from the ground to the walk, and there were two blockhouses projecting from the walls to enable defenders to fire along the walls. The second blockhouse had been added sometime after the first, as we were continually trying to improve our situation. Jeremy was charging the extra muskets.

No stars were visible now. The wind was picking up, which made the detection of any approach a doubtful thing. It was intensely dark, yet our eyes were well accustomed to the night. So far as I had been able to learn, no Indian had succeeded in taking a fortified position such as ours, but I knew the dangers of over-confidence, and tried to imagine how they might attempt it.

A dozen times they had attempted this fort with no success. If they tried again, it must be because they believed they could succeed.

Something struck the palisade below me... .

Further along something else seemed to fall, and something snake-like whisked along the walk and disappeared over the wall.

Not quite over. It was a knotted rope, and the knot caught in one of the interstices between two posts. Instantly, I heard moccasins scrape against the logs outside, and almost at once a head loomed over.

His weirdly painted face was just inches away from mine and my reaction was instantaneous: a short, vicious smash in the face with the butt of my musket.