When I finished reading, we just sat there thinking of pa, remembering the way he walked, the lessons he taught us, his humor, his handiness with tools.
'That gold's somewheres about,' Jack Ben said, 'an' he left you clues. 'No further than from the house to the old well.' That there should mean somethin'.
I recall that old well. She always had good water. Cold water, too. On'y it was too far from the house on a winter's mornin' so your grandpa dug one closer.'
'It ain't the gold, Jack Ben. It's pa. We want to find what remains of him.'
'You know what I think?' The Tinker turned his head toward us, firelight glinting on the gold rings in his ears. 'I think that's the same man after you.
The one who killed your pa. I think he's out there right now.'
We set quiet, contemplating on that. It could be ... but who?
'A Higgins,' Jack Ben said, remembering the old feud in Tennessee. 'It must be a Higgins you've paid no mind to. He got your pa, now he's after the rest of the Sacketts.'
That might be, but something worried me. Couldn't put a finger on it, but something about this whole setup bothered me to fits. Nell set over there kind of watching me and that upset my considering. Hard to keep a mind on business with her setting over there breathing. Every time she took a deep breath my forehead broke out with sweat.
'Go back over it,' Judas suggested. 'Cover every step. Possibly there is a thing that does not fit, something that will explain it all.'
'It might be the McCaire outfit,' Orrin said. 'Charley McCaire didn't take kindly to losing those horses even if he had no hand in stealing them.'
'You don't think he did?' I asked.
'I doubt it. I think it was somebody in his outfit. But once he had them he didn't want to give them up or to have it believed that anyone in his outfit was a thief. If Tyrel hadn't ridden up when he did we'd have had to shoot our way out.'
'I don't think it's any of them,' I said. 'There's something odd about this man.'
'What became of Swan?' Judas asked.
I shrugged. I'd been wondering that myself. We'd seen nothing of him, yet surely he was around. He was not with Paul and Fanny when they left ... if they had.
Finishing my coffee, I threw the grounds into the fire and rinsed out my cup. We would find the gold. I was sure of that, but I had never been a money-hungry man. We'd started out to find pa, or what remained of him, and we'd come a long way. We had to find out what happened in those last hours or minutes.
I put my cup away and went into the darkness near the trees, stood there a moment, and worked my way over to where the Tinker was.
He spoke as I neared him. 'Tell? There's somebody or something out there.'
His whisper was very soft, only for my ears. I squatted near him. 'Nothing definite ... just something moving ... scarcely no sound.'
I noticed that he held his knife in his hand. The Tinker was always a careful man.
'I'm going out there.'
'No.' The Tinker put his hand on my arm. 'I will go.'
'This here's my job. Just tell them I am out there. And be careful, there's no telling what he will do.'
It was very dark. There were a few stars among scattered clouds. I made no attempt to keep to the brush. I moved through the knee-high grass and wild flowers.
When I was thirty yards out from camp, I stopped to listen. What was he doing?
Trying for a shot? Or merely listening?
I moved on among the scattered spruce, keeping low to the ground. I stopped, and a voice spoke, very low. 'Have you found the gold?'
There was a chill along my back. 'No,' I said after a moment.
'It is mine. It is all mine. You will not find it.'
That voice! There was something ... some thread of sound ...
'We can find it,' I said calmly, 'and no one else can. The message my father left is one only we could understand.'
There was a long silence. 'I do not believe it. How could that be?'
'It has to do with our home in Tennessee.'
What manner of man was this who would so coolly talk to me in the darkness? And where was he? The direction was obvious, but if I leaped, and missed, I'd be dead in the next moment.
'It is my gold.' He spoke softly. 'Go away and I'll not kill you.'
'You're through killing. If anybody does it now, it will be us.'
He did not speak, and I wondered if he were gone. I listened ... the man was a ghost in the woods. I was good, but this man, I believed, was better.
'You killed my father,' I said.
'He was a good man. I did not wish to do it, but he had my gold.'
'The Frenchmen mined the gold. They buried it. They sold their claim to it with Louisiana. It was anybody's gold.'
'You will not have it. I will kill you all.'
After a moment of listening, I said, 'Where is my father's body?'
If I could keep him talking, just a little longer. I shifted my position slightly, making no sound.
'It is beyond there, beyond your camp. I buried him in a crack. It is at the edge, near the roots of a tree.'
The faintest sound. I moved swiftly, felt the sudden rush of a body in the darkness, saw the gleam of a knife in a short, wicked sidewise swing at my ribs.
He swung with his right arm, and I pulled back and dropped to my right. His knife went past me, and I rolled up on the small of my back and kicked out viciously with both feet, kicking where his body had to be.
The double kick caught him on the side and knocked him rolling. Coming up like a cat, knife in hand, I went for him. I saw the black bulk of him roll up and come at me, felt the edge of the knife and the point take my sleeve, and then I came up on his right side and brought my knife up from below.
His elbow caught my wrist and I almost lost my grip on the knife. He twisted away, turned, and threw his weight into me. He was heavy and bull-strong. The charge threw me back, but I caught my left forearm under his chin and brought him over with me. He landed on his back just above me and then we both came up, panting fiercely, gasping for breath at that altitude.
He circled ... I could barely see him. I could hear his breath and see the cold light gleam along his blade. Suddenly I stopped, poised, yet still. Instantly he threw himself into me and I sidestepped off to my left, leaving my extended right leg for him to trip over. As his toe hooked over my leg, I swung back and down with my blade.
It caught him too high--it ripped his coat and must have nicked his neck, for I heard a gasp of pain and then he wheeled into me again. This time his head was up and I jabbed him in the face with my fist. He did not expect it; my fist smashed him back on his heels, and I stepped in, stabbing low and hard.
At the last instant he tried to evade my thrust, throwing himself backward down a small declivity. For an instant he vanished, and then I was down and after him.
He was gone.
Stopping, poised for battle, I listened. Not a sound except a soft wind in the trees. A cloud drifted over the stars and it was darker. Every sense alert, I listened.
Nothing ... nothing at all.
A brief, utterly futile battle. A moment of desperate struggle, and then nothing.
Yet I should have known. He was a sure-thing killer, who could stab the wounded and helpless Pierre, who could shoot my father from ambush and then lurk, waiting for days for a final shot.
He had thought to kill me there in the darkness, coming at me suddenly, yet I had been ready. And I had nicked him. Of that I was sure.
After a moment I walked back. 'I believe I scratched him,' I said and explained.
At the edge of the cliff where he had said my father's body was hidden, I hesitated. It was the very edge, and
