'That's where you an' me differ,' I said. 'I worry considerable about him. All he's got to do is kill us an' he can take my money and be off with it.'
'I don't kill very easy,' he commented.
'I hope you don't,' I agreed. 'You're a right handsome young man and there's not too many about, but that there Horst, he isn't going to come up an' give you a break. He doesn't want to die and he knows he can, so he'll be no damn fool. He'll shoot you from the brush and take what he wants off your body.'
We came into the town with the sun hanging low in the sky, and I went first to a store to buy my gun. I'd taken coin from the carpetbag, and sure enough I found what I wanted. I bought me a brand-new rifle-gun like those made in Pennsylvania. Nor did I waste time charging it.
There was a tavern there, and we went to it and put our feet under their table for supper. 'We'll stay here through the night,' Dorian said.
Well, I looked at Archie and he shrugged his big shoulders. Both of us knew we'd better light out of there because this was right where Horst and them would come. I will say that meal tasted good and it would give us a chance to wash up.
There was a room with a bed for me, but they'd sleep in the outer room on the floor, wrapped in whatever they wore. There was one window to my room and the one door that opened into the main room of the tavern. The window was shuttered and locked from the inside. I taken my bag inside and put it down with the rifle-gun and peeked out through the shutter slats. Not far away was the river and a great big old stone house somebody said had just been completed.
The tavernkeeper fetched me a wooden tub filled with hot water, and when I'd bathed and cleaned my clothes some, I felt a whole lot better. I was even beginning to feel Dorian might be right, and then I heard a voice in the taproom and it was Timothy Oats. He was having a drink. Through a crack where the door didn't fit that well, I could see him. He was settin' with Elmer and a big swarthy man, and Dorian was across the room with Archie, a glass of beer on the table in front of him.
Well, I got dressed. By now they would know I was here, and they would have some kind of a plan worked out. Nothing to happen right here in town, maybe, but after we'd gotten out on the road.
This was where the Big Sandy River started, I guess you'd say, the Tug Fork and Levisa Fork joining here to make the Big Sandy. Sometimes, although I'd not have said it aloud, I almost wished I was alone and didn't have those men to worry about. Archie, he was a swamp boy, a swamp and timber boy, and I could see it. If you wanted to call him a boy, that is. He wasn't much older than Dorian but he'd grown up scratchin' for a livin' back in some swamp. I could see it.
He was a trouble-wary man. Part of that came from being black them days. A black man had to ease himself around the tight spots and learned how to keep himself from trouble. Dorian Chantry never had to worry about trouble. Everybody in his part of the country knew who he was and had respect. The trouble was, this wasn't his country.
Sleep was what I was wishful for, but I couldn't lay my head in comfort with him out there in the same room with Tim Oats. Peekin' through the slats, I could see Archie was worried, too. He knew as I knew that Tim Oats probably felt if they could be rid of Chantry they could handle me.
The keeper of the tavern was no fool. When you run a place like that, you learn to sense trouble coming before it happens, and I caught him throwing a glance, one to the other.
If he was worried, he wasn't the only one. What Tim Oats had in mind, I don't know, but something was cookin' and he had the mixture in mind. Tim Oats was between Dorian and the door, and so was that big swarthy man, to say nothing of Elmer.
Dorian finished his beer and stood up. Archie had finished his beer too, but he was still holding the mug. Dorian glanced over at the host. 'Do we sleep here? On the floor?'
'It will be warmer, with the fire going.' The tavern-keeper wanted no trouble. 'You can bed down right here.'
Tim Oats exchanged a quick look with the big man, and I guessed this hadn't been a part of whatever they had in mind. Maybe they expected Chantry and Archie to go past them out the door.
Archie moved their table over closer to Oats and his group, putting it between them. He carefully moved the benches, too, kind of walling themselves away from Oats. It was done naturally, like he was just clearing a place to lie down, but I must say it was going to make it hard for that outfit to start anything in the night without making some noise.
Dorian drew his pistol and checked the loading, then stretched out on the floor near the fire. Oats glared at the pistol. 'What's that for?' he demanded.
Dorian smiled that lovely smile of his. 'Indians!' he said. 'Wild Indians! Lots of them in these woods! Or haven't you heard?'
'They been cleared out,' Oats protested uneasily.
'Don't you believe it. They come around during the night, looking for scalps. A man can't be too careful.' He hesitated and his face was innocent as a girl's. 'Now, don't you boys move around too much. If that door opens in the night or somebody creeps around, I'm liable to go to shooting.'
'Ain't been any Indians around here in years!' the swarthy man argued.
'Well,' Dorian said cheerfully, 'if they come, you are closer to the door than we are, so please stop them.'
Looked to me like everything was going to be all right, so I went to bed, and tired as I was from the long night and day of walking, I slept until day was breaking.
When I came out for breakfast in the morning, they were all at a table. Two tables.
'Ah? Miss Sackett! You do look as if you slept well! Won't you sit down?' Dorian was smiling and cheerful, but Oats looked sour. He shot me a quick glance but I ignored him, making as if I'd never seen him before. Elmer looked mean, but I would expect that. He was a young man who needed his sleep.
'Buckwheat cakes and honey!' Dorian said. 'This is living!'
He glanced over at Oats. 'Are you gentlemen going far? I mean, if there is any way we can help ... ?'
'We don't need no help,' Oats said. 'Tend to your own affairs!'
'Oh, but we intend to!' Dorian was almighty cheerful, and a body would almost think he welcomed trouble. 'It will be no problem.'
The buckwheat cakes were good. The coffee was fresh ground like it should be. Once the food was on the table, nobody was inclined to talk, and I was giving thought to what lay ahead. Somewhere to the south was Pikeville, and it would surely be easier if we could find a boat. A canoe would be best, or even a skiff.
When the rest of them had gone outside, I went to the tavernkeeper. 'What's going on?' he asked. 'I thought there would be trouble.'
'They are thieves,' I said, 'and we're wishful of getting away from them. Is there anybody with a skiff or a canoe?'
'There's an old birchbark canoe...' He pointed. 'Yonder, back of the barn there's an inlet. The canoe lies there.'
When I started to reach for money, he put up a hand. 'No, don't worry about money. I heard them call you Sackett, was that right?'
'It is. I am Echo Sackett, from Tuckalucky Cove, or thereabouts.'
'Before we started the inn,' he said, 'there was a time down on the Big Sandy when I was laid up. I was almighty sick, with a wife and two young-uns. There was a man came through, found us hard up for meat, and he stayed around for a week, huntin' for us, cookin' until we got well, and carin' for us generally. Then he taken off and I haven't seen hide nor hair since. He was a Sackett. So you just take that canoe and do what you've a mind to.'
'Bread on the waters,' I said, 'and thank you.'
Outside, Dorian was squatting on his heels, looking off down the street. Timothy Oats was down there with Elmer, talking to another man.
'Come on,' I said. 'We've got a canoe.'
We moved fast, slipping away and into that canoe. A stroke or two of a paddle and we were out of that inlet and turning upstream against the current. I was a fair hand with a paddle myself but I had to admit it, Dorian was better. Of course, he was bigger and stronger. Archie took to a paddle like he was born to it.
