Right then I began to think like Pa would, or Regal; I began to think about takin' my rifle-gun and playin' Injun down through the woods until I found their camp. If I could catch sight of them, I knew I could leave them with somethin' to bury. A few days ago I'd not have thought seriously of that, but when folks you care about are in danger, you do get to thinkin' such thoughts.
This was a part of the country I knew only from hear-tell, but often of an evening when the boys were settin' around they'd talk of lands where they'd hunted and how the land lay. That's all we knew of much of the country around, yet it was all we needed.
Suddenly that shep dog lifted his head from his paws, he lifted his head and he started to growl, away down deep in his chest.
'Easy, boy!' I whispered. 'Easy, now!'
I reached out with my rifle muzzle and prodded Dorian, hoping he'd wake up quiet. There's some who grunt and groan or wake up exclaimin'. He didn't, I'll give him that. His eyes opened and he followed the rifle barrel to me. I put my finger to my lips and indicated the dog, his hackles all bristled up. Dorian reached out a hand, and Archie sat up, drawing his pistol.
The little fire we'd had had gone out, long since. There was no light but from the stars, and few of them. We sat quiet, listening.
We heard faint sounds from the woods, expected sounds. Then a whisper of movement down below where we lay on the ledge. If we kept silent, they might not even guess there was a ledge or a place for us to hide. I held my rifle-gun ready, but I didn't cock it. That sound could he heard sharp and clear in the night.
A low wind stirred the leaves and moaned through the pines. My mouth was dry, and I could feel my heart beating, slow and heavy.
Something was moving down there, working its way through the woods. We waited, holding our breath, but it moved off, and after a time we began to breath easy again.
Setting there, to keep myself busy, I rigged a sling with which to carry my carpetbag easier. Something I could hang down my back from a shoulder.
Right back of where I sat was the limestone cliff, topped with pines and a scattering of other trees. On my left the cliff broke off and thick forest swept away down along the mountain.
I stood up, slinging my carpetbag to try it, taking up my rifle. The dog was not a dozen feet away, peering into the darkness. 'No, Shep,' I whispered. 'Ssh!'
I was standing in the shadows and I moved toward that place where the cliff broke off into the forest. It was darker there and I would be able to see better when I looked back.
Dorian was on his feet; Archie squatted against the rock wall.
Shep came suddenly to his feet, staring at the trees on the other side of the clearing and growling, low and deep.
Archie had his gun out, waiting.
'Don't you make a move!' The voice spoke from the darkness across the way. 'Don't you make a move!'
Chapter 18
Three years back, when he saw that wall of water comin' down the gorge, he thought he was a goner. Thing that saved him was that yellow poplar right there on the rising edge of the gorge, and he taken to it, making a fast jump to the first limb and then climbing higher. The water kept him there all day and part of the night, but he'd not forgotten what he saw.
Big old logs were coming down that gorge like shot from a gun, and later when the water was down he went below where they hit the main river, and there they were, all floating pretty as you please in a little bay.
Trulove Sackett was not a man to overlook a thing like that, so he fetched his calk boots and pike pole and he worked out on those logs, cutting the limbs with his ax and bunching them. When he had a log raft made, he packed some grub and floated them down the river to sell.
When fall came and the leaves were dropping from the trees, he went back up that gorge again, carrying his rifle-gun. Sure enough, it was as he'd remembered, a long slope above that gorge, both sides thick with a fine stand of yellow poplar, with here and there an oak or, lower down, a sycamore.
That first raft of logs had been happenstance. A body couldn't depend on such things to make a living by, so he fetched his cross-cut saw and double-bit ax and went to work. The cliff was so steep that once he cut a tree it couldn't do anything but fall, sometimes in the creek but more often on the side of the creek.
Trulove wasn't worried. Every third or fourth year there would be a high-water flood on that creek and he would cut trees and wait.
When the chores were done and there was a fresh-killed deer hangin' out on the porch for eatin'-meat, Trulove would fetch his tools to the gorge. It was a long walk, a good ten miles from home, but he'd carry a bait , with him and a jug of persimmon beer.
First he'd set out on a rocky place he knew, and restin' that jug on the fork of his elbow, he'd have a drink, cork her up again, wipe the back of his hand across his mouth, and give study to that slope, pickin' each tree real careful so it could get a clear fall to the creek bed.
If a tree got hung up on that slope, he'd have to get down there and cut it free, and when a tree that size, maybe six to ten feet through, when a tree like that starts to move, a body had better be somewhere else, fast. So he chose the trees with care to keep the slope cleared and give them a free fall.
Trulove Sackett was six-feet-six inches tall and weighed two hundred and fifty pounds and had never found anything he could take hold of that he couldn't lift. The folks down to the forks of the creek said Trulove could jump higher and farther than any man alive, and run faster, although there was nothing and nobody who could make him run. That was what folks said about Trulove, and he just smiled, drank a little persimmon beer, and went back to hand-loggin', which was what he knew best.
He was settin' on that rock studying his next set-to with them yellow poplars when he heard somebody halloo at him.
He knew the voice. He looked down the gorge to where a man was hoppin' from rock to rock to come up the slope. That would only be Macon. Nobody else knew where he was or knew about the loggin' he was doing on chance of a spring flood some year.
Macon Sackett spent most of his time huntin' ginseng to be shipped off to China. In between times he trapped a little fur.
When Macon reached the rock, Trulove handed him the jug and Macon taken a pull. 'Now, that's mighty fine drinkin', but a body has to have a taste for it. I know folks can't abide persimmon beer nor brandy.'
'That's most of them. Leaves more for us.'
Macon studied the slope, then glanced at Trulove. 'That's a killer, Trulove,' he commented, 'that slope is. One o' them big logs will get you sometime.'
'Maybe.'
Macon hadn't come this far to talk logging, so Trulove waited, taking another pull at the jug. If he was to get anything done, it was time he started. Took a while to fell the big ones.
Macon stropped his knife blade on his boot sole. Sized it up, stropped some more. 'You mind that nubbin of a girl from over by Tuckalucky Cove? Echo, her name was?'
'The one who outshot all the boys over at Caney's Fork?'
'That's the one.' Macon tested the edge of the blade on a hair. 'She's been down to the Settlements to pick up some money due her. Seems like she's on her way home with a couple of pilgrims an' there's somebody after her.'
'They better not catch up.'
'Oh, she can shoot, all right! She can prob'ly shoot better than anybody, but there's a passel of them.' He paused a moment. 'One of them is Felix Horst, from over on the trace.'
Trulove put the cork in the jug and smacked it with his palm to settle it solid. 'Where they at?'
'Word come from somebody down on the Russell Fork. He figured we should know.' Macon paused.
'She'll be headed for the Cove. Where's Mordecai?'
'On his way, I expect. Gent who passed the word to me saw him first.'
Trulove cached his tools along with the jug, still more than half-full. He picked up a small cache of food,
