the Warrior's Path (1980) Read online

  They came up the path together, Penney and Macklin in the lead.

  The house Tom Penney built indicated much of his character: solid, built for security and comfort, not a hasty habitation thrown together for mere shelter. It had two rooms, the large kitchen-living room and a bedroom adjoining. There was a loft where the girls slept, warmer because of the rising heat. Everything in the house showed the hand of a man with a love for work and for his materials.

  Diana Macklin, seventeen and unmarried, was obviously a maid of independent mind, accustomed to the woods and the search for herbs. Not likely that she would wander off with a child and become lost, although even woods-wise men occasionally did.

  When they were near, I stepped into their path. "You can take me to where they were last seen?"

  "I can." Penney pointed. "It is ten minutes. No farther."

  Macklin said, "Diana would not become lost. She had played in the forest as a child."

  "This knowledge of herbs? She had it from Indians?"

  He hesitated ever so slightly, and I wondered why, "She learned it in England, and more from a woman here, and some from the Indians, also."

  "She spoke their tongue?"

  "She did. She had a gift for languages."

  Surely an unusual girl and one who, if she kept her wits about her, might make a place for herself even among Indians and could protect herself and Carrie.

  The big man was Max Bauer, and he was both wide and thick. There was about him an air of command that surprised me. He did not appear to be a man who would be second to Joseph Pittingel, which had me wondering if I had not underestimated Pittingel himself.

  "Ho!" Bauer thrust out a huge hand. "So this is the woodsman!"

  The instant our hands met I knew he meant to crush mine to show me who was master, so I met him grip for grip and saw his confidence fade to irritation, then to anger.

  "You have come far? From Virginia, mayhap?"

  "Far," I said.

  "You will find nothing! The earth has been trampled so that no tracks are left!"

  "Not even on the first day?"

  He brushed off the suggestion. "I was not here the first day. When my boat came in, I went to study the ground. It was hopeless."

  The hollow where the girls had come to gather herbs was a pleasant little place, a meadow beside a small pool with reeds all about the pool's edge and forest encircling the hollow itself. There was a wide variety of plant life and a well-chosen place in which to look for herbs.

  The earth had been badly trampled, the grass pressed down, reeds parted where men had gone to the water's edge. Any sign one might have found had long since been destroyed.

  "There's nothing here," I said.

  "Agreed!" Bauer spoke loudly. "It is a waste of time! In any event, by now the Pequots are far from here."

  "Pequots? You saw them?"

  "I did not. But they were here. I have a feel for them. They were here."

  We had seen nothing of Yance, nor did I expect him, but I knew he was out there, watching and listening. We had been so much together that each knew the other and his thinking, and right now he was beginning to do what I would have done in his place. He was casting about in a wide circle to pick up sign farther out, where the grass had not been trampled.

  Now we had to place ourselves in the minds of the maids or their captors and try to decide what they must have done. The search would not have progressed far on that first attempt, for undoubtedly few of them were armed; fewer still would know anything about tracking.

  These people were city folk or from good-sized towns. In England they had been craftsmen for the most part, gentry some of them, and the parks or woodlands of England were vastly different from these primeval forests, or so I heard from my father, Jeremy Ring, and the others at our settlement on Shooting Creek.

  We went back to the settlement. The man with Max Bauer was a small, quick-moving man with sandy, tufted eyebrows and a quick, ratlike way about him. His name was not mentioned, and I deemed him judged of no consequence, yet I did not feel so myself. It is such men of whom one must be forever wary, for they live in the shadow of greater or seemingly greater men, often eaten by jealousy or hatred, not necessarily of those whom they serve.

  We stopped at the Penney's, and the rest went on, but Macklin and I went in and sat down to a glass of cider, cold from hanging in the well.

  Anna Penney was filled with questions about Temperance, so I told her much of our life at Shooting Creek. "Our settlement is at the foot of the mountains. The water is very clear, cold, and good there. We have a dozen cabins, a stockade, and several of us are good farmers. So far the crops have been good, and there are berries in the forest and many roots. All of our men are hunters, and there is much game."

  "Your family is there?"

  "My father was killed by the Senecas, and my mother is in England. She was wishful that my sister not grow up in the wilderness, and my brother Brian wished to read for the law.

  "You must not worry about Temperance. She is much loved and is one of us. We do not have a church, for services have always been conducted in our homes. I fear by your standards ours are not much. Rarely do they last longer than half an hour.

  "She has good friends amongst us. Jeremy and Lila Ring are there. They came with my family. Jeremy was a soldier and a gentleman."

  "I have heard of Jamestown. It was to Virginia the first settlers here were going, but they came ashore sooner than expected."

  "Jamestown is far from us. We came up the rivers through Carolina."

  She left the house, and Macklin and I sat alone. He seemed uneasy. Several times he cleared his throat as if to speak. He was a tall, quiet, scholarly-looking man.

  Putting down my glass, I said, "Tell me about your daughter."

  He looked at me strangely, but he did not speak for a moment. Then he said, "Why? What is it you wish to know?"

  "To find them I must understand them. A track is not only marks upon the earth. If she is a prisoner, she must do what she is told, but if she is not, or if she gets away, I must understand her thinking. She may have been taken. We know nothing."

  "Do you doubt it?"

  "All is surmise. Nobody saw Indians take her."

  He took a swallow from his mug, then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "She is a fine girl," he said, "a fine, honest girl."

  "Most maids of her years are already wed," I commented.

  He looked straight at me, his eyes hard. "She had many offers. Why Joseph Pittingel himself--"

  "He wished to marry her?"

  "He spoke of it. Joseph Pittingel is a wealthy man."

  "She refused him?"

  "She did, in a way. She just, well, she just looked at him and walked away."

  I decided I liked Diana Macklin. "Yet there was little search made for them. Was something wrong?"

  He sat silent, his lips firming in a stubborn line. He liked not the trend of the conversation but seemed to realize my need to know. "After all, you will hear it soon or late." He looked around at me. "There is always talk in these small settlements when someone is different. She liked none of the young men, although she was gracious and sweet to the older ones. I suspect it was that only which saved her from being called up. Some said she was a witch! My daughter, a witch!"

  "I have no faith in witches," I replied, "nor in the devil, for that matter."

  "Be careful of what you say," Macklin warned. "It is well nigh as sinful not to believe in the devil as not to believe in God!"

  "Could she have gone away of her own free will? Seeing the attitude around her--and she seems a girl of uncommon intelligence--could she have decided to go and simply not return?"

  He considered that, then shook his head. "No. Had she been alone, she might have gone away, but she would not take Carrie with her.

  "Carrie loved her like a sister, and they were much together, but Diana would never have taken her from her family. Also," he added, "Diana would have waited unti
l spring. Midsummer is not a good time to begin such a journey, and Diana is a girl to think of such things. She was never impulsive but very cool. She thought things through to their conclusion."

  "What of Diana's mother?"

  "Diana's mother is dead. She died in England when Diana was a small child."

  Someone approached the door. Anna Penney returning from wherever she had been. I got up. "Shall we go to your place? We must talk more of this."

  Reluctantly, he got to his feet as Anna entered. She came at once to me. "You will find my Carrie for me? You and Yance? When she was gone, the others would not look, and I knew what they believed, yet I have always loved Diana. I never believed any of the things they said. It was just that she--"

  "She what?"

  "She loved the night. Our parson has said that witches love the night, that they meet in the forest in old caves, ruined buildings, and that they keep to darkness and the shadows."

  We crossed the lane to Macklin's cabin, spotless in its neatness. We sat at the table, and he looked out the open door.

  "Our house is empty without her," he said. "I have been much alone, and she cared for me. I have some small skill with tools, but I am happier with my books. She read them, also, and we talked long hours."

  My eyes went to the small row of books. The Complete Gentleman, by Peacham, stood beside Barrough's Method of Physic and Michael Dalton's Country Justice. Although I knew them by name only, I had seen them in Jamestown. Bacon's Essays and his Advancement of Learning I knew well. They had been among the last batch of books brought up from the coast. "I see some old friends yonder," I said.

  His expression changed. "You have read them?"

  "Bacon," I said, "and much else. My father was a reader of books, and our teacher was a very great scholar. He was Sakim."

  "An infidel?"

  "Some would call him so. I would not."

  "How can you hope to find them? Not even Max Bauer could, and he is our best in the woods."

  Slowly I got to my feet. I knew much that I had wished to know. If Pequots had the girls, they might be dead by now, but I did not believe it.

  "Those others who disappeared? All were girls?"

  "Yes, but that means nothing. A lad would have found his way back. But a girl?" He shrugged.

  "Diana, they say, was very much at home in the woods."

  "She was different."

  I walked to the door. "I will find them, Macklin, but what of you? Should you stay on here? There is suspicion, and if what I hear of your people is true, she would be risking much to return."

  He looked at me, then shook his head. "How far can one go? And where can one stop? Is there no place in which to rest?"

  "You've been through this before?"

  He shrugged. "It is ever the same. And it is my fault. She was reared by me. I could have made her another way, and she would have been like other girls." He frowned suddenly. "But I was a fool. I did not want her like others. I wanted her to be like herself."

  "And like her mother?" I asked.

  The eyes he turned toward me were the eyes of a man who had been through hell. There was pain there and fear, anger, resignation--I knew not what, only that he was a man suddenly without hope.

  "So you know? I guess I always knew there would be a time. I knew someone would come who knew."

  He stared at me, then the floor. "My God, what will we do now?"

  Chapter IV

  Thunderous knocking on the door interrupted whatever might have been said. Macklin went to the door, and I stood back, expecting anything.

  There were four men, and they brushed by Macklin to face me. "You are Sackett?"

  "I am."

  "You are to leave--now. We do not need your godless kind in this place. You are to go, and you are not to return."

  "I have come only to help," I said coolly.

  "We do not need your help. You must go--or suffer the consequences."

  "It seems that help is needed whether you believe it or not. Two girls have disappeared. Perhaps they have been taken by Indians, and you do nothing to find them."

  "That is our affair. It is none of yours. One of you was here and ended in the stocks. Make sure that does not happen to you."

  I smiled at them. My musket was in my hand, and in my belt were two pistols. "I must ask your pardon, gentlemen, but be sure I do not end there. If I should be put in your stocks for no more than coming to your town, I can promise it would cost you much.

  "I have come only to do what you yourselves should have done. I shall not leave until I have accomplished what I have begun. You are, no doubt, good enough men in your ways, but those ways are not mine. Two girls are missing. I understand others have disappeared before this."

  "Others?" They looked startled. "But that was long ago. It was--"

  "Last year," I answered. "Are you so careless, then? Have you not asked yourself why it is girls who vanish?" I knew nothing myself. I was but giving them that on which to think. "The forests are wide and deep, but are they selective?"

  "I do not know what you mean," the speaker said. Yet he was disturbed. Had he, perhaps, thought of this, also? "It is true--"

  "You have suggested I leave. Very well, I go. But I shall not leave until I know what has happened here. You no doubt think of yourselves as Christians, as God-fearing men, yet you call off a search and condemn those girls to death in the wilds, perhaps, just because of your foolish superstition."

  "Be careful!" The spokesman's face lost its look of indecision. "You do not speak of superstition here! What we have seen is the work of the devil!"

  I shrugged. "I go now." I stepped around them but did not put my back to them. "I shall do what I can do and what you did not do."

  "We could not." One of the others spoke for the first time. "There were no tracks."

  "There were tracks, but badly trampled tracks, yet any Indian could have found the trail. Any tracker could find it."

  "We have one of the best. He could not!"

  "Could not? Or did not?"

  Stepping through the door, I closed it behind me. I was angry, and I knew the folly of that. Anger can blind one too easily, and thoughtlessly and foolishly I stepped away from the wall. There was a sudden whoosh in the night and a thud. A knife quivered in the log wall behind me.

  I lay on the ground. I had dropped a moment too late, for I had been narrowly missed by a thrown knife but in time to avoid a second. I had not merely hit the ground but had moved swiftly off to one side, then farther. I could see nothing.

  The night was dark, but there was starlight, and already my eyes were growing accustomed to it. An attempt to kill me because I was here? Or had somebody listened to what was said inside?

  Ghosting away, I reached the forest and slid into its dark accepting depths. In less than an hour I was near where our camp had been; it was there no longer.

  Yance was there.

  "Had trouble?" At my assent he added, "I figured so. There was some coming an' going in the woods about, but I moved my camp yonder.

  "I found tracks," he added, "far out where nobody took time to look."

  "Indians?"

  "White men, wearin' moccasins, like you an' me." We moved off into the darkness, traveling swiftly for some minutes. When we slowed down again to listen, he said, "You see that Pittingel again?"

  "Others."

  "When I was in the stocks, there was a sailor man in them right beside me. He'd been drunk and roisterin' about, but he was sober enough in the night, and we talked some.

  "I've been recallin' things he said, like this Pittingel now. He owns a couple of ships, sends timber to England, corn to the West Indies, and he brings back sugar, rum, and coffee, but that wasn't all.

  "After everybody was asleep, we talked a good deal. It wasn't very nice, settin' in those stocks, unable to move more than a mite. He told me Pittingel was a trickster. He said Pittingel had some of his ships lay off the coast until they were all scrubbed down and aired out, bu
t that wouldn't fool him. He knew a slaver when he smelled it."

  "Slaver?"

  "Blackamoors. From Africa. They buy them from the Arabs. Most of the slave dealers are Arabs and some Portuguese. He sells them in the Indies. Folks here don't take to slaving, so Pittingel lets nobody hereabouts guess, but he's slaving, all right."

  We were quiet, each thinking his own thoughts. Yance said suddenly, "Macklin will miss her. According to what Temp had to say and from what I saw, Diana spent most of her time with her pa. She read from his books, and they talked about what they read."

  Anna Penney had put by a little food for us, and Yance ate, taking time out, here and there, for the cider. We talked a little in low voices about the country around, and then we moved off to a place he'd found, and there we bedded down for the night. Yance was soon asleep.

  A long time after he slept, I lay awake, looking up at the stars through the leaves and listening to the horses tagging at the grass. The woods were quiet, and the town, if such it could be called, was far enough away that we heard nothing. Yet the settlement would be quiet after dark; anyone out after dark would be suspect.

  It was but ten minutes" walk to the hollow from which the girls had vanished. It was plain enough that many men had been here, for the grass was trampled. It was no more than we expected.

  It was a pleasant enough place, a small meadow surrounded by woods, and on the edge of the woods a small pond of an acre or more. Reeds grew about, and a few marsh marigolds grew here and there. On the pond floated lily pads. On the shore, back at the edge of the trees, there were violets. It must have been an idyllic spot before the searching parties trampled it out of shape.

  The east side of the hollow I dismissed at once, for there was a dense thicket of blackberries there. No man in his right mind would have attempted to get through that mass of thorns when other ways remained.

  We stood still, looking all around, trying to take in the complete scene, trying to picture what must have happened here. Yet as we stood looking and listening, there was a sound of men coming along the path from the settlement. Yance vanished.