Ride the River (1983) Read online

  Was the money here? Had he, as my friend at Mrs. Sulky’s suggested, deliberately advertised in an unlikely publication?

  James White leaned back in his chair and his eyes reminded me of something … Of a weasel. “You say your name is Sackett and you are from Tennessee?”

  “You know my name. I wrote to you from Tennessee.”

  He seemed to be hesitating, trying to figure which trail to take. If he intended to pay me the money, he had only to make sure who I was and hand it over. I would sign for it, of course. It struck me as a straightforward proposition.

  If he planned to steal the money, somehow something had thrown his plans out of kilter. Maybe he had not expected anybody to see his advertisement or answer it. Or maybe he had figured a sixteen-year-old mountain girl would be easy to deal with. Whatever, he figured something had gone wrong for him or was going wrong.

  “How did you happen to see the item in the Advocate ?”

  “It came wrapped around some goods we bought from the pack peddler.” For the first time an idea occurred to me. “Fact is, I believe the peddler saw that notice and wrapped it around the goods a-purpose.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “So’s we could read it. Mountain folks read everything that comes to hand. It ain’t much - isn’t much, I should say. He would know that and he would know the item concerned our kinfolk.”

  “Who is this peddler you speak of?”

  “Never did know his name. I doubt if anybody knows, or where he comes from or how old he is. He peddles goods in the mountains and he tinkers with things, fixes guns, clocks, and the like, although nobody has much use for a clock except as something to listen to when you’re alone.”

  “How do you tell time?”

  “We know when it’s daylight and we know when it’s dark. What else would be needed?”

  “What about appointments?”

  “You mean meetin’ somebody? If I am wishful to see somebody, I go to his house or the field where he’s workin’. He does the same if he wishes to see me. Or we can meet at church of a Sunday.”

  “And if he doesn’t go to church?”

  “In the mountains? Everybody goes to church. Even George Haliday … he’s our atheist. We go to meet folks as well as to hear the preachin’ an’ singin’. George, he goes so he can hear what the preacher says so’s they can argue about it at the store.”

  “They are friends?”

  “Of course. Everybody likes George, and the preacher looks forward to those arguments. Ever’body down to the store does. They argued about the whale swallowin’ Jonah until the preacher came up with evidence showin’ two men had been swallowed and lived to tell of it.

  “Preacher, he says for all his mistaken ways George knows more Bible than anybody he ever knew. He says that down inside, George Haliday is a good Christian man who just likes to argue. I wouldn’t know about that, but ever’ once in a while the preacher throws a sermon right at him; and all the folks know it and they watch George.”

  “The tinker who brought the Advocate ? Do you see him often?”

  “Ever’ two, three months. Sometimes oftener. He comes down along the ridge trail carryin’ a pack so big you’d think it would take three men. Packs it all by hisself.”

  “Doesn’t he ever get robbed?”

  Well, I just looked at him. Where was he raised? Nobody would rob a pack peddler, but especially not this one. Anyway, even among Injuns, peddlers an’ traders were respected an’ let be. We all needed their goods. If the peddler stopped comin’, we’d all lack for things.

  “Nobody would rob the Tinker. I reckon nobody could. He’s got him a special kind of knife he makes himself, and knows how to use it. I often wished I had one like it, but I have to make do with my pick.”

  ” ‘Pick’?”

  “Arkansas toothpick.” When I said it, I could see he was ignorant. “It’s a kind of knife.”

  He stared at me there for a moment, tryin’ to make me out. I reckon I was a different kind of person than he’d ever met. So I changed the subject on him.

  “About that money. Folks where I come from, Mr. White, are right serious about money. When somebody owes money, they pay it or explain why they can’t. You have money for me. I want it.”

  “Of course. You are impatient, but I understand that.” He reached in his desk and drew out a paper with all kinds of writin’ on it and indicated a line at the bottom. “You just sign right there and you shall have your money.”

  Me, I just looked at him. “Mr. White, I don’t figure to sign anything until I have the money in hand. All of it. You put the money on the desk and I’ll sign fast enough.”

  “I am sorry, Miss Sackett. Your signing would expedite matters. In any event, it shall have to be tomorrow, as I naturally would not have such a sum in my office.”

  I stood up. “Yes, sir. I understand, sir. Tomorrow morning I will be here and you had better be, with that money. If it ain’t here or you aren’t, I’ll start backtrackin’ that money. I reckon any kind of money leaves its trail, and I can read sign as good as anybody. I’ll follow that trail right back to where it come from an’ right back to you, so’s I will know how much is involved an’ why you keep putting me off.”

  He stood up too. “There’s nothing to worry about, Miss Sackett. Your money will be here. However” - and there was a hard edge to his voice - “I would advise you to change your tone. You are in Philadelphia now, Miss Sackett, not back in your mountains. You would do well to curb your tongue.”

  “You have that money for me and you’ll not have to put up with me.”

  He started to speak angrily, then changed his mind. He changed it so fast the words backed up on him, but he finally come out with it. “I am sorry, Miss Sackett, we seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot. I did not wish to offend you or cause unnecessary delays. I only hoped to make your stay more agreeable.”

  To be honest, that was all he had done. Maybe I’d been set on edge by the doubts of my bald-headed friend or something in James White’s manner, or the fact that I’d been followed from the time I arrived in town. Come to think on it, he’d said nothing a body could take offense to.

  “I am sorry too,” I said. “I shall be here in the morning.”

  Chapter 3

  When I fetched myself to the sidewalk, the tall young man from the office was standin’ there. He looked me up and down, impudent as you please, and then he said, “Come along, Miss Sackett, and I’ll walk you home.”

  “No, thanks. I shall walk by myself. I have much to do.”

  He laughed at me, not a very nice laugh. “How’d you an’ ol’ White get along? You better watch him. He’s got an eye for the girls.”

  I walked across the street, and was so irritated that I did not notice whether I was followed or not. It was several blocks before I thought to look, but I saw nobody. It was late afternoon and folks had either gone home or were going.

  Turning back, I saw I was in front of the building with the brass nameplates, and there it was again:

  “CHANTRY & CHANTRY, LAWYERS.”

  Up the steps I went and into a hall where several doors had names on them. Opening the Chantry door, I stepped into an outer office that was all shadowed and still. There were two desks and chairs, and along one side was a leather settee for those who waited. The door to an inner office was open a crack and I could hear the scratching of a pen. Stepping into the door, I peered inside.

  A white-haired man was sitting behind a desk, writing. Piled beside him were several lawbooks, and one of them was open.

  As I peeked in, he looked up, right into my eyes. He stared at me as if not believing what he saw, and I stared back, embarrassed.

  He stood up, and he was very tall. Tall as Regal, maybe, but not so muscular. “Will you come in, please? My clerk has gone home, I believe.” He came around the desk. “I am Finian Chantry.”

  Taking a further step into the room, I stood, my feet together, very erect, very prim
. “I am Echo Sackett.”

  He gestured to a chair, then turned back to his desk, pausing in midstride. “Sackett, did you say? Sackett?”

  “Yes, sir. I am afraid I am presuming, sir, but there was no one in the outer office and I hoped to have a word with you, sir.”

  “Sit down, Miss Sackett. Echo, did you say? What a pretty name!”

  “I am glad you think so, sir. Many think it strange, but we live in the mountains, sir, and my father loved the echoes.”

  “The mountains? Tennessee, no doubt?”

  “Why, yes, sir. How did you know? Oh! My accent!”

  “On the contrary, Miss Sackett. I once knew someone of your name, a very long time ago, and he was from Tennessee.”

  Finian Chantry moved some papers aside, and marking his place in the open book, closed it. “He was a fine man, a great man in his way. Were it not for him, I might not be here tonight. He was a good friend to me, and an older friend of my brother’s.”

  “If you could tell me his name, sir?”

  “Daubeny Sackett. He fought in the Battle of King’s Mountain, among others.”

  “He was my grandfather, sir.”

  Finian Chantry sat back in his chair. With his shock of white hair and his lean, strong features, he was a strikingly handsome man.

  “Then perhaps I can call you Echo?” His face became serious. “Now, Echo, what can I do for you?”

  Seated across from him, I told him my story as simply and directly as possible. How we had seen the notice in the Penny Advocate and how I had written to James White and had come to claim my inheritance.

  “This inheritance. Do you know from whom it comes?”

  “No, sir. It was to go to the youngest of Kin Sackett’s line, so whoever left the money must have known our family for a very long time. Kin Sackett has been dead for two hundred years.”

  “Strange,” Chantry agreed, “but interesting, very interesting. And this James White advertised in the Penny Advocate ?”

  “Yes, sir, and anyone who knew of Kin Sackett would know we lived in Tennessee or west of there.”

  He got to his feet. “Miss Sackett, I shall escort you home. It is not well for a young girl to be on the streets of Philadelphia at night, even if she is a Sackett.”

  When we went outside, a carriage pulled up before the door and a man stepped down to open the door for us. Riding in a carriage! If only Ma could see me now!

  “Tomorrow when you call upon Mr. White, I shall attend you. I scarcely believe there will be trouble.”

  James White sat at his desk staring at the accumulated papers, a disgusted expression on his face. He glanced up as the thickset man in the square gray hat entered.

  “What is it, Tim? I am busy!”

  “You’ll be busier if you expect to pull this off. You take my advice an’ get to that hillbilly girl an’ get her to sign a release.”

  “When did I ask your advice?”

  “You never did. That ain’t to say you couldn’t have used it a time or two. That hillbilly girl’s no damn fool. She’s gone to another lawyer.”

  “What? Who?”

  “She went right from here to Chantry’s office. Walked right in.”

  “That’s impossible!”

  “You believe that an’ you’re liable to find yourself in jail. Old Chantry’s nobody to fool with. You know it an’ I know it.”

  White brushed his mustache with a forefinger, throwing a quick, angry look at Tim Oats. Inwardly he was cursing. It had all looked so simple! Everybody on the O’Hara side was dead, the money was in his hands, and Brunn’s widow trusted him implicitly. He had made an attempt to find the heirs that would pass muster with her, and he could do what he wished with the money until he found the heirs, which he had hoped never to do. Who would dream a copy of that little sheet would ever find its way into the backwoods of Tennessee?

  “Chantry doesn’t handle such cases,” White said impatiently. “His practice is in admiralty law or international trade. Anyway, how could a hillbilly girl even get his attention?”

  “All I know is that she left here and went right to his office. She opened the door and walked right in.”

  “And probably came right out.”

  “I figured I’d best get to you. Chantry is tough, an’ you know how he feels about the law. To him it’s a sacred trust, an’ if he finds you playin’ fast an’ loose, he’ll put you behind bars.”

  “You don’t have to explain Finian Chantry to me. I know all about him.”

  James White was irritated and a little frightened. Still, he had done nothing wrong … yet. He touched his tongue to dry lips. Thank God he had been warned. Grudgingly he glanced at Tim Oats. “Thanks. You did the right thing, coming right to me.”

  Finian Chantry had fought in the Revolution. He had been an important government official at the time of the War of 1812. It was said he had refused a seat on the Supreme Court for reasons of health. He was a man accustomed to power and the use of power.

  Tim Oats was right. He should have smoothed things over and gotten the Sackett girl to sign a release. He could have given her a few dollars … After all, the girl had no idea what was involved.

  Of course, that was what he had planned. To take her to a plush restaurant, give her a couple of glasses of wine, then produce some gold money and get her to sign a release as “paid in full.” Then she turned him down.

  Turned him down! Who did she think she was, anyway?

  Yet slowly caution began to slip through the cracks in his ego. Chantry, he was sure, would not give her the time of day, but the sooner the Sackett girl was back in her mountains, the better.

  When old Adam Brunn died suddenly, his widow had asked White to settle her husband’s legal affairs. The old man had a small but solid practice, mostly with estates and land titles, but White agreed immediately. Had the widow known anyone else, she would not have asked him, but a friend of White’s had been helping her through the trying period after her husband’s death, and had recommended White.

  Most of what Brunn had left unfinished was routine and offered no chance for chicanery. Then he had come upon the O’Hara papers.

  Apparently, many years before, one Kane O’Hara had been an associate of Barnabas Sackett, whoever he was, and later, of his son, Kin Sackett. Partly due to the Sackett association, Kane O’Hara had done well financially, leaving a considerable estate to his heirs. In his will he left a provision that if at any time the O’Hara family was left without an heir in the immediate line, what remained of the estate should go to the youngest living descendant of Kin Sackett.

  To White it seemed a foolish document, but all of the subsequent heirs had included the provision in their wills as well, and for a while there had been some association with the Sackett family. At last the event had taken place, and a search for the youngest Sackett had begun.

  Adam Brunn’s conscientious search for the heirs discovered the Sackett family living in Tennessee, and Brunn had drawn up an advertisement to appear in some Tennessee newspapers just before he died. His widow was determined Brunn’s wishes be carried out, as apparently this was one facet of his business he had discussed with her. White proceeded to advertise, but deliberately chose a paper unlikely to be found in Tennessee.

  The letter from Echo Sackett had come as a shock, for he was already devising ways by which the money could remain in his hands. White’s income varied between six and seven hundred dollars per year, a goodly sum in 1840. The inheritance came to something more than three thousand dollars, and in addition, there was a small iron cube, a puzzle box of some sort, composed of many movable parts, each one a small square with its own symbol or hieroglyphic.

  That iron box or cube or whatever it was had become an irritation to White. It must have some significance, for it was mentioned in the will and was obviously important. He had worked over it, turning the various bits and pieces. Some of the squares slid from place to place and could be realigned to make different combinations of
the symbols, but what they meant, he could not guess.

  Tim Oats was vastly intrigued. “That there’s valuable,” he declared. “I began life workin’ with metals, worked for a jeweler, I did, an’ whoever put that thing together was a craftsman! He really knew what he was doin’!”

  “It isn’t Latin,” White said irritably. “It isn’t any language I know.”

  “It’s old,” Oats said, “but there’s not a speck of rust. I heard tell of iron like that made long ago in India.”

  “A children’s toy,” Brunn had written in his notes, “of only family interest.”

  James White, a devious man himself, did not accept that conclusion. In the weeks since it had come into his possession, he had moved, twisted, and turned it - but to no avail. If it had a secret, it was beyond him.

  Since three thousand dollars represented four to five years of income for James White, he had no intention of giving it up to any ignorant hillbilly girl. He stared at the papers on his desk and swore bitterly. Three thousand dollars to that impudent slip of a girl! It was preposterous!

  Yet, suppose he had to pay it to her? What then? It was a long way back to Tennessee, most of it by stage. White rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, then brushed his mustache with a forefinger.

  Maybe … just maybe …

  Finian Chantry entered the library of the club and looked about. He nodded here and there to the regulars, men with whom he frequently had dealings, business or political, most of whom he had known for years, and in some cases their fathers before them. When his wife had been alive, they dined out often, but of late he had become more and more of a recluse, preferring his books to most of the conversation about matters whose conclusions were obvious.

  The club was different. It was one place that held no memories of his wife. It was a gathering place for men, and men only. As he grew older he liked less and less to be involved in disagreements of any kind, and here, in the quiet precincts of the club, over brandy and cigars, he had settled some of his most difficult cases.

  It was easier, sometimes, to meet with people on neutral ground, to discuss probable outcomes and resolve problems without going to court. Chantry was, as they all knew, a thorough student of the law, who prepared his cases with infinite skill. His memory was fantastic and he seemed to forget nothing, recalling with ease rulings made fifty years before. He seemed to have read everything and forgotten nothing. Most other attorneys preferred to settle his cases out of court rather than go to trial and almost certain defeat.