Novel 1978 - The Proving Trail (v5.0) Read online

  He left, closing the door softly behind him. Pulling off my boots, I draped my coat over the back of a chair, and taking off my gun belt, placed it on a chair beside the bed with the gun butt close to my hand.

  Occasionally a rig went by in the street, or a rider. Once I heard a subdued murmur of voices. Then I slept, and when I awakened it was night. A reflection of light from the outside kept the room dimly lighted. The walls were dark, but I could see the table and a chair in the corner.

  The chair in the corner? I looked again. I stared. A woman sat there, rocking just a little.

  For a moment I lay absolutely still, the hair lifting on the back of my neck. What I felt then may have been fear, it may have been sheer disbelief, I do not know.

  “I see you are awake, Kearney.” The voice was low, a lady’s cultured voice, a kindly voice as well. “I hope my being here is not distasteful. I simply had to come. Oh, I know! You do not know me. Your father did, however. He knew me quite well. And you must come to know me, too. After all, we are cousins.”

  “Are we?” Somehow in that moment when she was speaking, I had controlled my fear. My father had once said, “Fear is a weapon to be used by you if you control it, by your enemies if you do not.” I added, “I am afraid you have the advantage of me.”

  “I am Delphine, Kearney. You have not heard of me?”

  “I have not.”

  “A pity. We could have been such good friends. You see, we heard you had died…we even thought your father had passed on…some years ago. We were sure…well, it was quite a surprise to us to learn that he still lived.”

  “A shock, I imagine.” How had she gotten in here? I knew Louis would not have permitted it, and Sophie would do nothing of which Louis did not approve. Yet she was here, sitting in the corner of my room.

  Old tales returned to mind, tales from the swamps and back country of the Deep South, tales of witches and witchcraft, of people who came and went mysteriously. I shook my head irritably to clear it of such nonsense, yet I wished I could make her out.

  From below came the subdued mutter of voices, people at supper, no doubt.

  “Yes,” she admitted, “quite a shock. But now that we have found you, we must become friends. We must see much of each other. We are cousins,” she added, “of a sort. Several times removed, that is.”

  “Louis told me he refused you a room.”

  “Oh? He spoke of that, did he? Yes, he was tiresome. Very tiresome. A most disagreeable man. The people about town say a girl refused him and he could not abide it, so now he hates all women. What a foolish man!”

  “But a wise one,” I replied quietly, “a man learned in philosophy and history, a man worth talking to.”

  “Oh, I suppose he could be interesting in a way, but I do not like him. He is cold and abrupt.”

  “And suspicious?” I suggested.

  “But of what? I am but a woman who has traveled far simply to meet her cousin!”

  Fortunately, I had not undressed, planning to go down for supper later. My boots were beside the bed, and my gun. I glanced at the chair. It was there, half-covered by my hat. Had she seen it? I made a mental reservation not to try to use it until I had checked the loads.

  “Felix will be so relieved, you know.” I could not see her smile but knew it was there. “Somehow he quite lost you. I must speak to him about that. It is not good to lose track of one’s relatives after having been separated so long.”

  Slowly I sat up and swung my feet to the floor. Once when I was very small, this woman—I believed it was she—had visited us, and after that my father had been ill for months. Was there a connection? Or was that only my imagination?

  Picking up a boot, I shook it out, a habit one acquires when sleeping out where there are snakes, tarantulas, and scorpions. I shook it, and something fell to the floor, something with a metallic sound. Ignoring it, I tugged on a boot, then felt for the other one. It had fallen out of reach, so I stood up and took a step. My foot came down on something on the floor. I gave a sharp outcry, as one will, and Delphine said quickly, “What is it, Kearney? Did you stub your toe?”

  “Stepped on something,” I commented, tugging on the boot. “Nail or something.” I swung my gun belt around my waist and buckled the belt. “Come. We will have supper.”

  We went down the steps together, and Sophie saw us first. Her lips tightened and her eyes flashed angrily, but she said nothing. “Supper, Sophie? Are we too late?”

  “You are in good time, m’sieu. There is roast ptarmigan, hearts of artichokes, and for fish there is trout.” She bustled ahead of us, seating us at a table in the warmly lit, pleasant room. Several other tables were occupied. The men, I noticed, all looked at my companion, and so, for the first time, did I.

  She was beautiful. As to her age, a factor my father always assured me I should never notice in women, she might have been nearly thirty. I was sure she was older, how much I did not know. She was beautifully gowned, her black hair done in the latest fashion, her black eyes very large and ringed with long lashes.

  Beautiful, as I have said, but there was something about her mouth and eyes I did not like, a sense of cruelty and of something else…something grossly evil.

  Or was it my imagination, coupled with some ancient memories of things heard or seen and long forgotten because I had been too young to give them significance?

  “You are handsome, Kearney.” She looked at me critically. “And quite the young man. I wonder just how old you are?”

  “Age is a relative thing,” I said. “It is character, as my father always said, that matters. In horses, dogs, men, and women.”

  “He seems to have been a wise man, your father,” she said, a touch of irritation in her tone. “Why then did he not come home?”

  “Perhaps because he was a wise man,” I said.

  “You should come home, Kearney.” She leaned toward me. “You should know your own country, your own people. You must come back to Carolina with us. You would love it.” She put her hand over mine. “Please, Kearney? You will think of it? We need you there.”

  She said “we” but she meant me to think “I.” The fashions of the time were suited to her, and she used them well. The gown she wore suggested what it concealed, and although all the men in the place were giving her their attention, she ignored them, devoting herself completely to me.

  “We have been searching for you, you know,” she said.

  “We traveled a lot,” I said, thinking of nothing better.

  “This man, this Frenchman…he was a good friend of your father?”

  She suspected, or perhaps from some means she knew, that whatever my father had might have been left here. I shrugged and waved a careless hand. “Father always liked good cooking, and Louis is the best, the very best. They talked of books, too, but friends? I think no more than acquaintances. If my father had a friend,” I said thoughtfully, “it was that man in Denver…the one on Larimer Street. I was too young,” I added, “when we were there, but the man was from somewhere in the South. New Orleans, I think. I know they had much in common.”

  Whether she was believing me I had no idea, yet she listened attentively as she ate.

  Why had she come west when Felix was already here? Did she not trust him? Or was there some deadline, some date that made speed imperative? Somehow I must be rid of her and talk to Louis again, and I must see those papers, whatever they were.

  “This man in Denver,” she said, “you knew him?”

  “I only saw him. I was a child. My father was back this way alone, later. I was working at the time and he traveled east by stage. I only know that he spent some time in Denver, doing what I am not sure.”

  That was true, and remembering it, I wondered. What had my father been doing? He left me but rarely, as if knowing there was a danger that threatened us both, but on that occasion he had gone to Denver and had been gone more than two weeks. Had he come to Georgetown then? It would not have been out of his way…at least not
much.

  “The food is good!” Delphine was saying. She looked at me oddly as she spoke, almost as though she were examining me, expecting some effect or reaction from me. “You must talk to him. He will listen to you. I do want a room here, Kearney, a room just like yours.” She looked at me. “Close to yours.”

  “He listens to no one,” I said. “Louis makes up his own mind, and if he dislikes someone, he tells them to leave. No matter who they are.”

  “But surely—”

  “I would not even try,” I said. “I know the man.”

  “Not even for me?” She put her hand on mine again, her fingers caressing my wrist.

  I was embarrassed, yet short of breath too. She was a beautiful woman, and I had been long in the mountains and never in all my life had met such a woman, so seductive, so beautifully gowned. “I…I’ll try,” I said. “I’ll see.”

  And at the moment, I meant it. After all, what harm could it do? This was the most comfortable place to stay, and she was very much the lady…or appeared to be.

  I started to rise and in my haste put my foot down wrong and fell back rather awkwardly into my chair. It was nothing but clumsiness, but as my hands dropped to the chair arms to push myself up again, my eyes met hers.

  In them I surprised an expression such as I had never seen in the eyes of any human, and only once in the eyes of any living thing. Rising once from a stream where I had been drinking, I had looked right into the eyes of a mountain lion, all poised to leap.

  Suddenly I knew I had to get away, to be alone, to recover what was left of my good sense. “I am afraid I…I think I had better go lie down,” I said. “I am feeling unwell.”

  “Do that, Kearney. Go lie down. I will see you another time.”

  Excusing myself, I got up hastily and went to my room.

  Chapter 13

  *

  SCARCELY WAS I back in my room with the gaslight lit than Louis appeared. I sat down on the bed.

  “Are you all right?” he asked sharply. “How did she come to be with you?”

  When I explained, he shook his head irritably. “She must have come in while I was in the garden. Damn the luck! Kearney, you must avoid her! She is the one, I am sure, whom your father warned me against.”

  Moving my boot, something rattled on the floor and I looked down. A carpet tack. It must have been that which I shook from my boot…but how would such a thing get into my boot in the first place?

  “What’s the matter?” Louis demanded.

  Reaching down, I picked up the tack. It was an ordinary carpet tack except that the point was covered with a hard, shiny substance of a yellowish brown color. “This,” I said. “It fell out of my boot.”

  He took it from me, very carefully, and studied the point under the light. Briefly, I explained how I shook out my boots as I always did and the tack fell to the floor, and that it must have been that I had stepped on when I stood up.

  “Get your sock off!” he said. “Let’s see that foot.”

  “I must have stepped on the side of it,” I said. “It would have hurt much more had I stepped on the point.”

  There was no puncture or scratch on my foot. Louis examined the point again. “You’ve been very lucky,” he commented grimly. “I am sure this is a poison, and I am sure it was meant to kill you. She must have placed it in your boot while you were asleep, never imagining you’d shake out your boots.”

  “We all do it,” I said. “You learn quickly out here.”

  “She must have believed you stepped on it when you stood up. She believes you are poisoned.”

  He was still examining the tack. “I know something of this sort of thing,” he commented. “When I was studying at the seminary in France, there was a professor there who was making a study of plant poisons—arrow poison and the like which had been used by primitive peoples. It resembles pakuru, a poison made from a tree of that name. If my memory serves me correctly one staggers, becomes clumsy, is apt to lose control of some muscles, then one dies. Depending on whether one gets a little of it or much, it can kill in anywhere from fifteen minutes to several hours, but usually the quicker time.”

  “When I started to rise, I almost fell,” I said. “It was pure clumsiness, but—”

  “Of course, she believed her poison was working. Very well, the thing for you to do is be gone before morning. Be out of here and away into the mountains.”

  “I came to see the papers my father left,” I protested.

  “And so you shall. How long will it take? An hour…less, surely. In the meanwhile I shall see your horses are made ready.”

  He took up the tack. “I shall get rid of this. It must not be left lying about, and I am sure you do not want it.” He looked at it. “An ugly thing…murder is the answer to nothing. It invariably creates more problems than it eliminates. A dozen times in my life I have thought of it, and of course did not do it. I am a civilized man. However, a year after, the person I would cheerfully have murdered was no longer of importance to me, and in many cases of no importance to anyone. Time eliminates so many problems. It is a good thing, I think, to save newspapers, then read them months later. One soon discovers then what is important and what is not. Many a crisis that seems about to shake the earth and bring down governments turns out to be no more substantial than those dust devils which one sees in the desert or plains. They spin furiously for a few minutes, then fall apart, leaving not even a ghost of themselves.”

  There was a tap at the door, and when Louis opened it, Sophie was there holding the familiar buckskin case that my father had so long carried.

  He took it from her and passed it on to me. “There! I know nothing of what it contains, and only what he told me of his story. I think you should read these, but please, mon ami, before you do anything, consult with me. And with Sophie.”

  “Sophie? I thought you did not like women?”

  “Most of them I dislike. Not woman…women. Silly creatures, most of them. Sophie is different. We have been friends, Sophie and I, and although she does not know it, when I am gone this will become hers. Sophie is a jewel, Kearney, a jewel of the purest water. She is a philosopher, a true philosopher with a sense of reality far better than mine. She sees much and says nothing, a rare quality in a man, let alone a woman. Most women sparkle beautifully as young girls. These are the robes nature puts on them to help trap the unwary male, but once the game is trapped the bait disappears, and most of them settle into dullness.”

  The idea was amusing, but I objected. “You can’t say that of her…of Delphine,” I said. “It seems to me the bait is still there.”

  He shrugged. “Of course. She is a huntress. She is not looking for a man. All men are useful to her, none really important. Many of the famous courtesans of history were such women. Sex was not important to them. They simply used it as a tool in reaching for wealth or power. Such a woman usually controls the situation because she herself does not care. I think Delphine, like her brother, if such he is, wants wealth because it insulates her from people. She has an inborn hatred and contempt for people. They are like spiders with webs, not to trap prey necessarily, but simply as a place to be, where the world cannot brush against them. Apparently whatever they have is not enough to insure this, and what is yours would be enough. But beware, my friend! Such people are intent, they are relentless and single-minded in their purpose, whatever it may be.”

  “I cannot always run from them,” I protested.

  “You cannot. What you must do is go east, establish your claim to the property, and settle the fact once and for all that there is an heir and you are he. If you wish to take possession, do so. If not, sell the property and return here, away from them and all they mean, buy yourself a ranch, and make your own place in the world. Your father avoided the issue because he wished to avoid the family feud, he wished to be free of all that, but there was a final killing. It disturbed him very greatly, and to return would have meant more killing. Also, there were others between him a
nd the property. That, apparently, is no longer so. You are a shrewd, intelligent young man, Kearney, but I would suggest you move quickly to assert your claim while they are still looking for you here. I have friends, and I can arrange for you to move very swiftly indeed, so go east, see a man whose name I shall give you, and take possession. The rest is up to you, and now I shall leave you with these things,” he said, tapping the buckskin case, “but do you study the contents carefully.”

  The room I had overlooked the street, and I sat near the window but at one side of it so that I might survey the approach to the hotel. I could not see directly down into the street without pressing my face against the glass, which caution told me would not be advisable. Delphine was not likely to take a shot at me, but I did not believe for the moment that she was alone. And if she had come alone, she would not long remain without recruits.

  Louis was right in suggesting that I slip out of town. One attempt had been made to kill me, but when it was realized that the attempt had failed, they would surely make another. It was this that was irrational about them, that they seemed to want to gain possession of what papers my father had left and to kill me also, but so impatient were they that they could not seem to wait until I came into possession of the papers they wanted. They would kill me first and take their chances on the papers…or that seemed to be the case. What I had surprised in the eyes of Delphine was simply that, an eagerness for the kill.

  First, to read and understand what my father had left. It was only a small packet of papers, including a very skillfully drawn map showing the locations of several pieces of property, two plantations, one quite large, and several patches of pasture and woodland in other parts of the state. Accompanying them were the deeds to two of the smaller parcels.

  There was a letter, folded and sealed, addressed to me. I broke the seal.

  My Son:

  When you read this I shall be dead. Since your mother died I have lived for you and you alone and now that I am gone the decisions will be yours to make. If you decide to go back, know that you must see Old Tolbert. He will know best how to proceed.