Sitka Page 2

  Shortly after he arrived at the farm, Jean's Uncle George was shown the tree, and immediately plans were made to smoke out the bees and steal their honey. But that was before Uncle George realized that there was no way in which smoke could be made to affect all the bees simultaneously. Long before the smoke reached the bees near the top the wind would dissipate it, and to attempt the robbery would be to die under the stings of thousands of bees. Uncle George grumbled, threatened the bees and went away. He did not return to the Honey Tree and Jean did not mention his tree again, yet the thought of all that stored-up sweetness fascinated the boys.

  "You going to smoke them today?" Rob was eager. "I'll bet there's bushels of honey!"

  "Bushels?" Jean was scornful of such an estimate. "There's tons!" He stared up at the tree, awed by the thought. Then he hitched up his too-large pants, remembering suddenly what he had meant to ask. "Did you see him?" "See who?"

  "The man ... there was a man came this way, just ahead of me. When he saw you he turned off into the swamp."

  "Who was it?"

  "I'll bet he's gone to the stone house." It was strange he had not thought of it before. The trail the man was making would lead that way, and this might be the man who had left those ashes there. "I don't know who it was," he added. Rob's eyes were big with excitement. Strangers were few along the Susquehanna in those years and most of them either passed by or occasionally stopped at the tavern for a meal or a drink. There was nothing to keep anyone in the village. And for anyone to leave the safety of Mill Creek Road for the dangers of the swamp was unheard of.

  "Maybe he's one of the Carters."

  Jean's heart began to pound heavily. The thought had not occurred to him before. The Carters were a band of outlaws known for their robberies, murders and brutality in all the regions near the Susquehanna in the early 1800's. The name was given them because the first of their number had worked as carters hauling goods along the high road. There had been some trouble at Sunbury and one of the cart drivers had killed a man in a most brutal fashion. Three of them had then looted the man's store and fled into the wild country along the West Branch of the Susquehanna. Later, they were believed to have shifted their operations to the Great Swamp.

  In time their numbers had increased, although how many there were was never exactly known. A man caught stealing cattle had broken jail and joined them, and shortly after a farmer en route to the Mill had seen six of them gathered together at the bridge. A number of times in the months that followed travelers were beaten and robbed along Mill Creek Road, and two men were found murdered near Penn Creek shortly after they had been seen displaying money from a sale of cattle.

  During succeeding years the Carters became notorious in all the country around. One was hanged, and another was shot and killed by an old soldier while attempting to steal a horse. By the time a concerted effort was made to deal with them they were already guilty of a score of murders. Two of them belonged to a family of evil character named Ring. It was said in the villages along the river that the Rings were all a little insane, but whatever else they were, they were also vindictive and dangerous men. It was believed the Carters had spies in the towns who warned them of impending trouble and let them know when prosperous travelers were on the road. The few attempts to capture them failed because the Carters knew the swamp and the villagers did not. Then after some fifteen years of terror the Carters suddenly vanished and for a long time travelers were safe again.

  During those fifteen years the Carters had won a reputation as evil if not as widespread as those other murderers who haunted the Natchez Trace, far to the south. The stories of their crimes made exciting listening, and every lad along the river knew tales of the Carters and their bloody doings. "What will we do?" Rob asked anxiously.

  "Let's go look."

  Rob was frightened but he was even more curious, and moreover, was afraid to admit his fear. With Jean in the lead, the two boys started at once into the woods.

  The afternoon was already late and in the forest it was noticeably darker. The direction taken by the stranger would take him nowhere but to the stone house or one of the several trails leading away from it. That stone house, Jean now realized, must have been one of the hide-outs of the Carters. If this stranger knew the swamp and knew of the house he could only be a Carter. There was no other alternative that made sense.

  Rob was apprehensive. Not accustomed to shouldering responsibility for his actions, nor to being in the swamp this late, he was worried. He knew that if his parents ever learned what he was doing he would never hear the last of it, yet quite as much as Jean he wanted to know who the stranger was and where he was going.

  "Maybe we should get somebody to come with us," Rob suggested.

  "Nobody believes there's any Carters left hereabouts. They'd just laugh at us." This, Rob knew, was exactly what would happen. Everybody was sure the Carters were gone for good, and it was unlikely that anybody would go into the swamp to investigate a rumor started by two boys.

  The forest grew thicker and darker. Twice Rob fell, and once off to their right, something fell into a stagnant pool with a dull plop and both boys jumped. It was cooler now ... the trees began to take on weird shapes and landmarks lost their identity as night made all things anonymous. Some small creature sprang from the trail ahead of them and darted off through the woods. Probably a rabbit. They came down to a creek bank, the water gleaming a dull lead color in the vague remaining light. They crossed another log and entered a narrow opening in the forest wall. About them the darkness made tiny warning sounds, and they listened, aware of a strangeness they had not known before. It gave them an eerie feeling as if some great dark thing lurked in the shadows ahead, peering out at them, waiting for them to draw nearer, watching for the moment to spring. A loon called, far off beside some lost pool, and the lonely sound made their flesh crawl.

  "Shouldn't we go back?" Rob whispered.

  They should ... Jean knew they should. He had no business spying on this stranger, and less business bringing Rob Walker into it, yet he could not turn back now. "You can if you want to; I want to see what he does." It was not bravado that drove Jean on so much as an innate sense of self-preservation. The swamp provided him with a home and a livelihood. The presence of an intruder could only mean trouble for him. If the Carters had returned he would no longer be able to move freely along his trap lines, and the source of his income would certainly be curtailed and might disappear. Young though he was, the idea frightened him, for the swamp was all the home he had ever known. He found nothing to attract him in the life of the village boys. Lonely though he was, often wistful with longing for the mother he had lost and the father he had scarcely known, he nonetheless loved the woods and would not have abandoned his free, easy life for anything. The boys pushed on for some minutes; then Rob stopped again. "Jean. Please, I think we should go back," he insisted in a hushed tone. "We should tell somebody."

  "We've nothing to tell. Anyway, Dan'l Boone wouldn't go back, nor even Simon Girty."

  It was an argument for which Rob had no answer. But sometimes he doubted that he would make another Boone. It was one thing to play at such things, but when the swamp grew dark Rob was no longer positive he wanted a life of adventure. Jean, on the other hand, seemed as much at home here as any young wolf or deer. He belonged to the forest and the forest belonged to him. Both boys had listened for hours to talk of Mohawk, Huron and Iroquois, of Simon Girty and Dan Boone, stories of hunting, Indian fighting and travel. They heard tales of the mountain men, and of the far lands of Mr. Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase, lands yet known to few. Many of the stories had originated with Jean's own father, who like most mountain men loved to yarn away the hours when he found himself among the wide-eyed citizens of settled communities. The stone house huddled against the wall of the ridge that hemmed the swamp at that place, hiding itself in the deepest shadows under the ancient hemlocks. The boys crawled under a bush where no grown man could have gone and stopped just behind
a huge hemlock, only a few yards away from the house. Jean tried to remember what it was like close along the wall. He did not want to step on anything that would cause even a whisper of sound. Rob moved up beside him and they crouched there, wide-eyed, listening and tense. From within came a murmur of voices and they could see a thread of light from a crack in the boarded-up window. A few inches below, a shaft of light streamed from a knothole.

  They moved forward from tree to tree until within a dozen yards of the house, then stopped again. Now they could distinguish the words of the men inside. "You took long enough."

  "Hutchins is there, and he's travelin' alone. Ridin' one horse, leadin' another.

  From the way he bulges at the waist he's wearin' a money belt." "He's packin' two, three thousand in gold. Harry was there in the bank, seen him pick it up."

  "Sam, I seen a kid out there. Settin' by the bee tree."

  "He see you?"

  "Nah ... but what's a kid doin' in the swamp?"

  "Well, what was he doin'?"

  "Settin' ... like he was waitin'."

  "All right, then. He was waitin'. What more do you want? Maybe his pappy was huntin'."

  "Nobody hunts in this swamp. Nobody."

  "Probably LaBarge's kid. LaBarge built hisself a cabin over next the woods. I recall his woman used to collect bloodroot an' such to fetch down to the store. Made a livin' at it."

  "You mean Smoke LaBarge?"

  "You scared?" The tone was contemptuous.

  "He never set much store by me. What you lettin' us in for, Sam?" "Forget it ... Smoke's dead and gone. Last I seen of him was on the Yellowstone, but at Fort Union folks were tellin' it the Blackfeet killed him." "Take some doin'."

  "Well, they done it."

  There was a sound of breaking sticks and then a fire crackled and a few sparks ascended from the squat chimney. The good smell of wood smoke came to the boys. Jean got carefully to his feet. If these men were mountain men as their conversation implied, they would be able to hear the slightest sound. But Jean had to look into that knothole; he had to see those men. Signaling for Rob to stay where he was, Jean crept forward in the darkness. At the window he lifted his head slowly, holding it to one side of the knothole. He peered through, first from one side and then the other, and saw not two men, but three. The third man lay on a bunk asleep, his face in the shadows. The stranger whom they had followed Jean recognized by the boots he wore and the size of him. He was huge, awkwardly built, and dressed as a farmer would be dressed. His face wore an expression at once stupid and cunning. The man called Sam was hunched over the table, a shorter, broader, thicker man than the big one. His was a brutally strong face, but it possessed a hard, cynical cast that indicated a certain grim humor. Jean shuddered to see as he turned his head that there was an inch-wide scar through his eyebrow.

  The stone house was as Jean remembered it, the old fireplace, a table, two benches and a barrel chair. The floor was of hard-packed earth. On the wall there now hung various articles of clothing. Several guns were within view. The big man looked around the room. "This is a good place. Too bad we had to leave."

  "It was time. We use some sense this time we can stay here for months before anybody gets wise. Hutchins, he's from out of state, an' he's headed west, so nobody will miss him."

  "What about the body?"

  "What d' you think? Right in the swamp where we should have put them all. The Rings was too careless."

  Jean listened, his mouth dry with fear. Everybody in the village knew Captain Hutchins by sight. He had kin in the village and had visited there several times, but now he was going west to California and the lands on the Pacific, and he was carrying gold to buy furs along the way. He remembered hearing them talk about it in the village. "Country's growing out there," Hutchins had said that very day, "and I want to grow with it." "Ain't that Spanish land?"

  "It is now," Hutchins agreed, "but unless I miss my guess it won't be very much longer. Someday the United States will span the continent. Might even cover all North America."

  "Foolishness!" That was what old Mister Dean had said. "Pure foolishness! The country's big enough as it is. No sense taking in all that no-account land. Ain't worth nothin', never will be."

  "There are folks who believe otherwise," Hutchins replied mildly. "And I know there's rich, black soil there, miles of fine grass, and a country that will grow anything. There's future in that country for men with the will to work and the imagination to see it."

  These had seemed but the echo of words Jean had heard before. Had his father said them, long ago when he was too young to remember? Or had his mother repeated them to him? Whatever the reason or occasion, the words had struck fire within him and he listened avidly, knowing inside him that westward lay his destiny, westward with a land growing strong, westward with a new nation, a new people. And now these men within the house were planning to kill and rob Captain Hutchins.

  Jean knew at once that he must get away to warn him, to tell him of these men and their plans. He got up, too quickly, and when he stepped back his foot slipped and he scrambled wildly for a foothold, then fell flat. Inside there was a grunt of surprise, and then a clamor of movement. The door slammed open as Jean got to his feet and he was touched, just barely, by the shaft of light from its opening. He darted for the brush .... once inside that brush, within its blackness ... he tripped and fell flat, then crawled, scrabbling in the grass to reach the undergrowth only a few feet away. He was just about to make a final lunge when a large hand grasped his ankle. He kicked wildly, but the hand was strong. Inexorably he was drawn back and jerked to his feet.

  The man with the scar grasped his arm. "Snoopin', were you? We'll be larnin' you better."

  Chapter 3

  Sam grippped his arm and led the boy into the light from the open door. "This the one you saw?"

  "Looks bigger," the big man said doubtfully. "I tell you, Sam, I ain't sure. He was settin' down. Could be, though."

  Sam shoved Jean into the house and they followed him in, studying him thoughtfully. Jean stood very straight, his heart throbbing heavily. He was caught, and he had no idea what was to happen now; but he returned the man's stare boldly, although his mouth was dry and he felt empty. "You're the LaBarge kid, ain't you?" Sam asked. "I am Jean LaBarge." His voice was steady. For some absurd reason he was sorry his hair was not combed, that he was not wearing his other shirt. These men had known his father and he would not like them to think him unworthy. "What you doin', sneakin' around here?"

  "I was not sneaking," Jean lied. "I was coming to the door. I saw the light and wondered who was there. Nobody," he added truthfully, "ever comes here." "What were you doin' in the woods?"

  "I run a trap line." He tried to make his voice matter-of-fact. "And I collect herbs." From their attitude they apparently believed he had been alone, and therefore had no idea Rob Walker was outside. And they must not know. "Pretty dark for that, ain't it?" Sam's voice was mild. "I sold the herbs in the village. It is closer to the cabin if I come through the swamp."

  "He's lyin', Sam." The big man had an ugly voice. "He lies in his teeth. When I seen him he was just a-settin'."

  "What about that, boy?" Sam asked.

  "I was studying the Honey Tree," he said. "I been aimin' to get me some of that honey."

  Sam chuckled. "I studied some on that, too," he said. "It ain't easy." Sam ignored the bigger man, sizing Jean up with careful eyes, noting the shabby, often-patched homespun pants, the torn plaid shirt and the uncut hair. Sam found himself admiring the boy, for he put on a good show. He seemed wary all right, but if he was scared he managed to hide it. This was quite a boy. Old Smoke LaBarge would have been proud of him ... but too thin, much too thin, and poor as a Digger Indian.

  "Ain't you afraid of the swamp?"

  "I grew up in it."

  Sam had an idea but he was a slow man with his thinking. He took his time now, turning the idea slowly on the spit of his mind, studying it from all sides. They could kil
l the boy ... that would be the easiest way, but it was a pity to kill a lad with his gumption. Also, if the boy failed to show up around the town folks would be sure to become curious and start looking for him. And Sam could stand for no snooping around. On the other hand, this boy was obviously very poor, probably making just enough to keep eating. A little extra money would look mighty big to him. If this lad was as smart as Sam was beginning to believe he would fit perfectly into their plans. Folks would become suspicious if an unemployed stranger hung about the tavern, but this youngster could go anywhere and nobody would think anything of it.

  "Were you listenin' at the window, kid?"

  "Not yet." Jean rightly guessed that frankness could hurt him none at all, and might win their friendship. "But I intended to. I'd have listened before I came around to the door."

  Sam chuckled. "I'd have done the same, boy. I surely would." The big man shifted his feet impatiently. "Sam, this boy means trouble. We've got to do something."

  Sam gestured irritably. "Take it easy. I think this boy's on our side, Fud, and I've an idea."

  Jean sat very still, waiting. Outside Rob would be creeping away, until he got far enough from the house to climb to the top of the ridge without being heard. Once atop the ridge he could follow it along to the road, but what if he took the wrong direction and became lost in the forest? For the ridge was but an offshoot of the higher land back of the swamp, and there was forest there, almost untouched, without track or trail of any kind. Sam finished stoking his pipe and lighted it at the candle. The strings of his shirt were untied at the collar showing the thick black hair on his chest, and his big hands were thick and powerful. From time to time as he moved about he glanced at Jean. "Fud," Sam finally said, "you got to use your head. We can get rid of this boy a month from now as well as now, but on the other hand, he's not apt to run to the law, bein' he's dodgin' it himself. "Oh, yes!" Sam grinned wisely at Jean. "You might fool those folks in town, but Fud an' me, we know you're livin' alone in that cabin. Your Uncle George ain't home, an' what's more, he ain't comin' home. Now if those folks in town knew that they'd have you in the workhouse. I know these here good folks, they can get themselves mighty busy about a poor little boy livin' all by himself. I know them, lad, an' you know them, too.