Rivers West Read online

  “It is not so bad, and the mule yonder could carry our packs and the tools.”

  “I’ll abide that. It’s setting one of them takes me down.”

  We walked back to the inn and resumed our former table. The host crossed over to us. He looked at me, measuring my shoulders with a careful eye. “You’re taking on a bit,” he commented. “Neely is a likely lad, strong and a good wrestler.”

  “He’s big, is he?”

  “Bigger than you by thirty pounds. He’s beaten them all but Purdy. Nobody can beat Purdy.” The innkeeper was quite serious. “He’s more than a man, and he’s cruel—a cruel, bitter man who fights to wound. There’s those about who’d give a lot to see him whipped.”

  “It will come. If I beat Neely, I shall try him.”

  “You?” The innkeeper was scornful. “He would eat you alive.”

  It irritated me, this talk of the invincible Purdy. But the innkeeper crossed to the sideboard and came back with a piece of iron. It was a horseshoe that had been straightened. “What do you think of that? He did that here before us all. While we looked on, it was.”

  Taking it from him I looked at it, shaking my head. “You are right, of course, it took a man to bend that.” Then I looked up. “The horse dealer promised us another drink. Could we have it now?”

  When he was gone, I put the straightened horseshoe down on the table, and when he returned, I said, “We’ll eat now, for I want my food to settle before I grapple with Neely Hall.”

  “You will meet him, then?”

  “I will.”

  “You’ll be stayin’ the night then?”

  “We will, and mark us down for two good beds.”

  When we had eaten, we pushed back from the table, and when Jambe-de-Bois turned toward the door and nobody was looking, I took the iron horseshoe and bent it double, almost back to its former shape. Glancing at it, I applied a bit more pressure, and when the innkeeper crossed to Jambe-de-Bois, I held it down by my side. “Your food is good,” I said, “and the ale excellent. And just between us two, I think you’re a likely man, but if you are also a wise one who likes to make a bit of money on the side, you’ll say nothing of this to anyone.”

  He looked puzzled, wondering of what I was speaking. Then I handed him his horseshoe.

  He started to speak, then abruptly he closed his mouth and went to the sideboard. He thrust the shoe back into a drawer and out of sight.

  The horse dealer came in. He crossed to the table and sat down. “Neely will meet you. Right here in front of the inn, at sundown today. Over there on the grass, yonder.”

  I shrugged. “I haven’t said I’d meet him. What do I get out of this?”

  “You can make a bet. You can make as many bets as you like, and your friend, too.” He smiled, and I could see how pleased he was with the idea. “I thought you might like to bet.”

  “I’ve a little put by,” I said with a shading of reluctance. “And, of course, you have your horses.”

  “Horses?” he was startled. “I’ve said nothing about horses! I thought maybe two dollars—”

  I laughed at him. “You’re wasting my time. I’d bet you twenty English pounds against the stocky gray with three white feet, the dun, and the mule.”

  His face shadowed a little, his eyes became worried. “I wasn’t thinking about no such bet. I was thinking…well, just a sporting bet, a fun bet.”

  My contempt was obvious. “Sorry. You make a sporting bet, and I get my nose rubbed in the dirt. Fun for you…but what about me? Forget it.”

  “You won’t wrestle?”

  “Why should I wrestle for your fun? Sorry, my friend.”

  “But I sent for Neely! I told ’em all!”

  “Your problem. My offer stands. Twenty English pounds against your three animals, take it or leave it.”

  He shook his head, but he sat still. Leaving him with Jambe, I got up and strolled outside. Standing under the overhang, I looked up the road. Some riders had appeared on the road, and I watched them warily.

  They came closer, and I recognized Miss Majoribanks, Macaire, and Simon Tate. The younger man was there, too, lingering a little bit behind.

  Tate reined in when he saw me. “You still here?” he stared at me suspiciously.

  “Well,” I said, “we got sort of involved. Seems they have a wrestler here, and they’re trying to talk me into a bout. But this horse dealer—”

  “You mean Kimball? What about him?”

  “Seems like he’s a tin horn. He wants me to wrestle, all right, but he doesn’t want to bet enough to make it worthwhile getting dusty.”

  “Are you afraid?” It was the girl. She was giving me that cool, level look she had.

  I shrugged. “Could be. But seeing as I’ve never seen the man, I doubt if I am. The one I really want is Purdy.”

  “Purdy!” Tate burst out. “You’d be wrong in the head to think of it. The last man he fought lost an eye.”

  “He might need a lesson,” I suggested.

  Miss Majoribanks just glared. “Well, of all the conceited—”

  “Nice of you to notice, ma’am,” I replied cheerfully. “But it seems they want me to fight Neely Hall first.”

  “You wouldn’t have a chance. I know Neely Hall. He’s very strong.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But when I offered to bet this Kimball twenty pounds against two horses and a mule, he backed down. I guess he doesn’t think Neely’s that strong anymore.”

  Kimball had come out of the stable. “That’s not so! I’ll take that bet!”

  Miss Majoribanks looked down at me. “Do you have any more money, young man?”

  “I have ten pounds.”

  “Then I will wager with you. Fifteen pounds to your ten that Neely beats you, two falls out of three!”

  “Ma’am, are you sure you want to do that? I mean, I didn’t think—”

  “You didn’t think a lady would bet? Well, many have, and this one will.”

  “Miss,” Macaire said gently. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. You don’t know this young man.”

  “I know him well enough to want to see Neely Hall put him in the dust!” She said abruptly. “Let’s go inside.”

  Macaire offered her his hand and she stepped down, then went past me as if I didn’t exist. As she passed I caught a whiff of some faint but very pleasant perfume.

  Neely Hall came from his farm in a wagon. I first saw him when he stepped down in front of the inn. He was a big, hulking young man, a few years older than me, and much heavier. His face had a kind of boyish softness in it which mine had lost, and he seemed pleasant enough.

  He scarcely looked at me when he came in, and there were no further preliminaries. We walked out to the grass and peeled off our coats.

  He moved in swiftly, then suddenly ducked and dove at my knees with the idea of upending me, I guess. I sidestepped quickly, pushing the side of his head as I did so, which threw him off balance. He staggered, caught himself, and came at me again.

  He was quick on his feet, although his movements were clumsy and untrained. But I wished to learn how much he knew. Several times we grappled; each time we broke free. The crowd had swelled to at least fifty people, and Neely was performing before his friends. I began to see from his approaches that he knew the rolling hiplock and he also knew how to apply a headlock or stranglehold, for several times he seemed to be trying for them.

  He was strong and active, but I doubted if he’d had twenty serious matches in his life. Suddenly I moved in, but as I reached for him a stone rolled under my foot, throwing me off the least bit, and he dropped an arm around my head and applied pressure. As he did, he tried to work his grip back so his biceps would be at my ear, his forearms across my throat.

  Thrusting an arm through his spread legs, I grabbed him by the buttock with one hand, dropping my left hand to his leg below the knee and bending it sharply back and clear of the ground. Then, with a great heave, I threw him over my shoulder and we both fell…only he l
it on his head. Instantly, I spun around, dropped on him as he lay partly stunned, and pinned him to the ground.

  “First fall to John Daniel!” Macaire shouted.

  Holding him a moment longer to show there was no mistake, I got up.

  Neely followed me, getting to his feet, staggering a little, and peering at me, surprised and shaken.

  Of them all I think only three knew exactly what had happened—Macaire, Simon Tate, and the innkeeper.

  “I never saw that done before,” Tate commented, low voiced. “I thought he had you.”

  “So did he,” I commented dryly.

  We rested. I wiped off my face with a wet cloth and stood waiting. Neely was across the small circle of people, getting excited advice that was undoubtedly doing more to confuse him than otherwise.

  Time was called. We circled warily. He was very strong and quick, and now he was more careful. I doubt if he realized what had happened any more than the others, but he didn’t want it to happen again. He feinted a lunge, then lunged and caught me napping. He backheeled me suddenly, and I hit the ground hard on my shoulder blades, but kicked up my feet and turned a complete somersault, coming up fast.

  Knowing how to fall is an art in itself, and the first training I had received as a child. How to fall, how to break one’s fall, and how to rise quickly in a posture of defense.

  When I’d gone down, he was sure he had me and came in fast. So when I turned my somersault and came up, I put my head right into a headlock. This time I was driving hard toward him, so I followed through and knocked him over backward. He took me down with him, and, as I broke free and started to get up, he threw himself against my legs and I fell again. In an instant he was atop me. In the moment he fell upon me, I had attempted to turn, and he had me pinned.

  “Second fall to Neely!”

  I heard the shout and lay still. I had started the move that would have thrown him clear but stopped. The time was too short, and I wanted no arguments. I wanted a decision win which could not be disputed.

  We got up, and I went to my side of the ring. Macaire came over to me. I was scarcely breathing hard and simply waiting. I rinsed my mouth with water, spit it out, and mopped my face.

  “You’ve wrestled some lad,” he said.

  “A bit.”

  “Yon lad is strong, but I saw you make the move with your feet. You were going to throw up your legs and catch him under the chin with your heels and flip him off, I think.”

  “I was.”

  “Time!”

  This was the decisive one, and most of my money and whether we had horses or not depended upon it. I wasted no time, wanting no accidents. I moved in quickly, then suddenly ducked and hooked an arm around his right ankle with my right arm and threw my body weight against him. He went down, and I continued to roll with him, turning over atop him until I was in a perfect hold-down position, with both his shoulders to the ground.

  It took them a moment to realize it was all over. The third fall had come so suddenly, they were unprepared for it.

  Tate came over and thrust a hand under Neely to be sure his shoulders were down, but they were. My weight was across him, and I think for the first time he realized my strength, for when he tried to move I held him still upon the ground.

  “Third fall to John Daniel!”

  I held the position until there could be no doubt and then got up, offering a hand to Neely. He took it and got up.

  “I’ll buy you a cider,” I said.

  “Taken,” he said, “and you’re a strong man, a strong man, indeed.”

  We walked to the inn together, and the innkeeper refused my money. He leaned over the bar and whispered, when Neely was turned aside talking to a friend, “I made a bit on this, I made a good bit.”

  There was a light touch on my shoulder. I turned and Miss Majoribanks was there. “Your money,” she said briefly. “I did not know you were a professional!”

  “That I am not,” I replied quietly. “I am what I seem, a man who works with wood. I wish to be no more.”

  “I scarcely think you need worry,” she said ironically. “You have strength enough, I suppose, but to become something more needs intelligence!”

  With that she turned away, her chin in the air. I was not angry, and she had a fine, proud way about her. I liked her lifted chin and the square set of her shoulders—even the way she gathered her skirt as she turned.

  “And now for Sam Purdy!” The innkeeper said it. “But that will be a different thing, I’m afraid.”

  “There’ll be no match with Purdy,” someone said. It was a new voice, and we all turned.

  A man stood in the inn door, a square-set man with gaiters and a gray coat. He was an oldish man, and a gentleman, by the look of him.

  “No man will fight Purdy,” he said.

  “And why not, Reverend?” Tate asked.

  “Because Sam Purdy was killed this day in Berwick, killed by the bare hands of a man to whom he spoke rudely and then tried to thrash.

  “Oh, it was a fight! For almost three minutes, it was a fight, and then the stranger killed him, dropped him with a broken neck.”

  “That bull neck of Sam’s?” somebody said. “Oh, come now!”

  “He did it,” the Reverend said emphatically. “Did it with his hands and apparently only half of his mind to it. You should have seen him move! Like a cat he was! When Sam went down, he simply took out his pipe and lighted it.”

  “Did this man have a name?” I asked.

  “Aye,” the Reverend turned to me. “He said his name was Macklem. Colonel Macklem.”

  Chapter 7

  *

  WE RODE AS a party when we left the village the next day, and headed toward Berwick, a goodly distance down the road, if such it might be called. Miss Majoribanks and her party were in the lead, and Simon Tate rode with them. He would leave our group in Berwick and take the road down the coast to Boston town.

  Jambe-de-Bois and I stayed in the rear, leaving Miss Majoribanks free of our company. She had paid off readily enough, and so had Kimball, the portly horse dealer, although he paid off with a sour expression and bad grace.

  “Lucky for you that Purdy is dead,” he told me. “He would have killed you.”

  “He might have. But he didn’t kill Macklem, did he?”

  Kimball knew nothing of Macklem, but Macklem was much on my mind. Jambe-de-Bois had warned me of him, but I had expected nothing like this. A man who could defeat and kill such a man as Purdy was someone to beware of. Well, our paths had parted. Nor had I regrets.

  Tate dropped back as we neared Somersworth. “You will be going the same way as Miss Majoribanks,” he suggested. “Macaire is a good man, but that other fellow…he doesn’t measure up. Though he believes he does, and she believes him.”

  “It’s none of my affair. I shall go to Pittsburgh. What they do is their own trouble.”

  “But you could keep an eye on them, could you not? She’s very young, John Daniel, with much to learn, but she’s also bold and fearless. She knows nothing of the world save from her reading. She rides daringly in it only because she has always been protected.

  “If aught should happen to Macaire, I fear for her. She’s like one of my own, John Daniel, and I’ve known her since childhood.”

  “She will have none of me. Anyway, I’m simply an artisan. I’m not a landed man—”

  He glanced at me, sharply, I thought. “No? I have it on good authority that if you lived in France and had your just dues, you’d be at least a count…and a man of substance.”

  “Now who has been telling you that?” I was exasperated. “I am a simple workman. A man good with tools, and nothing more.”

  “Have it your own way. But you will be going where she is going…at least as far as Pittsburgh. If you can help her, please do so.”

  “All right,” I agreed, not grudgingly.

  He left us shortly after and took the coast road to Portsmouth and thence to Boston.

  We, on
the other hand, started south toward Haverhill, to then turn westward toward the Connecticut River. Our party was now five people. In Haverhill Miss Majoribanks expected to be joined by a companion, a lady whom she had previously known and with whom she had corresponded when she first began her plans to go west and search for her brother.

  Jambe-de-Bois and I brought up the rear, riding some three horse lengths behind them and keeping our distance.

  In Berwick there was much talk of the recent fight between Sam Purdy, who had been well known in the area, and the stranger, Macklem. Too late, the law had considered arresting Macklem, at least for an inquiry, but he had departed the town, and nobody saw fit to pursue either him or the issue. Everyone seemed more than pleased that Purdy was out of the way with no harm done to local people.

  A hostler shook his head. “Lad, I never hope to see such a thing again. I never liked Purdy. He was a rough, violent man, given to brutality, and no one was ever at ease when he was about. But the way of it!

  “Oh, believe me! It was the fault of Purdy! He was ugly and looking for trouble. I think he’d had a drink or two, and this stranger was too neat, too upstanding for his taste.

  “Purdy started the trouble but…well, the manner of it. The stranger destroyed him. Literally, sir. Macklem destroyed him. You never saw anything like it. It was steady, deliberate, and efficient, almost without effort.

  “No panting, no struggle, no cursing. He simply demolished Purdy. He must have struck him a dozen times, and a bone broken for each strike. Sometimes with fists, often with only the edge of the hand. But he wiped him out.

  “Purdy was no coward. With a broken shoulder, the side of his face smashed in, he still tried. Then the man broke his neck. They can say what they wish…and most say it was accident. I say, sir—and I have seen many a fight—that it was deliberate. It was calculated, efficient, deliberate. Macklem knew he was going to break his neck, knew he was going to kill the man.

  “And he did it, sir. Broke his neck and killed him, and Macklem with not a hair mussed. He simply tucked his shirt in a bit when it was over and made some comment about self-defense. Within minutes he was gone from the town.”