Read Online Louis L'Amour by The Warrior's Path - Free Book Online

joined me.
    â€œWonder if they know about that river?”
    â€œDoubt it. They wouldn’t meet up with many hunters or the like. Wouldn’t be fit company. Of course, that Macklin girl was a listener. What I mean is, she paid attention to folks when they talked, and when I was tellin’ Temperance about our country, she asked a passel of questions, all of them right canny. Still, not many of those folks get far from the settlements, and she might not.”
    It was a worrisome thing, for in the thickness ofthe forest we might pass them within a few yards and know naught of it, for knowing nothing of our presence, they would be still if they heard us, suspecting we were enemies.
    Near as we could figure it was about fifteen miles from the shore of the sea to the river at the point where we now were. Yet the maids seemed to have headed west and then would turn south, and the area in which they now could do that could be less than five miles, probably less than three.
    We gave study to the country, trying to figure how they might travel. Yance gestured toward it. “Hard to believe, with folks needing land that all this lies empty and still.”
    â€œI like it wild,” I said, knowing he did, too. “But think of all the poor back in the old country who would like to have even a small bit of it.”
    â€œAye.” Yance swept his eyes across the country, alert for any sign of movement, any suggestion of travel. “And I am thinking they will come, Kin. They will come. It is a vast and lonely land now, but it will not be so long.”
    We came to our feet and moved away. “You work slowly across to the westward,” I suggested. “I shall go swiftly west and scout the country toward the great river.”
    We parted. It was our way to do so when hunting, and we had bird calls or sounds we could use to signal one another; we often worked apart, but we worked as a team.
    We must work swiftly now, for those coming behind us would soon know their slaves had escaped and would be coming for them, seeking them out, and us.
    What happened within these woods no man would know, and many had died here, unmourned and unknown, and so would it be with us if we erred even slightly.
    I had gone scarcely a mile and had paused to listen when I heard the faintest sound; turning my head, I looked into the eyes of a girl, and she into mine.
    For a moment neither moved or spoke. She stood slim and graceful as a tall young birch tree, and she looked straight at me, and then she smiled. Others came up behind her, a smaller, younger girl and a tall young black man. He carried a spear and, at his belt, a knife.
    â€œIt is all right, Henry,” she said. “He is a Sackett.”
    â€œWhat,” the black man asked, “is a Sackett?”
    She smiled with sudden humor. “Who knows, Henry? It is some strange sort of beast that comes up from the south and brings fresh meat and steals young girls from their homes.”
    â€œI can see,” I said quietly, “why one might steal a girl, although the idea had never occurred to me before.”
    â€œAll girls are not easily stolen,” she replied. “But we have been, and now we try to return again home. You will help us, sir?”
    â€œYour mother sent for my brother,” I said. “We both came. But we had best move. Others are behind us who would keep us from helping you.”
    â€œThere are those behind us, also,” she said. “You are alone?”
    â€œYance is here. He will join us soon, I think.”
    My eyes went to Henry. “I was also a prisoner,” he said.
    â€œHe helped us,” Diana said. “Without him we might not have been able.”
    Turning southward then, I led the way into the forest, but first I paused and sent into the sky the call of a lone wolf hunting. There would be no answer, but Yance would know, and he would come.
    The black man, and Diana as well, looked lean and fit.