Five years I lived there alone.
That isn't to say I didn't see anybody in all that time. Long before ma died I used to go hunting with the Cherokee boys, and I could use a bow and arrow or set a snare as good as the best of them. These were wild Cherokees who took to the mountains when the government moved the Indians west.
Pa had been friendly with them, and they liked me.
Whenever I was over that way I was sure of a meal, and many a time during that first year I made it a point.
Whilst working with Caffrey I had done most of the kitchen-garden planting, and there was seed at the house. The Cherokees were planting Indians, so I got more seed from them, and I spaded up garden space and planted melons, corn, potatoes, and schlike. For the rest, I hunted the woods for game, berries, nuts, and roots.
It would be a lie to say I was brave, forofa night I was a scared boy, and more than once I cried myself to sleep, remembering ma and wishing pa would come home.
Those first years it was only the thought of pa coming back that kept me going. Caffrey had been sure pa was dead and had never left off telling me so, although why he should be so sure I never knew. It wasn't until I was past fifteen that I really gave up hope. In my thinking mind I was sure after that that he would not come back, but my ears pricked every time I heard a horse on the trail.
Travel was no kind thing those days, what with killers along the Natchez Trace and the Wilderness Road, Bald Knobbers, and varmints generally. Many a man who set out from home never got back, and who was to say what became of him?
First off, I swapped some dress goods ma had in her trunk for a buckskin hunting shirt and leggings; and after I had trapped, I traded my muskrat and red-fox skins with the Cherokees for things I needed. The cornmill was there, and after my first harvest I always had corn.
My fourteenth birthday came along and ma wasn't there to bake me a cake like she'd done, so I fried myself up a batch of turkey eggs.
And that was a big day, because just shy of noon when I was fixing to set up to table, the Tinker came along the trail.
It was the first time I'd seen him, although I'd heard tell of him. He sat up to table with me and told me the news of the Settlements. After that he always stopped by.
The Tinker hadn't very much to say that first time, but he did a sight of looking and seeing. So I showed him around, proud of the cabin pa had built and the way he'd used water from the creek to irrigate the fields when they needed water-- although rain usually took care of that.
The Tinker noticed everything, but it wasn't until a long time after, that some of his questions started coming back to mind to puzzle me. Especially, about the gold.
Once he asked me if I had any gold money ... said he could get a lot for gold.
So I told him about all our gold going to Will Caffrey, and he got me to draw him a picture what those gold pieces looked like.
"Your pa," he said, "must have been a traveled man."
"Sacketts haven't taken much to travel,"
I said, "although we hear tell that a long time ago, before they came over to the Colonies, some of them were sailors."
"Like your pa," he said.
"Pa? If he was a sailor he never said anything about it to me. Nor did ma ever speak of it."
He looked at a knot I had made in a piece of rope. "Good tight knot. Your pa teach you that?"
"Sure--t's a bowline. He taught me to tie knots before he taught me letters. Two half-hitches, bowline, bowline-on-a-bight, sheep's bend--all manner of knots."
"Sailor knots," the Tinker said.
"I wouldn't know. I expect a good knot is useful to a lot of folks beside sailors."
Aside from the cornmill and ma's trunk filled with fixings, there wasn't much left at the cabin beside pa's worn-out Ballard rifle and the garden tools. In the trunk was ma's keepsake box. It was four inches deep, four inches wide and eight inches long, and was made of teakwood. Inside she kept family papers and a few odds and ends of value to her.
The Ballard was old, and no gun to be taking to the western lands, so I figured to swap it off when I did the mill, or at the first good chance.
If I was going to meet up with Bald Knobbers or wild Indians I would need a new, reliable gun.
Now the Tinker, he sat there smoking, and finally as the fire died down he said, "Daylight be all right for you?"
It was all right, so come daylight we taken off down the mountain for the last time.
One time, there on the trail, I stopped and looked back. There was a mist around the peaks, and the one that marked the cabin was hidden. The cabin was up there in those trees. I reckoned never to see it again, or ma's grave, out where pa dug it under the big pine.
A lot of me was staying behind, but I guess pa left a lot up there, too.
And then we rounded the last bend in the trail and my mountain was hidden from sight. Before us lay the Crossing, and I had seen the last of the place where I was born.
Chapter Two.
We fetched up to the Crossing in a light spatter of rain, and I made a dicker with the storekeeper, swapping my cornmill for a one-eyed, spavined mare.
It was in my mind to become rich in the western lands, but a body does not become rich tomorrow without starting today, so I taken my mare to a meadow and staked her out on good grass. A man who wants to become rich had better start thinking of increase, and that mare could have a colt.
The Tinker was disgusted with me. "You bragged you'd a mind for swapping, but what can a man do with a one-eyed, spavined mare?"
Me, I just grinned at him. Two years now I'd had it in my mind to own that little mare. "Did you ever hear of the Highland Bay?"
"She was the talk of the mountains before she broke a leg and they had to shoot her."
"Seven or eight years ago the Highland Bay ran the legs off everything in these parts, and won many a race in the lowlands, too."
"I recall."
"Well, when I was working in the fields for Caffrey, the Highland Bay was running loose in the next pasture. A little scrub stallion tore down the fence and got to her."
"And you think this no-'count little mare is their get?"
"I know it. Fact is, I lent a hand at her birthing. Old Heywood, he who owned the Highland Bay, he was so mad he gave the colt to a field hand."
There was a thoughtful look in the Tinker's eyes.
"So you have a one-eyed, spavined mare out of the Highland Bay by a scrub stallion. Now where are you?"
"I hear tell those Mexicans and Indians out west hold strong to racing. I figure to get me a mule that will outrun any horse they've got."
"Out of that mare?" he scoffed.
"Her get," I said. "She can have a colt, and sired by the right jack stud I reckon to turn up a fast mule."
We sat there on the bank watching that little mare feed on green meadow grass, and after a bit, I said to the Tinker, "When a man owes me, one way or another I figure to collect. Do you know where Caffrey keeps his prize jack?"
He didn't answer, but after a bit he said, "Nobody ever races a mule."
"Tinker, where there's something will run, there's somebody will bet on it. Why, right in these mountains you could get a bet on a fast cow, and many a mule is faster than a horse, although mighty few people believe it. The way I see it, the fewer folk who believe a mule can run, the better."
Caffrey's jackass could kill a man or a stallion, and had sired some of the best mules ever set foot. Before dark we were hidden in a clump of dogwood and willow right up against the Caffrey pasture fence.
The wind was across the pasture and from time to time the jack could catch scent of my mare, and while he couldn't quite locate her, he was stomping around in there, tossing his head and looking.
"Two things," I said, "had to work right for me to leave this here country--the timing had to be right: You had to come up the trail, and that mare of mine had to be ready. And this here jack will work the charm."