Saddler's Run Read online

  Things did not look at all promising as the heavily armed band drew near and then surrounded the two travellers. Saddler made no hostile move, but was very ready for the attack. He really could not see how he and the child were likely to be spared. It was then that he received a great surprise, when the young boy whom he and Abigail had stood up for the previous day pushed his little pony through the ranks of warriors and began first by talking excitedly and then shouting urgently. The men nearest to him turned and listened gravely to what he was saying and then, without a word, the riders in front of Saddler and Abigail parted, leaving a clear path forward for the two white people. The boy, who really could not have been any older than Abigail, smiled at them and said, as he had done the day before, ‘Thank you!’

  Hardly daring to believe their luck, Saddler led the way through the Apache braves, none of whom made any attempt to molest him or Abigail.

  When they were clear of the Chiricahua, Saddler breathed a sigh of relief. He realized that he was running with sweat. He had been certain sure that those boys had had it in mind to kill him and then take the child away for Lord knows what horrors. Abigail, being a child, had not perhaps fully understood the danger in which they had been, although she looked a little white and shaky. ‘Well, Mr Saddler,’ she said, ‘we surely cast our bread upon the waters that time!’

  ‘Hey? What’s that you say?’ he enquired.

  ‘It says in the Bible that if you cast your bread upon the waters, it will return to you tenfold. Meaning that acts of charity will bring you a reward. Helping that boy yesterday has saved our lives, don’t you see?’

  ‘That’s one way of viewin’ the case,’ said Saddler gruffly. ‘That was the hell of a fix we was in. I didn’t think we’d make it out of there.’

  ‘Oh, something always turns up,’ said the girl cheerfully, ‘You must never despair, you know.’

  As far as Saddler knew the Choctaws had no sort of reason to feel aggrieved with white folk just at that present moment, leastways, no more reason than usual. At any rate they had not just had another chunk of their land stolen away from them, the way that the Chickasaw had. That being so, the two of them might be a little safer in their territory, although of course, you could never be certain sure.

  Abigail was disposed to chatter while they rode, which Saddler found pleasant. Her crying yesterday looked to him to have unloosed something within her and she was a mite more open than she had been.

  ‘Don’t you ever wish that you had a little house, all of your own?’ she asked wistfully. ‘It must be so nice to stay in just the one spot for years at a time. Don’t you feel the same way?’

  Saddler turned the question over in his mind, before replying. At length, he said,

  ‘Now that you set the case out so, I won’t say as I wouldn’t like that. I been a roaming type, what some call a rolling stone. I ain’t never put down roots.’

  ‘Did you never marry?’ asked Abigail and then blushed, saying hastily, ‘What a thing to say. I’m sorry.’

  He chuckled. ‘That’s nothing. No, I never married, leastways, not yet I ain’t. There’s time enough; I’m not all that old. Had one or two sweethearts, but nothin’ ever came of it.’

  They rode on for the day, seeing only a very few other travellers, all of them Indians. None of these others appeared to want to talk or have any dealings with them, which was just fine by Saddler.

  They stopped every couple of hours so that Abigail could stretch her legs. The famous pony, of which she had made mention, turned out to have been only in her possession for three months and that when she was nine. She hadn’t ridden much since then and it was an uncomfortable experience for her.

  After they had halted for the third or fourth time, she said, ‘I have a terrible pain in my . . . that is to say in a certain part of my body.’

  Saddler laughed at this, saying, ‘You will get used to it in time. It’s quicker than driving that wagon.’

  By evening they had, according to Saddler’s calculations, entered the Choctaw territory. There was no reason to fear most of the people living in this part of the territories, although of course, like anywhere else, there were bad people. A lot of his trading in recent months had been with the Choctaw, and Saddler had always found them to be honest in their dealings, although exceedingly shrewd and canny bargainers. Even so, there was no percentage in taking unnecessary chances, and so Saddler insisted that they make their camp that night in some woods. He wanted to be off the road and out view.

  Despite his caution, Saddler could see no cause to forbid the lighting of a little cooking fire. Apart from food, he had a desperate craving for coffee. After they had eaten and drunk their fill, the two of them stretched out and relaxed.

  Abigail said, ‘You are sure that we will be safe here tonight?’

  ‘No, I ain’t sure. There’s no such thing in this world. I mind though that we are no more at risk than we would be in the average town. The Indians in these parts are not bloodthirsty savages. They’re just folks like you an’ me. I think we will be fine here.’

  As it happened, Ben Saddler could hardly have been more wrong about that, but to be fair to him, the danger that found them there the next morning could not have been foreseen. Still and all, Abigail came closer to losing her life in that little wood than at any other point in their journey to Kansas.

  Chapter 5

  Abigail was sound asleep as the sun rose the next day. Slowly though, she was roused to consciousness by a strange sensation: as if somebody was tickling her nose. At first she moved her hand up in her sleep, to brush away whatever it was causing the sensation. It stopped for a little and then there it was again, the lightest of touches, only this time accompanied by a slight noise.

  Eventually, she came to and opened her eyes; whereupon she almost screamed out loud. There, just a few inches from her face, a pair of twinkling brown eyes were regarding her curiously. Abigail jerked back in fear and then saw that the owner of the eyes was a bear cub that wanted to play. As she watched it, it leaned forward and licked her nose, which was probably what had woken her up.

  The bear cub was so adorable and cuddly that Abigail could not resist throwing off her blanket and sitting up. The cub jumped back in alarm when she did so and waited six feet away, as though making sure that there was no danger. Abigail stood up and walked over to the little bear and reached out a hand tentatively. To her delight, she found that the cub was happy for her to scratch his head and fondle his ears, as though he were a cat or a puppy. Then he jumped back again and moved further off. She followed him.

  Saddler was snoring lightly while all this was going on. He had barely slept a wink on the night of the Apache attack and had been dog tired when he closed his eyes the previous night. As he slept, Abigail followed the bear cub further into the woods. Her eyes were shining with pleasure, and for the first time since the death of her parents she was smiling happily. It did not for a moment occur to her that she might be in any danger.

  The bear led her to a little clearing, where the grass and undergrowth seemed to have been trampled down or crushed. The significance of this escaped her. She was so busy playing with the bear cub that she didn’t even hear the return of the creature’s mother, who had been out foraging for food. When it saw what it assumed was a predator pursuing its only cub, the she-bear gave a mighty roar and reared up on its hind legs. Abigail turned round and almost fainted in terror at the frightful sight of a fully grown black bear which was about to attack her.

  The protracted snarl of the angry bear jolted Saddler from his slumbers. He knew at once what the sound meant and, on seeing that Abigail was not lying next to him, he leaped to his feet.

  Abigail was sprightly and young and that is what saved her life. The huge creature swung a paw at what she perceived to be the threat to her offspring. Had those razor sharp claws caught Abigail it would all have been up with her. She jumped back though, seeing what the bear was about to do. Just at that same instant Ben Saddler
came running into the glade. He commenced to roar and shout at the mother bear in an effort to draw her attention away from Abigail. The bear turned round and for a fraction of a second Saddler’s life hung in the balance. Then, obeying some imperative of her own, the great beast lowered her bulk back on to all four of her paws and, shepherding her cub before her, ambled away into the forest.

  ‘Did she hurt you?’ Saddler asked.

  ‘No, I moved back in time.’

  ‘What in the hell were you thinking of, wandering off in that wise? You lost your senses or what?’

  Hearing his cross voice, coming so soon after such a terrible scare, Abigail promptly burst into tears. Saddler felt remorseful for scolding her and at once went over to the child and put his arms round her.

  ‘There, there,’ he said, ‘don’t take on so. I was worried for you is all.’

  Later on, as they breakfasted, Saddler told her about black bears.

  ‘Thing with those bears is that you can often scare them away by shouting and waving your arms at ’em. They don’t want to fight. Not like grizzlies, mind. Shout at one o’ them and they’re apt to rip your head clean off your shoulders.’

  Abigail had recovered from her fright and said, ‘The cub was awful cute. I felt like I could have cuddled it.’

  ‘Which,’ observed Saddler, ‘is how you damn near got yourself killed.’

  When they started out that morning, Saddler said, ‘By late afternoon we should be at a little town called Fort Renown.’

  ‘Is it an Indian town or do white folks live there?’

  ‘Just white folks. It’s an old army fort and after the end of the war, a bunch o’ settlers moved in there to stake claim to some land in the territories. They’d no business doing it, but the Choctaw weren’t versed in law and so they couldn’t stop ’em.’

  ‘Didn’t the Indians try to fight them?’ asked Abigail.

  ‘No, they traded with ’em. Anyways, more people moved in until this fort has become a little white town, stuck right plumb-bang in the heart of the Choctaw nation.’

  ‘Why are we going there?’

  ‘Two reasons. First off, is where it’s on our way. Second is that you could do with sleeping in a bed for a night or two. There’s some kind of lodging house at Fort Renown. We’ll find you a bed for the night.’

  Abigail found the ride a lot easier that day, notwithstanding the fact that she was still mighty sore from the previous day. As they travelled, Saddler gave her various hints and tips about controlling her mount, with the result that by the time they reached Fort Renown at about four that afternoon, she was able to keep the pony moving pretty well, despite his natural inclinations to laziness and sloth.

  Fort Renown was a wooden stockade type fort which had been erected in somewhat of a hurry in the first few months of the war. It had originally consisted of little more than walls of whittled tree trunks, sharpened at the top and lined up side by side. There were watch-towers at each corner, and to begin with the soldiers quartered there had lived in tents, pitched inside the stockade. Gradually other buildings had been thrown up inside; a barracks, canteen, armoury and so on.

  After the war had ended some settlers who did not feel inclined to join in land rushes heard about the abandoned forts in the Indian Territories and decided that there would be less competition for land and resources in such locations. This led to the founding of a half-dozen little towns, each surrounded by scatterings of farms. The whole thing was a flagrant violation of the treaties made with the five civilized tribes but, since the government in Washington was already breaking those same treaties, nobody felt inclined to stop these illegal settlers from drifting into the area.

  The forts provided the focal point for the white settlers, who had in general as little to do with the Indians as they were able. There were stores, blacksmiths, saloons, brothels, churches and everything else that civilized people might require within the walls of the old stockades. There was no official law and so vigilance committees sprang up to administer beatings and the occasional hanging to keep the rougher elements in check.

  There were great wooden gates at the entrance to Fort Renown, but they were seldom closed; even at night. The Choctaw, unlike some of their fiercer and more martial neighbours, could see which way the wind was blowing and knew that there was little enough point in fighting physically against the encroachment of white settlers on their lands. They made the best of things by driving hard bargains with the white folk for the raw materials they needed and, wherever possible, cheating them blind.

  A sentry sat at the gate of the fort, whose job was to spot anybody entering the little town who might be after causing trouble. He nodded amiably to Saddler and Abigail, saying only,

  ‘Welcome to Fort Renown. Specially welcome to you, young lady. It ain’t often we get youngsters passing through here.’

  ‘Tell me now,’ said Saddler, ‘is there anywhere I can leave these horses for the night?’

  ‘Sure, there’s a man runs a corral over there. It’s outside the walls, but a boy watches the horses during the night. Nobody stolen one yet.’

  Saddler and Abigail took their mounts over to the corral and removed the saddles and other gear. They left them in charge of the boy watching over the place, until they had somewhere to stay for the night.

  The stockade of sharpened logs enclosed an area of just over eight acres. It had been made so large, because those who had built it had intended it to be a forward staging post for an entire army. It had never fulfilled its purpose and was for most of the war held only by a token force. A week after the surrender it had been abandoned.

  The original buildings of the fort lined the walls and as newcomers arrived they threw up commercial premises built also of logs. Some of these were substantial: the saloon had three storeys, the top two of which were given over to a cathouse. It was a busy place, with white people bringing in produce from their farms, Indians selling ponies and hides, a few soldiers and many trappers and traders who spent a night or two in the place while they were moving across the territories. Saddler was pretty confident of finding somewhere for Abigail to be able to sleep soundly in a bed for the night.

  ‘Why,’ Abigail said in surprise, ‘this is quite a civilized location.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say so, not if’n you knew what half these rogues was up to,’ Saddler replied. ‘Places like this attract all the gamblers, no-counts, vagabonds and plain villains as are within a hundred miles.’

  ‘Can I go and look round by myself?’ the girl asked brightly, not at all discouraged by Saddler’s gloomy estimation of the types to found in Fort Renown. Saddler stopped dead and said,

  ‘Listen to me right good, Abigail. This very morning you come within an ace of gettin’ yourself killed. You flat disobeyed me when I told you to stay in the wagon during that little shooting we had. I want now that you listen to what I say. You are not to stray from my side for a second. Not one second, you hear what I tell you? This ain’t a fit place for a little girl. No telling what would befall you. Some o’ the boys as hang out here are a sight worse than any she-bear.’

  ‘Perhaps later then,’ said Abigail brightly.

  Saddler shook his head in despair. He had discovered in recent days that tending to and keeping from harm a twelve-year-old girl child was the hardest enterprise he had undertaken since the end of the war. Breaking wild ponies and dealing with drunken killers was nothing compared with setting a watch upon a girl like Abigail. True, she made a better companion than many he had ridden with, but you never could gauge what was going on in the mind of such a one.

  There was a respectable little hotel which was used by the better class of person who was travelling through the territories and it was to this that Saddler directed them. Calling the rough, wooden building a ‘hotel’ was perhaps flattering such a basic amenity, which in truth consisted of nothing more than six rooms, each containing an iron bedstead and little more. The owner of this enterprise lived in one of the rooms
and had a minuscule sitting room at the front of the building, which doubled as an office. There were no eating facilities, the place was far too cramped for that, and anybody desirous of a bite to eat was obliged to try the saloon or buy their food from the store.

  Saddler was all charm when he approached the owner of the hotel. The middle-aged woman eyed him with suspicion when he entered her office, but as soon as she caught sight of Abigail her mood changed. In her mind Saddler had been transformed from travel-stained vagabond into respectable family man.

  ‘Say ma’am,’ said Saddler, ‘I was wondering if you had such a thing as a room for the night for this young lady?’

  ‘Why surely we do. Will you be requiring a room for yourself too?’

  ‘Do you have two spare rooms?’

  ‘We have four tonight.’

  ‘Well then, yes. That would be right nice of you if you could rent us two rooms.’

  ‘Will that be just for tonight?’

  Saddler thought for a moment and then said, ‘Yes, for now. But I suppose if we wanted, we could always keep them for another night?’

  The matter was attended to briskly and Saddler and Abigail were shown to two spartan, but clean and tidy, little rooms.

  When he had paid the owner and she had left, Abigail said to Saddler, ‘Are we going to look round the town now?’

  It was so pleasant to observe the change in the child since first he had encountered her that Saddler did not like to repress her high spirits.

  He said, ‘Abigail, I will show you round here in a space, but first off is where we need to get things straight.’

  ‘What things?’ asked the child.

  ‘You do not leave my side is one. Unless, that is, I tell you to. Is that plain?’

  ‘That’s fair, I guess. What else?’

  ‘You do just as I say an’ when I say. I say, “We’re leaving”, you just stand up and come right with me. Without any chatter or aught of that kind.’