Rivers West Read Free

fancy myself a man who can walk.
    Suddenly, through the dark columns of the huge old trees, we saw a light. With the chance of good food and drink before us, we lengthened our strides and in a few minutes faced a clearing under giant trees and a ramshackle bridge over an arm of the swamp.
    At the door the latchstring was out. We lifted it and stepped inside.
    A fine fire blazed upon the hearth of a huge fireplace at the opposite end of the room. There were some benches, a long table, and a half-dozen men standing about. At the fire, a middle-aged woman stirred something in a pot that set my stomach to high expectation.
    A mostly baldheaded man with a fringe of sandy hair, whom I took to be the owner, looked around at us. He wore a long buckskin waistcoat and heavy boots.
    â€œWelcome, lads! Welcome! Come up to the table! It’s a raw night for the out of doors. Have a nip of something. I’ve rum…even a bit of ale that I’ve brewed myself. Tasty, mighty tasty.”
    He turned to the woman at the fire. “Bett, get some food on the table. These will be hungry men.”
    There was a tall man with his back to the wall, a handsome man indeed, with a pipe in one hand and a glass in the other. He looked at me with a quick, appraising glance, then his eyes rested thoughtfully on me. My coat was open, and he could see the pistol there.
    I set my tools in the corner, and after a moment of hesitation, my rifle beside them.
    Chapter 2
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    M Y NAME IS Watson,” the baldheaded man said. “We do a bit of farming here, and some’at o’ fishing, and a man with a rifle can find game. We set a good table, if I do say so m’self.”
    He glanced from Jambe to me. “A tot of rum? Warms a body who’s been out in the cold night.”
    â€œAye,” I agreed, “it has been a long way of forest and swamp.”
    â€œHere it is! And good Jamaica, too! I’ve a taste for the dark rum. Nothing fancy, just good rum.”
    The rum did take the chill from my bones, but it was food I wanted, and besides, I’d no taste for drinking with strangers about, and there was an air in this place I did not like. Watson was all right, no doubt, but I’m by nature a cautious man, and the look of the others was not to my taste.
    There was a dark, sallow man with snaky black eyes. He stared at me. “Goin’ far?” he asked.
    â€œAs far as a job,” I said. “Word has come to me that they are building ships down Boston way.”
    Yet I was lying, for my interest lay westward rather than south. To the frontier town of Pittsburgh. Two or three years before, they’d built the steamer
New Orleans
, said to be the first on western waters, but I had a feeling it was to be the first of many. With the fur trade to the West growing, there would be a demand for fast, reliable transportation, and as the
New Orleans
had proved itself, they would build others. I had an idea of building my own boat to trade on the western waters.
    The tall man with the pipe moved around the table and sat on the bench opposite me. His smile was pleasant, but the expression in his eyes was cool, calculating, and somehow taunting. I had a feeling that here was a man who looked with amused contempt on all about him.
    â€œColonel Rodney Macklem,” he said, introducing himself. “Will you have a drink?”
    â€œObliged, but I have a drink.”
    â€œYou didn’t mention your name.”
    â€œJohn Daniel,” I said it easily, but there was a flicker of irritation in his eyes, of impatience, too. Here was a man who did not wish to be thwarted or turned aside, yet his lips smiled in a friendly fashion. I had just a thought, however, that he had expected another name…what name?
    Jambe-de-Bois was watching me, too—somewhat puzzled, no doubt, and curious.
    Bett Watson came around the table with one huge bowl of stew and two smaller ones, and with spoons and a ladle. “Start on