Now in those days I rejoiced in the strength of my legs, and I was determined not to be thus balked. So I doubled after him into a maze of tobacco and melon beds.
But it seemed he knew how to run. I caught a glimpse of his hairy legs round the corner of a shed, and then lost him in a patch of cane. Then I came out on a sort of causeway floored with boards which covered a marshy sluice, and there I made great strides on him. He was clear against the sky now, and I could see that he was clad only in shirt and cotton breeches, while at his waist flapped an ugly sheath-knife.
Rounding the hut corner I ran full into a man.
"Hold you," cried the stranger, and laid hands on my arm; but I shook him off violently, and continued the race. The collision had cracked my temper, and I had a mind to give Muckle John a lesson in civility. For Muckle John it was beyond doubt; not two men in the broad earth had that ungainly bend of neck.
The next I knew we were out on the river bank on a sh.o.r.e of hard clay which the tides had created. Here I saw him more clearly, and I began to doubt. I might be chasing some river-side ruffian, who would give me a knife in my belly for my pains.
The doubt slackened my pace, and he gained on me. Then I saw his intention. There was a flat-bottomed wherry tied up by the bank, and for this he made. He flung off the rope, seized a long pole, and began to push away.
The last rays of the westering sun fell on his face, and my hesitation vanished. For those pent-house brows and deep-set, wild-cat eyes were fixed for ever in my memory.
I cried to him as I ran, but he never looked my road. Somehow it was borne in on me that at all costs I must have speech with him. The wherry was a yard or two from the sh.o.r.e when I jumped for its stern.
I lighted firm on the wood, and for a moment looked Muckle John in the face. I saw a countenance lean like a starved wolf, with great weals as of old wounds on cheek and brow. But only for a, second, for as I balanced myself to step forward he rammed the b.u.t.t of the pole in my chest, so that I staggered and fell plump in the river.
The water was only up to my middle, but before I could clamber back he had shipped his oars, and was well into the centre of the stream.
I stood staring like a zany, while black anger filled my heart. I plucked my pistol forth, and for a second was on the verge of murder, for I could have shot him like a rabbit. But G.o.d mercifully restrained my foolish pa.s.sion, and presently the boat and the rower vanished in the evening haze.
"This is a bonny beginning!" thought I, as I waded through the mud to the sh.o.r.e. I was wearing my best clothes in honour of my arrival, and they were all fouled and plashing.
Then on the bank above me I saw the fellow who had run into me and hindered my catching Muckle John on dry land. He was shaking with laughter.
I was silly and hot-headed in those days, and my wetting had not disposed me to be laughed at. In this fellow I saw a confederate of Gib"s, and if I had lost one I had the other. So I marched up to him and very roundly d.a.m.ned his insolence.
He was a stern, lantern-jawed man of forty or so, dressed very roughly in leather breeches and a frieze coat. Long grey woollen stockings were rolled above his knees, and slung on his back was an ancient musket.
"Easy, my lad," he said. "It"s a free country, and there"s no statute against mirth."
"I"ll have you before the sheriff," I cried. "You tripped me up when I was on the track of the biggest rogue in America."
"So!" said he, mocking me. "You"ll be a good judge of rogues. Was it a runaway redemptioner, maybe? You"d be looking for the twenty hogsheads reward."
This was more than I could stand. I was carrying a pistol in my hand, and I stuck it to his ear. "March, my friend," I said. "You"ll walk before me to a Justice of the Peace, and explain your doings this night."
I had never threatened a man with a deadly weapon before, and I was to learn a most unforgettable lesson. A hand shot out, caught my wrist, and forced it upwards in a grip of steel. And when I would have used my right fist in his face another hand seized that, and my arms were padlocked.
Cool, ironical eyes looked into mine.
"You"re very free with your little gun, my lad. Let me give you a word in season. Never hold a pistol to a man unless you mean to shoot. If your eyes waver you had better had a porridge stick."
He pressed my wrist back till my fingers relaxed, and he caught my pistol in his teeth. With a quick movement of the head he dropped it inside his shirt.
"There"s some would have killed you for that trick, young sir," he said. "It"s trying to the temper to have gunpowder so near a man"s brain. But you"re young, and, by your speech, a new-comer. So instead I"ll offer you a drink."
He dropped my wrists, and motioned me to follow him. Very crestfallen and ashamed, I walked in his wake to a little shanty almost on the wateredge. The place was some kind of inn, for a negro brought us two tankards of apple-jack, and tobacco pipes, and lit a foul-smelling lantern, which he set between us.
"First," says the man, "let me tell you that I never before clapped eyes on the long piece of rascality you were seeking. He looked like one that had cheated the gallows."
"He was a man I knew in Scotland," I said grumpily.
"Likely enough. There"s a heap of Scots redemptioners hereaways. I"m out of Scotland myself, or my forbears were, but my father was settled in the Antrim Glens. There"s wild devils among them, and your friend looked as if he had given the slip to the hounds in the marshes. There was little left of his breeches.... Drink, man, or you"ll get fever from your wet duds."
I drank, and the strong stuff mounted to my unaccustomed brain; my tongue was loosened, my ill-temper mellowed, and I found myself telling this grim fellow much that was in my heart.
"So you"re a merchant," he said. "It"s not for me to call down an honest trade, but we could be doing with fewer merchants in these parts. They"re so many leeches that suck our blood. Are you here to make siller?"
I said I was, and he laughed. "I never heard of your uncle"s business, Mr. Garvald, but you"ll find it a stiff task to compete with the lads from Bristol and London. They"ve got the whole dominion by the scruff of the neck."
I replied that I was not in awe of them, and that I could hold my own with anybody in a fair trade.
"Fair trade!" he cried scornfully. "That"s just what you won"t get.
That"s a thing unkenned in Virginia. Look you here, my lad. The Parliament in London treats us Virginians like so many puling bairns.
We cannot sell our tobacco except to English merchants, and we cannot buy a horn spoon except it comes in an English ship. What"s the result of that? You, as a merchant, can tell me fine. The English fix what price they like for our goods, and it"s the lowest conceivable, and they make their own price for what they sell us, and that"s as high as a Jew"s. There"s a fine profit there for the gentlemen-venturers of Bristol, but it"s starvation and d.a.m.nation for us poor Virginians."
"What"s the result?" he cried again. "Why, that there"s nothing to be had in the land except what the merchants bring. There"s scarcely a smith or a wright or a cobbler between the James and the Potomac. If I want a bed to lie in, I have to wait till the coming of the tobacco convoy, and go down to the wharves and pay a hundred pounds of sweet-scented for a thing you would buy in the Candleriggs for twenty shillings. How, in G.o.d"s name, is a farmer to live if he has to pay usury for every plough and spade and yard of dimity!"
"Remember you"re speaking to a merchant," I said. "You"ve told me the very thing to encourage me. If prices are high, it"s all the better for me."
"It would be," he said grimly, "if your name werena what it is, and you came from elsewhere than the Clyde. D"you think the proud English corporations are going to let you inside? Not them. The most you"ll get will be the sc.r.a.ps that fall from their table, my poor Lazarus, and for these you"ll have to go hat in hand to Dives."
His face grew suddenly earnest, and he leaned on the table and looked me straight in the eyes.
"You"re a young lad and a new-comer, and the accursed scales of Virginia are not yet on your eyes. Forbye, I think you"ve spirit, though it"s maybe mixed with a deal of folly. You"ve your choice before you, Mr. Garvald. You can become a lickspittle like the rest of them, and no doubt you"ll gather a wheen bawbees, but it will be a poor shivering soul will meet its Maker in the hinder end. Or you can play the man and be a good Virginian. I"ll not say it"s an easy part. You"ll find plenty to cry you down, and there will be hard knocks going; but by your face I judge you"re not afraid of that. Let me tell you this land is on the edge of h.e.l.l, and there"s sore need for stout men.
They"ll declare in this town that there"s no Indians on this side the mountains that would dare to lift a tomahawk. Little they ken!"
In his eagerness he had gripped my arm, and his dark, lean face was thrust close to mine.
"I was with Bacon in "76, in the fray with the Susquehannocks. I speak the Indian tongues, and there"s few alive that ken the tribes like me.
The folk here live snug in the Tidewater, which is maybe a hundred miles wide from the sea, but of the West they ken nothing. There might be an army thousands strong concealed a day"s journey from the manors, and never a word would be heard of it."
"But they tell me the Indians are changed nowadays," I put in. "They say they"ve settled down to peaceful ways like any Christian."
"Put your head into a catamount"s mouth, if you please," he said grimly, "but never trust an Indian. The only good kind is the dead kind. I tell you we"re living on the edge of h.e.l.l. It may come this year or next year or five years hence, but come it will. I hear we are fighting the French, and that means that the tribes of the Canadas will be on the move. Little you know the speed of a war-party. They would cut my throat one morning, and be hammering at the doors of James Town before sundown. There should be a line of forts in the West from the Roanoke to the Potomac, and every man within fifty miles should keep a gun loaded and a horse saddled. But, think you the Council will move?
It costs money, say the wiseacres, as if money were not cheaper than a slit wizzand!"
I was deeply solemnized, though I scarce understood the full drift of his words, and the queer thing was that I was not ill-pleased. I had come out to seek for trade, and it looked as if I were to find war. And all this when I was not four hours landed.
"What think you of that?" he asked, as I kept silent, "I"ve been warned. A man I know on the Rappahannock pa.s.sed the word that the Long House was stirring. Tell that to the gentry in James Town. What side are you going for, young sir?"
"I"ll take my time," I said, "and see for myself. Ask me again this day six months."
He laughed loud. "A very proper answer for a Scot," he cried. "See for yourself, travel the country, and use the wits G.o.d gave you to form your judgment."
He paid the lawing, and said he would put me on the road back. "These alleys are not very healthy at this hour for a young gentleman in braw clothes."
Once outside the tavern he led me by many curious by-paths till I found myself on the river-side just below the Court-house. It struck me that my new friend was not a popular personage in the town, for he would stop and reconnoitre at every turning, and he chose the darkest side of the road.