Free Rivers West by Louis L’Amour

up, staring at me. His motion ceased. “Now why would the man be doing that?”
    â€œCharles Majoribanks wrote to his sister. He may have sent information elsewhere as well. Foulsham may have been going to meet your sister…perhaps even with a message.”
    I was putting it all together as I spoke, and, of course, it was speculation, no more than that. Yet the coincidence would be great otherwise, and as much as coincidence interferes in all our lives, I did not like it.
    Nor did Macaire. He went back to currying the horse, and I stood by, thinking as I watched him.
    â€œOne thing we know, Macaire,” I suggested, “we are not alone on the road. One man has been killed, another attacked—”
    He glanced up, and then I told him about the man who stood over me that night at the inn.
    â€œWe must be careful,” he said, “very careful. I’d want no harm to come to the lady.”
    â€œNor I,” I said, and he looked at me, not too surprised, I think.
    Chapter 8
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    M ORNING CAME WITH an uneasy sense of something impending, of something about to happen for which I was unprepared.
    The common room of the inn was empty when I came down the steps from the room where I had slept.
    It was a warm, friendly room with a large table, several chairs and a fireplace in which a small fire smoldered uneasily, as if unsure whether it intended to burn or not.
    The floor looked washed and clean, and there were curtains at the windows. I went to a window and peered out. The inn yard was empty; it was hard-packed earth fringed by the green of new grass. There was nothing to allow for the feeling I carried, and when I straightened a voice said, “Looking for Indians?”
    Startled, I turned, having heard no sound.
    The man was lean, taller than me, and somewhat stooped. What his age was I could not say, although I guessed him along in his thirties. He might have been older. He wore buckskins, fringed, with a wide-brimmed hat, and moccasins on his feet. He, too, carried a rifle.
    His gray eyes carried an amused look, but a friendly one. I grinned back at him. “You never can tell,” I said. “An Indian might be any place.”
    He chuckled. “I reckon you’ll do.” He walked to the fireplace and took up the blackened pot beside the coals. At a sideboard he got down two cups. “Been here before,” he said. “Know my way around.”
    He filled the cups. “You the ones goin’ west?”
    Briefly, I hesitated. But I liked the man, liked his style and manner. “Yes,” I said, “I’m going to Pittsburgh.”
    He showed his disappointment with a small frown. “No further? Pittsburgh ain’t anywhere. She’s a good enough place, but the frontier’s moved west now. Pittsburgh and Lexington…they was the places. Now you got to go to St. Louis, on the Missouri.”
    â€œYou know the Missouri?”
    â€œI should smile. I been up it. Up the Platte, too.”
    His eyes took in the depth of my chest, the breadth of my shoulders. “You look fit for a mountain man.”
    â€œI’m a builder,” I said, and then added, “I build boats. I want to build me a steamboat.”
    â€œEasier’n walkin’,” he agreed. “Keelboat man, m’self. But mostly, I favor horses.” He sipped the black brew and looked up at me. “You the one travels with that peg-legged man?”
    â€œWe’re going the same way, it seems. We’re also traveling with Miss Majoribanks and Macaire.”
    His cup had started toward his lips, but now it stopped, hesitated, then continued the move. Something in what I said had stopped that cup, made him hesitate. I waited, but he made no comment for several minutes. When I finished my coffee and threw the dregs into the coals, he said, “Mind if I trail along?”
    â€œYou’re going on west?”
    â€œI should smile. Back to the beaver