Free the Sackett Companion (1992) by Louis L'amour

a stronger man in every way. A skilled tracker and hunter, a good seaman, he was all Pittingel was, only more so, but without the money. A man to be feared.

    HENRY: A slave of Ashanti background. His people have always been warriors and slave traders in Africa, raiding other tribes and selling them as slaves to the Arab, Portuguese, and other traders who operated off the African coast. Enslaved himself, he had been quietly submissive, making himself useful while biding his time. He helped the girls to escape and escaped with them. His hope was, by helping them, to find a place for himself among their people. This was, at least, the story he gave himself. He was actually a kindly man, respectful of them, and aware of the life awaiting them for which they were in no way equipped to survive. A cool, self-contained man of considerable ability, and a great man in his own land where his father was a king among the Ashanti, a warrior people.

    VERN, FEEBRO, AND LASHAN: Henchmen of Bauer, and hence, to some extent, of Pittingel.

    JUBLAIN: Former soldier, adventurer, a friend and associate of the Sacketts. Gone to Moslem lands to seek his fortune.

    PETER TALLIS: Also in SACKETTS LAND, and TO THE FAR BLUE MOUNTAINS. Had a booth in St. Paul's Walk, a man of many parts and varied interests. Originally a man skilled in cutting not quite legal corners, he had become the agent for the Sacketts and the produce they sent for sale in England or the Low Countries. He handled such business for others as well, led into the field by the Sacketts.

    DAMARISCOVE: In the Maine Islands, but rarely mentioned among the early settlements in America. Vessels had been coming to this island for generations. The first authentic date so far is 1603, four years before the Jamestown settlement and seventeen years before the Pilgrims landed. The Mayflower, as a fishing vessel, had visited Damariscove before its famous voyage with the Pilgrims. No longer inhabited, it was a port of call for many ships along the Atlantic coast prior to British settlement on the mainland.

    SHAWMUT: Where Boston now stands. First settled by Samuel Maverick and the Reverend Blaxton. There were several springs on the site. Winthrop moved most of his colony there after the original site proved unhealthy.

    SAMUEL MAVERICK: He had come over the Atlantic with Gorges, who established a colony in Maine. Maverick retained property in Maine but settled at Shawmut and built a strongly fortified trading station there. An able, interested man, he owned several trading vessels and later wrote a book called A Brief Description of New England And Several Towns Therein.

    He was an ancestor to the Maverick for whom the un-branded Texas cattle were named, and of Maury Maverick, a Congressman from Texas in the New Deal Era.

    THE REVEREND WILLIAM BLACKSTONE, OR BLAXTON: Born in Salisbury, England in 1595. Graduated from Cambridge. Came to America in 1623. As he had religious differences with the colonists he eventually left Boston for Rhode Island. He has been credited with planting the first orchards in Massachusetts. Reputed to be a reserved and studious man content to be left alone to pursue his own interests, both intellectual and agricultural.

    PORT ROYAL, JAMAICA: Variously called the City of Gold and the Babylon of the West, Port Royal was a buccaneers' port. There was much legitimate trade, of course, but it was predominantly a port for pirates, privateers, slave traders, and those who dealt with them. Bronzed seamen with gold rings in their ears swaggered along the quays and lingered in the waterfront dives, of which there were a-plenty. The loot from many a sunken or captured ship was brought to Port Royal and it was there the riffraff of the seas spent their bloodstained gold. Brawls and dagger thrusts were an everyday matter and a man was supposed to take care of himself. Most of them were well-fitted to do so.

    Dining, drinking, and wenching, the buccaneers spent fortunes because