So I told him my name, and then for no reason I could think of, I told him about the mare and the colt she would have and some of my plans.
"Orlando Sackett ... the name has a familiar sound." He looked at me thoughtfully.
"There was a Sackett who married a Kurbishaw girl from Carolina."
"My father," I said.
"Oh? And where is he now?"
So I told him how ma died and pa taken off, leaving me with the Caffreys, and how I hadn't heard from pa since.
"I don't believe he's dead," I explained, "nor that those Kurbishaws killed him. He seemed to me a hard man to kill."
Jonas Locklear's mouth showed a wry smile. "I would say you judge well," he said. "Falcon Sackett was indeed a hard man to kill."
"You knew him?" I was surprised--and then right away I was no longer surprised. This was the Deckrow plantation, the place the Tinker had inquired about. At least, he had inquired about a seafaring man.
"I knew him well." He took the cigar from his mouth. "We were associated once, in a manner of speaking." He turned toward the door.
"Come in, Mr. Sackett. Please come in."
"I am not welcome here," I said stiffly.
The way his face tightened showed him a man of quick temper. "You are my guest," he replied sharply. "And I say you are welcome. Come in, please."
Almost the first person I laid eyes on when we stepped through the door was Marsha Deckrow.
"Uncle Jonas," she said quickly, "that boy is with the Tinker."
"Marsha, Mr. Sackett is my guest. Will you please tell Peter that he will be staying for dinner? And the Tinker also."
She started to say something, but whatever it was, Jonas Locklear gave her no time. "Peter must know at once, Marsha."
Nobody who ever heard that voice would doubt that it was accustomed to command--and to be obeyed.
"Yes, uncle."
Her backbone was ramrod stiff when she walked away, anger showing in every line of her slim figure. I wanted to smile, but I didn't.
I kept my face straight.
Locklear beckoned me to follow and led the way into a wing of the house. The moment we passed through the tall doors I knew I had entered the rooms of a man of a very different kind from any I had known.
We went into a small hallway where, just inside the door, there hung on the wall a strange shield made of some kind of thick hide, and behind it two crossed spears. "Zulu --f South Africa," he said.
The large square, high-ceilinged room beyond was lined with books. On a table was a stone head, beautifully carved and polished. He noticed my attention and said, "It is very ancient--f Libya. Beautiful, is it not?"
"It is. I wish the Tinker could see it."
"He is a lover of beautiful things?"
"I was thinking more of the craft that went into it. The Tinker can do anything with his hands, and you should see his knives. We--we both shave with them."
"Fine steel." He rubbed out his cigar on a stone of the fireplace. "This tinker of yours--where is he from?"
"We came together from the mountains. He was a tinker and a pack peddler there."
When I had washed up in the bathroom I borrowed a whisk broom to brush some of the dust from my clothing, and when I got back to the library he was sitting there with a chart in his hands. When he put it down it rolled up so that I had no more chance to look at it.
He crossed to a sideboard and filled two wine glasses from a bottle. One of them he handed to me. "Madeira," he said, "the wine upon which this country was built. Washington drank it, so did Jefferson. Every slave ship from Africa brought casks of it ordered by the planters."
When we were seated and had tasted our wine, he said, "What are your plans, Mr. Sackett?
You are going west, you said?"
"California, or somewhere west."
"It is a lovely land, this California.
Once I thought to spend my days there, but strange things happen to a man, Mr. Sackett, strange things, indeed."
He looked at me sharply. "So you are the son of Falcon Sackett. You're not so tall as he was, but you have the shoulders." He tasted his wine again. "Did he ever speak to you of me?"
"No, sir. My father rarely talked of himself or his doings. Not even to my mother, I think."
"A wise man ... a very wise man. Those who have not lived such a life could not be expected to understand it. He was not a tame man, your father.
He was no sit-by-the-fire man, no molly-coddle. His name was Falcon, and he was well named."
He lighted another cigar. "He never talked to you of the Mexican War, then? Or of the man he helped to bury in the dunes of Padre Island?"
"No."
"And when he went away ... did he leave anything with you? I mean, with you personally?"
"Nothing. A grip on the shoulder and some advice. I am afraid the grip lasted longer than the advice."
Locklear smiled, and then from somewhere in the house a bell sounded faintly. "Come, we will go in to dinner now, Mr. Sackett." He got to his feet. "I am afraid I must ask you to ignore any fancied slights--or intentional ones, Mr. Sackett.
"You see"--he paused--?th is my house.
This is my plantation. Everything here is mine, but I was long away and when I returned my health was bad. My brother-in-law, Franklyn Deckrow, seems to have made an attempt to take command during my absence. He is not alt pleased that I have returned."
He finished his wine and put down his glass.
"Mr. Sackett, face a man with a gun or a sword, but beware of bookkeepers. They will destroy you, Sackett. They will destroy you."
At the door of the dining room we paused, and there for a minute I was ready to high-tail it out of there, for I'd eaten in no such room before.
True, I'd heard ma speak of them, but I'd never imagined such a fine long table or such silver or glassware. Right then I blessed ma for teaching me to eat properly.
"Will the Tinker be here, sir?"
"It has been arranged."
Marsha swept into the library in a white gown, looking like a young princess. Her hair was all combed out and had a ribbon in it, and I declare, I never saw anything so pretty, or so mean.
She turned sharply away from me, her chin up, but that was nothing to the expression of distaste on her father's face when he looked up and down my shabby, trail-worn clothes.
He was short of medium height, with square shoulders and a thin nose. No man I had seen dressed more carefully than he, but there were lines of temper around his eyes and mouth, and a hollow look to his temples that I had learned to distrust.
"Really, Jonas," he said, "we are familiar with your habits and ways of life, but I scarcely think you should bring them here, in your own home, with your sisters and my niece present."
Jonas ignored him, just turning slightly to say, "Orlando Sackett, my brother-in-law, Franklyn Deckrow. When he would destroy a man he does it with red ink, not red blood, with a bookkeeper's pen, not a sword."
Before Deckrow could reply, two women came into the room. They were beautifully gowned, and lovely. "Mr. Sackett, my sister ...
Lily Anne Deckrow."
"My pleasure," I said, bowing a little.
She looked her surprise, but offered her hand.
She was a slender, graceful young woman of not more than thirty, with a pleasant but rather drawn face.
"And my other sister ... Virginia Locklear."
She was dark, and a beauty. She might have been twenty-four, and had the kind of a figure that no dress can conceal, and well she knew it.
Her lips were full, but not too full. Her eyes were dark and warm; there was some of the tempered steel in her that I had recognized in Jonas.
"Mr. Sackett," she asked, "would you take me in to dinner?"