Read Ebook: Shifting For Himself; or Gilbert Greyson's Fortunes by Alger Horatio Jr

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Ebook has 139 lines and 5831 words, and 3 pages

I handed him my wallet. He flipped through the panels holding my press pass, social security card, driver's license and a picture of Lois in a bathing suit. When he failed to do more than give the latter a casual glance I knew this was a man with a troubled mind.

I said, "Maybe you could give me kind of a hint on what's going on."

"Going on?" he repeated absently.

"You know--going on." I got off a nonchalant-type laugh that would have fooled anybody who was deaf. "I even heard that the President wanted to see me!"

He gave me back the wallet. "Ah--yes. Come with me, please."

We left the office and went down a hall, around some corners and down more halls, past a lot of doors, all of them closed. Finally he stopped in front of a pair of doors with shiny brass doorknobs, knocked twice, then turned the knob, said, "Mr. Quinlan, gentlemen," shoved me through with a jerk of his chin, and closed the door behind me.

I never saw him again.

There was a long table down the center of a long narrow room. The woodwork was white and the walls papered a dark green, with walnut-framed pictures here and there of the kind of men you see in albums of Civil War vintage.

But the men around the table were as modern as a jet bomber. There were five of them, three of whom I recognized on sight: Army Chief of Staff General Lucius Ohlmsted, Secretary of War Franklin McClave, and, seated at the far end of the table and looking even younger than his forty-nine years, the President of the United States.

The remaining two were just a couple of men to me: dark business suits, clean collars, manicured fingernails and the type of faces you see twenty of on any city block.

I walked on down the room, feeling as conspicuous as a cheer leader at a wake, while five pairs of eyes sorted me over molecule by molecule. When I reached the near end of the table, I stopped, resisted an impulse to salute, and stood there at attention.

The President managed to keep from smiling, although you could see he wasn't far from it. "Thanks for coming here so promptly, Mr. Quinlan. I'd like you to meet my associates."

He reeled off names and titles. The two strangers were a Mr. Proudfit and a Mr. Kramer, occupations not disclosed. Kramer was small and ageless, with a weather-beaten face and a mouth like a steel trap; while Mr. Proudfit had the look of a benign monk, until you saw the tempered steel glint in his piercing eyes.

When introductions were completed, I said, "How do you do?" once, including them all, and went on waiting. Nobody suggested I sit down, probably because there were only five chairs around the table to begin with and the room's two couches were too far away to keep me in the group. The President gave me the same winning smile that had pulled a couple million extra votes his way in the last election, and said, "Let me start off, Mr. Quinlan, by telling you that we've got a problem on our hands--one that may very well involve the peace and well-being of the entire country. The details are going to strain your credulity beyond human limits, I'm afraid--just as they have ours. But there is enough supporting evidence to what we've heard for us to do something about it. And that's where you come in."

He paused, evidently waiting for a response from me. There was only one response I could make--even though I hadn't the slightest idea what he was talking about. "I'm at your service, Mr. President."

His smile was a medal for my chest. "Thank you. At this point I'd better let Mr. Kramer take over."

Kramer leaned back in his chair, placed the tips of his fingers together and stared searchingly at me over them. His voice, when he spoke, was as dry as his skin. "Mr.--ah--Quinlan, I understand you were born thirty-one years ago on a Potawatomi Indian reservation in the state of Michigan."

I blinked. "That's right. Not many people know it."

"You are part Indian, I believe?"

"One quarter Potawatomi."

"Also, I'm told that you are something of an authority on the history of the American Indian."

"I've written books on the subject and expect to write a good many more."

"You speak the language?"

"What language?"

He floundered a little. "Why--ah--the--ah--Indian language."

"Look, Mr. Kramer," I said, "there are scores of Indian languages. Nobody in history, red man or white, could ever speak all of them. Fortunately most Indians belonged to one of several great families, and the language of each family was close enough for the tribes in that family to understand each other. I can handle the language of the Algonquin like a native, being part Potawatomi myself. I can get by in the tongue of the Iroquois, the Caddoan, the Siouan, and the Muskhogean. The D?n? and Uto-Aztecan would give me considerable trouble, while the Penutian would be just about a blank."

I stopped there, and shrugged. "Sorry. I didn't mean to turn this into a lecture."

Kramer's weathered face stayed expressionless. "Are you familiar with the customs of Indians of, say, two hundred years ago?"

"With their customs, clothing, religions, food, taboos, cultures, weapons, or anything else you can think of."

Franklin McClave, the Secretary of War, cut in on us at this point. "I think, Bob," he said to Kramer, "that Mr. Quinlan qualifies for the job." His glance turned to me. "I'd like for you to meet a man waiting in the next room, Quinlan. I want you to hear his story, talk to him, ask him questions, then give us your opinion of the results. Do you mind?"

I spread my hands. "Whatever you say."

Kramer got to his feet and went over to a side door. He pushed it open, said something I didn't hear, then stepped rather quickly out of the way.

A moment later young Daniel Boone came out!

Of course, it wasn't really Daniel Boone at all. Leaving out the fact that the "dark and bloody ground" frontiersman had been dead nearly a hundred and fifty years, this man was a lot handsomer, with entirely different features. But he was wearing the fringed buckskin trousers and shirt, the beaded moccasins, the coonskin cap, and his coarse black hair hung almost to his shoulders. A powderhorn swung from his neck by a greasy cord, and he was holding on to a six-foot muzzle-loader as though it were his only contact with reality.

I stood there with my chin two inches from the rug and gawked at him. He was scared to death. His deep-set brown eyes rolled fearfully from side to side, with too much white showing around the irises. His clutch on the gun grew even tighter, whitening the knuckles of his hand.

Muscles crawled on my scalp. A strange tension seemed to fill the room. Kramer cleared his throat. "This man's name is Enoch Wetzel, Mr. Quinlan. I want him to tell you exactly what he told us earlier tonight."

I felt the tendons in my legs tighten, pulling me into a slight crouch. I was back a hundred and seventy years in the past, with a dull anger starting to move around in me. "Wetzel," I said, making it sound like a dirty word. "Any relation to Lewis Wetzel?"

The young man's eyes widened with astonishment and obvious relief. "Well, now, I reckon so! Lew's my uncle."

"Lew Wetzel," I said between my teeth, "is a low, stinking, murdering skunk!"

I ducked just in time to keep from being brained by the swinging stock of the long gun. I came up under it quicker than I'd ever moved before in my life and nailed him on the jaw with a solid right, getting my shoulder behind it. It was like hitting the Hall of Justice. He grunted and up came the rifle butt for another try.

Suddenly the room was bulging with strangers. A dozen arms folded around the young man, the gun was ripped from his fingers and he hit the rug with a thump that shook the room. The buckskin-covered legs threshed briefly, then were still.

I moistened my lips and backed away as sanity returned. I looked at the frozen faces around the table. "My fault, Mr. President. I can't blame you for thinking I'm as crazy as he is. But, as Mr. Kramer mentioned, I'm part Indian. Back in the seventeen hundreds a frontiersman named Lewis Wetzel murdered a lot of Indians--men, women and children. I suppose you might say I went atavistic, or something, at hearing this fellow claim he was Wetzel's nephew. He's a screwball, of course, and I owe you a good solid apology for starting a ruckus."

The President wasn't smiling now. "Perhaps I should have told you before, Mr. Quinlan, we may desperately need this young man's assistance in the near future."

I almost blurted out the wrong thing, but bit my lip instead and remained silent. The President's eyes swung to the heap of humanity on the floor. "Let him up, boys. I'll call you if I need you again."

The six Secret Service men rose and stood Enoch Wetzel on his feet, then returned to the adjoining office, not looking too happy about leaving a madman with the Chief Executive. Wetzel pushed the long hair off his forehead and stood there glowering at me, spots of angry color in his dark cheeks.

I said, "Forget it, Mac. I made a small mistake."

His thin lips peeled back in a snarl. "Halfbreed!"

I took it, although nothing was ever harder for me to do. Kramer hurriedly stepped into the breach. "Mr.--ah--Wetzel, we're waiting for you to repeat what you told us before."

"My father got hisself put on by General Harmer as a scout a fortnight back. The General, on orders from President Washington, was to lead his sojers to the north after the Injuns up there. Pop allowed as I was ready to try my luck agin the abbregynes, so he took me along.

It was a page torn out of technicolor nightmare: three of the world's most important men hanging onto the words of a madman who claimed to be an Eighteenth Century Indian scout in the employ of one of George Washington's generals. Yet the man's every word, every gesture, everything he wore, was as authentic to that period as the powder horn around his neck.

"We draw back in the woods aways an' wait. It's gettin' along to'ard sun-up, an' Pop says he aims to get a better idea how many Injuns they is, an' what tribes. Most of the braves got nice new British guns an' General Harmer'll want to know about that."

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