Something with heavy footsteps and deep wet breathing snuffled and grunted around them for almost an hour after midnight, waking them and then leaving them in such a state of fright that they did not sleep again until almost dawn. They were sure it was a bear, and sat up, back to back, Mary gripping the tomahawk, ready to defend themselves blindly in the darkness. When Mary heard Ghetel snore, she at last gave in to her own weariness and they both dozed sitting up until they were awakened by the shrilling of some woodland bird and glimpsed a pearly-coral dawn showing through the trees on the other side of the river.
They wanted some strength for their attempt to ford the river, and so occupied themselves with searching for food until the light strengthened, pausing often to spew the scalding, fluid contents of their bowels onto the ground. The memory of their helpless fright during the long night caused Mary to think she should try to fashion some sort of weapons for them. Appreciating the properties of hickory, she found two arrow-straight saplings, about two inches in diameter at their bases, cut them down with the tomahawk, shaved off the bark, cut them to lengths of about seven feet and then whittled their heavy ends to spear sharpness. This arming somehow heartened them for the crossing of the river.
Mary led the way into the cold, swift water, feeling the slick, rounded stones with her bare feet, probing ahead for depth and bracing herself against the current with the blunt end of her hickory spear, while the old woman clung desperately to the back of her dress and grasped and mumbled, prayers probably, in her language. With every additional inch of depth they reached, her toes’ traction on the slippery stones became more tenuous, and the certainty that they would be simply carried off their feet and swept into the relentless stream to drown became more definite, more dizzying. The river, which she had estimated at fifty feet wide, now seemed as broad as the O-y-o. The flow was generally only thigh-deep, but when she would step into a muck-and-pebble depression and feel the current tugging at her hips and waist, the end of the whole ordeal would seem to lie inches away in the watery void at her left.
She seemed to have been looking at the same exposed roots on the far bank for hours when they suddenly were there in her hand and then she was scrambling up the bank with river water dribbling out of her skirt. “Ahhhhh HEEE!” Ghetel roared with joyous relief. Unseen animals went rustling away across the leafy floor of the woods. They had made it. They were exhausted, trembling violently, but exultant. They hugged, pounding each other on the back and laughing almost hysterically in their triumph. They subsided eventually, and paused to wring out their skirts and the ends of their blankets, sighing and shuddering. Mary took note of her belt then, and decided she should keep a calendar of the days of their return, as she had of her descent. She counted back. This was the fifth day since their flight from the salt camp, so she tied a triple knot to mark the beginning of their trek and then four more single knots. Ghetel, meanwhile, was expressing her familiar concern:
“Hungry,” she said. “I need a breakfat.”
So they made a brief excursion up the slopes to look for food, being careful to keep the river in view. Mary was anxious to get back down the east bank of this river and rejoin the O-y-o. She was worried about being out of sight of it.
High on the slope, where an old burn-over was covered with scrub and second-growth timber, they found a profusion of wild grape vines clinging to the small trees as if trying to haul them down and strangle them. The grapes were small, hardly bigger than peas, but were in such dense bunches that it was only a few minutes’ work to fill a blanket with them and tie up its corners. Then they picked more and sat on the ground nibbling the powerfully bittersweet grapes off their stems. They chewed up the seeds too, finding the grapes more filling this way. Thus filled, but left strangely half-satisfied for lack of bread or meat, they scrambled back down the slope to the river bottom and followed it northward toward the O-y-o.
At midday, the weather close and overcast, when they were perhaps a fourth of the way back down the shore of the tributary, they were dismayed to find still another obstacle before them: a deep, wide creek flowing across their path into the river. Mary sighed. They would have to make a detour from their detour. This was worse even than she had suspected. They had been fugitive for five days now and, though they probably had walked sixty or seventy miles, they had progressed no more than thirty miles toward home, because of these necessary digressions from their route.
In truth, she thought, because of these damnable side-trips, we’re probably further from home now then when we escaped!
But no. Looking at it that way will only drive you mad.
This unexpected creek had added five or six miles to their trek by the time they had made their way up its south bank, crossed it on a fallen ash tree that had bridged it and then hiked and crawled back down its north shore to rejoin the Buffalo River. And thus by nightfall they still had not raised sight of the O-y-o. It was mid-morning of their sixth day of freedom before they stood, weary and weakened by their flux, on the banks of the O-y-o again, now above the mouth of the Buffalo river.
These last two and a half days, Mary thought, have brought us a hundred yards closer to home.
It was so grimly absurd it was almost like a joke. But it was a joke she decided not to tell Ghetel. The old woman was having enough trouble keeping heart as it was.
“Eh, now!” Mary exclaimed with a dreadful false jollity. “That wee diversion’s done with. Now we’ve an easy road ahead f’r a good spell!”
CHAPTER
12
Along a ridge crest deep in the Tennessee country, four horses picked their way over a stony game trail among dark pine trees.
On the lead horse was the half-breed guide, Gander Jack, who now was dressed in the Indian mode. Gander Jack spoke English and Cherokee and frequently in his forty-one years had passed between Roanoke and the Cherokee towns south of the Cumberland. He was one of the few men who knew the way to the towns of the Southern Nations, and so had been hired as a guide at considerable expense by Will Ingles, who rode on the horse immediately behind him. Johnny Draper was on the third horse, leading a pack horse that carried their provisions and several pounds of mirrors, glass beads, combs and small tools to be used as gifts and ransom. Gander Jack had suggested they bring rum, but Will had been opposed to it—first because he suspected it was prompted by Jack’s own considerable thirst, and second because he did not believe that rum was conducive to levelheaded dealings with Indians. At length, though, Will had conceded and brought a few gallons of whiskey, which he guarded closely.
They reached the end of the ridge and began to descend through a copse of junipers, emerging then on a clear slope overlooking a vast and brilliant stand of mountain ash: a profusion of small yellow leaves and stark red berries. Cedar waxwings, bluejays and finches shot to and fro among the ashes, feasting on the berries. On the distant slopes, forests of dark evergreens stood among the fading hardwoods, while shadows of clouds slid slowly up the valleys.
The riders converged with a narrow mountain stream about halfway down the slope, a gushing, roaring, leaping watercourse among boulders. The descent was so steep that the horses all but slid down on their rumps. In half an hour then they rode out onto a gentle, U-shaped valley full of dry grass and pine growing in reddish earth. Here they could ride abreast. They went at a trot for an hour, their eyes shaded by their wide, three-cornered hats. Gander Jack wore a yellow bandana circled around his head. His hat hung behind his shoulder on a strap.
Jack pointed ahead, and Will noticed a haze of smoke hanging along a wall of dark pines a mile ahead. “Cherokee town there,” Jack said. He reined in his horse; Will and John did the same, though uncertain why. After a full minute of listening and watching, Jack clucked his tongue and they moved forward again, but at a slow walk. Will had broken out in a sweat in the still heat and ominous quiet. And suddenly, in the corners of his eyes, he detected the movement of figures. Glancing about, his hand tensing involuntarily on the rifle that l
ay across his saddle, he saw that they were flanked by perhaps a dozen warriors on foot, some of them armed with bows and hide shields, others with guns. These were escorting them toward the town. It was eerie how they had materialized out here on this open space.
They rode in among pines and the smell of woodsmoke, and found themselves suddenly within a clean, orderly village of remarkably substantial log houses, some bigger than his own home in Draper’s Meadows had been, roofed with split wood. Stick-and-clay chimneys showed that the dwellings even had fireplaces. Handsome, brown-skinned young women, naked from the waist up, working at grain mortars and kettles and looms in the pleasant shade alongside the road, paused and stood up to watch these white men ride in. Children wearing not a stitch paused in their play and looked in awe at what Will presumed were the first white men they had ever seen. A clear stream curved in toward the heart of the town, and it was full of naked children and women washing. Will was impressed by the air of peace and order. He turned to look aside at Johnny, who caught his eye at once and remarked:
“Nice town, ain’t it?”
Looking back, Will saw now that much of the population had moved in behind them, following quietly and watching with great curiosity.
“Chief,” Gander Jack said softly, and Will turned to see a well-formed old man with grizzled hair coming toward them down the sun-flecked street, carrying a long walking staff with white and yellow feathers at its tip. Jack raised his hand to him and reined in. The chief returned the salute, and Jack dismounted, stood before him and offered his hand. They clasped forearms and Jack began talking. The chief nodded, his quick eyes occasionally darting up to look at the white men. “Get down,” Jack said. “He don’t like you a-lookin’ down on ’im.” They slid off, eager to please.
Will and Johnny and Gander Jack went into the lodge, a spacious and cool structure with a high ceiling, and there they smoked a pipe with the chief and some leading men of the town. They ate a meal from a large bowl containing beans and squash flavored with strips of a meat they could not identify by taste. Gander Jack was canny enough to wait until they had finished before telling them it was dog. Will felt a twinge of nausea, then put it out of his mind and forgot about it.
The Cherokee chief was reserved but hospitable. He listened as Will described, with Jack translating, the massacre at Draper’s Meadows and told of his hope that the hostages might be located in the Shawnee country and ransomed through the offices of the neutral Cherokees. He told of the gifts of great beauty that he could bestow upon both the Shawnees and the Cherokees if his beloved family were returned to him. The chief listened to all this with his eyes hooded, and if his soul was stirred at all by the mention of the presents, he did not show it. He spoke quickly to Gander Jack and then stood up.
“He’s never had a chance to talk directly to Englishmen,” Gander Jack said. “He has a few things on his mind and wants you to listen.”
Johnny leaned close to Will, smiling with half his mouth. “What say y’, Will? Shall we hear ’im out?”
“Can’t say as I’ve got anything more pressing t’do. Tell him,” Will said to Gander Jack, “that we deem ourselves lucky to share his wisdom.”
Gander Jack let the chief get a few seconds’ head start talking, then stepped in at his first pause for breath and began translating:
“He says he’s seen his cousins the Shawnees two times this year … and they’ve told him what’s in their hearts …
“The Shawnees took up the tomahawk against the English white men because they’ve been drove from place to place by ’em. They used to live a good life but had to move away north to strange places when the English white men came close and made big farms and killed all the game …
“Then they had to move west and find new lands, on the O-y-o, because more white English came …
“He says he understands the hearts o’ the Shawnees … that he himself got wary when he saw your white faces come today … He fears that the Cherokee nation may one day have to fight the white English too, to keep from being driven afore ’em …
“He says the Shawnees won’t give up their captives easy. He wants you to understand that they take captives and adopt them into their families to replace people who been killed or died because of the white men coming …”
“Ask him if that means they’re likely alive,” said Will.
Jack exchanged words with the chief, then told Will:
“That’s up to the families. They’re given a captive to replace someone they’ve lost. If their anger’s too strong, they might torture or kill that prisoner to have revenge. But if they believe that person is of good blood, they’ll adopt him, or her, and give the same comfort and protection they gave their own.”
Will and Johnny traded anxious glances. Then Will extended another question that had been bothering him. “Ask him why the Shawnee, if they hate white men so dang much, hire on with the French. They’re just as white as we are.”
The chief was not stumped for a second by that question. “He says,” replied Jack, “that the French are different from you. They hunt and trap and fish, just like the Shawnee, and they make small villages like the Indians, and farm only for food to eat themselves … He says they don’t try to drive the red man out and destroy his land and kill all the game. He says the French and the Indians can live side by side in a land and help each other. But not so with the English white men, and that’s why the Shawnees use the help o’ the French …”
At this point the chief sat down. A buck, at a signal, brought forth the pipe again, with coals to light it, and it was passed around. Then the chief began talking again, this time with a less pontifical demeanor.
“He says he’s glad you come to see him. He thinks y’re brave to come here alone and your reasons are kindly. The Cherokee, too, love their families, and would do as you do … He says he’d like to help you ransom your families, and he’ll say good words for you to any Shawnees who come here. But he says it ain’t likely any will. Wait …”
The chief talked again, and waved toward the southwest.
“He tells me there was a Cherokee named Snake Stick, from a village out yonder, came through here two days back, an’ this ’ere Snake Stick told him he was going up to talk with the Shawnees afore winter. He says if Snake Stick ain’t gone yet, y’ might hire him as y’r go-between.”
Will’s eyes blazed with eagerness. “How far to this Snake Stick feller?”
“I know where his town is. Five days south an’ west, barrin’ floods or trouble.”
Will pondered that a moment. They had ridden two weeks already into this strange country, and considered themselves lucky to have come so far unharmed. Five days deeper into the Cherokee lands would be risky indeed. He turned and glanced at Johnny.
“It’s f’r Bettie an’ Mary an’ them,” Johnny said. “I can’t go back knowin’ I hadn’t done all I could.”
“Nor me.” He turned back to their guide. “Will y’ take us there, Jack?”
The half-breed shrugged, a sickly smile on his face.
“I take it that means f’r a price,” Will said.
The half-breed nodded. Then the Cherokee chief spoke again. Jack translated:
“He says y’ oughter know that Snake Stick might not be inclined to do anythin’ for a white English. He thinks like a Shawnee, talks like a Shawnee. His heart ain’t ’xactly neutral. He goes up t’ visit the Shawnee an’ listens to ’em t’ git his blood all hot. Th’ chief warns us we oughter know that.”
Will Ingles curved his forefinger over his upper lip and stared at the chief, thinking. Finally he said:
“I reckon this ’ere Snake Stick’s like any other man. Like as not he’d do f’r us—f’r a price. Thank our chief here. Tell ’im I have some gifts for ’im, in pay f’r his hospitality. Then we’ll be a-gettin’ on, to go see this Snake Stick.”
Gander Jack thought it would be a good idea to give the Cherokee chief and his friends some whiskey in return for their opinion
s and advice, but Will refused, knowing it was Jack’s own thirst that had prompted the suggestion. “And don’t you by God tell ’em we’ve got any, either,” Will warned him. “This evenin’s goin’ smooth. No need to waste good liquor makin’ good Cherokees bad. Now hear me, Jack: I’m a-sleepin’ with these jugs, and with my gun, and if I wake up hearin’ one squeak of a jug-stopper, I’m shootin’. D’ye get my drift?”
Nobody came into the hut that night to steal whiskey, but Will might as well have been standing sentry duty; sleep just would not come, even though he was bone-weary and the pallet was far softer and drier than anything he had slept on for weeks.
It might have been the sounds that kept him awake; it might have been the smells. Now and then he would hear sounds of soft movement go past the hut, like moccasins on soft earth, like legging brushing against legging. When he heard something like this, he would stare at the oblong patch of lesser dark that was the doorway of the hut and would put his thumb on the cold flintlock hammer of the rifle, which lay across his waist. He would stare at that black-gray oblong until it swam; then he would look a little way above it, realizing that he could see it more clearly in the edge of his vision. A child coughing in its sleep somewhere in a nearby shelter made Will jump in his blankets and his heart pound for five minutes.
The fact was, though Johnny Draper and Gander Jack had seen not a hint of it, that Will Ingles was scared halfway to death. It had been getting worse night by night during their long ride into the Cherokee country, but he’d been able to put it down. Now, lying in the dark in the middle of a Cherokee town, he was almost shrieking scared. And the thought of going a week deeper into tribe country, to parley with a nasty young Cherokee instead of a nice old one, made it worse. One minute he’d be thinking how scared he was now, and the next he’d be thinking how scared he was going to be next week.
Follow the River Page 19