Follow the River

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  But such were the ways of white people: very much trouble and never wise. Wildcat would never again be so foolish as to want a white woman. He was a warrior chieftain, and a warrior chieftain could not afford to be confused; to want a white woman was to be confused. Now he must put that white woman out of his thoughts and pay attention to this ambush, because it was the most important thing he had ever done.

  They had been here a long time manning this ambush, almost a full day. The famous American militia colonel named Washington and two of his officers were supposed to have come down this trace this morning on their way to inspect the place called Vass’ Fort, which stood a league down the creek. They should have been here by now: they were on good, fresh horses, with no extra baggage, and it did not make sense that they should take this long to come through the valley.

  Captain Wildcat keenly desired the reddish scalp of the young colonel. He had heard Red Hawk, second chief of the Shawnee town on the Scioto-cepe, tell in council about his futile attempts to shoot the Virginia colonel in the great battle near Fort Duquesne. To kill an officer whom Red Hawk had been unable to kill would be a great coup. But it would require skill and watchfulness and thoughtful action.

  Now the chieftain realized that though he had been lying here a long time dreaming of that glory, it might yet slip out of his hands.

  He rose from the place where he had been crouched, and went to his first warrior. I must be sure the Virginia colonel has not already passed to the fort, he told him. I am going to go up over the ridge and down the other side to see if he has gone down that branch instead. The warrior nodded. You have heard, said Wildcat, that this officer is very hard to kill, and so he must be caught by complete surprise, before he has time to draw over him the cloak of the Great Spirit. Again the warrior nodded. Therefore, said the chieftain, no one of you must make a sound or fire a gun until I have looked at the other trail and returned. Tell them that. The warrior nodded and went and told them that, and Wildcat went over the mountain.

  While he was gone, Colonel George Washington, Major Andrew Lewis and Captain William Preston of the Virginia militia rode down the creekbed toward Vass’ Fort. Captain Preston was a nephew of the late Colonel Patton, who had been killed the previous summer in the massacre at Draper’s Meadows, and Preston was relating to Colonel Washington that he himself had been spared the same fate only by blind chance, having been sent down Sinking Creek to fetch a neighbor to help at the harvest. The young colonel nodded, allowing that even the best of soldiers often survive or die according to sheer luck, or God’s will in the disguise of sheer luck.

  This is what Colonel Washington and his aides were discussing as they rode under the guns of the six Shawnees hidden along the bluff above them. The warriors were squirming with agitation, and kept their gunsights on the white officers for a good five minutes as they passed below. But they had been ordered not to fire their weapons under any circumstances until their chieftain returned. And as Shawnee soldiers, they were, above all, disciplined.

  And by the time the chieftain returned from the other side of the mountain and learned of the escape of his prey, Colonel Washington and the other officers were safe within sight of Vass’ Fort.

  Captain Preston opened the door to the room in which Colonel Washington was conferring with the leaders of Vass’ Fort. There was a jug of rum on the table and an oil lantern hanging on a chain from a ceiling joist. Preston was smiling. “Colonel, sir, if I may interrupt: I find an old neighbor of mine is here, by a miracle, and she has a wondrous tale to tell.”

  Washington stood as the little, white-haired wraith of a woman limped into the room, supported by a sturdy, bearded young man he vaguely remembered. “This is William Ingles and his wife, Mary,” Preston said. A chair was vacated for her, and the colonel sat down with hands folded on the table, looking across at her. The half-wild eyes in the gaunt young face arrested him. In recent years he had learned to recognize the peculiar look of people who had survived every kind of extremity and horror, and he felt a profound pity and respect for them.

  “These gentlemen here have already spoken of you,” he said. “Is it true that the New River leads straight through the mountains to the Ohio?” He was a man uncommonly interested in land.

  “Not straight, sir, no, not straight by no means. But it does go there, sir. I reckon it’s some two hundred mile by water to th’ O-y-o. But it’s no route y’d take if y’ could find any easier one, sir.”

  He listened with keen interest as she described such things as the salt spring and the burning spring and the river of coal. She told him about the Shawnee town on the Scioto-cepe, and about the prisoners from Fort Duquesne who had been there, about the other salt lick where the big bones were. He was leaning far over the table on his elbows by now, enraptured. “And how far is that?” he said.

  “I reckoned five hundred mile by water. I came a good bit farther, havin’ many a walk-around.”

  “Pray, ma’am,” he pursued with his surveyor’s yearning for creditable measurement, “how did you make these estimates?” He suspected they might be far wrong, wild guesses exaggerated in her mind by the enormity of her suffering.

  She placed a rope of yarn on the table, a strange, limp, greasy, frayed strand tied in knots from one end to the other. And she began to explain. “These thirty knots show a day each on th’ way down, in captivity. To th’ Shawnee town. Some fifteen mile a day, with a few days at the salt spring. These forty-four knots each show a day o’ walkin’ back a free woman from th’ big bone lick.”

  Colonel Washington looked up from the yarn into her eyes, and his scalp crawled. One of his most vivid memories among the harrowing experiences of the last three years was his own five-hundred mile winter ride to Fort LeBoeuf in the winter of 1753, whose accomplishment had made him famous throughout the Colonies. He had done it mostly on horseback, with a guide, interpreter and armed escort, yet it had nearly killed him. And now here before him sat this little woman of his own age with her haunted eyes who, without provisions or weapons, had made a far more awesome passage, through utterly uncharted territory. The young colonel was not a man often overtaken by humility, but for this moment he felt humble. He cleared his throat.

  “Madame, as I was saying to Captain Preston only today: Some of us seem to have God’s eye on us, and his hand ready to intervene for us.” He stood up to his towering height, then bowed. “Thank you, Mrs. Ingles. I am honored.”

  William Ingles stood with his brother Matthew at the gate of Vass’ Fort in the early morning light. Matthew wore his long, woolen hunting shirt and his chest was crisscrossed with straps supporting his powder horn and bullet bag and a game bag. He was setting out for a day’s hunting, to supplement the monotonous diet of corncake and milk that prevailed in the fort. He grinned at Will’s rueful expression. Will was a little embarrassed. He felt that his Mary was making him look something of a fool with her fears and premonitions. Now she had been having strong presentiments that Vass’ Fort itself was about to be attacked, and had been urging its inhabitants to vacate it and cross over the Blue Ridge to safer places. She had started up that refrain right after Colonel Washington’s departure, and finally Will had agreed to take her across the ridge to a still larger fort near the Peaks of Otter.

  “Well, Matt,” Will said, “by spring, maybe, she’ll have it all out of ’er system, an’ then we’ll come back over and finish buildin’ at the Ferry. I, uhm …”

  Matthew put his hand on Will’s shoulder. “Y’ don’t have t’ say more. If I’s her, I’d be scared too, an’ prob’ly would be, till I was back in County Donegal. So, Godspeed, ol’ feller, an’ I’ll be a-seeing you come spring, I reckon.”

  Will and Mary said their good-byes a little later to Matthew’s wife and to John and to the other twoscore inhabitants of the fort, and rode southeastward toward the pass over the Blue Ridge, saying little to each other. They were still somewhat like strangers to each other; they had talked and talked about their travels and
about Tommy and Georgie and Bettie and Henry, but there were still some things they had not talked about. There were a few patches of wet snow still lying in northerly hollows, but most of the ground was brown and bare and hard.

  * * *

  That afternoon Matthew Ingles was returning to Vass’ Fort with a hare in his pouch and a wild turkey hen slung head down over his shoulder when he heard gunfire. He broke into a trot, the dead bird banging heavily against his flank. He thought for a moment of his sister-in-law’s premonitions.

  Blue gunsmoke was billowing over the stockade of the fort and from the woods around it. The quavering cries of Indians wove through the rattle of gunshots. Matthew’s heart rose into his throat and he thought of his wife and child inside. Crouching and staying in the thickest brush, he ran zigzagging toward the stockade. There was nothing for it but to get inside. He ran. His moccasins thudded on the frozen ground and the turkey bumped heavily against him. He threw it off and sprinted toward the fort, which was now but a hundred yards away.

  Then there were Indians between him and the fort, a small group of them running across his path from one defilade to another. Painted faces turned and saw him coming.

  Matthew ran straight toward one and, at point-blank range, discharged his rifle into his face. The warrior spun to the ground and Matthew leaped over him, but there was now another in his way. All of them seemed to have forgotten the fort now and were stopping and veering and coming toward him with fierce glee in their faces, as if now they were involved in a game of sport, their purpose being to keep this lone white man from reaching the wall of the fort. Matthew roared with an equally fierce exuberance; his muscles felt like steel springs, his feet felt winged. He held his rifle like a quarterstaff, by its barrel. A brown face painted with ochre and blue stripes rose before him and he swung the rifle stock around and felt it thud against flesh and bone, and that Indian was gone. He swung it at another face and with a loud snap the stock broke off. There were hands all over him now. He jabbed the splintered rifle stock into a buckskin-covered abdomen and then the broken gun was wrenched from his hand. He roared with joy and surged on toward the fort, now so near, feeling himself dragged down by the gripping hands. Something was striking his back and shoulders.

  He was on the ground, disarmed, the weight of bodies squirming on him. A few inches ahead of him on the ground there was a great long-handled fry pan. Why it was there he had no idea. But he got out from under the howling attackers somehow, grabbed the pan and scrambled to his feet. It had the weight and heft of an axe, and he killed two warriors with it before sharp things slamming into his back took his breath away and he saw the brown earth coming up to his face.

  John Ingles, peering through a loophole in the stockade, wrapped a ball in a greased patch and rammed it down the barrel of his long rifle, tipped a pinch of powder into the flashpan and stuck the barrel out through the loophole. A man behind him yelped and dropped to the ground. There were two dead men and three wounded women on the ground inside the stockade, and John Ingles could not understand where the shots had come from that had hit them. The fort was on a small rise. Any shots that were coming inside the compound had to be coming from someplace higher. John squinted against the powder smoke smarting in his eyes and looked for a target.

  “There ’e be!” someone yelled. “Up that poplar!”

  John stooped to the loophole again and scanned the surrounding woods until he saw the sniper: the warrior was on a high limb of an immense poplar tree two hundred yards from the fort. Now it seemed that a number of the defenders in that fort had seen him and were sending shots off into that tree. John drew a bead on the tiny figure in the distant branches and fired. Missed. He drew the weapon in to reload, and this time he risked putting in an extra-heavy charge of powder. He rammed the ball down and charged the pan, heart racing, afraid someone else would hit the sniper before he could. He aimed into the high branches again. A puff of smoke floated out from the tree and a ball thwacked into a roof behind him. John Ingles aimed a half a degree high, braced the gun butt tight against his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. The stock wrenched his shoulder back as the super-charge went off, but then through the veil of drifting smoke he saw the warrior pitch sideways and fall fifty feet to the ground. He grinned at the cheers he got.

  John Ingles lay on the ground half an hour later, feeling the blood gurgle in his lungs. He had done all he could. He had caught a ball in one of his lungs and was too weak to get up, and the stockade was on fire. The gate had been burned and then rammed open and there were Indians running through the stockade with their damnable yowling, cutting babies apart and slashing women to ribbons with knives, and the screaming and sobbing was just too much to bear. He groaned with rage at his helplessness and watched as a scowling Indian with a bear-claw necklace bent over him and grabbed his hair and sliced into his scalp.

  By midafternoon everyone in Vass’ Fort was dead or standing naked in the cold mud roped together by the necks, watching the buildings burn. Those with any wits left about them were remembering how they had ignored the warnings of that poor strange Ingles woman.

  The westerly wind at their backs all but blew them over the pass through the Blue Ridge; their cloaks flapped forward and the horses’ manes shivered and ruffled and parted. Before and below, the rolling lowlands sloped away and away into a pearl-pale haze toward the seaboard. Real civilization was down there, a day’s downhill ride away.

  They halted their horses in the pass and looked back once, the wind wailing and making them squint and weep; they looked back at the somber ranks of crests stretching westward under the sinking sun. That was the wild world where these two had wed, and had raised and lost their children, and had lost any softness that once might have been in their souls: back in those dark and merciless mountains their souls had been forged.

  Will reined his horse around as if to shelter her from that whipping wind, and they sat close together now, facing each other for a moment, seeing the distance and the longings and the sorrow in each other’s eyes, the big ruddy man and the little pale woman, now knowing each other’s feelings enough to understand that they would one day go back, as westward was where the future lay.

  Then Will saw a special darkness go over her face, like the shadow of a cloud blowing over a meadow.

  “Reckon what?” he asked.

  “I just wish they’d a-come with us,” she said. “I still feel it strong, about Vass’.”

  “Well, I pray y’re wrong for once.” He sighed. “Now tell me,” he said. “What d’yre foreshow on Tommy and Georgie and Bet?”

  “Only that we sh’ll never stop a-looking’ till we know for sure.”

  “That I swear,” he said. And then he said: “Now, Mary, y’know there’s one big matter y’ve not told me yet. Let’s get it over with, while there’s just us two t’ hear’t.”

  She leveled her gaze at him and set her jaw and squinted against the wind and the winter sun behind him, or against whatever would be in his eyes when she told him. “She was born on th’ ground three days after th’ massacree,” Mary said. She saw his eyes moisten and saw his lips forming the silent word she. “I toted an’ suckled ’er three months. Then …” Her gaze fell and her brow knotted.

  “What?” he said. He thought the wind had blown her words away.

  “… Then,” she said, looking defiantly at her husband, braced for whatever he might say, “… then I had to leave ’er with a nurse squaw. Or she’d ’a’ perished, as y’ can see by th’ sight o’ me.” There. She had dared to say it.

  A blast of wind buffeted her ears and the hood of her cape and Will had to reach up and hold his hat to keep it on his head. He stared at her, and finally he said:

  “And did y’ give this girleen a name?”

  “Aye. But you oughtn’t t’ know it. I intend to forget, quick as I can.”

  He sat there and looked at her. She did not know how he was going to take this. Finally, he said:

  “As it should b
e.” His mouth was firm and the tears in the corners of his eyes could as well have been from the cold gale.

  “And hav’ee somethin’ t’ say to me?” she asked after a while.

  He ran his tongue across his lower teeth and inhaled.

  “Only this: When I saw the savages takin’ y’off, I had t’ run t’other way.” He sighed and looked as if he wanted to gaze off somewhere, but kept his eyes on hers.

  And she said:

  “As it should be. If y’d been fool enough t’ run into a massacree, where would I be now?”

  They both bared their teeth in unsmiling grins now and allowed themselves to gaze off over each other’s shoulders. Finally Will reached and took her hand.

  “We’ll start us a new family, when y’re well. Look’ee.” He gazed westward over the Alleghenies. “We’re just where we were five year back. On Blue Ridge. Just us two. Lookin’ yonder.”

  “Aye. And I love’ee more, Will Ingles.”

  He swallowed hard, hearing this at last. “Is that true, Mary Ingles?”

  “Proof of it: ain’t I here?”

  Now they both were really smiling.

  “Come,” he said. “Let’s ride down out o’ this wind-blast ’fore it blows us plumb away.”

  CHAPTER

  33

  October, 1768

  William Ingles spurred his horse and galloped ahead of his two traveling companions, up a road through a yellow-green meadow to the rounded shoulder of a hill. He reined his horse to a standstill, rose in his stirrups and looked down into the New River Valley. There it all lay, his domain, peaceful among the golden leaves of the woods: Ingle’s Ferry and Inn, the neat house and barn and public house close by the ferry road, woodsmoke curling up from the chimneys, the cornfields yellowing on the gentle slope above the buildings, the stone well in the yard beside the inn, all as peaceful as he had left it three months before to go on this mission.