Between the trees bordering a clearing something moved silently into view. Motionless, scarcely daring to believe his eyes, Rob watched in awe as a giant bull moose stepped into the open. Although some deer were dropping their horns, heavy palmated antlers of many points crowned the monarch’s massive head. Polished to a lustrous brown, they glinted in the afternoon’s low sun. The bull tested the air with his nose high and the rack of mighty antlers laid back along his neck passing the hump of his shoulders. As though sensing danger, the great head turned toward Rob’s still figure.
Rob’s thumb swept the Jaeger’s hammer to full cock as the rifle came smoothly to his shoulder. The click of the lock jerked the bull’s muscles tight, but as his sight blade lined behind the vast shoulder, Rob touched the trigger. The heavy crack of the rifle shattered forest stillness, and powder smoke momentarily hid Rob’s target. He stepped quickly away from the concealing smoke and saw that the moose had vanished. The clearing lay empty.
Rob was loath to believe that such a large creature could move so soundlessly. Yet, he was certain that his shot had gone true, and he listened intently. The forest lay quiet, and doubt began a slow gnawing. Then there was a crash of brush well to his left, and Rob expected that the hard-hit moose had fallen.
Rob reloaded carefully and primed his rifle. If closely pressed, a freshly wounded animal might struggle on for long distances, but given time to lie down, they rarely rose again. Rob took his time, allowing the wounded moose to stiffen before closing in on him.
Entering the clearing, Rob found deep-driven tracks where the moose had lunged away. He followed the tracks which were soon joined by gouts of frothy blood. If the shot had punctured the bull’s lungs, he would not have traveled far, and within a hundred yards beyond the clearing the moose lay dead.
Rob circled the animal warily, awed at its size, but with exultation replacing the awe as he realized his luck in encountering the forest giant. Here lay a winter’s meat supply, and he judged the distance to Aughwick as less than two miles.
Rob tugged the moose onto its back and hacked away the inside rear leg tendons with his tomahawk, so that the carcass lay propped on its spreading antlers and splayed hind legs. He gutted the moose, carefully laying aside liver and heart. He wedged a stick across the body cavity to hold it open allowing the carcass to cool more quickly. He cut the tongue away and washed it with the heart and liver in a small run. He tied the three choice cuts on a stick, and draping the load across his shoulders, he tracked for Aughwick.
A moose taken so close to the village created turmoil. A pack of boys followed Rob’s trail back to the downed animal, and Fat and Flat departed to do the skinning and to reduce the moose to a dozen convenient loads. The head, with antlers intact, was borne triumphantly to E’shan’s lodge where it was displayed for all to admire. Old men looked, then sat with E’shan talking of ancient hunts. Young men looked with envy, for moose deer had become scarce in the Endless Hills. Youths ran hands over the polished antlers and dreamed of encountering such a magnificent beast.
A large fire was built, and the occasion turned festive. Strips of moose meat broiled on cooking sticks, and squaws helped Fat and Flat in serving and volunteered to help cure the heavy hide. Rob told of the kill. He embellished his tale in the Indian manner, feeling a bit foolish as clad in his grotesque rags he reenacted the appearance and the taking of the mighty bull.
Old hunters stood and told of past moose taken, and the yarning ran well into the night before the last story was told, and the last belly was filled with strong meat.
If Fat and Flat were dismayed by the disappearance of one hundred pounds of winter meat they did not show it. Honor to the lodge was at least as important as eating. With Red Bird helping, they organized the meat into piles to be smoked, dried, and pounded into pemmican, frozen, or to be cooked and eaten immediately.
Still dirty and worn to a thread, Rob tunneled contentedly within thick sleeping robes, enjoying the women’s muted chatter, and the smoky warmth of the lodge. Shikee was hunting but would soon return. Croghan, it was said, was on his way to Aughwick from Philadelphia. It would be good to see them. Secure among friends, Rob relaxed allowing his vigilance to rest, his mind to drift, and his body to float on the soft furs. All seemed good, and he slept.
16
1752 – Planning & Building
It was a good winter for Rob Shatto. The lodge was warm, the food was plentiful, and the company congenial. The new lodge was better than the old one. Flat had laid it out larger, and bark made better covering than had the aged skins.
Rob thought E’shan better settled in Aughwick where others daily visited his lodge than on the Little Buffalo where few passed during the cold months. E’shan dozed by his fire and made few arrowheads, but he too enjoyed the stream of visitors.
Along the stream squaws had raised a bark sweat lodge. A hot fire burned close by, and fist-sized stones were placed on the blaze. When the stones glowed with heat, bathers entered the lodge. Stones were brought in, and water was dashed on their heated surfaces. Bathers soaked in the hot steam sweating from every pore. Bodies warmed through and through until bathers roused from heat-induced stupors to sink into the stream and wash themselves clean. Far from being shockingly cold, the quick dip in the icy water felt merely cooling and barely returned the bather’s temperature to normal. Rob soaked regularly in the sweat lodge and made a silent vow to build a permanent sweating place from which he could dash to sink into the depths of his millpond that would someday replace his temporary dam of rocks and logs.
He ate prodigiously and hunted regularly with Shikee. He put on weight and his hollows filled out. Muscle developed by months of rock carrying rounded his body, and he suddenly loomed above the entire village as though something long restrained had received special nourishment and had sprouted with a vengeance.
Under the skilled hands of Fat and Flat, his wardrobe also bloomed. The moose hide became a fringed hunting shirt as well as many pairs of hard-soled moccasins. The women even contrived doeskin pants such as some white traders wore. Shikee claimed the rest of the lodge might have to go naked if Rob did not stop taking all of the squaws’ time.
Croghan returned to his cabin, and they spent many hours planning ahead and discussing Indian and white problems. It was decided that as soon as he could manage, Rob would set up his forge and again turn out his ironware. George would use his pack string to move Rob’s iron from where it lay hidden at the foot of Kittatinny Mountain. George would trade Rob’s wares among the tribes, and they would share their profits.
In the meantime, other tasks required undertaking. Croghan had been charged by the Provincial Council in Philadelphia to make a springtime circuit of the Indian lands the Penns were attempting to purchase and to render a report on what lay therein. Croghan and Andrew Montour would journey to Philadelphia in April for final planning and instructions.
It was Croghan’s suggestion that Rob accompany them on their travels. He could earn always-welcome money, and he would gain increased knowledge of the mountain land, the villages and tribes therein.
Their circuit would be made on foot, resting whenever practical with Indians of the territory. From the Indians they would seek more detailed information about the land than they could acquire by merely hiking across it.
Croghan pointed out that the name, Quehana, was not unknown within the Endless Hills, and his presence would lend stature to their party. Many hunters carried Rob’s blades and used his points. Meeting the maker would please all and undoubtedly assist Croghan’s future trading.
Anything that would aid the Penn’s purchase of Sherman’s Valley appealed to Rob. Until he owned the land, he could not complete his plans for his plantation. He agreed to make the trip and expected to enjoy the journey as well as profit from it.
In the bitter cold of February, Rob reluctantly left the comforts of Aughwick to begin felling timbers for his house. He returned to the Little Buffalo in far better condition than when h
e had left it. His pack bore changes of clothing and a store of pemmican and corn. He was well fed and physically ready to challenge the forest.
The half-raised stone walls stood unaffected by wintry blasts that swirled into the protected valley, and Rob could have camped within their shelter. He chose instead a hollow deep in the evergreens where trees cut the wind and firewood from his logging would lay handy.
David had owned only a felling ax, so Rob planned no squaring of logs at this time. He wished to drop the needed trees and cut them to length. Using their own branches, he would prop the logs off the ground where they could season until he needed them.
A few planks were already required, and Rob intended to split and square them using wooden wedges and the poorly suited felling ax. He chuckled wryly at his boyish oversight back in Carlisle. An hour or two at the forge hammering himself a good broad ax would have served him better than some of the tomahawks, but within the year, he might again stand before the great anvil, and he could make what he needed.
He wondered how much iron-making skill remained in his work hardened hands. He felt as though he could stoke a good heat and work soft iron just as he had years before, but it had been a long time.
Rob chose trees of twenty-four inches diameter at chopping height. Most were straight white pines. From such trees he could later square planks twelve inches square and at least thirty feet long. A thicker tree would provide a longer log before it narrowed, but the thick butts were difficult to chop through. He estimated that he would have to down forty large trees and square their trunks merely to provide the upper walls for his house. Additionally, he had marked for cutting five perfect white oaks with three foot butts. The oaks would be hewed flat on two sides and placed atop the stonewalls to act as sills supporting his upper floor joists.
The large trees were only a beginning. He needed timber for both floors, more for rafters, and a vast quantity to plank the roof. The task seemed impossible, but he rationalized that if he could successfully chop one tree, dropping a hundred was only a matter of time. Actually, it was not the labor he dreaded but the loneliness of the task. For months he would be struggling with logs and rock with little human contact, and he did not look forward to the isolation.
Carrying his ax and sharpening stones, Rob sought a tree he had blazed the preceding fall. He had marked only a few trees close to the house, preferring the necessity of dragging the squared logs to living in a stump-dotted clearing. All of the trees selected were above the hollow so that dragging would at least be downhill.
Rob cleared away brush that might interfere with his swing or his footing and carefully sighted his tree so that it would not hang on another when falling. He first chopped a deep notch in the downhill side. Later, he moved to the uphill side and chopped a second notch slightly higher than the first. Trees tended to fall downhill, but the placement of the notches would encourage the tree to fall exactly where he wanted it. When the trunk began to snap and pop, Rob drove home a few rapid strokes to hasten the timber on its way and moved well clear of the toppling tree.
A cut-off tree occasionally performed unexpected antics when crashing to the ground. Some spun on their axis throwing the butt dozens of feet to the side, and trees properly notched, for inexplicable reasons, even fell in a wrong direction. Rob took no chances of being struck. He stood well aside and relaxed only after the crashing fall had died away.
The tall and straight pines did not require much trimming. He chopped the limbless trunk loose from upper branches and, using a log as a lever, rolled it onto a few short limbs where it would rest while seasoning.
Rob found that he could comfortably down and cut off three trees a day and still have daylight for other tasks. He avoided the stone work because of the biting cold, but between hunting and gathering wood chips for his campfire, he began chopping and smoothing his door and window frames. Working stubborn oak into thick boards gave him a taste of what lay ahead in squaring his logs and making wooden floors. The tasks appeared too great. He would have to find help, and he put his mind to that problem.
When Sattelihu came, Rob estimated he had one hundred logs down and seasoning. Montour studied the work with pursed lips and shook his head in awe. He counted logs and fingered the small mountain of clay roof tiles. When he spoke, Montour chose Delaware, and Rob answered in kind.
“Quehana builds a strong lodge.”
“My people will be warm in winter and cool in summer. Neither rain nor war arrow will enter the lodge of Quehana.”
Montour laughed and changed easily to his equally fluent English.
“Rob, it’ll take you years to get this mansion up. You’ll be an old man walking on your beard and still not be finished.”
“Oh, I’ll get it done, Andrew. I’m not in any rush to move in.”
“Oh, is that so? Passing through Carlisle I heard a different tale.”
Masking his eagerness, Rob took time to place sticks on his fire before asking, “And who was telling you my intentions, Mister Montour?”
Undeceived, Montour took his own time responding, setting aside his pack and lighting his pipe from a glowing coal, then settling himself until Rob felt ready to punch his eye.
Finally, Montour said, “Seems every time I go through Carlisle, Miss Rebecca Reed gets me in a corner and worries me over any word I’ve heard about the mighty Quehana. Got tired of it, so I told her I heard Rob Shatto had taken a pair of Shawnee squaws to live with.”
“Andrew, you didn’t!”
“No, I’m just joshin’ you, Rob. That little gal surely thinks the sun rises out here on the Little Buffalo, but she’s only part o’the reason I wandered over this way.”
Rob rested against the bole of a hemlock letting the fire warm him and listened carefully to Montour’s deep and easy voice.
“I’ve been given the duty of living here along the border between whites and Indians to try to keep the peace. Being an even measure of each, both sides figure I can see their side and still get the job done. My main task is to again run all the white squatters back over the mountains.
“Settled myself on a fair piece of ground west of here, so I’d be handy to Sherman’s Creek, and that’s where I’ll be from here on out—when I’m not chasin’ squatters, that is. I figure to move most of the whites out. At least enough to keep the Nations quiet through the summer. By then, there’ll be more for me to go after. Squatters increase like fleas on a dog. Let one get settled and a dozen more figure the way is clear for them as well.
“Seems old Justice Burger in Carlisle feels your bein’ here is some special affront to authority. So he’s particularly anxious for me to herd you back over the mountain.”
Rob recalled Burger’s animosity and his warning to be aware of just who the panther was. Rob was not much worried about it.
“So, what do you plan to do, Andrew?”
““Bout you? Nothin’, of course, Quehana. You’re getting so blamed big I’d have to enlist a company to get your carcass hauled off. Lord a’mighty, can you imagine how it would be for me in the lodges if I gave Quehana, named by The Warrior himself, any trouble?
“Fact is, I came over to tell you to watch your step around Carlisle. A squatter got killed over on the Susquehanna, and a story is goin’ around that it was one of your blades that did the work. Same family tried to squat along Sherman’s a few years back. Got run off by the sheriff. Name of Girty, maybe you remember them?”
“Simon Girty? Surely, I remember him well. I stopped at his cabin once, and Simon gave me a hand when I first came over the mountain. How did it happen, Andrew?”
“Shawnee called The Fish got drunk and stuck a knife in Girty. Fellow named Turner shot The Fish, so everything got square for now.
“Problem is, somebody’s stirrin’ up the idea that your selling iron knives and tomahawks to Indians is causing trouble. Seems kind of silly when you know that every trader going into the hills carries a pack of trade iron, but feeling is runnin’ a little high in
Carlisle right now. Girty was a drinkin‘ man, and a lot of the rough crowd knew him well. I reckon they get a little encouragement from old Burger and maybe one or two others who don’t think too much of your livin’ out here when they can’t. So, I’d walk light and careful in Carlisle for a spell, Rob.”
Following Montour’s departure, Rob returned to his tree felling. He had perhaps a month before he accompanied Croghan and Sattelihu on their swing through the mountains. He would avoid trouble in Carlisle, but he would not pass the village without seeing Becky. He got to thinking how foolish it was to blame him for making iron implements but not caring about George Croghan and the others who did the selling and trading. Looking at it like that, he didn’t see how anybody with an ounce of sense would pay attention to such ideas. Blaming the maker would make guilty all of the gunsmiths instead of the men who used the guns. Rob figured nothing could come of it.
He worked steadily, recognizing ever more clearly how massive the task ahead was going to be. His thoughts turned often to David’s small store of money. He hesitated to spend the coins, as without them he had nothing to fall back on, but now seemed the time he needed the falling-back money. Hiring a good ax man to help him build would save months of work.
Rob reasoned that two men could do far more than twice the work of one man. Two men could raise a log in minutes where one worker needed hours of jacking and wiggling to complete the same task.
In the early fall, when his stone work was finished, he would go to Carlisle, or even down to Lancaster, and hire strong and willing workers. By snow-fly they might have the house under roof.
17
1752 – Rebecca
Arrowmaker (Pennsylvania Frontier Series) Page 12