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Text originally published in 1960 under the same title.
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FEAR IN THE FOREST
BY
CATEAU DE LEEUW
ILLUSTRATED BY LEONARD VOSBURGH
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
TABLE OF CONTENTS 4
DEDICATION 5
FOREWORD 6
CHAPTER ONE 7
CHAPTER TWO 13
CHAPTER THREE 20
CHAPTER FOUR 28
CHAPTER FIVE 35
CHAPTER SIX 42
CHAPTER SEVEN 49
CHAPTER EIGHT 57
CHAPTER NINE 63
CHAPTER TEN 70
THE AUTHOR 79
REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 80
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to the memory of those boys of 1794 who were men and those men who were heroes
FOREWORD
There was only one way to make Ohio territory safe for the settlers, and that was to defeat the Indians. General Harmar had tried it in 1790 and had lost to the savage foe. The following year General St. Clair’s troops marched north, only to suffer what was, perhaps, the greatest defeat our army has ever known.
Fear was rampant along the frontier, and the Indians grew bolder day by day. President Washington named Major-General Anthony Wayne to accomplish what the two generals had failed to do. Wayne’s preparations were so careful and detailed that his nickname of “Mad Anthony” seems out of place here. He drilled his men unmercifully, and taught them to fight the Indians with their own methods. The result was an army that was tough, and obedient to command. When he felt the men were ready to march against the Indians, he went north to Fort Greeneville.
This was in October, 1793. He would have liked to finish the matter once and for all at that time, but he had not enough supplies to back up an army on the move. Until he had them, General Wayne was determined not to attack. This meant a long winter of drilling, and, when spring came, an urgent need for more and more pack-trains to bring food and ammunition to the string of forts he had built right up to the border of the Indian country.
The Indians were assembled in great numbers to oppose him, but Wayne did not give them the chance. He was always secure in his forts. Even on the march, his men had strongly fortified encampments every night. Inevitably, the number of Indians dwindled. Food was scarce for such a large gathering of them. Small bands went off to hunt; some pounced upon the supply trains or settlers’ cabins. They made one effort, late in June, to storm Fort Recovery, and were repulsed. After that their force lessened. By the time Wayne met them in battle at Fallen Timbers, on the twentieth of August, 1794, the victory was his within an hour.
But he could not have won that victory without the necessary supplies. The men and boys who drove the pack-horse trains faced real danger to bring the essential rations from Fort Washington. This book, true to the period in action, and giving something of their speech, is meant to tell a little of their thrilling story.
The astonishing tale of the “spies” and their captive, Christopher Miller, is a true one. I have used real names and the descriptions of real places wherever possible, and I am grateful to those pioneers who left behind them the account of their stirring times.
C. DE L.
CHAPTER ONE
Would the long, hot afternoon never end? Daniel wondered. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and flung back a lock of hair that kept falling forward. The June sun burned on his back. He leaned for a moment on his hoe and looked around.
Jeptha and Luke were visible farther down the field, and the sound of Mr. Worder’s axe came from the woods beyond. Little Uzziel, who was too young to do much, was chasing the pigs. Beulah’s high singsong voice rose above the sound of the hominy mortar as she called to her sister in the house.
It was a busy scene. It had a homey look, for everyone was working, and they were working for one another as well as for themselves. Only he was separate; only he did not belong in the picture.
His stomach rumbled with hunger. He looked up at the sky but the sun was still high in the heavens; it would be a while till supper.
Milly, the baby, came running from the cabin, her older sister after her. Milly wore a short shift and Elvira caught at it as she ran. Milly thumped to the ground and bellowed in fierce resentment, her face growing redder and redder. Mrs. Worder came from the house and picked her up. She shook her finger at Elvira and went back into the cabin.
Daniel could not make out any of the words, but the sounds of the child’s crying and Mrs. Worder’s voice had reached him. The figures moved woodenly in the harsh sunlight of the clearing around the cabin. There was no feeling of reality to them.
Daniel suddenly spoke aloud to himself. “Sometimes I don’t feel nothin’s real anymore,” he said. And then, ashamed of what lay behind his words, he bent to his work again.
It was much later, when he had stopped thinking about anything except how hungry he was, that he heard a shout from Luke. He looked up and saw a horseman coming out of the woods from the narrow trail that led north to the Indian country, and south to Columbia. It was on that trail, he remembered, that—
“Dan’l!” Mr. Worder’s gaunt form had appeared from the woods. “What’s the hallooin’ for?”
“We got a visitor,” Daniel answered. “From the north.”
Mr. Worder shouldered his axe and came forward eagerly. “From the north, eh? Might be, he’d have news of Gen’l Wayne and the Legion.” He beckoned to the lad to follow him, and Daniel willingly turned from the hot, backbreaking work.
Abel came into view then, with Jonas the ox dragging a crude sledge of logs. “What’s up?” he shouted. “Indians comin’?” His laugh had a cruel edge to it, and he faced directly toward Daniel, as if to dare the younger boy to object.
Daniel winced at the words—he couldn’t help it. “Indians comin’?” might be said in fun, with the bright sky untouched by cloud or smoke, but Daniel’s mind was swept by a black, unreasoning terror.
Mr. Worder shouted back, “Visitor!” and Abel, as eager for news as anyone else on the frontier, called, “Whup gee!” and “Giddap!” He flicked Jonas on the rump with a little leafy switch he carried, anxious to get back to the cabin with the others.
Daniel heard Mrs. Worder saying to the man on horseback, “Lands sakes, yes, it’s too far for you to go afore dark. You’d best spend the night here. You’re right welcome, I’m sure.”
“I had expected I was not more than a few miles from Covalt’s station by this time,” the stranger said. “I must have been traveling slower than I thought.”
“It’s not that it’s so far,” Mrs. Worder amended, “but it takes so long. With all the rain we’ve been havin’ it’s boggy in spots, and the trail is as good as lost some places.”
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p; “Well, it is kind of you to offer hospitality,” the man said with a slight bow, “and I shall be happy to avail myself of it.” He turned to Luke, who was standing open-mouthed beside him, staring like a lack-brain. “I’d rather not turn my horse loose tonight. I’m anxious to press on as soon as possible in the morning, and don’t want to waste time hunting for him in the woods.”
“We got a lean-to for Jonas,” Luke said. “I’ll put him in there.”
Mrs. Worder was issuing orders like a general on the eve of battle. “Elvira, see what you can rustle up in sass. Beulah, get movin’ with that hominy. We’ll need more. Jeptha, bring in more wood. And you, Daniel”—her voice hardened—“take the gun and see what you can git in the woods. We’re short on meat,” she added apologetically to the stranger.
Daniel paled. Was the light already failing? Was it still as bright as it had been a few moments before? Or was it only the cloud of fear which had darkened the scene for him?
He saw the others staring at him—some curious, some sneering—as if they wondered what he would do. He took the musket without a word, picked up the powder horn and bullet pouch, and went out. He was not even to know the name of the stranger, he thought angrily, keeping his steps firm and not too fast until he was out of sight.
He wanted to run; he wanted to find his game and shoot it and get back to the cabin in a hurry. But hunting wasn’t something you could do in a hurry. He wanted to stay close to the clearing. But he would never be able to find game so close to the cabin. His breath came hard, and the knot of fear grew tighter and tighter in his chest.
It was pure luck that showed him the quail, for he was too deep in his thoughts to be much of a woodsman. He grew very still, and loaded the musket with slow movements. He had been foolish not to have loaded it before he got into the woods. Then, just as he was raising it to sight, the quail took alarm and scurried under some leaves.
To his surprise, there was movement in the trees ahead. The quail’s panic had communicated an alarm to some other woodland creatures. Daniel’s heart lifted. Turkeys! Several of them roosting in the trees! As they started to take flight, he fired, and brought down a big one.
He caught up the feathered body, hardly waiting to make sure that the bird was dead, and started back toward the Worder cabin on the run. But he slowed to a walk as the woods thinned, and tried for nonchalance when he dumped the bird onto the floor just inside the door. “Here’s your meat,” he said.
“Quite a hunter, aren’t you?” the stranger said, smiling at him from the log-stump seat. “I never saw quicker work than that!”
“It never happened afore, neither,” Abel said with a snort. “Most times, Dan’l is so busy lookin’ for Indians he don’t see the game.”
“Well, that shows he’s a cautious lad,” the stranger said. “And heaven knows there have been too many Indians about for comfort these past few months. I’ll be glad to get back to Cincinnati.”
Mrs. Worder, busy at the fireplace, opened her mouth to ask a question, but her husband was ahead of her. “What were you doin’ up north?” he asked.
The stranger sighed. “Being a fool, most likely,” he said with wry humor. “I come from eastern Pennsylvania, and the stories I had heard about the fine land to be had here in Ohio made me itch to get my hands on some.”
“You a farmer, Mr. Reese?” Luke asked suddenly.
Daniel thought, So that is the man’s name—Mr. Reese!
“No, but I was brought up on a farm, and know good land when I see it....This is a fine place you have, right here,” he told Mr. Worder.
Mr. Worder’s chest swelled. “Not as rich soil as down towards the river mouth,” he said modestly, “but we don’t git flooded out every spring, neither.”
“I can see that....Well, I decided to come west and investigate for myself. I had a mind to do some investing in land and then sell off the sections when I got back east. Mr. Symmes’ purchase was what got me started, I suppose.”
“You going to do it?” Luke asked curiously.
Mr. Reese was silent for a moment. “I—don’t know,” he said finally. “I did not go as far north as I had planned, for I could see almost at once that there is still too much danger from the Indians in that part of the country.”
“Here, too, I reckon,” Mr. Worder said glumly. “Dan’l’s pa got kilt by the Indians—that’s why he’s livin’ with us.”
“But that was three years back, pretty near,” Abel said.
“The Indians are still a menace, however,” Mr. Reese said. “Even as close to the Ohio River as this. I could not, in all honesty, sell land to people under such circumstances, without warning them of the dangers, and I am very much afraid that if I did that, I would not be able to sell it at all.”
“Shucks!” Mr. Worder said. “We knew it was sort of dangerous when we come, but that didn’t stop us.”
Daniel’s thoughts turned inward then. His father had known the Indians were dangerous when he came out in 1790, and they had stopped him. And how many others, he wondered? There were so many stories of killing and scalping, of burning and pillaging, of crops ruined and people starving and homeless. He admired Mr. Reese for his stand. He would, at least, not lure folk out to such unfriendly country without warning them.
Supper was an unusually fine meal, in honor of the unexpected guest. Instead of the usual mush and milk, there was boiled turkey. It was flat, since the Worders had no salt left, and so was the hominy, mixed with dried pumpkin to stretch it. But there was at least a little honey on that. The food was more than welcome to Daniel after his day’s work in the sun. There was so little corn left at this season that if the stranger had come a few weeks later there might have been none to give him.
The little cabin was crowded when all were seated at the rough puncheon table, but later, after they had talked before the fire for a while, they would have to make room for Mr. Reese to sleep on the floor. The one bed in the cabin belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Worder, and the three older boys and Daniel slept in the shaky-floored loft above. The girls, Uzziel, and Mr. Reese, would have to fit themselves into the small amount of floor-space left.
The talk after supper was good. Mr. Reese, being lately from the east, had much to tell them of events on the Atlantic seaboard, and he had had an adventure or two in coming through the Pennsylvania mountains. “My trip down the Ohio was completely uneventful, however,” he added. “Not an Indian to be seen; not even a snag in the river to slow us up, and we made the trip riding the crest of the spring freshets in record time.”
Mr. Worder said suddenly, “Dan’l’s folks were from Pennsylvania. His ma died there, and his pa brought the young-un along with him when he come west to make a new farm. He settled right above us here, not far from the old Miami Indian trail. I reckon that was his big mistake—he was too close to the varmints, and they couldn’t resist havin’ a try at him.”
Mr. Reese said thoughtfully, “Those old Indian trails were well placed for travel, though. It is surprising how they instinctively chose the most desirable routes through the country.”
“No need to give them all the credit,” Mr. Worder said dryly. “Animals made the trails afore the Indians. Buffalo traces, lots of ‘em.”
“I kept to the pack-horse trails whenever I could,” Mr. Reese said, “although I dislike traveling through strange and dangerous country with no chance to see far on either side of me or to look ahead or behind for any distance.”
“I hear Gen’l Wayne’s been cuttin’ roads right through the forest,” Luke said. “Sixty feet wide, we were told, but that don’t hardly seem possible.”
“It is, though. He has to have plenty of room for the movement of his troops,” Mr. Reese said. “And with several thousand men, counting all the garrisons in the string of forts he’s building, he would need those roads for the transportation of supplies, if for nothing else. I think it very sensible and far-sighted of him.”
He turned to Daniel, who had been sitting quietly on th
e floor, almost behind him. “Have you heard about those pack-horse brigades that haul the supplies from Fort Washington to Fort Greeneville and beyond?” Daniel was startled, for it almost seemed as if the stranger were addressing him alone.
“I—I’ve heard of ‘em,” he stammered quickly, for apparently Mr. Reese expected him to make a reply. “But I don’t know much about ‘em.”
“Some of them are organized by the army, or the Legion as it is now called. There are detachments of infantry or dragoons to guard them on the march. Captain Benham is Pack-horse Master-General, and I have some little acquaintance with him. I am better known, however, to one of his subordinate captains—Mr. Sutherland.”
“From what I hear,” Mr. Worder said, “it’s dangerous work. Always plenty of Indians lyin’ about, waitin’ in ambush to git hold of the meat and flour and ammunition they carry—not to mention the hosses.”
Mr. Reese said smoothly, “But many of the brigades have military escort; most of them, I imagine.”
Mrs. Worder stirred a little. “Time you children were asleep,” she said not unkindly, for she knew how much a visit from a stranger like this meant to them in their lonely lives.
Mr. Reese rose at the very moment the young folk scrambled to their feet. “Time I was bedded down, too,” he said with a laugh, “if I’m to get an early start tomorrow.” He clapped young Daniel across the shoulder. “Want to come with me and join one of those pack-horse brigades we were talking about?”
Daniel was startled. “Why—I wouldn’t know—” he began.
“You’d learn. It would be fine work for a lad like you. You say you lost your pa to the Indians a while back. Here would be your chance to make some money and pay back the varmints at the same time.”
Daniel looked quickly about him, searching the faces of the Worder family for some clue to the answer he must make. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Worder’s features told him anything—their expressions were almost masklike. The girls were open-mouthed. Luke looked excited; Jeptha and Abel stared at him stonily, Abel’s mouth turned down in a half-sneer.
Fear in the Forest Page 1