Daniel Boone: Westward Trail

by Barrett Jr. Neal

  Kentucky was a rich and fertile land, said Findley, with soil so dark and moist in the long valleys that the Indians grew cornstalks twice as tall as a man and half as broad as his forearm. He told about white water rushing through deep clefts of granite, rolling hills and valleys shadowed green with ash, hickory, chestnut and every tree you could think of. He talked about fog on the river in the morning, deep forests full of ferns, streams thick with fish, and fields so full of cane that a fellow could get lost in one for years if he didn’t mark his trail.

  And hunting? Findley had a great deal to say about that. The land past the Endless Mountains was a veritable paradise for a man with a good eye and a long rifle. You didn’t even have to track game there. All you had to do was to sit right still and let it come to you. Deer, bear, squirrel, fox and every kind of fur you cared to trap. There were more buffalo in Kentucky than anyone could hope to count, herds so big they made the earth tremble. Why, a man could stand and watch them pass all one day and the next, and never see the end.

  “It’s like nothin’ you ever seen,” Findley told his audience. “Once I set out some trade goods for a bunch of Injuns, and tossed the wrappin’s aside, not thinkin’ anythin’ of it. Well, don’t you know, when I come back to that place later, the whole valley was sproutin’ grass I never seen before. I couldn’t figure what’d happened. Then I recalled the goods I’d opened up was from England, and it come to me like lightnin’. Them wrappin’s was dried up bluegrass, which grows real good over there. It just come back to life in Kentucky, and took hold right off. Whole damn place is covered with it now.”

  Boone wasn’t sure he believed that, but he didn’t laugh like some of the others. He sure believed everything else Findley had to say, and kept him talking long after the others had gone to sleep. How, Daniel wanted to know, had he made his way to Kentucky in the first place? Had he crossed the Endless Mountains?

  Everyone said they rose up sheer as a wall and that no man had ever managed to scale them. Findley had a ready answer for that. He hadn’t come through the mountains at all. He had traveled down south from Ohio, with a Shawnee party. “When they were a mite friendlier than they are now,” he added wryly. “Or ’bout as friendly as the Shawnees get.”

  “So that’s the way in, then?”

  “That’s one way,” said Findley. He grinned at Boone and spat in the dying fire. “There’s another, if a man could find it—a trail that starts up north somewhere on the Blue Ridge an’ winds west out of the mountains. It’s a secret way the Indians call the Warrior’s Path. Ever heard of it?”

  Boone shook his head.

  “It curls down south, then cuts through the Endless Mountains, or it’s supposed to, anyway. I reckon it’s true, ’cause the Cherokees been usin’ it since God was a chile to pounce on the Shawnees an’ anyone else they can find north of the Ohio. Probably plenty of other Injuns found it ’fore that.”

  Daniel sat up straight, his blue eyes bright with interest. “Mr. Findley, you think there is such a trail? Truly?”

  “I think there might be.”

  “Then by God,” Daniel blurted, “let’s find it!”

  Findley gave him a patient smile, but Daniel didn’t notice. John Findley wasn’t the first man to talk about Kentucky, but there was a magic in his words that touched Daniel and held him spellbound. The wonders of that land behind the mountains filled his head, crowding everything else aside.

  The fire had dwindled to charcoal and a wisp of grey smoke by the time the pair stopped talking. It was Findley who finally brought the conversation to an end, for Daniel would have rattled on all night and then some. Sleep wouldn’t come to him even after Findley’s snores had settled into a long, easy rhythm. Kentucky was there, just past the mountains, waiting to be taken—if a man was big enough to do it.

  It sounded like heaven the way John Findley talked about it. Only heaven was likely a little easier to get to, and a safer place, for sure. Daniel didn’t figure there would be any Shawnees in the hereafter. A couple of tame Delawares maybe, but certainly no Shawnees.

  He wondered what Rebecca would think about his dream. She liked him, he knew, but maybe Miss Rebecca Bryan wouldn’t want a man who would haul her off to a wilderness full of Indians. He thought of her all night and wondered. He had gone without sleep before, and didn’t miss it when he arose at dawn. As ever, there was a full day’s work on the wagons to be done, enough to keep a man’s hands busy and his mind off the wonders of Kentucky. By late afternoon, there were other things to think about. Rumor reached the wagoners that the trip was nearly over. Advance troops would reach the river late that night, or early the next morning. That meant Fort Duquesne was jut ahead. Would the French come out and do battle? Maybe they didn’t know Braddock was coming. Hell, they had to, one teamster laughed. The army’s trek north was about as secretive as a herd of buffalo stampeding through Boston.

  Rumors grew as the day wore on. By nightfall, Daniel heard that the French had given up and there would be no battle at all, that the Shawnees had turned on their allies and slaughtered them all in the fort, that the French army was twice as big as the British had expected, and that Braddock himself was surrendering his sword at that very moment.

  After supper, Daniel walked up ahead to the encampment to try to find Gist, who would know the truth of the situation. But the scout was nowhere to be found, and all Boone got for his trouble were more rumors.

  At least one story, however, turned out to be true. The river was there to slow them down. Early the next morning, Braddock’s troops started across the Monongahela. Boone could barely see the tips of their banners, they were so far ahead, but he could hear the crisp beat of drums and the shrill whistle of fifes in the morning air. The stirring sound of the Grenadier’s March wafted through the thick woods and rolled down the valley. Boone thought it must be a stirring sight and wished he could be up front for a better look.

  Line Morgan, the dour old Virginian who rode beside him on the wagon, was less impressed. “Reckon you ought to be damn glad you’re where you are,” he scowled.

  “Why?” Daniel asked curiously. “My God, Line, there’s near two thousand of ’em, countin’ the militia. Whatever we run into….”

  Line spat over his shoulder. “Damn redcoats ain’t got the sense God gave a gopher, that’s why. Where you think the militia is, Dan’l?” He nodded ahead and flicked his reins. “Right up ahead of us is where. Ol’ Stiff-Nosed Braddock don’t want ’em to take no glory from himself. What does that tell you?”

  Daniel frowned. Line was right. It didn’t make much sense. You didn’t have to be a gold-braid general to know it was a good idea to spot Indians before they spotted you. And the seven hundred boys from North Carolina and Virginia were the only troopers on the trek who had ever fought redskins. The rest had more than likely never even seen one. “Well,” Boone replied finally, “there’s more’n a thousand rifles up there. I don’t reckon the French or the Shawnees’ll want to walk into that.”

  Line Morgan looked at him cynically, but didn’t answer.

  The column was long, and as usual, moving slowly. The sun was almost straight up in the sky before Daniel’s wagon splashed into the waters of the Monongahela. Its banks had been churned to mud by the boots and wheels that had passed that way all morning. Urging the horses up the other side, he glanced ahead, past the other wagons. There was a narrow, sloping defile ranging up the hill, crowded close on either side by dense woodland. It was just like every other hill they had climbed for the past four weeks, thought Daniel.

  Suddenly, the wagon ahead came to a halt. Morgan cursed, and shouted at the driver. Daniel shook his head and laughed at Morgan’s frustration. Not thirty yards past the river and already another delay. Some wagon had a busted wheel, or maybe tangled traces. Standing, he squinted at the wagon in front, and the one after that. It was like riding on a caterpillar through the grass. The front end stopped, dragged its back end up behind, and waited for the middle to make up its mind
.

  Daniel stopped, peered intently at the hill, and grabbed Line’s shoulder. “Great Jesus, look at that!”

  Line stood. Dense puffs of smoke mushroomed out of the woods up ahead on either side of the ridge. At first, Daniel thought the trees were on fire. Then he heard the unmistakable chatter of rifles echoing down the hill. It was a terrible, devastating sound, more guns going off at once than he had ever imagined, followed by high-pitched calls of alarm and shouted orders.

  Just ahead, Daniel made out the mounted figure of Colonel Washington, and beside him, Christopher Gist. He had thought the colonel was still confined to a sickbed, but there the man was, swinging his saber to left and right, spreading his militiamen out of the column and into the cover of the woods.

  It was difficult to tell what was happening on the ridge. The smoke was as thick as a cloud come to ground, but the redcoats marched forward in orderly lines and columns, disappearing into the pall. What the hell were they doing? And where was all the shooting coming from?

  Suddenly, as Boone watched, redcoats came pouring out of the smoke, tearing back through their own ranks. The lines held for a moment, then broke. In half a minute, a ragged mass of crimson flowed like a river of blood down the hill. Gunfire mixed with the shouts of the dying echoed across the ravine. Panic swept like a tremor through the wagons. Teamsters yelled and whipped their horses about for the river, while militia officers sprinted down the line, shouting angrily for the wagoners to stand by their teams and hold.

  “Goddamn,” Line Morgan muttered, “hold what, for Christ’s sake?”

  A loud cry went up ahead, as the word passed from man to man: “Indians!” Through the smoke they charged after the fleeing redcoats. The hill was covered in an instant with red-painted Shawnees, snapping at the Regulars’ heels, shrieking like devils and waving their tomahawks high.

  Washington’s militia, dispersed in the woods, slowed the enemy and gave a good accounting of themselves, but it was too late to turn the tide. The battle was clearly lost as soon as it began.

  Redcoats by the hundreds poured past the wagons, fighting their way to the river. Daniel was near deaf from the din of screaming soldiers and the steady crack of rifles. His strong hands held his own weapon high, searching for a target, but there were none to see, only choking smoke and dust. He heard his own name above the noise and jerked swiftly about. John Findley reined up beside him on a dappled mare. Findley shouted again, but Daniel couldn’t hear. He didn’t need to. Findley’s gestures were plain as day. The Shawnees had already reached the lead wagons. Daniel waved at Findley and leaped to one of his team horses. Morgan took the other. Slashing the traces that bound their mounts, the pair charged through the redcoats for the river.

  General Braddock was dead. Four days after the somber remnants of the army fled across the Monongahela, they stopped to bury him near Fort Necessity, under the road they had built only a few weeks before. It was Christopher Gist’s idea to put him there. The old scout knew the Shawnees. A scalp as famous as Braddock’s would be worth looking for, and the Indians would surely sniff it out if they could.

  Rumors of what had happened flew thick as flies all along the long trek back, but Boone was home on the Yadkin River before he heard the full story. Two-thirds of Braddock’s army had been felled in the massacre—a thousand men, dead or wounded. Everyone said Braddock could have beaten the Shawnees easily if he had only had the sense to listen to Washington. But instead of sending his men to cover, the general had galloped back and forth through the hail of gunfire, keeping his troopers in straight, even lines, making them easy targets for the Indians.

  Much later, Christopher Gist told Daniel the rest of the story. The French, horrified by Braddock’s superior force, were ready to wave the white flag when an officer named Beujeu had a better idea. He talked eight hundred Shawnees into setting up an ambush, tempting them with the promise of British scalps, plenty of bright red coats and all the rifles they could capture.

  The Regulars who had died straight off were the lucky ones, said Gist. Those who surrendered to the Shawnees had gotten the worst of it. The Indians had not yet heard about the European tradition of courtesy for prisoners. The hapless Britishers had been stripped, painted black, tortured and burned at the stake.

  “Don’t guess Pennsylvania’s a hell of a lot like Europe,” said Gist.

  “This ain’t the kind of country a man can just come into and admire from afar,” observed Daniel, watching the flames lick wood in Gist’s fireplace. “You got to live in it, and listen to it.”

  “You’re right as you can be,” agreed Gist.

  In the radiant warmth of the hearth, Daniel’s thoughts wandered away from Braddock and Fort Duquesne. “You mind tellin’ about it again, Mr. Gist? How it looks when you first catch sight of Kentucky?”

  Gist shook his head. “Damnation, boy. How many times you got to hear it?”

  “A thousand, if I can. That’s the part I don’t never get tired of,” said Daniel.

  PART ONE

  1768-1770

  Chapter One

  Daniel stood quietly in the shade of the big oak. Bright sun filtered through the heavy branches and dappled his strong, sun-leathered face. He adjusted the brim of his black felt hat, tattered now from fourteen years of use. Just beyond the trees, the small meadow caught the first light of morning, yellowing the tips of high grass and thin spears of second-growth ash. A squirrel chattered overhead. Half a mile away, a crow rose out of the trees, cawed a loud complaint, then dove back into the woods.

  “You see that buck yonder?” Daniel said softly. The boy nodded without looking up. Daniel waited a moment, then slid the rifle out of his arms. “Reckon you better take him now, James.”

  The boy glanced up, startled. His eyes went bright with pleasure. “Me? You want me to bag it, Pa?” he whispered.

  Daniel looked solemn. “’Less you can spit that far, boy.”

  James reached up and took the rifle, holding it as if it were a sacred artifact. Without turning his head, his eyes flicked toward the far side of the clearing. The buck was just visible through the saplings, frozen at the edge of the forest. The sun colored his back the same shade as the brush around him.

  “He’s a nice one.”

  “Ten points, maybe.”

  “Might be twelve,” James said hopefully and looked up with a dozen questions in his eyes.

  Daniel knew what the boy was thinking, and he was pleased. The boy didn’t want help on his first deer. He would take all the credit for a hit, or the blame for a miss.

  Quietly taking his father’s horn and pouch, James moved off. It was the right time of day, early enough for the dew to wet the grass and soften the sound of his footsteps. The buck was at least seventy yards off, and James wasn’t sharp enough to try a shot like that. He would have to cover half that distance to make a clean kill, and there was scant cover to help him.

  Daniel watched his son with a critical eye. Whenever the buck put his head down to feed, James moved, keeping low to the ground, knowing every place his moccasins would touch without looking, never taking his eye off the animal. Just before the deer brought his head, up, James caught the slight bunching of muscle at the shoulder and froze. The deer raised his muzzle, sniffed the air, and looked right at him. The buck knew something was wrong. He stared at James for a full three minutes. Daniel saw a dark swarm of gnats drift past the deer’s head. The deer twitched one ear. Then the gnats moved off, smelled the boy’s sweat, and settled around his head, but James never moved. Daniel grinned with pride. Goddamn! The boy was better than the buck. The animal had moved, but James hadn’t. The gnats were likely stinging his eyes, now, and crawling up his nose.

  Finally, the deer looked away, searched the rest of the meadow, then lowered his head again. James waited. Sometimes, a wise old buck would look away from something he found suspicious, then jerk up to catch it moving.

  In a few moments, James moved forward again, taking a few short yards at a
time. When he stopped and carefully brought the rifle to his shoulder, Daniel figured he was a good forty yards from the buck. The boy was right. Any closer and the animal would bolt for sure.

  The deer raised its head and James squeezed the trigger. Powder flashed in the firing pan just before the gun jerked against his shoulder, and a puff of smoke rose from the muzzle. Daniel saw the buck rise up straight, shake its head, and bolt for the brush behind. He looked at James and smiled. The boy was likely wetting his trousers, itching to go look for that deer. Instead, James dropped to his knees and started reloading the long rifle. Holding the weapon between his knees, he ran the ramrod quickly down the barrel, poured powder in his palm and filtered it into the muzzle. The ball on its patch of linsey went in after, and James ran the rod in to tamp it. He put the hammer on half-cock, charged the pan again and shut the frizzen.

  When the boy stood up, Daniel walked out into the clearing. He was pleased. His son had remembered the most important rule: Unless there’s an Indian breathing down your back, with a scalpin’ knife, don’t do anything till you load again. An empty rifle makes a passable club and nothing more. James hadn’t forgotten.

  The deer, a good ten pointer, had been hit under the right ear and had died no more than four yards into the trees. Daniel hefted the animal up on a branch and let James dress it.

  “It’s a good buck,” said James, stepping back to look at his work.

  “It’s a fine buck,” Daniel agreed. “Fine as they come.”

  James knew he had been lucky to get such a fine animal for his first. They had roamed nearly fifty miles from home during the past three weeks, and the buck was easily the best they’d seen. Game was to be had, and they had trapped their share of skins, but you sure had to work for it. Things weren’t like they used to be, as his father was fond of saying. When the Boones had come to the Yadkin nearly twenty years before, a man could shoot thirty deer a day without leaving the valley. It wasn’t like that now. And Pa said it wouldn’t ever be again. When people moved in, deer, bear and everything else got hard to find.