Daniel Boone: Westward Trail

by Barrett Jr. Neal

  They were halfway home before James brought it up.

  He had gone over the problem a dozen ways to Sunday, then decided to just come right out and say it.

  “Pa, you were twelve when you got your first rifle, ain’t that right?”

  “That’s right,” said Boone.

  “I’m eleven now.”

  “I recall you are, son.”

  “That means it’ll be ’bout another year, won’t it?”

  “’Bout that.” Daniel couldn’t keep his mouth straight. He stopped on the trail and grinned down at his son. “James, how long you been thinkin’ this over in your head?”

  James wet his lips. “Guess since I shot the deer.”

  “An’ before that, too, I imagine.”

  “Yes, sir. I reckon so.”

  “James, I don’t reckon twelve’s any kind of magic number. Somethin’ could happen before then. I mean, if we was in Salisbury takin’ down skins and just happened to see the right kinda rifle. .

  “Yes, sir,” James replied as he tried to keep from whooping like an Indian. “I sure hope that’s the way it happens.”

  Sometimes it scared Daniel just to look at the boy. His hair and eyes were dark, like Rebecca’s, but inside he could see nothing but himself. He had once taken the boy hunting in the dead of winter, carrying the small, trembling frame against his chest under his own heavy jacket. James had been barely eight, but his big black eyes had searched out the forest like a creature born to the wilderness. Daniel could see it plain, and he thrilled at the sight. That was the first time he’d noticed. It was like seeing a part of yourself flow into someone else.

  Of course, he and Rebecca were linked together too. Some peculiar power was always there between them, no matter how many miles apart they were. But this was different. Loving a woman was a strange and wonderful thing, but Daniel wasn’t sure the mysterious cord that bound him to his son wasn’t stranger and more wondrous still.

  Chapter Two

  They knew he was coming. The dogs didn’t bark that way at strangers. Even before he and James stepped out of the trees into the hollow, the door to the cabin erupted with small, screaming figures. In a moment, Israel, Jemima and Susannah were all over him, laughing, jumping and climbing up their father’s legs. The last to reach him was little Levinia, stumbling twice before she toddled up to him. Daniel set the others aside and hefted his two-year-old daughter high, laughing as she squealed in delight, churning her short legs in the air.

  “I got a deer,” he heard James solemnly tell his brother. “All by myself.” Daniel lingered long enough to see Israel’s eyes go wide, then he strode up the hill to meet Rebecca. Carrying baby Becky in her arms, she came to him. He grabbed her around the waist and kissed her soundly.

  “Damnation, girl, you’re fillin’ out some.” Grinning, he held her back to look at her and pat her belly. Rebecca flushed. “Daniel, the children!”

  Boone laughed. “They growed up in the woods, Becky. They seen plenty of wild critters, so I reckon they know what I’m doin’.”

  “Well now, we don’t have to show ’em right here, Dan Boone.” Concern creased her brow. “Anyway, I’m not fillin’ out, I’m thinnin’ down, if anything.”

  “You look just fine,” he assured her and reached down to let the baby grab his finger. “Better’n ever.” It was the truth, too. At twenty-nine, Becky seemed no different than the tall, black-haired beauty who had captured his eyes when she was just fifteen. She still had the power to set something stirring in him. Full-figured yet coltish, she was lean in the right places and soft where it counted. Her flashing black eyes could put more in a glance than a fulI day of talking. He could leave her for a full season, but when they held each other again, the need between them was as strong as ever, old and familiar, yet strangely new again.

  “You have a good hunt?” Rebecca looked over his shoulder to see Israel and James leading the mounts and pack horse to the rear of the house.

  “Fair to middling,” Boone shrugged. “Thirty, maybe forty hides. James got a buck all his own.”

  “He didn’t!”

  “Good one, too. Tracked and downed it like an Indian. You’d have thought it was ol’ Christopher Gist himself out there.”

  “More like ol’ Daniel Boone, I imagine,” she teased him proudly.

  Daniel grinned. “He’s a fair shot. Takes after his mother, I reckon. ’Course, he didn’t kill no horse, but he’ll come along fast.” His blue eyes twinkled.

  “Daniel Boone!” Becky stepped back and put her hands on her hips. “You are not goin’ to start that business again!”

  Daniel threw back his head and laughed. She was a good shot all right, but he never grew tired of telling how once while perched in a tree branch, she had downed her own horse. He usually failed to mention that she had also killed seven deer in the bargain.

  Later, when supper was over and the children had been sent off to sleep, Daniel and Becky talked awhile before the fire, then went quietly to their own bed. As always, neither said a word as Daniel slipped under the heavy bearskin cover and waited while Becky changed in a small corner of the room. She kept her back to him, and he could hear the soft rustle of clothing as she slipped out of her dress and drew the long cotton nightgown over her head. When she was beside him, he reached over and kissed her. Becky’s arms came up to hold him.

  He murmured to her a moment, then she moved up close against him, her body trembling at his touch. Daniel reached down gently and let his hand roam under the gown, over her legs and to the softness of her belly. Becky moaned and came to him, pulling the nightgown quickly over her shoulders and flinging it out of the way.

  Daniel never ceased to marvel at the warmth and fury of this woman of his. Quiet and soft-spoken in the day, she was likely as not to blush clear to her brow if he touched her in a familiar place. But at night, the fires smouldering in her body came alive, and it was all he could do to match her needs. It had always been that way, right from the beginning.

  He knew other men looked at Rebecca. She was a beauty, and worth a second glance. But they could never see the woman inside. Becky didn’t show that side of herself to anyone but her husband. Not ever.

  Daniel had been with other women—just a few. He neither cherished nor regretted those times. The truth was, all the others had ever done was sharpen his desire for Rebecca. She had touched him first, and put her mark on him forever.

  “Sure is nice to see you again, Becky,” he murmured to her softly.

  “See me, Daniel?” Her black eyes looked amused in the dim firelight. “Well, now, I been wondering what it was called. Sure didn’t seem like seein’ to me. Seemed more like feelin’.”

  “Good feelin’, Becky?”

  “Not too bad, Dan Boone.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it.”

  Her raven hair touched his cheek, and she reached down and ran her fingers past the flat of his belly. “Lordy, Daniel. You ain’t quite through lookin’, are you?”

  Daniel laughed and joyously pulled her to him.

  Early in the morning, Becky woke and looked at him. It was still a good half-hour till dawn, but even in the dim light she could see his eyes were open, and guessed he had been awake for some time.

  “You all right?” she asked.

  “Just thinkin’.”

  She rose and rested one hand on her chin. “’Bout what?”

  He was silent a long moment. “It wasn’t a good hunt, Becky.”

  “I know that, Daniel.”

  “Thirty skins. Damnation! Might as well live in Boston or Fredericksburg. People comin’ out of the woods like flies, an’ more every day.”

  It wasn’t quite that bad, Becky knew. A person could still walk up the Yadkin River for days without meeting a soul. But Dan Boone had his own idea of crowded.

  He reached out and touched her. “It’s not the same, Rebecca. It’s changin’. The country ain’t ever goin’ to be the way it was.”

  Rebecca didn’t
answer. She knew her man well, and the sound of his voice told her all she needed to hear. Something churned in the pit of her stomach—an old familiar fear, one she had never let him see and never would.

  Even if Daniel had brought in a thousand prime skins it would still be the same. He hadn’t yet been home a whole day, and it was already gnawing at him, pulling him from her. She loved him with all her heart, and she knew full well there wasn’t another woman who could hold him. Sometimes, she almost wished there was. She could fight a real, live rival. But she was helpless against an enemy she couldn’t see, that great and fertile whore across the mountains, Kentucky.

  She had seen her rival’s shadow in his eyes the day he came back from the war in Pennsylvania and asked her to marry him. At first, she guessed it was another woman. Later, when she learned the truth, she fled alone into the woods and cried until she could cry no more. It was one of the few times in her life she let her tears flow freely. Daniel was hers, but even when he held her, when he lost himself inside her and gave her life, she could feel the bitch named Kentucky somewhere near. And if it came to deciding between his two loves, Becky knew whom Daniel would choose.

  He put off taking the skins into Salisbury, telling himself he would get to the task soon. Or maybe, as he told James, they would rest up awhile and go out again. But three weeks passed, and they went nowhere.

  James knew his father’s moods, and he understood, or tried to. But the image of a new long rifle with his name on it seemed to fade farther and farther into the distance. He could see someone marching into the store and buying the only one in stock, right before he and Pa got there. “Sorry, James,” old Mr. Wells would smile, “that’s the last of ’em. Won’t be makin’ any more, I hear.” James knew it was only a bad dream. There wasn’t any way in the world they would quit making long rifles. But he couldn’t help waking up sometimes with that thought on his mind.

  Going into Salisbury was about the last thing on Daniel’s mind. Not because of the skins, either, though that was part of it. Walking in with three dozen hides for a month’s work irked him no end. But there was more to it than that. It was getting harder and harder to face folks in town. He could scarcely turn a corner anymore without running into someone he owed money to. The trip up the Big Sandy had yielded enough skins to ward off some of his creditors, but there were always more debts than he could pay. Like Dick Henderson said, Boone had the honor of having more suits against him than any other man in North Carolina.

  Stepping off the porch, he stalked off down the hill and into the woods. Leaves were spread red and gold on the ground, and the evening air was crisp and clear with the promise of winter. All the signs told him it would be a hard one this year, but Daniel still hoped it wouldn’t be. A long winter meant holing up inside, except on the few good days when a man could get out for a few hours without freezing his tail off.

  There would be some good hunts, Daniel knew, but there would also be long weeks of boredom and waiting. That was more time than a man needed to think about things he wanted to do, things left undone from years before. There was too much unfinished business behind him now, Daniel decided. The last days of October were falling away fast. In November he would be what, thirty-four?

  Damn, and damn again, he thought. The years were passing him by, and what had he done with them? Hunted, scratched out a few crops, and this time last year, tried for Kentucky and failed, all the while piling up debts in Salisbury.

  A sound through the trees suddenly interrupted his thoughts. He dropped the stick he was whittling, walked across the dry leaves and peered down the road. A man was riding a mare and leading three pack horses, bony animals laboring under a load of boxes, sacks and clanking pots and pans. The peddler heading this parade was only a shade better off than his animals. A short, gaunt old fellow in worn buckskins, he rolled half-asleep in the saddle. Only grizzled white whiskers poked from under the coonskin cap that covered his head.

  Daniel took a step forward and shouted out a hello. The peddler stopped, pulled off his hat and scratched his crown. “You know where I might find a feller name of Daniel Boone?” he asked, squinting against the sun. “Folks said I’d likely find him out this way.”

  “Looks like they was right,” said Daniel.

  The man raised a brow and stared, then a wide grin spread across his features. “Well I’ll be goddamned. You growed up some, Dan’l. What’s it been now—twelve, thirteen years since we showed our tails to them Shawnees?”

  Daniel was puzzled for only a moment. Then the years fell away and he was back in Braddock’s camp, listening to tall tales around a campfire. “Findley,” he shouted, “Christ A’mighty, John Findley, or I’m an Indian dog!”

  Boone ran to his old companion, whooping and scaring the horses. In a moment, they were pounding each other on the back like no time at all had passed since the war. Daniel couldn’t remember when he had been happier to see a man.

  Chapter Three

  Daniel’s stern Quaker upbringing didn’t leave much room for belief in portents and omens. According to Scripture, true signs from heaven were few and far between. It was usually the Devil himself who set out sweet-smelling traps for a man. Still, it seemed to Daniel that John Findley’s sudden reappearance in his life had to be a godsend. Otherwise why had Findley showed up now, right on the heels of Daniel’s trip to the Big Sandy, which had taken him clear to the door of Kentucky?

  Findley’s eyes had lit up plenty when he heard about that. He wanted to hear the whole story, over and over, and as they sat before the hearth, he interrupted Boone again and again with questions about the trip. What did the country look like? What kind of game had Daniel seen?

  Finally, Findley leaned back and narrowed his eyes thoughtfully.

  “You’re right,” he told Boone. “If you’d kept on going, I figure the Sandy would’ve took you to the Ohio. You’d have run into more’n tame Cherokees, too. That’s mighty close to Shawnee country.” He shook his head and looked into the fire. “I still say that ain’t the way, Dan’l. Too far north, and the long way ’round to boot. Isn’t much better than my way, down the Ohio. The Warrior’s Path is the answer, if only a man could find it.”

  “And you still think you can? You believe there’s a way through the Cumberland?”

  “There is,” Findley said firmly. “Isn’t any question, boy. The Indians ain’t been flyin’ over those mountains all these years.”

  Findley hadn’t been in the Boone household two nights before Daniel sent for his younger brother, Squire, and his brother-in-law, John Stewart. Squire had been up the Big Sandy, and Stewart, only months before, had traveled with Ben Cutbirth southwest across the mountains clear to the Mississippi, then rafted down to New Orleans to sell furs. Stewart brought along a map, and Daniel pulled out another. Neither chart seemed worth much, but the four men knew enough together to make a few sound guesses.

  Findley knew where the Warrior’s Path ought to be. If there was a way through it all, he said, it had to be over the Blue Ridge and past the Clinch Mountains. If he was right, they should hit the north-south branch of the Warrior’s Path somewhere near the Powell River.

  From the beginning, none of the four said anything about actually making the trip, but Daniel knew, since Findley had come riding down the road from Wilkesboro, rattling pots and pans behind him, that the trip was fated to happen. This time, Daniel was going to make it happen.

  Rebecca knew. Right from the start. She didn’t need more than one look at Daniel coming up the road with the bearded man in tow. Dan’s eyes were shining and there was a spring in his step. Lord God—the way he walked, he looked more like Israel or James than a grown man.

  Becky didn’t like John Findley, but if Findley noticed, he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut. And why shouldn’t he? He had food in his belly and a bed to sleep on. And not just for the night, either. Daniel asked him to stay the winter.

  Rebecca understood that. It was the custom on the frontier. If the
re was extra food in your cupboard, you shared it with those in need. She didn’t fault Daniel’s generosity. Eight mouths were no harder to feed than seven, and she didn’t resent Findley for taking up bed and board. She resented him for bringing Kentucky inside her house. The whore was winning again, pulling Daniel away, and this time, she wouldn’t easily let him go.

  The winter was milder than Daniel had figured, but the cold, dark days seemed to drag on forever. Spring was the time to try for Kentucky—in April or May at the very latest. He vowed to wait no longer than that.

  Meantime, there was so damned much to do! Good horses to buy, and traps, extra rifles, a hundred-and-one things that had to wait for a break in the weather. Till then, all he could do was wait. And of course, the debts kept piling up higher while he sat there.

  Sometimes he wondered how he could even think about Kentucky. Here he was, worried about buying pack horses, when the truth was that he would be lucky to feed Becky and the children through summer. And Stewart, Findley and Squire were just as broke as he was—or damn near. They were a fine crew, the four of them.

  Sometimes he thought about picking up his rifle and just walking out the door straight for Kentucky, Rebecca and everything else be damned. He couldn’t, of course, and the thought fairly shamed him, but what was a man to do? Wait till the time was right? Hell, it never would be! There would always be another bill to pay, another crop to bring in, more hunting after skins to buy lead and powder so you could get more skins, and start the whole business all over—there wasn’t an end to it. No end at all.

  Early in March, he rode into Salisbury with Squire, hauling the skins he had taken with James through the fall and winter months. There were more than a hundred now, not what he would like to bring, but better than nothing. It was all the country would give, thought Daniel. The land was closing in, filling up with people, and not the kind who belonged there. The newcomers were men in a hurry, men who tramped through the woods, destroying nests and chasing away game. Daniel had moved his family farther up the Yadkin three times in search of wilder country, but still the strangers came, plaguing the Yadkin with their lawless ways.