“Don’t worry about it, Jeblish. If trouble comes they will do what needs to be done, and those girls may like to dance, but when trouble comes they’ll stand with us.”
“Who would lead them? Even if those city fellers could stand up to gunfire, who would lead them? Who could lead them?”
“There’s been some talk of Charles Lee. He served in the British Army, I think. There’s Montgomery, and of course, Old Put.”
“Aye, there’s them. Had my choice it would be that young colonel from Virginny…the one who was with Braddock. Don’t recall as I ever heard his name but he surely didn’t run when the shootin’ started. He was ridin’ back and forth, rallyin’ the boys to fight. He didn’t scare worth a hoot.”
“Washington. He’s a planter and a surveyor. Been out on the frontier a good bit.”
“Injuns still talk about him. They missed so many shots at him they say he’s got a charmed life. That there’s the best excuse for poor shootin’ I ever did hear.”
Jeblish took a coal from the fire to light his pipe. “Him havin’ frontier experience an’ all, I can’t figure why he didn’t tell Braddock he couldn’t fight Injuns the way you’d fight Frenchmen.”
“A colonel of militia,” Vanderdyke explained dryly, “does not tell a general of regulars what to do or how to do it. He listens, and speaks when he is spoken to…if ever.”
Vanderdyke drew back the ends of several partly burned sticks to begin killing the fire. “We’d best move. We’ve been in one place too long.”
They kicked dirt over the fire, what little they could find that was unfrozen, then added snow. The light died and the shadows took over. Into them the men vanished as if they had not been. The wind moaned and blew a few leaves across the campsite. Where they had been there was nothing but darkness and the cold.
—
The forest was thick, then scattered, with here and there a meadow. Twice they crossed streams on ice, and finding a place where the snow had been swept from the ice by the wind, they traveled downstream where they would leave no tracks.
Jeblish turned from the ice at a place where there was no snow and led the way back through thick forest to a cave under a bank. Back inside the cave, which had a hole overhead that had been used in ancient times to let smoke escape, they built a small fire.
“Found this place one time. Never seen no Injun sign around. I laid by some wood a couple of years ago; nobody never used it. Either this is one the Injuns missed or they fight shy of it.”
They were not talkative men and now they were cold. Huddling over the fire, they gradually warmed, and the small cave grew less icy.
“You’ll be stopping with Lint?” Jeblish asked.
“Aye. I’ll pass the word to him. He’s one man alone and he’ll need to be watchful.”
“That lad of his is coming of size now.”
“Aye, and Artemus has a good wife. He’s a canny farmer, so they should do well.”
Jeblish grunted. “We seen many such, you an’ me. Where be they now? Scalps dryin’ in some Seneca longhouse.”
“But they keep coming, Jeblish. They will never stop coming as long as there’s the promise of free land. The French are better traders, and they get along better with the Indians, but trade never settled a land. You need people for that.”
In his mind he went over the route he would follow. More and more the people of the frontier were turning to horses, but like the long-hunters, he preferred to travel afoot. By shank’s mare, as they put it.
A horse kept a man traveling along a trace while a man afoot could go anywhere. A man left fewer tracks and wearing moccasins as the woodsmen did, their tracks were scarcely to be seen except by a skilled eye. A horse might be faster but day in and day out a walking man could kill a horse, for the man had the greater endurance. A woodsman such as Jeblish or himself could run for hours on end without giving it a thought.
“Figured to scout south,” Jeblish commented, after a while. “You figure it’s war?”
Vanderdyke shrugged. “Who knows? Most think it can still be worked out, but there’s others, like Sam Adams and Tom Paine, who think the time for talk is past.”
“Figured it might start back there when the Boston Massacree happened.”
“It was nothing but a drunken brawl. Some idlers on the way home began to pelt the British soldiers and somebody tired of it and fired a shot, then they all fired.
“I didn’t blame the soldiers one bit. After all, men were killed with sticks and stones for thousands of years before a gun was invented. Anybody who pelts rocks at a man with a gun is a damned fool and if he gets shot it is no more than what he should expect.”
“Maybe they thought them guns weren’t loaded,” Jeblish commented.
“Then they were doubly fools. I am as loyal a patriot as any man, and I think the soldiers were within their rights. So did John Adams, who helped defend them in court.”
“It’ll be war,” Jeblish said. “I seen it comin’ for a long time, an’ my pa before me, he seen it. Spoke of it. The King’s laws weren’t made for no such land as this, nor for no such people. They never worked west of the mountains, and not very well east of them. Trouble was, Parliament could never get it through their heads that things were different over here.”
“They’ve gone against their own laws,” Vanderdyke agreed.
“Made a nice, neat little package, that English island did. All the land held by the King an’ a few lords an’ gentry. Everybody knowin’ his place the day he was born.
“Oh, I ain’t sayin’ there wasn’t some as got out of it! There was…one way or t’other. But it would not work over here where there was land forever. If a man doesn’t like where he is he just picks up an’ fetches hisself west. If folks don’t like the government they just move away.”
“I know. You and me, Jeblish, we grew up hunting for the table. If we didn’t shoot our meat we didn’t have any, but over in England only the King and his lords could hunt. Nobody had a gun but the gentry, and no use for one if he did have it. Here everybody has a gun and needs it to live by. If we ever have a country of our own, we can protect it, from foreigners or from rabble alike.”
“That’s right. If an Injun or somebody comes a-huntin’ trouble you might call a constable or the Army. But likely they just get there in time to look at the body and maybe chase who done it. I don’t want a government what’s going to act without reason, but I don’t think I should have to take a chance of dyin’ just to give it to them.”
Vanderdyke shook his head. “I’m thinking a government that rules an armed people needs be…well, polite. I figure that’s one way of saying it. They’ll learn. Soon enough, the King’s men will learn.”
Wind guttered the small fire. Vanderdyke drove two stakes into the hard ground and lay chunks of wood against them to make a reflector. Rising, he went around the bend of the cave and out into the cold. Glancing back, he could see no firelight or moving shadows. He gathered wood, shivering in the icy wind, and went back inside.
Jeblish rambled on, suddenly talkative, but Vanderdyke was thinking of how long it would take to cross the mountains and return again, and of what might be gained by cutting across country. He had learned from bitter experience that leaving a trail was always dangerous.
Traces were not where they were by accident but because long use had proved them the best routes. Most of them had been begun by the buffalo; now one never saw a buffalo east of the mountains, although when he was a boy there had been buffalo even there. To deviate from trails meant a man could get tangled up in swamps, mountains without passes, and other time-consuming obstacles. Yet the traces were where the Indians would be, and where spies would be watching.
Nobody knew exactly what was taking place across the mountains. There might be fighting by this time, and it would be wise to move with care and approach no settlement without carefully scouting the area. There were many Loyalists, men and women who held to the King and Parliament against all el
se. Many of them good people, too.
Most of those living in the Tidewater area believed things would be worked out and settled peacefully. As for Vanderdyke, he was skeptical. With another administration, perhaps, for there were many in England who were sympathetic to the Colonies; but whereas others understood the situation, George III was both stubborn and ill-advised.
There were those in England who believed the Colonies were also striking a blow for greater freedom at home, but there were others who wanted the Colonies to pay for their own defense, and with these Vanderdyke was inclined to agree. The difference was that he believed the army to defend the Colonies should be recruited there, and they should not have to pay for British Regulars whom they did not want.
“You comin’ back this way?”
“Further south. I may cross by the Cumberland.”
Jeblish added two sections of heavy wood to the fire. The wind scarcely reached them here, and there was a chance the fire would last throughout the night.
“Got no family,” Jeblish said, after a while. “Just as well, times like these.” He banked the fire a little. “Had me an Injun girl one time. Fine girl. Never was no better.”
“What happened?”
“She was a Huron. Whilst I was off on my trapline the Iroquois come. Killed her, our youngster, and half-dozen others. They taken the hair of her an’ the baby.” He spat into the fire. “Taken me two year, but I got their hair back. Opened up their grave and put it with them.”
“No parents?”
“Me?” Jeblish added a small stick to the fire. “I reckon they was good folks. Injuns kilt them, too. That was away back. Neighbor girl, she found me in the bushes an’ hid with me. We traveled alone through the woods for eight days, gettin’ us to where folks were.
“Eight days in the woods with a baby-child! An’ sometimes I figure I done a few things! That damn-fool girl was nigh thirteen when she done it! I tell you, Van, if this here country, with folks like that, don’t breed a race of men there’s something wrong! Women-folks…they can do the damnedest things, if they’re of a mind to!”
“What happened to her folks?”
“Kilt. Same time as mine. There was nineteen in the settlement—she told me that when I was older—nineteen, all kilt dead.”
—
Before daybreak, their fire smothered, each went his own way. Vanderdyke started off at an easy trot. The path he followed was little known and rarely used even by Indians, yet it did not pay to take anything for granted. He ran along with long, easy strides. He knew the spring where he hoped to arrive by the time the sun was at mid-sky, and it was some twenty-five miles away. He had often run as far in the morning and an equal distance in the afternoon. The biggest problem was moccasins, for they were constantly wearing out. A fact that enabled a knowing man to identify the tribe of the Indians who had used a camp by the type of moccasins they wore, for each was somewhat different.
He had three hours behind him when he stopped again to look and to listen. Long ago he had learned to trust his instincts and now he found himself uneasy.
Deliberately he turned from the trace and went into the trees. What had alarmed him he did not know, but he realized the senses often perceive things of which a man is not consciously aware. In this case it might have been a faint smell of wood-smoke, a sound, or something distantly glimpsed during one of the moments when he crossed a ridge or hilltop.
He moved now like a ghost, careful to avoid branches or the rustling of leaves. He suspected whatever it was that disturbed him was some distance away, yet he moved warily, pausing often, keeping his eyes and ears alert. He was careful to leave as little sign of his passing as possible, knowing how little an Indian needed.
Again he paused, merging his body with that of a huge old hickory, standing perfectly still, only his eyes moving, seeking, searching. The dampness of fog lay upon the trees and shrubs, an icy fog that had settled all about him. He was some distance from the river now—
A faint clink of metal on metal, but not close by. In the stillness of the frosty morning, sounds carried for some distance.
He was well armed, carrying two pistols for close-range work and his six-shot carbine. This was a weapon designed by John Dafte, in London. The six shots were carried in a cylinder that must be revolved by hand. The gun had been designed and built in small numbers more than a hundred years before, but his was scarcely nine years old, built by a skilled gunsmith from an ancient weapon Vanderdyke had inherited from a Dutch ancestor.
With modifications introduced by the gunsmith, the weapon had been much improved and was accurate up to two hundred yards. After that it became a chancy thing, although he had scored hits up to three hundred yards. It was shorter than the long rifles of the Kentuckians, and much lighter in weight than the muskets used by the Army.
He waited, listening. For a time he saw nothing, heard nothing. He was about to step out when his eyes captured a movement along the trace, of which he could see only a little.
Somebody, or something…there! Two men in buckskins, travel-stained and soiled, behind them a British officer in his red coat. Then the Indian…a Mohawk!
Two more Indians…He looked again to make sure his senses were not deceiving him….Two women.
Women? White women? Here?
Both women were riding horses and behind them were several pack mules, then four redcoats and two more Indians.
The women’s hands were free and there was no evidence they might be prisoners.
Slowly they drew closer, and he stood rock-still, waiting. To move might be fatal, for the Mohawks missed nothing.
These were no simple pioneer wives. The women were dressed for travel, but the elegance of their costumes could not be disguised, despite the fact they were far from civilization, far from any house or settlement.
Who were they? Where could they be going?
He was no more than thirty yards off the path and if he was glimpsed they’d be all around him in seconds.
He held his breath…waiting….
CHAPTER 2
A cabin in a moonlit clearing, a barn adjoining, the skeleton rails of a corral, and the snow-covered haycocks with the black wall of forest all around.
A wagon standing alone, the tongue pointing upward like a finger gesturing for silence.
Nothing moved but the thin trail of smoke into the sky, a frail bride for the wagon-tongue. Nor was there sound, no breath of wind, only silence and the cold stars. A smell of wood-smoke on the still air, and then a shadow that moved under the edging trees.
Inside the cabin a man reclined on a black bearskin before the fire, propped on one elbow to hold his book’s face to the firelight, a big man in a rough, homespun shirt, a rifle beside him on the puncheon floor. The man read slowly, moving his lips with the words.
On a bed built into a corner his wife lay sleeping. There was a table, two benches, and a chair made by cutting off one side of a barrel halfway down and building a seat into the barrel’s middle.
A candle in a pewter candlestick stood on the table, but it was unlighted. Candles were for visitors, if and when, for stoppers-by were rare. Like the wagon-tongue, it stood straight and listening, for awareness was the price of existence.
In the half-loft where the children slept, young Jacob Lint was awake. He stared up at the rough timbers, thinking of the snow on the roof and of the dark woods beyond the clearing’s edge. The Iroquois were on the warpath and revolution was brewing in the Colonies.
He had never seen the Colonies to know them, although he had been born there. He had never seen a schoolhouse and a church but once, nor had he ever seen a store. He thought of these magical, faraway things, often with longing. The only other children of his age he had seen had been the Elders….That was two summers ago when they came through, going west.
Pa turned the page and the whisper of it could be clearly heard. Pa turned half over to reach for a stick from the wood-box when they heard the owl hoot.
Jacob saw his father pause in mid-movement, listening. Very gently then, he put the book down, marking his place with a shred of bark. He took up his rifle, glancing toward his sleeping wife. He got up in one fluid, easy movement and moved to a place near the shuttered window. The owl hooted again, somewhat closer. Jacob Lint saw his father put the rifle down close to his hand and draw his knife.
Horrified, the boy stared, his mouth dry. Indians? Every settler lived in fear of them, knowing inevitably they would come. Was this it? Was it now?
They had lived long at peace with the Indians, but Pa had warned him that Indian ways were not always the white man’s ways, and they might take offense at something that seemed insignificant to a white man, and kill them all. Agreements had been made, but Artemus Lint knew, and so warned his son, that such agreements were not considered binding on those who did not like them. The old chiefs made agreements, young warriors broke them, and both were within their rights. It was a rare chief who spoke for all his people; as with the white man, there were always dissenters. Those who did not wish to accept a treaty simply ignored it.
At the Lint cabin they had fed Indians, shared with them what small store they had, but the Indians took it as their due with no appreciation of the hard work it took to grow. The white man was despised for his planting, for that was squaw’s work and only fit for squaws.
The Indian was inclined to despise the white man because his traders were always looking for furs. Obviously the white man was a poor hunter or trapper or he would catch his own fur. Artemus, a quiet man with a quick sense of the feelings of others, had soon learned several Indian languages and spoke easily to them. He knew that for the most part the Indian considered the white man inferior and looked upon white men with haughty disdain.
There was a faint scratching at the door. Jacob saw his father sheathe his knife and take down the bar and open the door. The bar itself was a weapon, deadly in the hands of a man skillful in its use, and Jacob had seen his father use it on a white renegade.
Volume 1: Unfinished Manuscripts, Mysterious Stories, and Lost Notes from One of the World's Most Popular Novelists Page 28