As soon as Noel crossed the creek, Jonathan shouldered his rifle and cut out across the hill which sloped gently to the crest, then leveled off like a giant tree-grown table top. Great bushy crowns of oak and popple, chestnut and beech, laced together with grapevines, fashioned a green roof overhead. Stephanie, stretching her legs to keep up with her pappy, and looking out for briers and brambly bushes in the undergrowth, noticed slim fingers of gold reaching in from the west among the black butts of the trees.
“Hurry, Steffy!” Jonathan called.
She shifted the kettle to her other hand, and hurried to catch up with him.
“Look over yonder towards the sun,” Jonathan told her.
Stephanie found herself standing on the sheer edge of the tableland, with the earth dropping in a plumb line hundreds of feet below. Setting down her kettle, she shaded her eyes with her hand and gazed thirstily at the wide horizon, trying to harvest all at once the wonder of the world that lay spread out below her—a vast world, with lush green meadows and wooded hollows rippling away as far as she could see. All her life she had been heading into mountains. Now the mountains were behind her, out of her life, and the world was wide and ongoing, its springtime green rimmed far off with a gauzy haze the color of frost-blue plums.
“Well, what d’you see, Steffy?” prodded Jonathan.
“Kentucky, Pappy,” she said. “But why didn’t you tell us it looked all—all wide like this, and green, and full of sky?” she demanded, half scoldingly. “For two whole years you’ve talked about Kentucky, but nary a thing have you mentioned but black land and wild critters and varmints.”
“I didn’t have the words, I reckon, Steffy,” Jonathan said. “I knowed all along I wasn’t makin’ you young uns see Kentucky the fine way hit is.”
While the others threaded their way across the wooded table top, Stephanie continued to stare at the new land they were at last about to enter and to claim.
“I reckon nobody could have told us Kentucky was like this, Pappy,” she said at last. “Nobody, that is, without book learnin’, like Noel.”
“Does book learnin’ do that for a body?” he asked.
“Of course, Pappy!” Stephanie assured him. “Didn’t you ever want to learn to read?” she asked. “Not in your whole life? Didn’t you have any Uncle Lucien to teach you things out of a book?”
“So far as I been able to jedge, readin’s jist a sort of fancy work,” Jonathan said. “Whar’s hit ever got your Uncle Lucien? Nowhars. Whar’ll hit ever get Noel? Nowhars, either. Hit don’t have ever’day value like knowin’ how to hit a high-tailin’ deer, or how to boil down salt, or what to do when a b’ar disputes the right of way, or how to find yourself when you’re lost as a lunatic in the woods. That’s the onliest kind of learnin’ we got use for in Kentucky right now.”
Stephanie glanced up at him. He was a big man, and now that the green meadow of Kentucky lay before him and the long stretch of the Appalachian Mountains walled him off from the North Carolina tax collector, he stood as tall and as proud as any king. In the bosom of his worn old red linsey shirt was the warrant for his Kentucky land, and from his belt and across his shoulders were slung the weapons and the implements that made him master of the wilderness—his bullet bag, his ax, his hunting knife in a leather sheath, his powder horn protected by a patch of deerskin, and his long rifle. His old coonskin cap which he wore when he left the Back Country was now folded underneath his belt, and as he stood bareheaded in the sun, he put Stephanie in mind of the stem, Abraham-like mountains through which they had come, his graying hair and his weathered face with its sharp nose jutting above his odd assortment of garments and weapons like lichen-covered rock above the tree line.
“How old were you, Pappy, when you ran away from home?” Stephanie asked.
“Ten,” he said.
“Just the age of Rob,” Stephanie mused. “What made you run away?”
“My pappy and mammy died,” he said. “I didn’t like the folks that took me in. They lived in Maryland. I sneaked out one night when hit was rainin’ an’ started runnin’, an’ I never stopped till I got to North Caroliny. I been on my own ever since.”
For a minute he stood looking out over the valley.
“I’ll never forget my first job,” he added, “diggin’ ’taters for your Grandpappy Linney. He was a Quaker, an’ he lived in a Quaker settlement on the banks of the Tar. I recollect how your mammy looked the first time I set eyes on her, too. She wasn’t any bigger’n a minute, an’ she was the spit an’ image of you. Eyes exactly the color of yourn.”
Color tinged Jonathan’s leathery face, as if he were plagued at having said so much.
“Why are you askin’ sech questions?” he wanted to know.
“Just because,” smiled Stephanie. She looked at him closely, thinking how well he knew the way to tame the wild country that lay before them. Such knowledge wasn’t printed in books, she told herself. It wasn’t knowledge the Linneys possessed, or the de Monchards. But a body had to have it, and no mistake, if he meant to come to terms with the wilderness.
“The woods were your Uncle Lucien, weren’t they, Pappy?” she asked.
“Humph!” snorted Jonathan. “Whatever put that fancy question in your head?”
“Oh, nothin’ much,” she said, smiling up at him.
Bertha came in sight through the trees.
“Hurry up, ever’body!” shouted Jonathan. “Noel, hurry!”
At last they stood together on the ledge, Job and Brownie alongside them, the sheep foraging and the pigs rooting around them.
“Out yonder,” Jonathan announced, proud as a peacock strutting its showy tail fanwise. “Off in that direction,” he said, pointing northwest. “Little bit further than you can see, mebbe. ’Bout as far as that last line of blue hills that look like a blue cloud restin’ flat on the ground. Right in there’ll be Harrod’s Fort.”
The Venables stared greedily, shading their eyes from the late sun in an effort to pierce the far, faint blue line.
“I see it!” cried Rob, pointing a finger in the direction of the hills.
“Whereabouts?” asked Noel, crowding against him.
Stephanie followed with her eyes the line Rob described, but in all the wide, green valley she could see no fort.
“Look!” cried Rob, now pointing his finger toward the west. “Look, Pappy! What’s that? Buffalo?”
“Jist a laurel patch, I reckon,” said Jonathan. It pleasured him mightily that he could name with certainty sights his family had never seen. “If we’d ’a’ come out a little north of here, Rob,” he said, “close to one of them thar big licks, you’d see buffalo. Thousands of ’em. If ever’body stirs their stumps right smart now,” he added, “we ought to make Harrod’s Fort in a matter of two days. Three at most.”
Once more they moved forward, new life swelling up within them, causing them to forget their weariness. By a round-about way they descended the hill and cut out across the valley, marching through woods and thicket and meadow, laurel grove and hazel patch, all their senses alert, their eyes trained on the farthest line of low hills.
Toward evening, on the third day, Stephanie, traipsing at Jonathan’s heels, stopped suddenly.
“Listen!” she said. “What’s that, Pappy?”
“Sounds like choppin’ to me,” said Jonathan. “Don’t hit to you? Somebody buildin’ hisself a cabin, I reckon. Hit means we’re a-gettin’ close to the Fort.”
Farther on she stopped again. “What’s that?” she asked.
Jonathan laughed.
“Looks like you forgot all you ever knowed, Steffy,” he teased. “Or else you don’t rightly believe we’re about to our journey’s end. That’s a man a-plowin’ new ground, an’ his ox ain’t a bit different from a Caroliny ox. They all want a lot of geein’ an’ hawin’ an’ proddin’ with a pole to keep ’em movin’.”
As the sun was slipping behind the rim of the valley, the Venables came out of the woods into a clearing,
and saw Harrod’s Fort looming before them. Like a great log box it hulked, with three blockhouses guarding it, and all about the square a stout oaken stockade reared high in the air, the earth rammed hard against the roots of it. It shamed everything the Back Country could brag about, thought Stephanie. Not in all of Hillsborough, where her pappy had once taken her on horse-swapping day, was there anything so eternal great big as Harrod’s Fort.
Like a horse on the home stretch, Jonathan hurried across the clearing, Stephanie at his heels, still clutching the black kettle, now only half full of salt, seeing everything, hearing everything, staring in astonishment at the many men who came and went outside the high stockade, or stood about in knots, talking together.
Not even in Hillsborough, nor at the Presbyterian camp meeting had she seen so many men at one time. Most of them, she noticed, wore buckskin clothes like Jonathan’s and Noel’s, with tight leggings that weren’t always getting caught in the briers, and roomy shirts in the loose bosom of which could be carried all sorts of things a body might need in the woods—parched corn and jerk, tow for cleaning a rifle barrel, and a pouch for money, if a body had money, and valuable papers, if a body had valuable papers, as Jonathan had.
But there were men in other clothes, too—outlandish clothes that belonged in the Tidewater, and in faraway cities to the north. There were men wearing tight breeches with buckles at the knee in which shone paste jewels, low leather shoes fastened with square buckles, long silk stockings, waistcoats of velvet, cravats tied at the throat in a large flowing bow, and low-crowned, broad-brimmed beaver hats. One man wore an officer’s hat, the brim turned up sharply at front and decorated with a silk cockade of black and white. His hair was powdered with flour and tallow, and cued to a fare-you-well.
“Pappy,” whispered Stephanie, “is that the governor of Virginny?”
“Governor Tom Jefferson?” laughed Jonathan. “You’d know him, Steffy, by his red hair, they say.” Jonathan talked low in his throat. “Ain’t none of them fellers a governor,” he said. “They’re speculators, most likely, that the governor has to watch. Slick, land-hungry scoundrels, a lot of ’em are, apt as not. Agents, mebbe, for big companies of rich men all along the Atlantic. The fancier a man’s rigged out, the fancier a landgrabbin’ scoundrel he is, way I figger hit.”
A buckskinned man, spying them, hurried to meet them.
“Howdy, Strangers!” he boomed, his voice ringing with welcome.
“Howdy!” said Jonathan.
“Back Country folks, I’ll be bound!” said the man. “Jist a-gettin’ in, I’ll be bound! Ain’t you?”
“Jist a-gettin’ in,” replied Jonathan. “Reckon my folks can put up here in the Fort for the night?”
By that time the Venables were faced with a dozen curious onlookers.
“Fort’s mighty crowded,” spoke up one man. “Land-crazy families been a-comin’ in here from ever’ which direction for a month now. Reckon they can always scrouge one more in, though.”
“Huntin” land?” asked the first man.
“Got my land,” Jonathan told him.
“Got a warrant?” asked the man.
“Got a warrant,” said Jonathan. “Thought mebbe I’d find the surveyor somewhars about.”
“He’s in that thar blockhouse, him an’ the deputy,” spoke up another man. “Goin’ to knock off for supper soon. Have to hurry if you want to do business before dark.”
Upon that advice, the Venables moved toward the heavy gates of the stockade which stood open inward, the buckskinned crowd, rimmed with men in outlandish dress, traipsing after. Close to Jonathan walked Stephanie, staring at the strange faces, sniffing the rich smell of venison broiling over an open fire in the square, hearing from within the stockade scraps of homey sounds that gathered a tired, homesick body in and made it feel at home—sounds of womenfolks talking together, of the chopping of wood for a fire, of the deep bawling of cows waiting to be milked, of the keyed-up bawling of young calves wanting their supper, of the shouts of little tykes playing whoopy hide, of mothers scolding and calling to their young uns to come and get their vittles.
Through the heavy gates they went, toward the nearest blockhouse, Stephanie trying to attend to everything at once—seeing that Job followed after them through the gates, that Rob got the sheep in, that Brownie and the pigs were not left behind, and that she was not separated from her pappy by the crowd of curious men who were bound and determined to hear what the surveyor had to say to Jonathan. Noel’s dulcimer, she noticed, created no stir at all. Harrod’s Fort, she decided, had seen outlandish things before.
Inside the blockhouse Stephanie found herself scrouged beside her pappy when he stood before the long puncheon table at which two men were seated. A ledger lay open on the table in front of them, and in it one of the men wrote with a gray goose quill dipped in a purplish pokeberry ink smelling of alum and vinegar.
“Howdy!” said the man nearest the door.
“Howdy!” replied Jonathan. “You the surveyor?”
“That’s right,” said the man. “May’s my name. And Jim Douglas here,” he nodded toward the man who wrote in the ledger, “he’s my deputy. Got a claim?”
“Yessiree,” answered Jonathan proudly, reaching inside the bosom of his shirt and bringing out the warrant, now soiled with much handling and journeying.
“Name’s Jonathan Venable?” asked the surveyor, opening up the warrant.
“Jonathan Venable,” said Jonathan.
The surveyor squinted to see the words in the dim light of the blockhouse. He read aloud:
“Jonathan Venable this day appeared and claimed a preemption of four hundred acres of land, he being a settler in this country, who made corn in the year 1778, as appears by testimony, lying on the waters of Salt River, at a spring with the J. V. cut on each tree. The court are of the opinion that the said Venable has a right to the preemption of four hundred acres of land according to law, and that a certificate issue for same. Signed,
William Fleming, Chief Justice,
James Barbour,
Edmund Lyne,
Stephan Trigg.”
“Got some other claims out Salt River way,” announced the deputy, laying down his goose quill. “I’ll be startin’ about sunup tomorrow. Might as well survey yourn first. Reckon you’re anxious to get a corn patch planted right away,” he added, “Winter’s been so hard through here, folks is starvin’ to death.”
“This all the help you got to clear your land, Venable?” the surveyor asked, smiling at Stephanie.
Jonathan looked down at her and smiled, too.
“Jist part of the help,” he said. “The best part, I reckon.”
3. Black Kentucky Land
The Venables slept in the Fort that night, stretched out close together on the ground. All about them slept other families who, likewise, had come to raise cabins and make clearings on corn-patch or tomahawk claims. A passel of them from the Carolinas—from the Catawba, the Yadkin, and the Haw in the Back Country, and from the Neuse and Drowning Creek and the Little Pee Dee farther east—had followed the same trail the Venables followed, had scaled the same mountains, crossed the same waters, filed through the same gaps and notches. To Stephanie they were almost kinfolks.
The greater number of the families, however, had come into Kentucky from another direction. Starting from Massachusetts and New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, they had drifted down the Ohio from Fort Pitt to Corn Island in big, clumsy arks which they abandoned when the perilous voyage was done. Others had come from Virginia, across mountains and through gaps of their own.
Stretched out on the ground, too, slept the solitary menfolks—the speculators and the agents, the hunters and the trappers, and those who had come merely to see for themselves this wonder of Kentucky which was the talk at supper tables and around open firesides from one end of the Atlantic seaboard to the other.
Dark had scarcely settled on the Fort when Stephanie snuggled down under an old blanket be
side Cassie and fought sleep for a pinch of a minute. All about her she heard the talk of menfolks and womenfolks, and though she paid little attention to the words that were said, she rested herself in the gentle sound. In a corner of the stockade cows tethered near the spring bawled, horses bit one another, and dogs barked. Lightning bugs flickered about the Fort, and in the row of cabins along one wall of the stockade, the light from sputtering candles glowed softly through the open doorways, and through the windowpanes of heavy paper slick with bear’s grease.
Turning on her back, and stretching her aching legs, Stephanie gazed for a spell into the wide sky, now sprinkled with stars that burned like signal fires over them, felt for the apple seed in the deerskin pouch still tied about her waist, and fell asleep.
At the first glimmering of morning light, Bertha Venable shook the Venable young uns from their sleep and set them at their tasks. Stephanie she sent to milk the cow, Rob to round up the sheep, and Noel to bring up Job for reloading. Cassie, too, had to get up and let Bertha fold the blanket under which she had slept. Then Bertha put Willie to minding the little tyke and keeping her out of other folks’ business while she broiled slices of venison for which she had exchanged a spoonful of salt.
Piggin in hand, Stephanie went across the square looking for Brownie, stopping on the way to peep through the doorway of the schoolhouse that stood inside the Fort. It did beat all, she thought to herself, how her pappy hadn’t told them half the wonders of Kentucky. Not once had he squeaked about a schoolhouse.
At the spring she found Rob separating the Venable sheep from those belonging to other families.
“Jeeminy, criminy, Steffy!” he called out when he saw her, his voice a mixture of awe and caution. “Did you ever think you’d see such an eternal big thing in the wilderness as this here Fort? Just look at them blockhouses! Couldn’t an Indian get within a mile of this place, I bet!”
Stephanie turned and studied the big, stalwart blockhouses which lorded it over the square.
“Supposin’ Indians did?” she said.
Tree of Freedom Page 3