“I’ve got news for you, Venable,” said Frohawk, As he spoke, he stuck his thumbs in his satin waistcoat pockets in such a way that a pearl-handled pistol came to light. “News you’ll do mighty well to hear without stirring up any more trouble for yourself than you’re already in.”
“Spit hit out quick then,” ordered Jonathan. Then he added, “This is the first time I knowed I was in any trouble.”
“I’d say you’re in plenty of trouble, noting all these improvements you’re making about here, Venable,” Frohawk said. “Happens that this land doesn’t belong to you. Happens that this land belongs to a certain gentleman in the West Indies. Name of Garret Bedinger. Ever hear of him?”
“No more’n I ever heard of you,” spat out Jonathan.
Noel shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and swallowed hard.
“Tell him to let you see his deed, Pappy,” he said.
“Yeah, whar’s your deed?” asked Jonathan. “Whar’s your proof that anybody by the name of Bedinger ’way off at the end of nowhar has got any proper claim to this land? Let’s see your proof.”
Casually, Frohawk reached inside his big waistcoat pocket and took from it a silk wallet embroidered with threads of gold and silver. Out of the wallet he took a tattered piece of parchment, yellowed with age and much traveling about, and opened it up.
“Don’t reckon anybody here can read,” he said, “so I’ll read it for you.
“By the King’s Most Excellent Majesty and the Right Honorable the Lords of His Majesty’s Privy Council:
“Whereas, Garret Bedinger, agent for His Majesty’s Colony of Virginia, does, by his petition this day read at the Board, humbly represent, that he being employed and instructed by the Government of that Country, petitions His Majesty for a confirmation of his privileges and properties under the great Seal of England; now,
“Therefore, upon full debate of the whole matter, it is ordered by His Majesty in Council, believing it to be for His Majesty’s service that His loyal subjects should be settled on the aforementioned properties as speedily as may be, and anxious to repay such subjects generously for favors received, that the Right Honorable the Lord Chancellor do cause the said grant of 50,000 acres of transmontane lands lying in the neighborhood south of the Falls of the River Ohio, and westwardly to the Salt River, forthwith to pass under the great Seal of England accordingly.
“Signed, Philip Loyd.
“Fifty thousand acres,” said Frohawk, hardly catching his breath after reading the parchment, “lying immediately south of the Falls, takes in this here little neckerchief claim of yours, Venable.”
Stephanie glanced anxiously at her pappy. It didn’t seem any more likely that he would have anything to say to these words inked in fine handwriting on a piece of parchment than he would have to say to the voice of God if it should speak to him out of thunder, or an earthquake, or a brightly burning bush.
Again Noel shifted his weight, and swallowed.
“Ask him, Pappy, has that paper got a date on it,” he said.
“Yeah,” echoed Jonathan, finding his tongue. “Has that paper got a date on hit?”
Adam Frohawk glanced at the parchment. “‘April 19, 1762. At a Court at Whitehall,’” he read.
“For once in my life I’d give my right hand, I reckon, if I could read writin’,” sputtered Jonathan. “Then I’d know how much you’re lyin’. Here,” he added, suddenly pushing Noel forward, though it was as plain as day he grudged doing it, “let this young un see that paper.”
“Certainly,” agreed Frohawk. He smoothed out the parchment and held it close enough for Noel to read, but he was mighty particular to hold it out of his reach.
“‘By the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, and the Right Honorable the Lords of His Majesty’s Privy Council,’” read Noel.
Noel’s voice in the stillness of the clearing was toned like a bell, and every word he read seemed to Stephanie to toll a death, as Bertha said the church bells of Charleston tolled when a body died. In this case, it was the death of this pleasant place overlooking a river where a cabin with a fine puncheon floor and a chimney of river rock was about to be raised, where a Tree of Freedom had been planted, and corn would soon be rustling in the hot summer winds. It was a tolling bell calling them to pack up their pots and pans, their flax hackles and Betty lamps, to load their creels on Job’s back, to round up the cow, the sheep, and the pigs, and be on their way again.
“I only wanted to save you trouble, Venable,” said Frohawk, as he folded the parchment when Noel finished reading.
“Whar’s your pre-emption papers from the Land Commissioners?” asked Jonathan. “Whar’s your surveyor’s warrant?”
“Bedinger had the land surveyed years ago,” Frohawk told him. “And pre-emption papers aren’t necessary. Can’t His Majesty grant such lands as he wishes to such subjects as he chooses?”
“Not this land,” Noel shot at him. “Virginny does the grantin’ in these parts now.”
“All right. So Virginia does the granting in these parts,” said Frohawk. “This deed’s dated prior to October 26, 1763, and according to her own law, Virginia’s bound to honor it. The Virginia Land Law says so expressly. It says that any person who has paid money into the public treasury under the regal government is entitled to receive vacant land. This upstart Virginia legislature took pains for good reasons to safeguard holders of old treasury rights. Too many Virginia bigwigs claiming Kentucky lands under such rights granted prior to October, 1763, to ignore that little matter.”
“Whar’s your proof this here Bedinger paid any money into the public treasury?” asked Jonathan, ignoring Frohawk’s slurs. “Whar’s your receipt showin’ that?”
Frohawk opened up the parchment again, and read like a slow rain that sinks into the ground as it falls, “‘… and anxious to repay such subjects generously for favors received.’”
“Favors mought be money paid into the treasury, same as us honest, hard workin’ folks pay,” said Jonathan, “an’ again, they moughtn’t. They mought be spyin’, or squeezin’ taxes out of farmers, or stirrin’ up the red men against us settlers. Any one of ’em, I calculate, ’d be a favor to His Majesty right now.”
“That’s quibbling, Venable,” barked Frohawk, flatly.
Stephanie noticed Noel clenching his fists.
“You wait till Virginny gets her throat out of the stranglehold of His Majesty!” he blurted out, his gray eyes burning in his slim face. “Then let this Bedinger try to claim land he’s done favors for! That’s what Virginny’s fightin’ this war for now.”
“Well! Well!” scoffed Frohawk. “One of the liberty boys!”
He turned back to Jonathan.
“You can move off now, Venable,” he said, “and spend your energy on some other clearing you can hold on to, or you can go ahead here and lose everything you put into this patch of land. I take it you know the Land Law entirely. It provides, you know, that a court be held in December of this year when all contesting claims may be heard. Stay here, if you like, till then. Make as many improvements as you can. The more you make, the better it will be for Bedinger. But, if I were you, Venable, I wouldn’t try to buck the law. It doesn’t pay. Or,” he added, looking straight at Noel, as he put the parchment back into his wallet, “His Majesty the King. Good morning, gentlemen. I’ll see you again.”
He turned on his polished heel and, like a raucous-voiced bird in fine sweeping plumage, he strutted across the clearing and disappeared into the woods in the direction of Harrod’s Fort.
The Venables stared, first after Frohawk, then solemnly at one another. Jonathan slumped down on a stump and looked listlessly ahead of him, his shoulders wilting like an empty meal sack when folks are facing starvation.
Suddenly, however, he sat bolt upright, his eyes on the woods in the direction of the spring.
Quickly the other Venables turned about to follow his gaze, and stared awestruck as up the hill came Lonesome Tilly. A few steps he p
added at a time, his scraggly white hair covering his stooped shoulders, his heifer-like eyes brimming with shy trust as he studied the curious faces before him. In his cupped hands he held a crude basket made of popple leaves pinned together with thorns.
Bertha Venable, after the first shock of seeing such a critter, took a step forward to meet him.
“You’re Tilly Balance, ain’t you, comin’ to see folks?” she said.
It was a caution, thought Stephanie, how her mammy could smooth out a path for a stumbling body.
Shyly, Lonesome Tilly padded up to Bertha and held out to her the basket in which lay, heaped up and spilling over, sweet, red, wild strawberries.
“’Pon my word!” said Bertha, taking the basket from his outstretched hands. “And just when a body’s starvin’ for berries and such like! Here, Tilly,” she motioned to a stump, “you sit right down here till we get dinner ready. It’s ’way past dinner time, I reckon,” she said, looking up at the sun which was already past the zenith, “but we got busy doin’ other things.”
Lonesome Tilly made no move to sit on the stump and wait for his dinner, however. He made no sign that he had understood a word Bertha had said to him. Instead, with a single grateful flash of his eyes toward Bertha, a look of recollection toward Stephanie, and a yearning in his face as he gazed a second at Willie, he slipped away among the trees as slick as a lizard.
“Well, consarn!” muttered Jonathan, ogling the spot where the old man had been standing so short a minute before. “If that don’t beat the Tories! ‘Quare old buzzard’ is right!”
Bertha busied herself passing the basket of berries around for all to help themselves, and bit into the richly red, sweet-smelling meat of one herself.
“Quare or not, a good neighbor, I’d say,” she pronounced. “A mighty good neighbor. I’ve known lots worse.”
“Did he put a hex on these berries, Mammy?” whimpered Willie, his mouth watering for a taste of them while fear kept him from reaching for one.
“Put a hex on ’em?” said Bertha. “Whatever put a notion like that in your head, child? Nobody can hex berries, honey.”
She stood looking down tenderly at Willie, sensing he was not fully satisfied. “And can’t anybody hex you but yourself,” she added.
“Why don’t he talk?” asked Willie.
“Maybe he was born that way,” explained Bertha. “Or maybe it’s a vow he took when somethin’ or other happened to him away out yonder where he come from. Or maybe it’s a sickness come over him out here in the wilderness by his lonesome with nobody to brew herbs for him, and gather slippery elm bark and lin bark and snake root to make him tea. It could have been a sickness that went to his head. Chances are, we’ll never know. And I reckon we don’t need to ask. We’ll just take Lonesome Tilly as he comes.”
“Will he come back?” asked Willie fearfully.
“I shouldn’t be a bit surprised,” said Bertha. “Now, stop frettin’, and eat some berries.”
She turned to Stephanie. “Whatever could you have been doin’, Steffy, all the time I thought you were startin’ dinner?” she scolded.
“I—I got busy, too, doin’ other things,” Stephanie explained. “But I’ll have the pigeons broilin’ before you can say ‘Wire brier,’ Mammy. See if I don’t. Here, Willie!” she called. “Where are the chips I told you to gather?”
7. Bad News from the Back Country
“I mought ’a’ known somethin’ like this’d happen,” grumbled Jonathan as he finished his dinner of pigeon breast and strawberries. “Ever’ day I been atellin’ myself things were workin’ out too fancy to be real. Now, ’long comes this feller Frohawk to tell me I’m right.”
Bertha busied herself about the fire for a minute. “Nothin’s happened, Jonathan,” she said.
The clear, upstanding way she talked was almost enough to persuade a body to believe her.
“Nothin’s happened, Jonathan. Just a little matter to prove you needn’t go lookin’ for trouble because it’ll always find you. Run along, now, young uns. Noel, you and Rob get back to your choppin’. We’ve wasted a sight of time.”
“But I couldn’t for the life of me see how trouble such as this could find a feller ’way off out here in the wilderness mindin’ his business,” said Jonathan, taking little stock in Bertha’s chipper dismissal of Frohawk’s claims.
“Pappy,” Noel spoke up quietly, “is what this man says about old royal claims such as Bedinger’s right? Under the Virginny Land Law, I mean?”
“I don’t know,” said Jonathan. “I jist don’t know. I jist took hit for granted that if a man had corn roots in the ground, an’ a roof over his head, an’ paid hard money for his land like the government said, that settled things. Didn’t my own pre-emption papers set great store by the corn patch I planted back in seventy-eight?”
He shrugged his slumped shoulders and got to his feet.
“Nosiree,” he said, “I never looked for trouble like this. Reckon we mought as well lay off work till I can go into the Fort an’ get things straight at the Land Office. Reckon maybe the surveyor can tell me what the law is. Or the deputy. He knows ever’thing.”
“If the law gives you till December, Jonathan,” said Bertha quietly, “I’d let the Land Office be, and finish this cabin.”
“But what if that scoundrel—” began Jonathan.
“A lot can happen before December,” Bertha told him. “The more improvements you have to do the talkin’ for you in court, the less you’ll have to use your tongue, and the likelier you are to win. A good cabin, and taters holed away in the tater hole, and shucky beans dryin’ on the chimney, and corn for the hominy block—to my way of reasonin’, no court’s goin’ to render a decision against such as these in favor of somebody that’s never laid eyes on the land tryin’ to hog such an eternal great big slice of Kentucky County. Honest work argues too loud. And besides, Jonathan,” she added, “you can’t buy up another claim. Your money’s all gone.”
“For all your reasonin’, Berthy,” Jonathan said, “justice ain’t always on the side of common sense. An’ that Land Office’ll pay my money back or I’ll know the reason why, if the court declares my claim ain’t legal,” he stormed. “They can take hit out of Bedinger’s hide. Or Frohawk’s.”
“There’s no use wastin’ time in threats,” Bertha reminded him. “Nor in talk. Nor in restin’ ourselves. It’s time to work, Jonathan. What work we do now’ll talk mighty fine for us in December. Nothin’s goin’ to be decided, recollect, before December?”
It rubbed Jonathan against the grain to take Bertha’s advice, but he went back to work. He had enough trees down, he reckoned, to build the walls of the cabin head high. As soon as he and Noel hacked out a path, he could wrap the log chain about the logs, hitch Job to them and snake them up to the clearing. It wouldn’t take any time to skid them into place in the wall, he said. They were already stripped and notched. And when he got the walls raised and a makeshift roof on, he was quitting, he announced.
But if Bertha wanted a fine cabin before, she wanted an extra fine one now as if, once finished, it could stand up like quality folks and talk right back to Garret Bedinger and his agent Frohawk.
“Berthy, there ain’t a lick of sense in havin’ things so Frenchy, facin’ what we face,” complained Jonathan.
But Bertha had her way. The days, as they passed by, saw Noel smoothing floor puncheons with his broad ax and shaving them as smooth as a looking glass with his drawing knife so that barefoot young uns need not snag their feet on splinters; saw Jonathan make a trap door for the potato hole under the floor; saw him hew out a window and make a heavy wooden shutter, all to a grumbling tune. To a tune of louder grumbling they saw him build scaffolding for a bed in a corner of the cabin, and scaffolding for a table near the fireplace; saw Willie putting wooden handles on shells picked up along the river and whittling tines in sassafras wood so that the Venables might eat their vittles properly with spoons and forks; saw Jonathan and Rob and Noel
roofing the cabin with the finest heart shakes of rived oak. They saw, too, sharp green quills of corn piercing the black loam in the clearing; saw beans unfurling their leaves like a Crusader’s banner; saw the seed of the Tree of Freedom put forth a slender whip bearing downy, grayish-green leaves.
“I reckon, since we got ever’thing else finished to a Louis’ taste, we mought as well build that fine rock chimney now,” said Jonathan on the morning after the roof was pinned down with logs. “Noel, you an’ Rob begin carryin’ up the rocks from the river. Willie, you run help. Willie!” he shouted. “Wharabouts are you?”
At the sound of his voice, Willie came ripping from the woods on the east fringe of the clearing.
“Somebody’s comin’, Pappy,” he blurted out. “From the Fort.”
“Frohawk?” Stephanie asked him, trying to read the answer in his big, dancing eyes. “Is it Frohawk, Willie?”
“It’s a man and a woman,” panted Willie. “And some young uns. Leadin’ a horse and drivin’ a cow. Just like us.”
The Venables didn’t wait to hear more. They hurried around the corner of the cabin to see for themselves.
Through the trees from the direction of the Fort came, as Willie had claimed, a man, and a woman, and two small boys, the larger the size of Willie. The woman carried a sleeping baby in her arms, the man led a laden horse, and carried a rifle on his shoulder, while the larger of the boys drove a bony, brindled cow with a leaftipped switch.
Jonathan, followed by Bertha, hurried across the clearing to welcome them.
“Well, howdy, strangers!” said Jonathan.
“Howdy!” said the man.
The woman’s face was a sight to see, one minute dark with wilderness worries, the next lighted up with relief till it looked as if she might be going to cry.
“You’re Jonathan Venable, ain’t you?” asked the man. “They told me at Harrod’s Fort I’d find your place hereabouts. My name’s Jason Pigot. My woman here, her name’s Priscilla. Prissie, we call her.”
Tree of Freedom Page 8