“Reckon you could make out with the shirt you’ve got a while longer?” Bertha asked. “Or wear Rob’s patched up old un when I make him a new un? If you could, I could make a shirt for a friend of yours.”
“Who?” asked Willie.
“Your special friend who’s always bringin’ you things—berries and coons and such like,” said Bertha.
“Lonesome Tilly? You mean Lonesome Tilly? Does he wear a shirt?”
“Do you think he grows fur on his hide, like a varmint?” asked Noel.
“Mammy,” said Cassie, draining her noggin, “can I have some more milk?”
“Not till Steffy milks tonight, honey,” Bertha told her, looking anxiously at her white face. “Looks like Brownie didn’t give down her milk this mornin’ like she ought.”
Rob turned wide eyes on Bertha.
“Where is Brownie?” he asked. “I haven’t seen her since we started the shearin’.”
“I haven’t seen her since I milked her this mornin’,” said Stephanie, her eyes suddenly serious.
“She’s down in the cane, mebbe,” said Bertha, trying to cover her anxiety with casual words. “Noel, you’d better run look.”
Stephanie followed Noel down the path to the river, both of them looking in every direction for some sign of the straying cow. But nowhere could they find hoof prints, nor trampled cane, nor signs of foraging among cane or leaves.
“What do you reckon’s happened?” Stephanie asked, her voice awed. It would have been what a body might expect if one of the pigs had strayed away in the woods and didn’t come back. It was going to be a miracle if the pigs made out till hog-killing weather. All the Venables knew that. They had come to believe it with such certainty that they no longer whetted their appetites for backbone stewed in the big black kettle and covered with dumplings, for kidneys split lengthwise and broiled on a stick over the fire, and for thick slices of ham fried in the skillet.
But Brownie was a different matter. With her milk and her butter, she was to be their mainstay in the winter ahead.
“Noel,” said Bertha, when he and Stephanie came up from the canebrake, “I was countin’ on you workin’ on my spinnin’ wheel this evenin’, but I reckon you’ll have to lay off and hunt the cow. You’d better go with Noel, Steffy,” she added. “And hurry, young uns.”
As soon as Noel brought his rifle from the cabin, they set out in a northerly direction through the woods, where Rob had last seen the cow.
“Reckon we’d better hug the river,” said Noel. “That way we can hunt through the cane and the woods at the same time.”
Through the May apple bed where Lonesome Tilly had first been seen, they made their way. The hollow tree was now deserted, but the May apples, Stephanie noticed when she stooped and turned back some of the big green umbrellas, were beginning to turn faintly yellow. Farther on they found blackish sarvice berries clustering in a tree full of witches’ brooms, and on the edge of an open, grassy spot a mulberry tree bearing little green August berries as hard as flint, and July berries as pink as a sunrise, and June berries as dark as a king’s rich, royal purple.
When they had eaten their fill of the sweet purple berries, Noel studied once more the endless, still cane-brake.
“Looks like we might as well leave the river,” he said. “She couldn’t have got into the cane without breakin’ it down some place. Or at least, leavin’ tracks.”
After that, they kept to higher ground, going farther from the stream, and deeper into the woods. Every few paces they stopped and waited, searching in all directions, and naming to each other the sounds they heard. Squirrels scampered and scolded overhead and chattering blue jays flashed their wings among the green leaves. Overhead, out of sight beyond the bushy tree crowns, crows cawed, and now and then a chipmunk scampered among the fallen leaves, or a grayish-green lizard slithered up the butt of a tree. But nowhere was there a sign of a straying cow.
“Hadn’t we better turn back?” Stephanie asked at last, noticing how slanting were the sun’s rays that broke now and then through the trees.
Noel stood a minute, considering.
“She’ll be farther away by mornin’ than she is now, I reckon,” he said. “We’ll go a hill and a holler farther.”
Again they trudged ahead, silently, across a small ravine, as fronds of maidenhair fern whipped softly against their ankles.
They stopped on the brow of a hill. Noel lifted his rifle from his shoulder and let the long barrel slide through his fingers till the butt rested on the ground. He stood motionless, his eyes peering through the woods. Stephanie stood beside him, her face warm and flushed.
“We’d better go back now, Noel,” she whispered. “Before dark overtakes us.”
Noel, however, made no move to go. He continued to stand and listen, sorting out the woodsy sounds all about them, the occasional scurry of padded feet, the questioning chirp of birds, the faint movement of leaves in the still afternoon.
Suddenly Stephanie touched his arm.
“Listen!” she whispered.
“I don’t hear anything,” Noel told her after a minute.
Stephanie cocked her head toward the river.
“Pipin’!” she said. “Somebody pipin’ a tune on a reed. And look!”
She gripped Noel’s arm tightly as she pointed into the woods ahead of them. Her face was blanched with fear.
“Somethin’ moved down there in that lin tree,” she whispered.
Noel tensed. Raising his rifle, he stood ready to fire.
“It jerked like somethin’ jumped in it,” Stephanie whispered. “Or out of it. Reckon it was a bear?”
Noel studied the tree, his fingers on the trigger of his rifle.
“Bears don’t show any likin’ for lin trees, I reckon,” he said.
As they watched, the branches on the farther side of the lin tree bent a little, dipped low, then swung free again.
“It’s just a deer,” whispered Noel. “Didn’t you see an ear a-twitchin’? I might shoot it and skin it, and we could carry home some of it. Mammy’d like a mess of venison, I reckon. And I could make us some moccasins out of the hide.”
He took aim with his rifle and squinted down the long barrel.
“Don’t shoot, Noel!” begged Stephanie.
There was no telling what the loud noise of a rifle might scare up in the woods, she told herself.
“Let’s keep a-watchin’,” she begged, “till we’re sure.”
As they watched, the branches bent again, dipped, and swung free, and again Noel aimed at the spot where a furry ear twitched.
With a panicky feeling tearing at her, Stephanie watched him, dreading the sound of the rifle. What had got the matter with her, she wondered. Had the stillness and the dimness of the woods demented her that she couldn’t bear to hear a rifle shot when it meant thick broiled venison for supper, and a pair of new moccasins to wear whenever she went to the Fort?
Noel lifted his fingers from the trigger and spat on them.
A low, familiar “Moo-oo-oo!” greeted him, and through the branches of the lin tree, Brownie thrust her long, brindled head.
“Consarn!” muttered Noel. “What if I’d shot her?”
The thought of such a disaster sent a shiver down his back.
“How did that critter ever get way over here at the end of nowhere ’thout leavin’ any trace?” he wanted to know as he shouldered his rifle.
“She must have gone through the woods another direction,” Stephanie told him.
“Well, why did she have to traipse over here when there are plenty of lin trees close home?” Noel demanded. “She’s got itchy feet, I reckon. Come on, Brownie!” he called, holding out his hand as he walked down the hill toward her. “Sooky! Sook! Sook!”
He had almost reached the cow when Stephanie called him.
“Listen, now, Noel!” she said, softly. “Down by the river. Don’t you hear it?”
Faintly through the trees came the sound. On a willow reed
somebody was piping a shrill tune, though to be sure it seemed to Stephanie to be no such tune as Noel sang to accompany the ballads he played on the dulcimer, or the songs sung at the Presbyterian camp meeting. The notes seemed to wander up and down, going high or going low, as fancy struck them, like some playful woodsy critter feeling good in the sun.
Noel climbed the hill again and stood beside Stephanie. They listened a minute longer to the aimless fluting that spattered the woods with clear, sweet sound.
“Let’s go and find it,” suggested Noel.
“Oh, but it might be red men,” Stephanie told him.
“Red men don’t pipe like that,” said Noel. “Red men don’t pipe at all. Listen! That music ain’t got killin’ on its mind. Can’t you tell?”
He started slowly in the direction of the music. Stephanie followed him skittishly.
“What’ll we do with Brownie?” she asked.
“She won’t stray now,” said Noel. “Anyway, we won’t go far. And we’ll come right back and get her.”
Stealthily they made their way along the slope, stopping every few paces to listen as the piping grew clearer. Following the sound put Stephanie in mind of Back Country tales she had heard of young uns being lured into danger by listening to mortal sweet music. She wanted to turn back, but Noel was for going on. It was a caution, she thought, how Noel took no stock in witches and ghosts and ha’nts, in lights gleaming on water, and roosters crowing at the front door, and death bells ringing.
On they went, one stealthy step after another, and closer and closer grew the fluting.
Suddenly Noel stopped. As quietly as a stalking red man, he parted the underbrush and motioned Stephanie to peep through. So close to them that they were almost on the banks of it, a little flag-fringed branch rippled down toward the river, and in its elbow rested an open place, green with grass and gold with evening sun. On the edge of it, with his bare legs crossed under him, sat Lonesome Tilly, playing on a willow reed. A blue dragonfly with gauzy outspread wings fluttered about his knee, dipping and rising, dipping and rising and dipping. But whether the dragonfly was dancing to Tilly’s piping, or Tilly was piping to the dragonfly’s dancing, a body couldn’t tell.
“I wish I could see what that old man’s a-thinkin’,” Noel whispered.
A dead twig snapped underneath Stephanie’s foot, and quick as thought, Noel let go of the underbrush so that the limbs sprang back and hid them.
But the noise put an end to the piping. After staring for a minute at the bushes, Lonesome Tilly got up, slipped his pipe underneath a wide whang tied about his waist, and disappeared behind the bearskin that served as a door to his tiny cabin built against the side of a hill.
“Shucks!” muttered Noel. “He’s awful easy scared. Let’s go see him.”
But Stephanie pulled at Noel’s arm. “We got nothin’ to take him,” she said. “Not even mulberries. And we hadn’t ought to go without somethin’ because he always brings somethin’ to us. ’Twouldn’t be like neighbors to go empty-handed.”
Noel took a last look through the bushes, but Lonesome Tilly did not come again from behind the bearskin.
“Leastways,” said Noel, “we know now where he lives. We can come back some time and bring him somethin’. Maybe the shirt Mammy’s a-goin’ to make for him.”
It was owl light and supper was ready when finally they reached their own clearing, driving Brownie before them. They had hardly finished telling Bertha about Lonesome Tilly and the music he made on his willow reed when Jonathan came home from Harrod’s Fort.
“Did you get any salt?” Bertha asked him.
“Naw. No salt,” he said. “Some in a week or two, mebbe.”
“Did you see Frohawk?” asked the young uns.
“Naw. Didn’t see Frohawk. Seen another feller.”
“Who, Pappy?”
Jonathan didn’t answer. He ate his supper silently, as if he hadn’t heard their question.
When Willie and Cassie were sound asleep in the cockloft, Jonathan called the other Venables into the cabin and bolted the door.
“Seen Colonel Bowman at the Fort,” Jonathan told them, his voice low, like a bur in his throat. “He wanted me to do a little job for him.”
By the faint light of a Betty lamp, Jonathan took from his shirt a piece of paper no bigger than his hand, with writing scrawled on it. He cleared his throat, making ready to tell them what the paper said, when Bertha got in the first word.
“Didn’t you hear anything at the Land Office about Frohawk, Jonathan?” she asked.
“Couldn’t find a soul that knowed anything for sure,” said Jonathan. “Surveyor said he ain’t had no notice about any sech claim as Bedinger’s, but one could still turn up, he said. That’s all I could get out of him.”
He cleared his throat again. “From all I could pick up ’bout the Land Law,” he said, “seems like Frohawk mought be able to claim this land when the court opens. Don’t look worrit, now, Berthy, ’cause for ever’ down in life, there’s an up.”
It seemed to Stephanie that her pappy was singing a spryer tune than usual. Ordinarily he didn’t argue so cheerful-like.
“Under that part of the Land Law that says them as possess old treasury warrants to the land dated prior to 1763 has a legal claim to hit,” continued Jonathan, “this Frohawk could make trouble. That’s what the surveyor said. An’ jist as I was makin’ up my mind to fight hit out in court, why ’long comes Colonel Bowman with this job for me which was the same as sayin’, let Frohawk claim this land if he can, there’s a thousand acres of better a-waitin’ for the Venables.”
Bertha eyed him sharply. “You don’t make good sense, Jonathan,” she told him.
“Here, Noel, read this here,” said Jonathan, handing him the paper.
Noel took the paper, faced it toward the flickering light, and read:
“The bearer, Jonathan Venable, is sent express to the Governor upon business of the utmost consequence to the State. Justices of the Peace in the several counties through which he may pass are requested to aid him in his journey with fresh horses, information, &. &. Colo. John Bowman,
Lieutenant of Kentucky County.”
“That little scrap of paper’s wuth four hundred dollars, hard money,” said Jonathan with a mighty satisfied look on his face, as he took the paper from Noel and stuffed it into his shirt bosom again. “An’ four hundred dollars’ll pay for one thousand acres of land, finer even than this. Over on the Green River, they’re openin’ up land, I hear. Course, I had to bargain for hit right sharply,” he added. “Afore I’d sign up with the Colonel, I went about askin’ how much an express gets paid nowadays for carryin’ important messages. Two hundred dollars for short trips, they said; as much as three hundred fifty to four hundred for long trips. The red men an’ the British eggin’ ’em on from behind are what makes expressin’ come high nowadays. But I says to myself when the Colonel an’ me come to terms, I’m a-goin’ to fight this here Frohawk’s claim tooth an’ toenail. But if I have to lose, hit can’t ruin me.”
“What’s your business with Governor Jefferson?” Bertha asked, staring at Jonathan with eyes full of questions.
“I’m swore to secrecy,” said Jonathan. “Even from my wife an’ young uns. I carry my business in here,” he added, tapping his forehead, “where Colonel Bowman hisself put hit.”
“When are you leavin’?” Bertha asked.
“Sunup,” said Jonathan. “Not a minute to lose.”
“Maybe the Indians’ll come here while you’re gone, Pappy,” suggested Rob.
“’Tain’t likely,” Jonathan said. “’Taint likely they’ll cross the Ohio in any strength. Leastways, not if George Rogers Clark gets back from the Illinois country. The air Clark’s a-breathin’ is mighty onhealthy for the red men or the British, I reckon, an’ they know hit. If anything happens, I got a boy at the Fort promised to run out here an’ warn you. Then you’re to move in, Berthy. D’you hear? An’ Noel,” he hurried on, not waiting
for Bertha to answer. “You’re to be the menfolks around here while I’m gone. You an’ Rob go tomorrow an’ help Jason Pigot with his cabin. Then go right along tendin’ the corn an’ clearin’ land like you never heard tell of Adam Frohawk, like you aimed to stay here the rest of your borned days. An’ if that old geezer turns up, no matter what shape he comes in, take care of him. Don’t take no sass off him. No sass at all.”
Noel sat there, looking white around the gills. Stephanie suspected he was hearing his pappy with one ear, and Francis Marion and his fistful of patriots with the other. And of the two, she thought he could hear Marion a shade clearer.
“Noel,” Jonathan spoke up sharply, “did you hear me?”
“Yes, Pappy, I heard you,” said Noel.
“You ain’t actin’ exactly like hit,” said Jonathan. “Berthy, I ain’t heard you promise to fort in case of red men.”
“Don’t seem to me there’s an awful sight of choice between bein’ scalped quick by a tomahawk,” she said, “and takin’ three weeks to die slow of starvation such as I know there’d be when two or three hundred get behind them stockades with not a mouthful to eat. We’ll look out for ourselves, I reckon, Jonathan. And if we have to fort, we will.”
Jonathan studied them a minute silently. “Reckon mebbe you boys’d better not go to help Jason Pigot tomorrow,” he said. “While I’m gone you’d better stay close home. The Pigots can live in a half-faced cabin for a spell. I’ll help Jason when I get back.”
Stephanie climbed the ladder to the cockloft that night with a strange feeling of fear of red men. To be sure, red men hadn’t bothered settlers to speak of since George Rogers Clark set foot on Kentucky soil. Let a body whisper Colonel Clark’s name to the red men, and right away, as if it were a plague of murrain pronounced on them, they hotfooted it back across the Ohio. But Clark wasn’t in Kentucky now, she reminded herself. He was over in St. Louis where he had a Spanish dulce. Maybe the Indians knew that. Maybe that was why they were thickening in Kentucky again.
But a body had to hold on to her fears, she told herself. A body had to shut her fears up tight inside herself, and let nobody see them, least of all, her mammy.
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