Tree of Freedom

by Rebecca Caudill

  10. A Soldier for Colonel Clark

  More than once, as Stephanie milked Brownie the next morning, her eyes strayed in the direction Jonathan had taken to Harrod’s Fort on the first leg of his journey to Williamsburg, as if she were trying to ferret out the mysterious errand on which he had been sent. Could the gentleman she and Noel had seen at William Poague’s workshop have had something to do with the message? she wondered. But the silent dark wall of trees kept as secret as a bury hole her pappy’s whereabouts, and his doings, and all that befell him.

  Mid-morning Rob fell to speculating on the length of time it would take his pappy to make the trip to Williamsburg and back again. A horse could jog along steadily at the rate of five miles an hour, he calculated. At that rate, if Jonathan rode ten hours a day, he could cover fifty miles between sunup and owl light. But Colonel Bowman had mentioned fresh horses. That meant he expected Jonathan to spur his horse along at a gallop wherever he found a road.

  “Jeeminy, criminy, what kind of message do you reckon Pappy’s a-carryin’ to the Governor?” asked Rob, when he got this far in his calculations. “The Colonel’s sure in an all-fired hurry if Pappy has to run a horse all the way to Williamsburg.”

  “The Colonel’s had spies out,” Noel told him. “He knows things.”

  Rob looked at him sharply. “Are the Indians comin’?” he asked.

  “Not as I know of,” Noel told him. “But somethin’s goin’ on, you can be sure of that, when it costs so much to send an express to the Governor, and Colonel Bowman’s willin’ to pay it. A body’s reason’d tell him that much.”

  After a minute Rob went back to his calculations, but it wasn’t long before he broke plumb down in them, not knowing how far it was to Williamsburg, nor how fast Jonathan would travel, nor how long he’d have to parley with the Governor once he got there.

  “You’d have more to show for your time grubbin’ bushes and choppin’ nettles and water weeds out of the corn,” Bertha told him, and sent him, grubbing hoe in hand, to the corn patch.

  Stephanie had never seen corn grow so fast as theirs. Sometimes she stood and eyed a stalk, trying to catch it in the act of growing. Before long prop roots would be putting out at the bottom of the stalks to hold the corn steady during the ripening, stiff tassels would shoot out of the top, and batches of waxy, dark red silks would spill out of the middle. It was the black Kentucky land that made the corn grow like something possessed, said Noel. It was little wonder, he said, men lost their reason trying to buy it up.

  Grow as fast as the corn would, however, it couldn’t grow fast enough to satisfy the Venables. Every day the young uns named what they would give for just one slice of hoecake, until Bertha, watching their pinched faces, made up a game for them. The juicy white breast meat of the turkeys Noel shot, they could call that bread, Bertha said. The fat, heavy flesh of bear, and the strong, dark flesh of the buffalo, that was meat, she said. It was a good game, agreed the young uns, but it left them as hollow as the Joe Pye weeds through which they blew bubbles down by the spring.

  The Tree of Freedom grew, too. It didn’t grow as fast as the corn, nor as gangling as the pumpkin vines that sprawled among the corn. It didn’t grow as fast as the potatoes on which clusters of white blossoms would soon be opening up, nor the gourd vine on which every day the young uns looked to see if little bitty long-necked gourds were beginning to set. The Tree of Freedom, having half a hundred summers instead of one in which to grow, took its time.

  “Steffy,” said Willie one day as he watched her tend the tree, “whoever heard of hoein’ a tree to keep it alive when some day ever’ endurin’ tree in the woods is goin’ to be girdled to make room for corn? A body’d think you was that tree’s mammy, the way you baby it.”

  “Maybe I am,” she said.

  The days were long now, but there was never time to be idle. A body’d think Bertha felt winter breathing down icy breath on them in the midst of summer heat, the way she had all the young uns scurrying around. Or maybe, thought Stephanie, work was her mammy’s way of hanging on to her reason, with Jonathan gone, and red men off in the woods some place, with winter coming, and a passel of mouths to feed.

  First, they had to build the chimney. For three days they lugged rocks up the hill from the river—big rocks and little rocks which Noel chipped and smoothed and fitted into a wall around the wide space left for them at the west end of the cabin.

  When the chimney was finished, Willie and Cassie ran in and out of the big fireplace, and turned their faces up and hollered into the wide, yawning funnel. Bertha got together all her tools and utensils she had brought from the Back Country—her pothooks and trammels, her kettles and her skillet, her griddle and her trivet—and carried them to the hearth.

  “Now,” sighed Stephanie, as she saw the kettles on their pothooks swinging from the crane Noel had fastened in a side wall of the fireplace, “it’s home at last!”

  Rob sighed, too, but for another reason. “It’ll sure take an eternal great big back log to fill that fireplace,” he said. “Did you need to build it so big, Noel?”

  Bertha wanted a spring house built about the spring, too. Again the Venables lugged rocks from the river, while Noel laid three walls, leaving the fourth side open. Halfway up the walls, he fashioned a ledge by recessing the upper walls, which he built of smaller stones. Here on the ledge Bertha could set her wooden bowls of butter, while piggins of milk could stand in the running water of the spring to keep cool and fresh and sweet. Noel cut bars of saplings to lay across the front to keep varmints out, and laid a roof of bark on a skeleton of saplings.

  The stump of a sycamore standing near the cabin would be mighty handy for a hominy block, Bertha decided. By burning and chipping and scraping, Noel gouged a hole in the stump big enough to hold a kettle full of corn. Then he cut a long sapling for a sweep and wedged the butt end of it under the bottom log of the cabin. A shorter sapling, trimmed just above the forks, he drove into the ground between the cabin and the hominy block, and rested the sweep in the crotch. To the free end of the sweep he tied another piece of sapling, one end of which he had chipped round to make a pounder.

  “Try it out, Rob,” he said, when he finished it.

  Rob grasped the pestle in his hands, and putting his weight on it, drove it down into the hollow stump, then let the wedged sweep lift it. Half a dozen times he pounded the block with the pestle, then stood off and eyed it longingly.

  “If a body just had a little corn in there!” he sighed.

  As soon as Noel finished the hominy block, Bertha set him to work on an ash hopper. Stephanie held the shakes in place for him as he built the hopper in the shape of a V, letting the bottom of one row of shakes extend a little below the other row to allow the water poured over the ashes to trickle down and drip into the kettle Bertha would place underneath.

  “Looks like a body’ll never get within hailin’ distance of all Mammy wants done,” Rob complained to Stephanie as he went to the woods to look for a wild cherry tree from which to make a butter paddle. “I’ll bet there ain’t another clearin’ in Kentucky with so much work laid out for young uns to do.”

  Their clearing was a busy world, to be sure, thought Stephanie, but such a lonesome, tight little world, hemmed in by trees. Not a soul came near it, not even the Pigots, now that they were busy in their own clearing. And not a jot nor tittle of news filtered to them through the woods. Nor did Jonathan come home.

  “Apt as not, the Governor’s sent him somewheres else with a message,” Bertha told the young uns, to keep long faces off them when it began to get dark.

  “Do you reckon the red men have scalped Pappy?” asked Willie, not knowing he oughtn’t to say such words.

  “That ain’t likely,” said Bertha. “The red men ain’t so smart they can scalp a body with his wits about him.” After a time she added, “Nothin’ that sneaks’ll get you if you’re waitin’ for it when it comes.”

  When June had passed its prime, Bertha said agai
n at dinner one day that she didn’t think she could stand another bite of vittles without salt.

  “Noel, you and Steffy try at the Fort once more,” she said. “Take a kettle full of sarvice berries and maybe somebody’ll trade you salt for ’em.”

  But Stephanie knew that more than salt her mammy was hungry for some scrap of news of Jonathan.

  As soon as they had gathered the sarvice berries, Noel and Stephanie set out. Almost a month had passed since they had gone that way in hope of salt the first time. Now the woods were dark and glistening green, and noisy, not with birds, but with harvest flies whizzing their timbrels among the trees, and locusts drumming among the grass blades in the open spots, cutting so deeply with their noise that they left a scar on the memory. Snakes slithered across the path, and along the edge of the branch darted sleek, blue-winged dragonflies like the dragonfly for which Lonesome Tilly fluted on his willow pipe.

  Within half a mile of the Fort, they stopped to rest at the foot of a hill. Noel squatted down and squinted his eye over a crawdad hole.

  “Can you see him?” asked Stephanie.

  “No,” said Noel, “but I think I hear him.”

  Again he squinted into the hole.

  Suddenly he cocked his head, his gray eyes alert, and strained his ears to listen. Not being satisfied, he laid his ear flat to the ground.

  Stephanie, watching him, gathered up her long skirt.

  “What d’you hear, Noel?” she whispered.

  Quicker than a wary varmint of the woods, Noel was on his feet.

  “Better hide, Steffy!” he ordered. “Somebody’s comin’!”

  Off the path they darted. As flat as lizards they sprawled behind a fallen tree screened from the path by bushes. Noel trained his rifle on the path.

  A minute passed while Stephanie’s heart pounded underneath her cottonade dress. Then they could hear, and no mistake about it, the soft thud of feet on a path that skirted the hill from the east. Many feet, it seemed, were running on the springy leaf mold.

  Stephanie crouched closer to Noel.

  “Sounds like some of the feet are fastened to young uns,” Noel whispered. “Hear?”

  Stephanie listened. Quick, heavy footsteps she heard, and, true enough, double quick little ones.

  A moment later, along the path came hurrying a man with a rifle on his shoulder and a big bundle tied in a deerskin on his back, a woman carrying a baby in her arms and a young un on her back, while two little scared young uns holding tight to her skirt trotted behind her.

  Stephanie raised her head high over the tree trunk to stare at them.

  “Fortin’!” she said, her eyes wide. “Wonder why?”

  “There ain’t but one reason why folks fort,” Noel said, giving words to her fears. “We’d better find out where the red men are.”

  He got to his feet and walked stealthily toward the path.

  “Reckon it’d be best to play safe so as not to get shot,” he mumbled, taking a stand behind a tree. “Hello!” he shouted.

  The man dropped his deerskin bundle, whipped about, and readied his rifle in the direction of Noel’s voice. The woman, looking like a trapped deer, tried to run, but she was too hobbled with whimpering young uns to make headway.

  “Who air ye?” quavered the man.

  “White folks and friends,” called Noel.

  The man waited a minute. They could see him through the bushes, taking aim in their direction, wetting his lips.

  “Show yourselves!” he ordered.

  Out of the bushes stepped Noel and Stephanie to assure the strangers, then hurried to meet them.

  “Be ye comin’ to the Fort?” asked the man, breathlessly.

  “Yes,” Noel told him. “Has somethin’ happened?”

  “Happened? Hain’t ye heard?”

  The man stared at Noel, his eyes a whirlpool of dark fear in his strained face.

  “Boy, where ye been? Didn’t nobody warn ye? The red men done finished Ruddell’s an’ Martin’s over on Lickin’. Hundreds of ’em come pourin’ over the Ohio. This mornin’. Hauled up a British cannon, an’ them stations was a gone Josie!”

  Goose bumps popped out on Stephanie’s arms. She crowded closer to Noel.

  “Whar do you young uns live?” asked the man.

  “Over on Salt River,” said Noel. “West of here a ways.”

  “Didn’t no runner come an’ warn ye?”

  “No. Nobody came. We didn’t know anything about the red men.”

  “Course, the red men air over yonder t’other direction from you,” the man said, thoughtfully. “They ain’t been over your way.”

  “Well, ’tain’t no time to mouth ’bout it,” whimpered the woman. “Let’s get to the Fort.”

  “I could go back, Steffy, and see if Mammy’s safe,” considered Noel. “But maybe we’d best go to the Fort since we’re so close, and get things straight. ’Twon’t take me no time to run home by my lonesome when we hear all the news.”

  The Fort was a sink hole of hubbub and hurry and fear that sucked Noel and Stephanie into it as soon as they set foot inside the stockade. From all directions panicky families came squeezing in, the grown folks carrying whatever they could grab up in a hurry—a rifle, a knife or two, an ax, a few clothes tied in an old coverlet, some jerk to stave off hunger if the Fort should have to last out a siege, a piggin, sometimes pieces of pewter, a few spoons, a plate, a candlestick. Some of them drove cows into the Fort, hurrying the poor, bewildered critters along with the sting of a willow switch. A few young uns, Stephanie noticed, came clutching a kettle or half a dozen pewter spoons or whatever had been hurriedly thrust into their hands. One little girl the size of Cassie hugged a rag doll to herself, and a little boy squeezed a kitten in his arms. All of them were shooshed teetotally into being quiet as they were dragged from their clearings through the woods to the Fort.

  Rumors flew about the stockade like miller moths darting around a lighted Betty lamp. The men at Ruddell’s and Martin’s had all been killed. No, the men hadn’t been killed, only the women and the young uns. No, the women and the young uns were taken to Detroit. No, the young uns were scalped alongside the men, and only the womenfolks were taken to Detroit. The red men had left Kentucky. The red men, egged on by General Bird, the British commander, were still in Kentucky, headed straight for Harrod’s Fort, bringing their cannon with them, burning and looting and scalping as they came. No, the Indians had all got drunk after taking Ruddell’s and Martin’s, and General Bird couldn’t persuade them to march on Harrod’s Fort. He had let them go back to Chillicothe where they came from.

  “You stay here, Steffy,” ordered Noel, when they could make neither heads nor tails of what they heard. “I’m goin’ back to get Mammy. Wonder what happened to that young un Pappy had posted to warn her?”

  “Maybe he’s on his way now,” said Stephanie.

  Noel made his way through the milling crowd toward the gates of the stockade, Stephanie following him.

  “Let’s ask in the Land Office before you go,” Stephanie suggested. “Maybe the surveyor or the deputy’ll know for certain what’s happened.”

  In the Land Office they found the surveyor writing in his book as calmly as if nothing had happened. The men standing about the table seemed not to hear the hubbub outside, either. They were buying up Kentucky land. A thousand acres. Two thousand acres. Five hundred acres to a buckskinned settler. Four hundred acres to another. Four thousand acres for a man on the James River. Two thousand acres for a feller in New Jersey.

  “Where are the Indians?” asked Noel.

  The man from New Jersey turned and eyed him.

  “Gone, I hear,” he said. “For the moment. You Kentucky buckskins seem to be especially susceptible to the red plague. It ought to make your land cheaper.”

  Noel’s eyes blazed. He set his lips in a thin, tight line while his fingers fidgeted on his rifle. He was burning up inside like a Caroliny tar kiln, and Stephanie half wondered why the smoke didn�
��t come pouring out of him. She caught his sleeve and pulled him to the door.

  “Noel,” she scolded, “don’t be so free and easy with that rifle!”

  “Then let that feller stop bein’ free and easy with Kentucky,” he warned.

  Toward the gate they went, Noel smarting under the land buyer’s sting. Inside and outside the Land Office were like two different worlds, noticed Stephanie, a make-believe world where a body pretended there was nothing important except grabbing land, a real world on the rim of which six hundred painted red men, spurred on by a handful of British, brandished tomahawks and set fire to new, sweet-smelling cabins, and hauled along a cannon the sight of which scared the liver out of folks. She wondered what a cannon would sound like if the British ever set it off. A thundergust that rocked the hills? The end of the world that Mammy read about in the Book of Revelations?

  “Somethin’s goin’ on here,” said Noel, starting toward the schoolhouse, in front of which a crowd was collecting. “Reckon I’ll listen a minute. Might get things straight here.”

  They edged themselves into the gathering crowd. A man was standing in the doorway, talking. Though his face was the face of a white man, he was rigged out in Indian clothes. He was taller than the men around him, and with his shock of red hair, he put Stephanie in mind of a big bur oak firing up in the fall.

  “Who’s that?” she whispered.

  “Don’t know,” answered Noel.

  “Very well,” the man was saying. “The red men have left Kentucky. They’re not marching on Harrod’s Fort, as I haven’t a doubt General Bird intended them to when he landed them on Kentucky soil. They’re taking their cannon and leaving this prize in peace, and are heading for the Ohio as fast as they can clear out with their loot and their prisoners. Who’s going after them with me?”

  Stephanie glanced hurriedly over the crowd. Half a dozen men were volunteering. But many more, looking mighty relieved that the red men had had enough and had gone home, were hemming and hawing, and never raising a hand.

  “Right over here,” the man was directing the volunteers. “Who else? We need more volunteers than this. Now, if ever, we must strike the enemy, and strike him hard. That’s why I’ve hurried back from the Illinois country to …”