The Winds of Autumn

by Jim R. Woolard

  Foaming water filled the bottom of the hull. I raised my head and damned if Hannah Ferrenden, reseating her macaroni hat, wasn’t staring at the intruding limb and my recently threatened vitals. She giggled. “Would’ve been a meaner loss than by my knife, eh, Captain Tyler?”

  Her frank eyes met my searing gaze. “Don’t bother saying it,” she cautioned, smiling. “You either love me or hate me, my man. There’s no middle road with us Ferrendens.”

  From beyond the hide bale pressing my backside, Lem’s loudly cursing voice gave me pause, short-reining my fit of temper. “How bad be it?” he demanded. “I’m not beggin’ for no watery grave for crissake.”

  The hull had ceased taking water, and despite the force of the river, we stuck fast to the sawyer. Lem realized we were in no imminent danger of slipping under altogether. You could hole a bark canoe easily enough, but as I recalled from our night crossing of the Ohio, sinking one outright was a piece of work for a team of men. What with his poor swimming and splinted leg, it was not reaching the bank safely that worried the old salt.

  The impaled canoe bobbed with the ebb and push of the current. On second glance the many feet of swift muddy water separating us from Wentsell seemed a mile. “Stick the bottom with your paddle, Mistress Ferrenden,” the ranger offered calmly from the bank. “Gauge how deep she runs.”

  It was mighty encouraging when the tip of the inserted blade touched bottom solidly with the water lapping at Hannah Ferrenden’s elbow. “Chin high on Captain Tyler,” she judged, “but he’s wounded and Sergeant Shakett has hurt his leg. What now?”

  “Tie as long a rope as you can,” Wentsell answered. “I’ll cut some vine. Hurry, lass, the Shawnee are out and about.”

  Just the mention of the red enemy put the bit in our teeth. Hannah Ferrenden spliced together the oilcloth lanyards from the muskets, Lem tendered the leather sling she’d fastened to his Lancaster mornings ago and she added her own belt. All told, our cloth and leather rope exceeded a dozen feet.

  Wentsell trotted from the beech and walnut forest, neck encircled with lengths of dark vine whose chopped ends were the size of brass buttons. He knotted the vines into a single strand and wrapped an end around a boulder at water’s edge. “Sail me your rope on a hatchet, lass!”

  Two shakes of the hound’s tail and the Shawnee hatchet clattered on the gravel at his feet. Wentsell mated leather and vine, laid his long rifle gingerly aside, shed possible sack, shot pouch and waist accoutrements, then stripped to his breeches, the skin of his hairless chest white as sun dazzled snow. He walked upstream the full length of our makeshift mooring line, wrapped his middle with the free end and stepped into the river.

  The Scioto deepened quickly and Wentsell began swimming with long, overhand strokes. He was as steady in the water as at the trigger pull, a veteran of countless river and creek crossings in weather both fair and foul. He floated against the stern, fisted the gunwale near Lem’s deadfall thwart and levered his head upward to peer into the bottom of the canoe. Whistling softly at Lem’s bad leg, he scooted along the gunwale and paused where the broken limb anchored the shattered hull.

  Cross-eyes seeming to watch each other instead of me, he slipped the loose end of the makeshift mooring line over the gunwale. “Snug her tight ta the sawyer. We’ll get the mistress an’ the weapons ashore first. Lem an’ you’ll go next. Last thing, I’ll secure the line ta your gear an’ yuh can drag me an’ the bundle ta the bank.”

  Wentsell looked at me square as he could. “Smartly now! We’ve got your sister, but the Redsticks may show anytime.”

  I turned, and Lem was beaming at the news about Sarah. He nodded and said as Blake would have, “Tie her fast, an’ let’s be about it.”

  Wentsell hefted the Brown Bess and waited for Hannah Ferrenden to precede him with Meek’s musket. The canoe rocked slightly as she dropped into the water. She pulled herself along the leather and vine rope with one hand, the musket held high and dry with the other; had respect for her scalp and our predicament, that woman did.

  Two quick chops of his hatchet at either end of the deadfall thwart and Lem had ample room to swing his ailing knee across the gunwale. I passed him his Lancaster, barrel plugged and lock covered, together with his shot pouch and hom. He followed after Wentsell, head bobbing under now and again short as he was, never his weapon and powder.

  Soon as the old salt gained the bank, Hannah Ferrenden was in the water again. She made double-quick time with her hands unburdened. She hung by an elbow on the gunwale and grabbed my Lancaster. “I’ll take your pouch and horn too,” she ordered. “I’ll not have that wound bleeding I can help it.”

  She was gone before I could thank her.

  I rolled into the river legs foremost on the upstream side of the mooring line. The current pinioned my chest against the line and I went for shore in long reaches, left hand clutching the slippery vine rope, right arm taking all the strain. The muddy Scioto was cold enough to put shivers in your lower portions and hurry in your feet and I didn’t rest at all, short breath or no.

  I occupied the boulder anchoring our makeshift rope while Wentsell made the last trip for our gear. What pain I’d stirred beneath my bandage amounted to no more than the familiar aching throb of yesterday, and I told Hannah Ferrenden so when she asked of me.

  From his seat higher on the gravelly bank, Lem said, “Your sister an’ Blake be at Painter’s Knob, five miles west a-here. We’ll need fetch ourselves that far today. Can yuh go it, lad?”

  “I’ll crawl if’n I must,” I answered. “I was believin’ mayhap we’d never meet up with Blake and Sarah again.”

  Out on the river, Wentsell shoved the canoe free of the sawyer and waved for us to reel him and Meek’s bundle to dry land. Lem and the judge’s daughter did the towing, Lem predicting, “We’ll regret this afternoon. Patch an’ all, that ol’ gal would’ve floated yuh women home ta Kentucky in fine fettle. Let me tell yuh, eighty miles through backcountry infested with red heathen ain’t no night march ta Emma’s Castle, no way, no how.”

  Before the frowning Hannah Ferrenden could inquire why Lem’s sobering statement had me chuckling, Wentsell scrambled from the narrow shallows with our gear and took charge in a hand clap. “Coil the line an’ bring it with yuh, mistress,” he barked, shucking his frock over wet skin. “We dasn’t leave any sign for our feathered friends.” He nodded at the river. “We’ll trust the Scioto ta swallow your canoe an’ hold her down.”

  He seated himself and hastily donned moccasins and leggins. “We’ll parley in the trees yonder with cover about us. It’s damn chancy tarryin’ out here nakid as newborn opossums.”

  Once standing, Wentsell paused abruptly and bent toward me and Lem, gaping first at the bloodstain darkening my hunting shirt, then at Lem’s crude splints. His brow puckered a-purpose and that crooked grin curled his mouth. “That much trouble for just one lone woman, Sergeant,” he joshed.

  Lem’s gaze never faltered. “Lucky for us’ens she didn’t have no twin sister with her, eh,” he shot back, matching Wentsell’s grin. His quick retort doubled everyone over with laughter and we were all— Hannah Ferrenden included —sleeving tears as Wentsell shooed us into the fringe of the nearest trees.

  We gathered together in a shaded pocket ringed by thick underbrush, Wentsell situated so he watched the direction we’d come. After positioning Lem against a walnut trunk facing the trail we’d follow upon departure, he spoke directly at Hannah Ferrenden, who perched on Meek’s bale. “Your paw don’t curdle the truth much an’ I won’t neither. Losin’ that canoe might be the death of yuh yet,” he surmised, echoing Lem’s riverbank prediction. “But we’d’ve spent days sealin’ her agin, if’n we could, an’ we linger a solitary breath any place we needn’t, Three Feathers’ll be most obligin’ with the knife and hatchet.”

  He fished his shot pouch for his pipe and in the brief quiet, Hannah Ferrenden asked, “What do you intend, Mister Wentsell?”

  “These two wounded catch th
eir wind, I am ta lead yuh away from the Scioto, westward. Tonight, whiles yuh hide with the Tyler brother an’ sister, I’ll scout the Shawnee sniffin’ our scent. We learn where they be, we’ll decide how best ta skirt ’em.” He studied me and Lem. “We can’t risk a fight with Three Feathers now. By the cut of their jib, we’ll be plumb grateful these lads raise Painters Knob afore dark.”

  Lem’s chin dropped and he nodded agreement. I did the same. Tired as I felt just then, the prospect of joining Blake and Sarah was the only inviting meat in Wentsell’s stew.

  “An’ our gear?” Hannah Ferrenden wondered, patting the bulk beneath her.

  Wentsell allowed himself a single long cold draw on the pipe and returned it to his shot pouch. “I’ll tote it liken the Frenchies. We’ll bury what we can do without somewheres else.”

  At his request, Hannah Ferrenden surrendered the coiled vines. He severed two six-foot lengths and wound them around the bundled gear, tying them off separately, the knots atop the bale. Next he passed a piece of leather rope through the vine straps and knotted it into a loop. Squatting with his back to the load, Wentsell settled the leather loop about his forehead and straightened slowly, the weight of the bundled gear centered betwixt his shoulder blades. For a man of strength and with balance afoot, it was a shrewd means of carrying a bulky pack long distances.

  Wentsell also bore his flintlock as well as Meek’s musket. Hannah Ferrenden’s burden consisted of the Brown Bess, what remained of the vine rope, and Wentsell’s possible sack. Lem and me had ourselves and our Lancasters to contend with, the lightest possible duty, precisely as Wentsell planned: In the proper order of march, the unhurt and unfettered husbanded the muster of the wounded and the lame.

  “Listen sharp,” Wentsell ordered. “Everyone walk tight ta my heels. There ain’t no way we won’t lay tracks here and there through the river bottom. But we’ll slow them Shawnee some we don’t maken it gadawful plain for ’em.”

  He shifted his feet, and the heavy pack swayed back and forth. “You’re at the rear, Mister Blaine Tyler, with Lem afore yuh, the lady behind me,” he said, facing westward. “Follow me, buckos!”

  Short of a full stride, Wentsell caught his oversight and without looking around called out, “Yuh too, mistress … if’n yuh don’t mind.”

  Hobbling Lem snorted and said over his shoulder in a low voice, “Hear that, lad, show him a pretty face an’ he be the same as the rest of us, tamer’n a Baltimore stable boy.”

  And so began our trek to Painters Knob.

  Chapter 21

  Afternoon till Midnight, September 19

  Wentsell was the master of the wilderness trail. During his approach of the Scioto, he had mapped in his head how we would make our return. The swampy lagoons, clustered trees, hanging vines and deadfalls choking the river bottom slowed him hardly at all. He wound through them with utter confidence, selecting the driest, hardest, most direct course, his chosen path graveled or overgrown with slough grass. He set the pace not by the difficulty of our passage or the weight of his own cumbersome pack, but by the constant shortage of wind hampering me and Lem. He judged by our huffing and puffing the moment we could not advance another yard without a blow. And soon as we recovered enough to forge ahead, he ordered our feet under us again, smiling at Lem’s continual grumbling about the unrelenting heat and swarming gnats.

  While we labored every stride, the afternoon trek was a grand adventure for Hannah Ferrenden. Either by chance or design, within the hour she mastered Wentsell’s peculiar, crab-like gait. Like him, her heel struck first when crossing hardpan. When slough grass hid rocks, hummocks and rills scoured by draining water, her toe searched carefully at each step before she lowered her foot. She quickly learned to slide her moccasins through the coarse grass rather than trample it and create sign any unschooled youngster could read and follow. At every rest, she posed an endless stream of questions about our surroundings ranging from tree moss to gar fish, and Wentsell answered them with rare patience no man had ever seen him display with any woman (or so Lem claimed in a whispery aside).

  In the dregs of late afternoon, we wounded started to lag behind. The old salt’s sprung knee was a glob of skin swollen beyond its binding splint, and I was suddenly light-headed and dizzy. And Lord help us, our plight worsened. The river bottom yielded to rising slopes whose lower reaches were blanketed with stinging nettles and scratching briars. We flailed upward on dying legs, gasping like fish thrown from the water, Painter’s Knob as distant as the unseen half of the moon.

  But the ever-resourceful Wentsell saved his finest for last. He lowered his pack on a flat of rock protruding from the slope and circled Hannah Ferrenden. Opening the possible sack she toted for him, he produced an iron canteen encased in beaded leather. He twisted the wooden bung from the metal spout and presented the vessel to Lem. “One slurp’ll stoke fire in your gizzard, Sergeant.”

  Though he’d never sampled squeezings for which he couldn’t grow a thirst, Lem’s exhaustion was such he was clearly skeptical of Wentsell’s boast. At the first solid swallow, however, his eye batted and he shivered, the liquor’s raw might scalding his throat. After two failed tries, he spoke in a wheezened croak. “Oh, my … Oh, my … I misdoubt the savior, bless him … will tender anythin’ better in the promised land.”

  “Don’t be hoggish with the sipping, Lemuel,” Hannah Ferrenden urged gently.

  I steeled myself, drank, and the swig exploded inside me with the flash of a Redcoat grenade, burning flesh from tongue to belly hole. My head spun and through the haze blurring my senses, Wentsell was saying, “Jesse Cravens renders this sweet juice at his cabin upriver from the Ferrenden Yards. Perfumes the night air if’n he’s cookin’ an’ the breeze blows just so. It’s the greatest temptation on the whole Allegheny. Swills an’ teetotalers alike, someone’s always grabbin’ his latch string, rain or shine. Treat yourselves ta another round, we’ve a fair piece ta traipse yet.”

  It was as free and wasteful with words as Wentsell ever got. He was dallying, marking time, plying us with whiskey in hopes the fiery repast would provide the grit and determination required for the final push to Painter’s Knob. After the swallow which he deemed would make us sufficiently pain-dulled but still sober enough that the march could be resumed, he reclaimed the canteen. “Enough’s enough, lads. Now you’re able, Sergeant,” he declared, pointing along the middle height of the slope, “camp’s lessen a mile thataway, an’ there’s little climbin’ left ta be done.”

  His gaze shifted to me. “I suppose you’re right anxious ta hug that sister of yourn again, ain’t yuh now?”

  He was clever as Satan himself that ranger. Knowing love and loyalty ranked above everything else with border kin, he double-tied the halter: If the whiskey numbness wore off too fast, the reuniting of family would keep me coming behind him whether upright or on hand and knee.

  Hannah Ferrenden, always beside me whenever we halted, winked and handed me my Lancaster. We shook out in the proper order and set off, the sun sinking toward the western horizon, Lem griping with new vigor.

  Our buoyed spirits saw us to the east wall of Painter’s Knob where, not surprisingly, Lem’s good but overworked leg cramped and brought him down like a felled tree. His crashing fall startled Hannah Ferrenden. She spun around, muzzle of the Brown Bess a yawning hole beaded on my chest, eyes big and round below her hat brim. Spying Lem flattened without movement, she lowered the heavy musket and rushed to him. On ahead, Wentsell, aware something was amiss, grounded his pack and waited at the alert, watching all about.

  When he was rolled on his backside, the old salt’s cheeks were pale and his forehead sheened with sweat. He asked me to straighten his cramped leg, which I did. Without further bidding, I kneaded the fist-sized lump bulging his calf till it disappeared. Pelt cap resting on Hannah Ferrenden’s thigh, Lem moaned in despair. “I can’t walk no more, camp or no camp. What for now, lad?”

  “Yuh was any less of a friend, we’d leave yuh for the S
hawnee,” a new voice said from behind my ear.

  I jerked my head up and, by all that’s true, there was Blake, every inch of him hale and hearty as ever. He was an uplifting, mind-relieving sight that wide-shouldered brother of mine. As on other bleak occasions, he’d arrived with Lem and me in dire straits.

  Blake fingered the bullet hole in my frock. “Got him hurt too, huh, yuh ol’ he-goat,” he challenged, tone stern, gray eyes warm and concerned.

  He ignored Lem’s sputtering, “I won’t abide such dribble,” and inspected Hannah Ferrenden from hat feathers to moccasined feet. “Well, leastways yuh brung the prize home havin’ come to no real harm.” He stuck forth an arm. “I’m Blake Tyler.”

  Hannah Ferrenden’s scrutiny was no less severe. She looked from Blake to me. “Of that, I’ve no doubt. You could be mistaken for each other in the same room,” she concluded, shaking brother’s hand.

  “It don’t raise no boil on anybody’s arse,” Lem interrupted, “I’d be most thankful for some help ta your fire, future Colonel Tyler.”

  The old salt’s plea won Blake’s attention away from the judge’s daughter. Blake passed me his flintlock. “Ain’t no fire, but Sarah’s not sixty paces from here, sound asleep.” He knelt, ran his arms under Lem, lifted him from the rough slope and called to the waiting Wentsell. “Lead off, Tice, afore his stink blinds me with tears.”

  The balance of the day’s travel was as brief as Blake foretold. Wentsell led along the deeply shadowed eastern rampart of Painter’s Knob for a piddling distance, then wheeled to confront a broad thicket of wild plum rooted flush against the face of the sheer cliff. He parted the dense growth with his rifle barrel, stepped forward and disappeared, the plum bushes snapping in place again. Familiar with Wentsell’s destination, Blake disappeared next, pushing through sideways with Lem still cradled in his arms. Hannah Ferrenden followed, her slim body hardly disturbing the thicket.