The Winds of Autumn

by Jim R. Woolard

  “Nothin’ more can be done for yuh, lad. You’ve got a fine weapon an’ a wad of jerk ta tide yuh over,” he said, cradling his own flintlock. “I’ll meet yuh at the Ohio tomorrow evenin’ the latest.”

  Without a parting salutation or backward glance, he spurned the scant pathway and began climbing down the southern face of the ridge. I watched him till he was out of sight, already thinking ahead to my rendezvous with him the next day.

  I wasn’t to see him again for two years.

  Chapter 28

  Afternoon, September 22 till Morning, September 23

  I came awake with a violent start, bitterly angry with myself, and tasting fear. At Wentsell’s departure I had every advantage over the enemy. I was well hidden with the wind quartering against my shoulder from the open side of the ridge and the shape of the ground funneling the trailing Shawnee straight betwixt my sights.

  That was before I’d dozed off soon as my body warmed the bottom of the cup. By the slant of tree shadow and the position of the sun, I’d slept a good three hours. If the Shawnee hadn’t reached the promontory, I still held sway. But when I gave that serious thought, I discounted it. Our lead on the war party had never been as much as three hours nor our tracks unduly difficult to unravel. And if the Shawnee I was supposed to waylay had gained the promontory, most of which lay exposed to me up the pathway, where was he now?

  Cursing myself soundly, I peered carefully around, moving nothing but my head, and that slow as brown molasses trickling from the barrel. Nothing untoward anywhere, not a thing out of the ordinary. I looked again with greater care and wasn’t satisfied. Suppose he’d trod past my hiding place without spying me, or worse yet, had done so and found no white tracks farther down the pathway. That meant the Shawnee could be wending a careful step at a time from behind me, knowing either his enemy or sign of where they’d disappeared lay between him and the promontory.

  Without hesitation I eased upright, planted a foot beyond the rim of the cup and took out in the direction I least expected to encounter the Shawnee: the open side of the ridge descended by Wentsell.

  The declining slope steepened rapidly, blunt shards of moss-covered stone big as cabins shouldering among the trees. Clinging vine overgrew everything. Random deadfalls canted every which way, some caught betwixt the trunks of standing trees, others slanting against the huge stones. I caught a foot in the crotch of a fallen limb overlaid with vine and dead leaves, and barely caught my balance in time to avoid twisting a knee or breaking an ankle. My old wound took to throbbing, and Shawnee or no Shawnee, I tamed my fear and slackened my pace.

  At the bottom of the ridge, I turned in the opposite direction from Wentsell, passing eastward below the small clearing where we’d spotted the Shawnee at noon. My shadow my guide, I trudged steadily east by south with brief stopovers to watch behind me, drinking at two separate streams that angled across my line of march. Nearing dark, the country all about began rising and I enjoyed a long blow in a copse of black gum. The bright scarlet branches overhead reminding me how joyed Hannah Ferrenden had been at her discovery of them just yesterday, I chewed a piece of jerk and stared down my backtrail for the merest hint of Shawnee pursuit. Not a living thing chose to grace the sights of my rifle and with darkness falling, I plunged ahead, zigzagging uphill to save breath and sweat.

  I overnighted on the highest brow of the ascending hills, my bed a hollow nook on the underside of a fallen cedar providing a view westward across the lowlands I traversed that evening. I slept but little, my restful moments continually disturbed by the calling of owls, the yip of foxes, and the howling of wolves, familiar noises suddenly threatening to a man worried his enemy was relentless and perhaps too clever for him.

  Toward dawn, an early morning wind rustled the dried boughs doming my hat. I awakened chilled and shivering in the dark, and felt for the familiar warmth of Hannah Ferrenden and her coarse woolen blanket. Her disappointing absence put an ache in my chest and a restlessness in my feet. She would be waiting for me at Limestone, and till I met her there and came to some reckoning with her about whatever future—if any—we were to have together, I would know no peace of heart or mind. Uncertainty was the bane of a man in love.

  Wentsell having said the unexpected served the hunter well when shaking Injun pursuit, I scooted free of the cedar boughs with the day unborn and slunk off as quietly as my heavy feet allowed across the crest of the hill. Sunrise found me on the opposite slope, and before me far as I could see to the southeast ran a walled valley scored at its deepest point by an open channel that had to be Brush Creek, a water way wide enough and deep enough that some Ken tucky hunters called it Little River.

  I traveled the ridges and hills bordering Brush Creek’s west bank the entire day. Whenever possible, I made use of game trails and rocky overlooks to lessen the toll on my legs and wounded side. I stopped unexpectedly and often to look back, never skylined myself without it being unavoidable and twice set lengthy ambushes that went wanting for a target. No matter. I wasn’t confident enough yet to ignore Wentsell’s warning: “The first Injun yuh don’t spy in time will likely be yer last.”

  By the hour shadows lengthened noticeably on east-facing slopes, dark clouds stretched from horizon to horizon and the breeze that faltered in early afternoon regained its bluster, flopping my hat brim on occasion. A storm brewed somewhere to the west, and would blow through before another day passed. The shelter of a big deadfall trunk or rock overhang would be a wise choice for the upcoming night.

  After miles of unbroken expanse, the high ground bordering Brush Creek was severed completely by its own Beasley Fork six miles from the Ohio. The wide cut of the Fork extended far back into the western hills. I wheeled that direction and hunted along the steep ridgeline for the easiest path to lower ground and a cold night camp with fresh water. My only choice proved a ravine harboring a feeder stream of the fork whose walls were much less severe than the downward angle of the ridgeline. I tied my Lancaster behind my back sling-fashion and tackled the climb with both hands.

  The stream centering the ravine, both banks overgrown with bull rushes, widened as it prepared to empty into the Fork. I was twenty yards from the confluence when I spotted moccasin tracks in the sandy silt bordering the rushes. I had the Lancaster free of its sling, ready for a throw to my cheek before I finished the first quick look to front and rear and then both flanks.

  The footprints followed the stream’s bank to the Fork. They were firm and clean inside, so fresh the bottoms had yet to dry. And they toed inward as Injun feet invariably did.

  I was exposed in good shooting light to every point on the compass with tree cover ten long strides away. Expecting a ball to slam into my flesh any second, I dropped to one knee, facing away from the bull rushes, and searched frantically among the tree trunks and thick brush fringing the stream for the telltale barrel of a flintlock or the bright paint of a heathen skull. I swept my eyes from left to right and back again and saw nothing of dire threat to me.

  The moccasin tracks were obvious and precise. They’d been deliberately placed. They were there to draw me not before the woods for a chancy musket shot, but directly in front of the rushes for a close-quarter attack, hopefully from behind. At that realization, a faint sucking sound betrayed the withdrawal of a moccasin from the clutch of mud and rush roots.

  What saved my life was the hunter’s godsend: a keen memory. I had more warning that Stick Injun but like him no time to stand, no time to turn completely about and level the Lancaster. I snapped my upper body around, left shoulder in the lead, and jabbed to my rear with the rifle’s barrel as if it were a speared lance, right knee anchoring the weight of my body.

  The jabbing barrel caught the charging Shawnee a staggering blow where soft throat met breastbone and lodged beneath his chin. Spitted on the muzzle, the heathen’s head skewered sideways, jerking his upper body after it, and the blade of his tomahawk slashed short of my forehead. I blinked at the solid thunk of his hatchet on the s
tock of my rifle next to my hand, and levered upward with all my considerable strength.

  He was going backward now and I was coming forward and we tumbled into the rushes, me atop him. At our landing, his eyes rolled far back in his head. Pinning him flat with my chest, the Lancaster wedged betwixt us, I grabbed for the hatchet in my sash belt and encountered his sheathed knife instead. Never fussy in a tight spot, I fisted the handle, yanked the knife free and drove his own blade under the Shawnee’s ribs. I pulled the blade loose and drove it deep again, a little lower to make sure of the kill. Bloody froth oozed from the heathen’s lips and he settled limply, lids slowly closing.

  I slid from atop him and rested on my back, hands and limbs quaking at the narrowness of my escape from death. My heart decided after long gulps of fresh air it would stay within the confines of my ribs, and I got a knee under myself so as to stand.

  Injun grunts from living tongues startled me anew, and I froze there on that one knee. The surrounding rushes were taller than my head, but I hunched lower to insure I wouldn’t be seen. I retrieved my Lancaster from the chest of the Shawnee and gripped the stock hard to settle my nerves. The jabbering exchange was wafting from the surface of the Beasley Fork. The hollow thud of paddle against gunwale and the scrape of landing bow confirmed the arriving lnjuns were afloat.

  More talk, coming closer, than the clump of possible sacks and gear being dropped opposite my position on the far bank of the feeder stream. I flattened comptetely, thanking the Lord he was thoughtful enough to grow the rush swamp as wide as he had. The snap of branches and the click of flint on steel was followed by the crackle of a birthing fire. They were camping for the night in my very lap.

  Dusk was not far off, but even then I would not dare move. Any attempt to slither away would sway rushes noisily and gurgle muddy water underfoot. Hate it as much as I liked, I was in for a long miserable night praying I wouldn’t be discovered.

  A new thought alarmed me. Was the dead Shawnee beside me a member of the party at the fire? If he was, wouldn’t they search for him when he didn’t join them soon? I squirmed around and leaned over him. The sight of the black band masking his eyes and the tattooed snake slanting across his chest, striking jaws lunging at his own neck, gladdened my soul, for they had stood out just as fine in the lens of my spyglass from the swell overlooking Brush Creek. That crisis past, I rolled away from him for the gnats and flies were beginning to gather on the blood crusting his belly skin.

  The Shawnee started feasting, jawboning and laughing merry as a Kentucky hunting party. There were five of them, I believe, and during their eating, some went off and I heard the thunk of heavy stone on wood. I finally determined they were sinking a dugout canoe in the water of the Beasley Fork on purpose, knowledge that gladdened my anxious heart. If I lived till morning, all was not lost.

  The sun dipped beyond the western horizon, and the light from the Shawnee flames glowed bright as daylight on the rushes above my head. I was close enough to their cooking fire that the smell of meat fat dripping on live coals drifted to me on the breeze, tantalizing whiffs that set my mouth watering and stomach growling. I cursed silently and chewed my third piece of Wentsell’s jerk for the day.

  With the darkness came the skeeters, swarms of them blackening bare skin. Never minding the noise it made, I disappeared into the shell of my frock like a turtle drawing in its head. There were so many skeeters whining and biting, despite my best efforts enough found flesh to torture me unmercifully.

  The Injuns jabbered endlessly into the evening hours. Shadows came and went on the rushes as they answered the call of nature at the edge of the bank. With the skeeters zinging about the way they were, the Injuns didn’t tarry long away from the protecting smoke of their fire.

  It was a moonless, starless, cloud-covered night. By midnight, wind gusts fluttered the rushes and sighed leaves on the trees behind the Shawnee camp. The force and chill of the gusts quieted the Shaw nee and sent them to their blankets. They slept, their snores long and raspy when the wind lulled. I wiggled about to answer my own call of nature without getting to my feet, and then dozed off, tired as if I’d plowed a full day behind a poor team of horses.

  The patter of rain and rumble of thunder roused me. The patter grew to a steady fall, and I slid the lock of my Lancaster betwixt my thighs to keep my powder dry. Soon as the morning blackness grayed the slightest, the Shawnee were up and about, packed their gear and by the squish of moccasins on ground fast softening, marched to the head of the ravine. I had some anxious moments worrying they might look down from the ridgeline and discover me and the dead Shawnee after all, but the rain undoubtedly drove them toward some shelter unbeknownst to me.

  I waded the feeder stream and thrashed through the bull rushes to their camp. From there I hurried to the Beasley Fork, shed leggins and moccasins, and waded the shallows in search of their sunken dugout. My knee found it before my eye. Shivering from the chill of the rain and the current swirling about my legs, I pushed my sleeves to my elbows and removed the rocks holding the canoe on the bottom. When it came free, the bow broke water first. I dumped the last of the rocks, levered the bow onto the bank, and lifting the stern, turned the dugout over to remove the remaining water from the hull. I lost one paddle to the current, but managed to save the other with a fast grab of the hand.

  I shucked into moccasins and leggins, refloated the dugout, and clumb aboard at the stern. Launching the craft with a mighty shove of paddle against bank. I floated off down the Beasley Fork, barely stifling a shout. I had my hair, my Lancaster, a boat under my knees and Limestone and Hannah Ferrenden in the offing.

  Chapter 29

  September 23-24

  Except for brief spells of slackened fall, the rain continued unabated, accompanied by wind gusts that plucked at my sleeve and whipsawed my hat brim. Through the morning the high ridges and tall trees flanking Brush Creek shielded me from the brunt of the wind, but once I gained the Ohio and bore westward, I faced directly into gusts mounting to a gale. After much wasted effort to hold a tight helm, I belayed the paddle and defied the downriver current and countering winds only when the dugout threatened to broach or collide with floating driftwood. I was prisoner to a low-lying craft plying dangerous waters in weather fast worsening.

  Rain drove west to east in curtains. Leaden clouds sank so low they appeared touchable with an upraised paddle. How far the eye could see was measured in feet. As the autumn storm approached its peak, a bulk of treed land thrust out of the river’s middle, a black barricade hovering dead ahead. I had just enough forewarning to stroke hard to starboard. The bow of the dugout skimmed the rock-infested head of the island and plowed onward along its northern shore without wrecking. Ask the angels how.

  Unsure how long the storm would endure, I decided to put into the bank before disaster struck. There was every likelihood the island was deserted, and I’d come too far to risk drowning in the muddy Ohio. My landing was uneventful. I unloaded my Lancaster and sweated the dugout from the water into the first line of trees. I was tired and near to collapsing, but I chopped branches from a second line of trees and concealed the dugout stem to bow, what Wentsell would have done. With only my Lancaster for company, a far comedown from recent days, I crawled under the upturned hull and slept.

  In the middle of the night I braved the chill of damp clothing to answer the call of nature. Though the rain had ceased, leaves still wet dripped water that plunked on the crown of my hat. A pinpoint of bright light toward the island’s western head caught my attention as I fastened the buttons of my breeches. A few paces to one side and viewed from a crouch, the pinpoint became a ball of winking red. It was a campfire, a big one for as far off as it burned. My island wasn’t deserted.

  I wasn’t a particularly trusting soul that night. It might be movers, militia bound for Fort Washington or boatmen risking a fire that size, any of whom could just as well be hostile and wary as friendly and inviting to an armed stranger stumbling into their camp afoot,
wounded and chewed to a fare-thee-well by skeeters. A worse death than scalping or drowning was a mistaken ball from the gun of your own kind. I returned to my sheltered bed hungry and lonely, certain of my resolve to make Limestone of my own accord.

  Declining the company of numbers seemed a little less wise at daybreak. I’d delayed my departure to grant the fire builders from last night time to embark for Limestone or whatever destination they intended, and was well hidden, scanning the Ohio’s northern bank with my spyglass, when a Shawnee warrior rode out of the morning fog and reined up at water’s edge. Wentsell’s contention “Yuh spy one Injun, there’ll soon be others about” bad merit, for three more painted and armed Redsticks hove into my lens portaging a canoe on their shoulders.

  They palavered awhile, the four of them, then floated the canoe. Rising river or not, the three portagers paddled smoothly past my position. I couldn’t help but wonder if they weren’t tracking the fire builders and their progress down the Ohio. A large militia contingent heading westward by boat to join Harmar’s forces would be of much interest to the warring Shawnee.

  The Horseback Injun proceeded to sour the morning for me. Dismounting, he tied his horse close by and built his own small fire. I watched while he roasted meat and ate with long bouts of chewing. Belly full, he picketed his horse where browse was readily available and settled down to wait, I assumed, for the return of his fellows in the canoe. I had no fear of Horseback Injun. I was beyond the range of his musket and he had not boat at his disposal. His friends in the canoe on the river gave me honest pause. Two of them were armed with rifles and they’d handled paddles with the experience of years. Encounter them out on the water and they would possess the upper hand. Their birch canoe was faster than the dugout and easier to steer in any kind of current, and two rifles were better than one. Wentsell scoffed at the oft-repeated claim Injuns were poor shots. The ranger had known good woodsmen now dead for believing that old saw.