The Winds of Autumn

by Jim R. Woolard

  I accepted the coins, thanked him and requested that saddlebags be filled with provisions in our absence for the upcoming ride to Tygart’s Creek. Jules was never a man to pry, and his frown was sincere.

  “Yuh have the horse and the saddle, Blaine Tyler?” he asked.

  “Within the hour,” I assured him with my best smile.

  Lem thumped from the tavern, smacking his lips. “My rifle’s yonder. I’m as ready ta die as I’ll ever be.”

  I shooed him into the dooryard a step ahead of Monique’s sudden questioning. Outside, once he had his rifle in tow, the old salt, emboldened by rum and nagging worry, turned and confronted me. “Damnit, Blaine, we can buy horses an’ a new rifle for yuh. I’ll not be much help with a crutch under one arm.”

  “Would Blake run?’’

  He tried, but couldn’t match my level gaze. “Naw, he wouldn’t,” Lem admitted, clearing his pipes, “an’ yuh won’t neither.” He spat. “But at least borrow a rifle from Jules. You’re carryin’ nothin’ but belt weapons.”

  I squeezed his shoulder. “Trust me, Sergeant. We could take what’s ours at riflepoint, then watch our backtrail forever. I won’t have ’em trackin’ us home. I call Clell out, yuh keep the rest off’n me. Yuh do that much, we’ll be on our way afore most of Limestone’s awake. Come along.”

  As always, Lem still grumped every other stride, but he followed me, and together we followed the roadway fronting Monet’s roadhouse down Limestone Creek toward the river. Cabins sat so tight to the roadway their doors opened directly onto the manure-strewn hardpan. Smoke eked from just a few chimneys. Town dogs gone to seed watched us but seldom barked. The smell of fresh slop heaps and outhouses assailed the nose. Limestone at dawn smelled no better than it had from the river the night I arrived, leaving little doubt why Wentsell shunned it all for the woods.

  The gate at the Ferrenden Yard stood ajar, left so as I’d hoped by whoever fetched the morning water. We ignored the bell rope and stepped inside to find no one out and about. The stables and smithy occupied opposite ends of the yard. In the middle of the back wall stood the large cabin for the crew and the smaller dwelling for the superintendent. Smoke flowed from the chimney of the crews’ cabin. Hearth flames reddened the grease-paper window. The superintendent’s dwelling showed neither smoke nor light.

  Firewood two rows deep was stacked against the wall of the crews’ cabin to either side of the front door. I halted three strides shy of the stoop and positioned Lem twice that distance behind and to my left. “Don’t raise yer rifle till I signal. Then cock her quick.”

  I took a deep breath, loosened my shoulders, and yelled for Clell at the top of my lungs. I waited a tad, and certain I had their attention, called his name again just as loud.

  The plank door squealed on its hinges and he filled the opening. Seeing I wasn’t armed with long gun or pistol, he stepped onto the stoop. A skinny wharf rat slid past behind him and planted his tailbone on the woodpile.

  “You’re standin’ sooner I expected,” Clell said, face grim and suspicious.

  “I’m lookin’ for Mistress Ferrenden, an’ I’m willin’ ta pay for learnin’ where I might find her,” I said, reaching into the fold of my frock. I winced as if even that small movement hurt me, and slowly brought into view the bulging bag of gold coins.

  Clell’s eyes widened and he stepped down from the stoop as I held the bag out to him. With a flip of the wrist I tossed it into the air and he caught it with a hairy paw fast as a snake’s tongue. He grasped the bag tightly, snorted through his nostrils and turned his head to boast of his easy pickings to the skinny wharf rat on the woodpile. And that long Tyler memory and short fuse reached out and bit me the fiercest ever. I took a step forward on my left foot and hit him square on the downward angle of the jaw with my right fist, every speck of my weight behind the blow. The sound of my fist landing was that of an open palm slapping a cow’s haunch. I felt skin tear under my knuckles. Blood spewed and teeth flew. I gave him no more warning with the second punch, shifting my weight to my right foot and hitting him with a sweeping left straight into his wind just below the ribs.

  He reeled back against the woodpile, gasping for air, not a smidgeon of defiance left in him. No matter. It was his tough luck he didn’t go down. I seized a round of firewood and backhanded him against the side of the head with it. I pulled off a touch at the last instant and angled the swishing round of wood upward enough so that it clipped him only a glancing bash on the corner of the forehead. I didn’t want to kill him outright and bring the law, drunk or sober, after Lem and me. I didn’t want them following us home either.

  Clell sank to the ground on the seat of his canvas trousers, cheek lolling against the stacked wood. I pointed the round of firewood at the skinny wharf rat with the open hanging mouth and wiggled the fingers of my free hand at Lem. The wharf rat jumped at the cocking of the sergeant’s rifle.

  “There’s a Lancaster flintlock with a gold star on the stock somewhere. I don’t have it and everyone ain’t lined up out here by the count of five, you’re all dead men.”

  I knew full well how I looked right then, knew from having seen Blake’s eyes when they were the dull gray of winter sleet and his heart as unforgiving as the Devil’s on a mindless rampage. I began my count, and wharf rat scrambled for the stoop. Someone inside yelled, “Get the man his damn rifle, Lute. We ain’t dyin’ for a sonofabitch like Clell Darns,” and the rest of the Ferrenden crew poured through the door like water from a piggin, nearly trampling Wharf Rat in their haste.

  They lined up as ordered and Lute handed me my Lancaster. “It ain’t been fired nor touched since the night we took … stole it,” he swore, stepping immediately back into line.

  I examined the weapon from butt plate to front sight, smiled, leveled the barrel and snugged the hammer back. They jumped to a man this time. “There’s Tyler horses, a bay, bell mare and two pack animals in your stables. Three of yuh put saddles on the ridin’ stock an’ bring ’em all round. Yuh pick the three, Lute.”

  My newly appointed foreman wisely left himself off the saddling crew. While we waited, I retrieved the coin bag from beside Clell, who as yet hadn’t stirred. I dumped coins into my palm, counted, recounted, then passed them to the surprised Lute. “That’ll cover the saddles and bridles. Tylers don’t pay for what’s already theirs.”

  The three saddlers jogged our horses from the stable. Lem held the whole crew at attention. till I checked the mouths, legs and hooves of each animal. “They’re fit,” I announced, mounting the bay.

  I froze my Lancaster on Wharf Rat. “Tie his crutches together and help the sergeant up,” I snapped.

  He not only boosted Lem aboard the mare, but also brought the lead ropes of the pack animals to my stirrup. I waved him back into line with my rifle barrel and stared at the Ferrenden crew one at a time as if I had the whole morning for the chore. “Any of yuh ever set foot within ten miles of the Tyler place on Tygart’s Creek, I’ll string yuh up by the heels an’ use yuh for bear bait.”

  Believe you me, they were squirming good with their heads lowered when I ordered, “Open the gate, Lute. Lead off, Sergeant.”

  We trotted through the wide gate, rifle butts standing at the ready on our thighs, and reined southward on the road to Monet’s.

  Lem didn’t bother looking back.

  And neither did I.

  Chapter 31

  Sunset, October 4

  Two days later Lem and I rode into the Oldham dooryard west of Tygart’s Creek. By then the old salt had forgiven me for denying him a prolonged rum bout in the Monet tavern celebrating our success at the Ferrenden Yard. Jules had met us upon our return with not only the saddlebags I’d requested, but with packsaddles brimming with replacement provisions for what we’d lost in the Shawnee raid. Sometimes Lem’s yarning reaped an unexpected benefit, and without letting him dismount, I’d cinched the packsaddles on our hauling animals, draped the saddlebags across the bay’s withers, kissed Monique soundly
on the mouth, shaken Jules’s hand, and herded the old salt down the wagon road south from Limestone at riflepoint. The muzzle of a flintlock could quell even Sergeant Lemuel Shakett’s infamous tongue and hustle his skinny bones for home.

  At camp that first night, Lem stared solemnly into the fire, a rooster whose beak had been pulled, and I did the same. Once we were away from Limestone, the loss of Hannah Ferrenden settled over me like low-hanging smoke. She was there in my heart, but when I reached for her, she slipped twixt my fingers. By the second night, we began to talk again, and Lem, his anger with me diminishing when I shared a canteen of rum from Jules’s saddlebags with him, asked me if I thought I’d ever see her again. I told him maybe, but that it was unlikely, Pitt’s Town and Tygart’s Creek being in many ways farther apart than the moon and the sun. What I didn’t admit to him was that much as I loved her, I wasn’t certain I had the courage to knock at the gilded door of Ferrenden Hall. The smell of raw manure didn’t leave a farmer simply because he stepped out of the pasture.

  Josh Oldham was rocking in a rush-seated chair when we rode in at mid-afternoon, napping on his porch in autumn sunshine and overseeing at the same time his myriad off spring at work in field and yard. His charges, from youngest to oldest, looked us over and waved, but none abandoned their chores to greet us in person. The old patriarch wielded a quick switch, and acceptable excuses were scarce as snowfall in summer.

  We reined in next to the porch and remained aboard, indicating we were passing through. I tipped my hat, greeted Josh and not locating Adam at work with the others, asked where he was.

  Josh folded his beard under his chin, leaned and spat off the end of the porch. Company was a rarity for him and he enjoyed the attention, though he would have been the first to deny such a thing.

  “He ain’t here.”

  I hesitated a mannerly-amount of time and asked, “Where might I find him, sir?”

  Another slow spitting preceded his careful, “He went home ta your cabin.”

  I glanced at Lem and inquired of Josh, “He go alone?”

  “Naw, she took him off two nights ago. Can be right forceful that girl.”

  Not at all thrilled I must now confront his daughter Loraleen on my arrival at Tygart’s Creek, I tugged at my hat brim, bade him good-bye, and reined the bay about, motioning Lem to follow with the pack animals.

  The old salt found my situation most humorous. Past the Oldham cornfield, he heeled the mare alongside my stirrup. “The Lord be truly generous ta yuh Tyler boys. Yuh traipse hither an’ yon huntin’ a sister lost ta Injuns an’ still run into beautiful women wherever yuh go. The black-haired gal skedaddles for home on her paw’s boat, but no matter, the redheaded one badgers her paw into allowin’ her ta wait beside your very bed. I’d truly like ta know what yuh boys say ta the Lord on your knees each night. He ain’t hearin’ a word I’m sayin’.”

  Even after the woods path narrowed and forced him to ride behind me, Lem funned me till we topped the ridge overlooking Tygart’s Creek. He quieted as we rested and blew the horses before descending the ridge. It was, the sergeant agreed, a mighty pretty sight. The autumn sunset painted the stubble of harvested fields and the walls and chimney of our cabin a pale gold. In the dark shadows beyond the sleeping cabin, an outside fire burned, surrounded by men through with the day’s work. A railed enclosure of recent vintage replaced the barn destroyed by the Shawnee. A male youngster, undoubtedly Adam, watered horses at a new trough flanking the pasture gate.

  “Ready ta face her?” Lem asked in a low voice.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” I answered, lifting the reins of the bay. “I ’tain’t never kicked a beautiful woman out of my bed before.”

  We were in the middle of the creek when Adam saw us. He tied the horses in his charge to the pasture fence and ran to meet us in huge strides, calling our names over and over. The bay cleared the creek, and like Blake before me, I emptied a stirrup and Adam came up and into my arms, tears streaming to his chin. I clutched him tight to my chest and walked the bay to the pasture gate.

  With a final hug, Adam dropped down and ran to greet Lem. I leaned my Lancaster next to the gate, removed my hat and dunked my head in the cooling waters of the trough. When I turned, Adam and Lem were looking at me. I straightened my frock and glanced at the trail of smoke rising from the cabin chimney. No man ever found suitable words with which to shun any woman in love with him.

  “How’s your redheaded keeper?” I asked Adam.

  “Ain’t no one about with red hair I know of,” he shot back, beaming smile warming his wet cheeks.

  Lem’s cackling laugh was a true howler.

  They both pointed and Abner Johnson, whom I’d not seen since our midnight camp on the Ohio, stepped from the sleeping cabin. His presence confirmed what I’d already guessed. I smoothed my queued hair with both hands and headed across the wide yard. I passed the grinning Abner without speaking, and I’m man enough to admit I was running before I got to the stoop of the main cabin.

  I burst through the door and she was at the hearth, wearing of all things a linsey dress, tight at the waist and low at the bosom, that swept the floor. She froze a half-instant in surprise; then those violet eyes grew bright and shiny and she walked toward me, dropping her long-handled ladle unnoticed on the puncheon floor. A step away, her lower lip trembled and, before I could loosen my tongue, she leapt into my arms.

  Later that same evening, after our meal and much tall yarning by Lem and Abner, she shooed them and Adam across to the sleeping cabin and barred the door. We watched the coals of the fire burn to gray, and then, with her more’n willing, the wonder of our coming together forever etched in my head, I heeded Brother Blake’s wise counsel and loved Hannah Ferrenden till she begged for mercy and never stopped.

  Epilogue

  Ferrenden Green

  Delaplain, Kentucky

  October 18, 1815

  It was in October 18 and 13 the express arrived informing us Blake Tyler, the infamous traitor, had been killed by a Kentucky ball in the Canadian Injun War. Since that fateful week, I have scratched for two years with quill on parchment setting forth my recollections of the autumn of 17 and 90, the season circumstances beyond any misdeed or oversight on our part forever changed the course of my brother’s life, and mine as well.

  When I found Hannah Ferrenden at the Tyler cabin that autumn, we were sure the return of Blake and Sarah was imminent and certain to happen, and each and every sunset I would lean on the pasture gate and stare across Tygart’s Creek at the ridgeline beyond it. But the sunsets slipped by, the glorious leaves of autumn fell and withered on damp earth, and the creek ford remained empty.

  In early November, Lem joined me one evening and said he believed Hannah Ferrenden was unbearably anxious to learn of her father’s fate, and to do so, she would need journey at least to Limestone, if not to Pitt’s Town or Redstone on the distant Allegheny. Canto, Lem pointed out, could tell Blake and Sarah where we had gone and why. In any event, the provisions were sufficient for our two lost souls to winter twice over on Tygart’s Creek.

  I couldn’t ignore Lem or what he said, for it was the old salt’s yarning that had brought Hannah Ferrenden to me. Descending Brush Creek on Wentsell’s raft, he’d kept her attention on the poling with an endless stream of chatter relating everything he knew about the Tylers, which of course included the leaving of young Adam in good but strange hands till someone came for him. Upon their arrival at Limestone, Lem’s yarning became vitally important to his listener. The situation at Ferrenden Yard turned ugly soon as the sergeant departed for the Monet roadhouse. Clell Darns would brook no subtle hint nor blunt word he was to take orders from a slip of a girl weighing less than a wet hen, judge’s daughter or not. Souring the situation still more for her was news delivered by the company keelboat that her father was within a hairsbreadth of dying, weakened beyond recovery from years of fighting the ague. With the judge perhaps already cold in his grave, and trusted mate Chard Langst
on lost in the Shawnee ambush on the Ohio, she had only Abner Johnson she could rely upon. without question, and Hannah Ferrenden doubted the two of them could assert any real authority over the thirty-odd rivermen manning the family yards at Limestone and far upriver.

  Her decision was straightforward and simple: prepare to fight another day. Accompanied by Abner, she shook her father’s Limestone factor out of his bed in the dead of night and obtained the gold she required with threats that if he didn’t do all she demanded, his lucrative dealings with the Ferrendens ended on the morrow. The old gentleman complied with considerable haste. Leaving instructions he was to provide a bag of coins through Clell Darns to One Blaine Tyler to tide him over whenever he appeared, she returned to the yard, purchased the loyalty of the keelboat crew with bright gold and sailed at first light. She told no one left behind at the yard her true destination, and fearful not even gold could ensure trustworthiness in a single man of them, made no attempt to send Lem word of her intentions either. Three days later, the keelboat gained the waters of Tygart’s Creek, me having passed their unseen craft in the dugout the first night as they lay at anchor in the deep shadows of the Ohio shoreline. Mooring the keelboat a short distance above the mouth of Tygart’s Creek, Hannah Ferrenden and her crew proceeded upstream afoot, and two days later surprised Canto and his dark fellows harvesting tobacco in our patchwork fields. She then retrieved Adam from the Oldhams and Loraleen, confounding them, she later admitted, with the haughty pronouncement she was the new wife of Blaine Tyler, and settled in our cabin to wait, however long it might be, for me to find my way home.

  A few days after Lem’s evening with me at the pasture gate, we honored Hannah Ferrenden’s request to pursue news of her father. We descended Tygart’s Creek, recovered the keelboat, and descended the Ohio in turn, sighting Limestone the third week of November 17 and 90. The village was buzzing night and day with the details of General Harmar’s repulse by the Ohio lnjuns, the federals and Kentucky militia having suffered numerous casualties. In the midst of heightened fears of further Redstick depredations the length of the river the coming winter, Clell Darns was only too happy to spread the ugly lie in every tavern that my brother had purposely failed to report for the final muster of Captain Jacobs’ militia company. By the time we learned of his defaming slander at Monet’s roadhouse, half of Limestone had declared Blake Tyler a deserter who should face a firing squad.