The Hinterlands: A Mountain Tale in Three Parts

by Robert Morgan

  But once I got rid of the black widow spider it wasn’t just fatigue and loss of ambition that troubled me. It wasn’t even shame at the foolishness of my scheme. The day was almost over. It was near four or five o’clock, and we was lost. We was loster than we had been all day. I didn’t have no sense of direction anymore and Sue seemed to be going this way and that. When I got a chance to look for the sun, it was first over one shoulder and then over the other. I couldn’t recognize anything, and the woods ahead just went on and on and got deeper and deeper.

  “Where you going?” I said to Sue. But she didn’t slow down. She was running on habit now. She had been running so long she couldn’t stop. It was like she still had speed and it carried her forward. She run like it was easier to go forward than to quit. She run like she didn’t care where she was going, like a dog that’s been hunting all night and keeps trotting along because it’s so far from home.

  Everybody’s life is hard. You show me somebody whose life ain’t hard and I’ll show you a dead man. The only thing that can get you through so much messiness and grief is a plan. Only trashy people just drift, and though they’s a certain wisdom in drifting I don’t see how they can stand it. How can anybody just loll around all day, with nothing to look forward to?

  But I was so tired, I wasn’t hardly at myself. The woods went on forever, with more trees, more thickets. The shelf-land was endless, and the mountains went on and on.

  Boom! boom! boom! I heard off to my left. It sounded like a drum. I wondered if it was far-off thunder. Maybe they was going to be another storm. But Sue didn’t seem to hear nothing, and she didn’t slow down.

  I heard it again, boom! boom! boom!, slow like somebody shooting pistols, a second or two between shots. It was like somebody had a dozen pistols, and was shooting them one after another. The sounds stopped and I wasn’t sure I had heard them.

  The leaves was drying out and rattling a little, covering up any sound in the distance. I couldn’t see any clouds that would indicate another storm. And the air didn’t feel like it was going to rain. In fact, the sky had cleared completely, and the air was getting warm again. I hit a laurel bush with my shoulder and it rattled and did not wet me.

  The boom-boom-boom come again from the distance. It really sounded like a drum. But who would be beating a drum this far back in the mountains? The blows sounded like echoes, but timed so even it was hard to imagine thunder or even pistols making the noise. Could the Cherokee have come back and be having a war dance? a corn dance? Could they be having a rally for an attack?

  Boom-boom-boom-boom, the sound come again. It was so regular it was scary. It was timed exactly to the blood beating in my ears. Could I be imagining the sound? Could it be a stroke coming on, or might it be a sound in the mountain? I’d heard of mountains that made noises, that groaned and knocked at certain times like they was having bad dreams. Singing mountains they was called. People thought they had caverns and waterfalls inside, or rocks that shifted around with the phases of the moon.

  Boom-boom-boom-boom come over the horizon again, and then a couple of echoes follered up. Could they be an army marching through the mountains? I tried to think of the last militia that had been mustered. Not since the Battle of New Orleans had local folks marched under colors. The sound was ghostly. It was like something knocking against the sky. But I didn’t believe no ghost army could be marching through the coves and hollers.

  It come to me why the sound was so spooky. It was like somebody knocking at a door or gatepost. You hear knocking and you have to go see what it is. If somebody is rapping, you can’t ignore it. But this was a big hitting, like something inside the mountain or inside the earth. And the sound filled the sky, running from one horizon to the other.

  “Whoa,” I said to Sue, because I wanted to stop and listen. “Slow down, old girl,” I said. If I could stop and quiet my heart and the thumping in my ears I might be able to figure out the racket. I might make sense of it.

  But Sue just kept trotting. And it sounded like the noise was getting louder and we was getting closer. But I couldn’t be sure, because the bangs come from all around.

  Maybe they’s a war going on, I said to myself. Or maybe it’s a shoot-out. Maybe they’s a duel taking place. But I never heard any guns shoot so much or so steady. People come to the South Carolina line to fight duels, so they could run in either direction if the law showed up. But whatever it was, it wasn’t regular gun shots, unless they was a brigade on each side.

  I was so busy thinking about the big knocks I hadn’t noticed we come to the end of the shelf-land. Suddenly Sue run into an open space under some big maples. The ridge bent around over what looked like a creek holler. I thought I could hear the seethe of water, though I wasn’t sure, with the leaves rattling and the booming from over the ridge. That was when I realized we had been resting on the shelf-land. The level ground had made me forget how hard it was to run uphill. Without knowing it, I had been resting for the climb ahead.

  Finally even Sue slowed down a little. The uneven ground cut her pace in half. She grunted and swung her weight from side to side. Boom-boom-boom-boom. The sound was even bigger, and much closer. It was just ahead of us somewhere, down near the creek. And now I could hear another sound. Besides the booms, they was a grinding noise, like something was being broke or crushed. I tried to guess what could make such a racket. I’d heard of fulling hammers that pounded cloth to make the weave closer and tighter. But nobody was weaving cloth back in the coves and beating it in a fulling mill.

  The noise was so loud Sue paid attention now. She cocked her ears to the sound, and then flattened them the noise was so painful. It hurt my ears too. Each knock pressed on my head like a gust of wind. The knocks was so loud they seemed to ring inside my head.

  “Whoa there,” I said to Sue. She slowed down more but didn’t stop. She seemed to want to turn away from the noise, but the only way to turn was further up the ridge. She was too tired to climb if she didn’t have to. We kept going generally toward the awful sound.

  The hammering was so loud it seemed in my head. The ridges caused the booms to bounce back and magnify and multiply. When you’re in the middle of a loud sound it feels like you’re smothering. I don’t know why a big noise will suck your breath away, like it squeezes your chest in a vise.

  Suddenly we come around the ridge into sunlight, and Sue stopped at the rim of a high bank. I thought it was a cliff at first, we was up so high, but I seen it was just a high bank of rocks and dirt. Somebody had dug way back into the mountainside and left this blinding wall of rocks and dirt. You never seen such a mess of muddy rocks, mud holes and dirty logs and heaps of gravel as they was at the foot of the cut.

  I was so busy looking for the source of the noise I didn’t see the men at first. They was the color of the yellow dirt and mud, and I was half blinded by the glare of the sound. I noticed one, two, three of the men moving around the spoil of gravel and mud. They was coated with mud and dust, and when I looked closer, I seen they didn’t have a stitch of clothes on.

  It was hard to tell anything about the men, they was so covered in dirt. But it looked like one of them had long, blond hair, and the other two might be dark, Indians or gypsies maybe. They had shovels and hammers, and they was boxes and wheelbarrows filled with rocks. I figured they had to be mining something, but it was impossible to tell what. It didn’t appear to be gold for they was no cradle and toms, and no sign of panning or washing gravel.

  They didn’t see me and Sue, standing way up on the rim of the cut. We had come to the end of our journey, for Sue didn’t make any move to backtrack and they was no way to go forward. Half the hole below was in shadow, and I had trouble seeing into the darkest part. One of the men was rolling a barrow up to the head of the clearing, and I shielded my brow with the hatchet to see where he was going. Slowly my eyes adjusted, and I seen where the terrible noise was coming from.

  It was a big waterwheel, but the crudest-built one you ever seen. It was m
ade out of rough logs and saplings pegged and tied together. The wheel creaked as it turned and the buckets streamed water like white hair. But the wheel turned steady, lurching as it went round. And what it turned was this big wheel of wooden spokes, like a wagon wheel without a rim. Each spoke would push down the end of this log and raise the other end. On the other end was a big hammer. The hammer raised up and fell down with a deafening boom. That’s what made the awful noise.

  It was a triphammer, raising and falling as the spoke let it go. It was crude beyond describing, but it seemed to work. They put their rocks on that hammer and it smashed them to gravel. It come to me they had to be mining lead, or lead and silver, since the two almost always go together. And if they was mining lead, they had to be a furnace nearby where they melted it down.

  Sure enough, smoke was rising through the trees further up the holler. I couldn’t see no fire, but something was hot up there. You could smell the smoke and the heated rock. And it come to me if they was a furnace running, they must be more than three men at the works. Right then I got a bad feeling at having stumbled on the secret mine. No prospector likes his diggings discovered.

  And I seen something else, just before I tried to get Sue to back away from the lip of the cut into the woods. I seen these old washpots and ladders throwed off to the side, and they looked like things made a hundred, or two hundred years ago. They had rusted and rotted, but you could tell they had laid there a long time. I’d always heard rumors that Spaniards had dug mines in these mountains, that they forced the Cherokees to dig for gold and silver. That reminded me of the thick coin in my right hand. Quick I pushed the big coin in my pocket. I didn’t want nobody to see that money until I’d had a better chance to examine it myself. And I didn’t want to lose the gift from Tracker Thomas.

  “Back away, let’s back away, old girl,” I said to Sue. I pulled at her tail and she swung her head with irritation. “Whoa back,” I said. But she was tired and stubborn, and she didn’t want to backtrack. Maybe she was curious about what was going on below, or maybe she smelled the smoke and thought something must be cooking. She figured where they’s men they will be something to eat. Men don’t go into the woods to work without their rations.

  “Back away, back away,” I said. “We ain’t got no business here.” I grabbed her leg and pulled. But it’s hard to move a hog. She had gone as far as she wanted to go and jerked away from my grip. I thought she might budge when the rheumatism stung my shoulder. And at the same moment I seen one of the men below pointing at us. I dropped to the ground, but Sue was pulling so hard she tipped right over the rim of the cut and jerked me after her. Next thing I knowed, the breath was knocked out of me. I rolled down that steep bank, ass over head, with the sky whirling and the hog first on top and then under me. All the woods and walls and mud was spinning. It felt like we rolled for miles on the sharp rocks before coming to rest in the mud with the dirty naked men standing over us.

  Both Sue and me stumbled and lurched to our feet. After such a fall and tumble, it felt my ribs was broke and every inch of my body had a bruise on it. I was groggy as if it was three in the morning. The men closed in, but it wasn’t me they was grabbing for. The three of them grabbed Sue as she struggled to stand up.

  “She’s a tame hog,” I said, gasping to find my breath. “We was surveying a road.”

  “We’re surveying us some tenderloin,” the tall man with the blond beard said. “We’re surveying us some ribs and ham roast.”

  “That hog is my property,” I said. “And we’re on our way to Cedar Mountain.”

  “You ain’t on your way nowhere but hell,” the tall man said. He and the Indians held Sue, one on each ear, one on the tail.

  “Do you steal from anybody that comes along?” I said. I tried to think of something to make them let us go. I owed it to Sue to not let her be killed, even if we didn’t get the road laid out. I don’t think nothing is as important as loyalty, even to a hog if it comes to that. All law and order is based on loyalty.

  “Ain’t nobody else come along,” the tall man said. “And we ain’t stealing; we’re just borrowing, you might say.”

  I reached for Sue, but they pushed me away. I still had the hatchet, but them fellers could see how weak I was. I was covered with mud now as well as blood and sweat.

  “Turn that hog loose,” I said, trying to sound strong.

  “You ain’t in no shape to give orders, chief,” the tall man said. The two Indians laughed.

  But I seen what their problem was. They couldn’t secure Sue unless they had a rope. But if one turned her loose to get a rope then I might attack the others and she would get loose. To do what they needed to, one had to attack me first and subdue me. I watched to see how long it would take them to figure that out.

  If the man at the furnace was to come back to the diggings, their problem was solved. But the hammer made such a racket it wasn’t no good to call him. I had the hatchet and could attack, but then they would kill me for sure, though Sue might get away.

  “Here, chief, give me that hatchet,” the tall man said. With the hatchet they could kill Sue and not need to go for a rope. “That hatchet won’t do you no good,” he said. “But it will do us a lot of good.”

  If I attacked them and they had to defend theirselves, they would lose the hog. And they was no advantage to killing me if they lost the sow. They was hungry men working out there in the woods, probably around the clock to get the lead and silver quick as they could. Under the dirt their ribs was showing.

  “Let’s discuss this with common sense,” the tall man said. He kept looking up the creek to see if the fourth man might be coming. The shadows had now covered most of the pit, though the sun was still bright on the walls and woods above. It was a long, summer day and they would be two or three more hours of light. The banging hammer made the air seem crooked. Or maybe that was just the way I felt, that the air was all twisted and tangled up.

  “What’s your name?” the tall man hollered.

  “I’m Solomon Richards,” I said. “And I’m building a road through Douthat’s Gap to Cedar Mountain.”

  “Solomon,” he said. “You ain’t going to build a road nowhere, not over this ridge. You’re tired out and wounded. Give us that hatchet and we’ll pay for the hog. We got plenty of silver.”

  But I knowed they’d kill me no matter what, because I had found their mine and could go back and tell where they was.

  “I know what you’re doing here,” I said.

  “Give us the hatchet and we’ll give you a share,” the blond man said. The Indians hadn’t said nothing. I didn’t even know if they spoke English or not.

  I had to think of something quick. The fourth man might appear any second, or they might figure out they had to kill me before they could eat the hog. If one come for me, I’d have to kill him with the hatchet. Only one idea occurred to me.

  I looked around the shadows of the clearing to see where they kept things. They was only heaps of mud and gravel, puddles and boxes, and paths made by the crude wheelbarrows. I couldn’t see no tent, but it looked like a bark and brush lean-to stood at the edge of the trees. I figured that’s where they kept the silver, and whatever guns they had. The silver might be buried in the leaves, but I figured it would be near where they slept.

  I started running toward the edge of the woods. The mud was so deep I sunk to my ankles. The tall man come running after me. The mud sucked and spit where a foot touched. I was too tired to outrun anybody. Normally I could sprint fast as the next one, but I had gone too far, and too much had happened to me that day. I made my legs run, but it was like they belonged to somebody else.

  “You can’t get away,” the tall man called after me. I didn’t answer for I needed all my breath.

  “They’s no way out except up the cliff,” the tall man hollered. At least that’s what I thought he said. The hammer was banging so close my ears hurt and I couldn’t be sure what I heard. But the naked man was gaining on me. I had
on my boots and sweaty clothes and I was near wore out.

  They was a bank at the edge of the woods where the shed was. You never seen such a crude camp, even among hunters or new settlers. They was just a fire with a stick over it for roasting turkeys or squirrels. And they was dirty pans laying around on the dirt. Some had cornbread in them and some had mush or grits. Didn’t look like they had nothing to eat but cornmeal.

  The lean-to was a kind of brush arbor, open where it faced the fire and clearing. They hadn’t took the trouble to construct it. They just piled brush and bark on a rough frame. Their blankets and stuff was scattered inside. It was so shadowy there, I couldn’t see much. I was looking for a gun or rifle. I knowed they would have one somewhere. Nobody would go out into the woods like that without a gun to shoot game and defend their claim.

  But what I seen was something else. They was a fringe of roots hanging on the edge of the lean-to. I thought at first they was rags, or maybe ramps. But they was shiny roots swollen as little sweet taters, some shaped like dolls and others like the private parts of a man. I knowed right then that was ginseng. They must have been two hundred roots there. These fellers was sang diggers that stumbled on the lead mine. That’s why they had such crude equipment. They wasn’t really miners at all.

  The woods was full of sang diggers back then. In late summer they would start scouring the ridges and hollers, especially in the Flat Woods, and upper edge of South Carolina beyond the Big Springs. You had to find it while the leaves and berries was still on to recognize it.