Beyond Fort Mims

by Lauran Paine

  Davy asked where the soldiers were. They were supposed to be policing the land acquired from Indians. Jesse Jones simply shook his head. He was too demoralized to make one of the common remarks about the army. He said, “They’ll head this way, which is why I come. Davy, there’s too many. For all I know it ain’t just that one band. You got neighbors?”

  “Some. Not close,” Davy said, and stood up. “We’ll fix you a place inside.”

  Jesse also arose. “You got room? I can bed down outside. How many kids you got?”

  “Eight. Fetch your blankets. You can sleep by the fireplace.”

  “I don’t expect your wife’ll cotton to a stranger traipsin’ in. I can bed down outside.”

  Davy said, “Where’s your saddle?”

  They went where Jesse had left his outfit. Davy untied the blankets, tossed them over one shoulder, and said, “Why’d you say they’d be headin’ this way?”

  “Because they burnt out and raided from east to west. That don’t have to mean they’ll come this far, but it don’t pay not to look out a little.”

  With the tolerance only a woman with eight children could possess, Bess Crockett made Jesse Jones comfortable, even brought him a cup of broth as he and her husband sat, watching the fire. After she had used her apron like a woman herding chickens to get the children to bed, Jesse said, “I never married. I never run across a woman like yours. I never stopped lookin, but it’s gettin’ kind of late now.”

  He put the emptied cup aside and watched flames leap for a moment before also saying, “I’m half a mind to go north where they got more people, big towns, and got the redskins tamed. That was the fourth cabin I’ve built. Can’t even get in a decent stand of corn nor potatoes ready before someone rides across the crops or shoots my chickens.”

  Davy got a jug of corn squeezings, but Jesse Jones’ mood was too deep to be affected by whiskey, although he drank right along with his host.

  When he arose before bedding down, he said, “Somethin’s got to be done, Davy, or we might just as well give it all back to the Indians. Good night.”

  Davy told Bess what Jones had said. While she lay abed at his side, the foreboding returned. But she had never argued with Davy. She did not say much this time except that the hostiles might not come this far.

  In the morning, when Davy’s brood was gathered for breakfast, Jesse Jones was not in the house. Davy went to find him. Jesse was sitting on the ground near his Indian horse, smoking his pipe. He exchanged greetings with Davy, removed the pipe, and said, “I’ll move on. You got about all the cabin will hold.”

  Davy squatted. “Move on … where?”

  “Just move on. I don’t want to build another cabin an’ have it burnt down. Up north maybe.”

  Davy considered his buckskin-clad friend with the fox-skin hat and shook his head. “You’d come back. Too many folks, no good hunting, too many farms cut up the land.”

  Jones relit his pipe.

  When her man entered the house with the older man trailing, Bess heaped two plates with venison, biscuits, and the sweet from a bee tree, filled cups with chicory-flavored coffee, and herded the children outside.

  She built up the fire, told Jesse she’d made a bed for him in the shed off the back of the cabin, and told him he could stay as long as he cared to. Jesse watched her feed the fire, clear away plates to be washed, looked at Davy, and said, “You done right proud with that ’un, Davy.”

  Jesse helped Davy with the chores after which they sat on the porch to talk. Davy had thought long and hard about what Jesse had told him.

  It hadn’t ended with Red Eagle’s defeat at Horseshoe Bend. Maybe it would never end, but he doubted that because, like it or not, the territory was filling up. Eventually the Indians would be overwhelmed. In the meantime he had no intention of waiting for raiders to reach as far as his homestead.

  He told Jesse he had two neighbors, Luke Biggs and Tom Fite. He would visit them, repeat what Jesse had told him, and see if they would go over the countryside spreading the alarm.

  When Jesse asked how many men might be recruited, Davy had to guess. “Twenty, maybe a tad more.”

  Jesse was unimpressed. “It won’t be enough. There was more’n that in the band that burnt me out, an’ my guess is there’s other bands. Maybe they got Creeks an’ Cherokees with ’em. No soldiers around?”

  None that Davy knew of. The forts were scattered. Soldiers patrolled occasionally but not often and never stayed long. He said he figured they’d ought to depend on themselves and whatever help they could scare up.

  Jesse went with him. As they were crossing out of the clearing, Bess watched from the doorway. Every time Davy left, she had misgivings about his ever returning. Later generations would call it the law of averages. With Bess Crockett it was something closer to the heart.

  Davy and Jesse were gone four days. The homesteads in the Obion River country were widely scattered. No one had neighbors closer than several miles. As far as the menfolk were concerned, this was close enough. How the womenfolk felt about isolation was moot.

  They got Luke Biggs to ride the countryside with the alarm. Tom Fite probably would have agreed to do the same, but, when they reached his clearing, Tom was flat on his back, drenched with sweat, shivering like he was freezing. His woman said it was one of those attacks that came onto her man from time to time.

  On the fifth day they returned to Davy’s clearing, hadn’t been there long enough to offsaddle and turn the horses out when a youngster not much older than John Wesley came into the yard on a twelve-hundred-pound, pudding-footed, big harness horse that had been ridden too hard. As the youth slid to the ground, words tumbled out of him. He was towheaded, thin, big-eyed, and clearly near the end of his tether.

  He said his name was Reno Knight. His father was James Knight who farmed some distance south of the Obion settlement. All but the big horse he had been riding had been run off in the night. His father’s hired man, who had gone out to do chores at daybreak, had been killed by an arrow, not sixty feet from the house.

  The lad knew little more. His father had told him how to reach the pudding-footed horse behind the cabin, had told him to ride for help. He had given the alarm in the settlement and had been told to keep riding until he found the Crockett homestead. They had told him at the settlement Davy Crockett knew more about fighting Indians than anyone around.

  The lad was shaking although the morning was warm. Jesse took him to the house, handed him over to Bess. The Crockett children were still and silent for once as Bess led the lad to stand by the fire until she got him a cup of hot broth.

  Davy was waiting with the horses when Jesse returned. Before mounting, Davy handed Jesse the rifle he called Betsy, got astride, and led off southward. This time neither his wife nor the children saw him leave, but come chore time with both saddle animals gone it required no figuring to know that the horses had not gone off by themselves.

  Bess and the children listened to the frightened boy from south of the settlement, and, while the children were fascinated by the youthful stranger, Bess refused to allow her mind to dwell on the absence of her man.

  Because of the humidity, Davy and Jesse did not push their horses. It was Jesse’s opinion that pushing the animals to their limit was not going to have much to do with what had probably already happened, and he was right.

  Men from the settlement had gone south, but, when they heard no gunfire, decided that continuing toward the Knight clearing would very likely let them ride into an ambush, and turned back.

  When Davy and Jesse reached the settlement, it was quiet. People nodded to the pair of strangers in buckskin but did not approach them.

  Two stores had steel shutters closed with locked doors behind them. They went to the tavern that had, besides the proprietor, two customers, both freighters whose outfits were on the edge of town.

  The
barman set up two ales, accepted Davy’s money, and walked away. One of the freighters, a graying, bearded man with a scar on his forehead said his name was Birch Newton. He also said he recognized Davy from seeing him at several shooting matches.

  Davy introduced Jesse and asked the freighter where the Knight clearing was. The other freighter, short and bear-built, spoke without looking around. “About two miles south on the east side of the trace. You know ’em, do you?”

  Davy explained about the lad on the big work horse. The short man still did not face Crockett. He considered his half empty cup of ale and said, “No point in goin’ there, mister. There’s nothin’ left. We seen the smoke an’ the fire last night.” The freighter finally faced Davy. “There won’t be nothin’ left. If the lad got away, he’ll be the only one who did.”

  The tavern keeper added more. “The Knights ain’t the only ones. We seen other fires last night. Red Sticks, mister, we could hear ’em howlin’.”

  Davy and Jesse left the settlement. They also left the trace, rode where the land was heavily forested, stopped often to listen. Jesse said, “Long gone. You heard what the tavern keeper said.”

  Jesse was right. When they came to the clearing they thought had to have belonged to James Knight, they left the horses hidden and moved carefully to the fringe of the clearing.

  They saw a sow that had been shot, a milk cow with so many arrows in her she looked like a pincushion—and a woman face down with one arm outstretched to touch the hand of a burly, towheaded man who had four arrows in him, any one of which would have caused death.

  Several chickens lay where arrows had pierced them. Jesse leaned on his rifle and softly swore. When he finished, he said, “Least we can do is bury ’em.”

  That was what they did, using spades and crowbars they found in an unburned shed. They did not talk. After the wooden crosses had been pounded into the ground, Davy removed his coonskin hat and said a simple prayer.

  Jesse did not speak until they were back with the horses. “Why’d you pray over ’em?” he asked.

  Davy’s answer was cryptic. “Because I’m a Christian and because it’s decent to pray over dead folks.”

  Jesse was swinging into the saddle when he said, “They don’t need no send-off, Davy. They needed prayers to be answered while they was alive.”

  Davy sat, cradling Betsy and considering the westerly forest. “Jesse, seems to me them folks in that settlement got no grit in their craws.” He jutted his jaw Indian fashion. “There’s the trail.”

  Instead of speaking, the older man nudged his horse out into the upper end of the clearing and angled southward until he came to the sign of many riders. He paused to cheek a cud of molasses-cured tobacco, offered the twist to Davy, and said, “I ain’t sure just the two of us can do much, but settin’ down an’ waitin’ for them folks from your country to get together and head down this way just might let a lot of settlers get caught like these folks was.”

  They cut the trail and had little difficulty staying on it. Aside from trampled ground they found scraps of women’s clothing, some pots and pans, an ax with a shattered handle, and a large shaving mug with the initials JK on it.

  The raiders were passing through some dense, dark forest. Davy studied the sign and told Jesse he did not believe the Indians knew the country. He knew it, and anyone else who did would have gone north where there was more open country and, incidentally, where there were more isolated homesteads.

  The day was ending. Dusk was coming. Davy was watching for a creek where they could make camp, when a loud howl broke the forest’s hush.

  Jesse nodded and dismounted. “They’re close. I got no idea why they ain’t miles from here, but that was a Red Stick yell if I ever heard one.”

  They left the horses tethered in a concealing thicket and went warily and silently in the direction of that yell.

  They heard deep growling noises as the trees thinned out and eventually did not grow at all except for five or six trees in a grassy clearing.

  Davy caught Jesse’s arm. A large black bear with an arrow in his rump had an Indian on the ground. How he had managed to accomplish this was anyone’s guess, but the Indian was dead. Blood was everywhere in the grass and underbrush. The bear was not satisfied. He continued to bite, growl, and fling the body from side to side.

  There was no sign of the Indian’s horse, but there wouldn’t be, not after the horse caught bear scent. Jesse made a conjecture. “He was tryin’ to catch the others. His horse smelt bear an’ run out from under him. He got off one arrer, then the bear done the rest.”

  It was as good a guess as any other. They returned for the horses and made a big wide sashay around the area where the bear was still growling and worrying the dead Indian.

  The trail veered slightly northward. That many mounted men could not avoid leaving abundant sign. Davy and Jesse followed it like a pair of hounds right up until it became difficult to see tracks. Between day’s end and forest gloom they had to dismount and track on foot, which was a slow, exasperating method. If it had any advantage, it might be that the raiders would make camp, and, if they did, and if Davy and Jesse continued to track them, they would close the distance.

  They had to stop when no moon appeared. It would not have helped much anyway in forested country where treetops prevented both sunlight and moonlight from reaching the ground except in rare places.

  Where they halted, trees were not entirely dense. There were clumps of buffalo grass, about the only thing that would grow, and some wild pigeons arrived to perch for the night.

  Davy watched them arrive and shook his head. A gunshot would be heard a long way. He and Jesse would eat tomorrow if they were lucky.

  They took turns sleeping. Davy was convinced the raiders were no more than a mile or two ahead.

  Chapter Seven

  Caught!

  They were in the saddle ahead of sunrise. There was a faint scent of wood smoke that they tracked with caution. Renegades, white or red, were as wary as wolves. When the scent was strong, they left the horses, crept ahead, found a nest of downed timber in the middle of which was a huge wood-rat nest.

  Here, Davy held up his hand. They stopped. The wood rat, the size of a house cat, came out, wrinkled his nose, swapped ends, and disappeared back inside his house.

  The smoke scent became stronger. Jesse went out a few yards, sniffed like a bear, and returned to say, “They’d ought to be a-horseback by now.”

  Davy made a guess. “That settler back yonder more’n likely had a jug.”

  A flock of frightened birds passed overhead. The men exchanged a look. Davy led off in a northwesterly direction. The smoke scent became stronger, and the next time they halted it was because a man up ahead somewhere called to someone in a language Jesse Jones understood. He leaned to whisper. “They’re arguin’ about goin’ ahead or goin’ back an’ attackin’ the settlement.”

  They listened to the arguing Indians until a man with a deep, loud voice told the arguers to be quiet. They would go northwest. They could raid the settlement on their way back.

  Davy lifted Betsy to cradle her in his arm, and Jesse was jettisoning the cud of molasses-cured that he had substituted for breakfast, when an arrow struck chest high on a half-grown redbud between them.

  Davy dropped flat. Jesse hesitated just long enough to peer in the direction from which the arrow had come, and the second arrow came from a different direction. It struck the barrel of Jesse’s rifle. The impact half spun Jones who also dropped.

  Moments passed. There was not a sound. They were exposed to the south and to the west, but that first arrow had come from the east. The second one had come from the west. Davy squirmed until he was facing easterly.

  Nothing happened. Davy swore under his breath. “They’re cuttin’ around us.”

  Jesse grunted.

  Someone with a deep voice called to
them. “You, stand up!”

  Davy called back, “Not likely.”

  This time the arrow struck the ground between them. It was followed by the same deep, rough voice that now ordered them for the second time to stand up.

  They arose, holding their rifles held low, cocked and ready.

  The invisible Indian told them to put their weapons on the ground.

  Davy put Betsy on the ground and straightened up as Jesse leaned to do the same. Each of them still had a fleshing knife and a hatchet.

  A stocky, dark Indian moved into view from behind a tree. He was holding a flintlock pistol. Something about him was familiar to Davy. The Indian walked closer, aimed his pistol at Davy’s soft parts, and spoke, “You know me?”

  Davy shook his head. “I’ve seen you somewhere, can’t rightly recollect where it was.”

  “At the village where you kept soldiers from attacking. You told that bushy-headed captain to go away. We run off their horses.”

  Davy’s gaze widened. He remembered. He did not know the Indian’s name but he remembered him as the sullen, dark man.

  Jesse spoke, “You’re Charley Ben. We stampeded them army horses.”

  The dark Indian nodded in Jesse’s direction. “You Jesse.”

  For five seconds, with more Indians arriving on all sides of the white men, nothing more was said. But eventually the man called Charley Ben spoke again, but in his own language, and four Indians came up behind the white men, roughly grabbed them, swung them around, and punched them in the direction of their camp.

  The raiders watched them arrive. Every one of them had a rifle, most had hatchets, and all had big knives in sheaths with the fur side out.

  Their breakfast fire was down to coals and no longer gave off much smoke. The captives were pushed to the ground. There were bridled horses. There were also bags of loot. The Indians had been ready to mount up and depart.