Beyond Fort Mims

by Lauran Paine

  Davy leaned down with a hand on Reno’s shoulder. “If I know Jesse Jones, I’d say he’s been shot worse an’ never stopped talking.”

  “He’s yonder in them trees, Mister Crockett.”

  “Son, by now he’s a mile off an’ still going.”

  “I want him, Mister Crockett.”

  Davy was about to speak when Jesse groaned. The lad crossed the room in long strides, sank to both knees with tears streaming. Jesse turned his head slightly and smiled, something he was not much given to doing. “I’m goin’ to need some waitin’ on, Reno.”

  Bess straightened up, her back ached. Her arms were bloody to the elbow. She used the back of one hand to brush hair away, and, when Davy came up, she dropped something into his hand as she said, “It’s not lead, Davy. It’s not heavy enough.”

  Davy took the ball to better light and examined it. Steel musket balls were genuine novelties on the frontier where men used molds into which they poured molten lead to make ammunition. Farther north, where they had factories to manufacture such things by the hundreds, steel musket balls were common.

  He pocketed the steel ball, went over, and sank to one knee as Bess spoke to Jesse. “If he was aiming for your brisket, he was too far to the left. Your side looks like a butchered hog. Take a deep breath.”

  Jesse obeyed and gasped.

  Bess leaned forward, feeling for broken ribs. She found two and asked one of the girls for the whiskey jug. She then explained to Jesse that with two broken ribs and maybe another cracked one, he’d be doing good if he could whittle a stick for two or three months.

  Jesse said nothing until he’d had two long pulls from the jug and let Davy take it, then he made a ghastly smile at Bess as he spoke in a harsh whisper. “I’ve got to be up ’n’ around long before then, ma’am. I got to hang some ambushin’ damned rascal’s hair out to dry.”

  They made a pallet for Jesse atop the bear robe, stoked up the fire, sat with him until his eyes closed, then Davy took his wife aside. She anticipated his question. “He’s not young, but it ain’t the busted bones. They’ll heal. He’s lost a sight of blood.”

  Davy listened, nodded, glanced over his wife’s head to the open doorway, kissed her forehead, got his rifle from beside the door, and slipped swiftly outside to the south side of the cabin, waited until he heard birds in the westerly woods, then ran across cleared ground and disappeared into the forest.

  The gunshot had come from the west not the east. It required a lot of time for Davy to make a wide sashay northward through thick timber before he could start southward. By the time he found where the ambusher had knelt, the sun was slanting away.

  There had been six of them. One wore boots; the other five wore moccasins. He had no difficulty locating the area where their horses had been tethered, or of the direction in which the animals had been ridden after the shooting—northward for more than a mile, then on an angle in the direction of the distant road.

  Tracking an area where gloom was perpetual was not easy, but Davy had an advantage. He was on foot. As the gloom deepened along toward day’s end, he was less than a mile from the same road where the wagon fight had occurred. He had been able to make good time right up until sundown. After that he had to slacken considerably in order to detect disturbed leaves, an occasional trampled small bush, and limbs that had been broken where riders had pushed past.

  He had his powder horn and bullet pouch slung from each shoulder, but he had not taken his parfleche. That meant he would have to go hungry. It did not bother him even after he found where the ambushers had left the forest for the road.

  Here, while the light was marginally better, the tracking was hindered by dozens of sets of horse tracks, some going north, some going south.

  He had to proceed a few feet at a time with dark forests on each side of the road and the silence that ordinarily accompanied nightfall, when he heard two gunshots.

  He left the road, hid in the westerly forest, and waited. Northward some distance there was the sound of horses moving swiftly from the road to the forest. It sounded as though riders were scattering among the trees.

  The silence deepened and was not disturbed for a long time before Davy picked up a familiar scent—wood smoke. That was not extraordinary in a country where to save candles folks bedded down early. He was not surprised. Hearth fires could put smoke up a chimney for a long time, often until the coals were rekindled the following morning.

  What baffled him was not just the scent but those two gunshots and the discovery of riders in this area that was not very far south from where the wagon fight had taken place. When he had previously scouted this area, he had not seen a clearing.

  He moved cautiously seeking the cleared ground that commonly accompanied a house. Those two gunshots had not come from somewhere this far north, but from easterly toward the roadway.

  He did not find the clearing for an excellent reason; there was none. What he found was a house made of unusually large logs nestled among a stand of big trees. What held his attention longest was one scraped rawhide window showing light from within.

  He hesitated in forest darkness. Once before he had come upon a place like this. That time the reason there had been no clearing was that the settler did not farm, he trapped.

  It was not possible from a distance to make out much except that the house had been built like a fort and the roof hadn’t been shingled with sugar pine slabs; it was covered with sod. If there was a stock pen, he could not make it out. In any case it would have been behind the house.

  The only way to approach the house was to one side of it where the trees were as thick as the hair on a dog’s back. It would take time.

  Someone appeared in the cabin doorway and flung away a basin of water. For a fact no one washed clothes or bathed after dark.

  He began working his way toward the house, was close enough to make out someone moving back and forth through the hide window without being able to distinguish anything except that it was a person, when a dog barked. A big dog. Davy heard it hit the end of a chain. He’d heard frightened horses hit the end of a chain that hard but never a dog.

  The rawhide window went dark. The snarling dog lunged several more times as Davy moved a yard at a time in the direction of the animal. Its lunging and snarling increased.

  When he finally could see it lunge and rear, he stopped dead still. It wasn’t a dog; it was a wolf, the largest one he had ever seen. He knew what it was, but buffalo wolves hadn’t been seen in his country since the last buffalo herds had been so diminished that the remnants migrated west. Many miles west.

  He moved back into the forest, changed course to sidle around behind the house. The big wolf no longer lunged on its chain but its snarling did not stop.

  There was a large animal pen behind the cabin made of smaller logs. In it were two big mules. They had caught his scent and were standing shoulder-to-shoulder, marking his progress by man smell.

  There was a lean-to built on the back of the house made of smaller logs. Davy was familiar with the smell of the lean-to before he got to the corral. The lean-to was a smokehouse.

  He stood beside a huge old tree and with eyes accustomed to darkness waited and watched. If the man inside shoved a rifle barrel through a gun hole, Davy would hear it, but nothing like that happened. Eventually even the wolf got quiet.

  Men like Davy Crockett developed powerful instincts. What instinct told him now was that no one would build a fortlike cabin deep in a forest where killers of all kinds and colors hunted without growing an eye in the back of his head and building a cabin that could not be burned or blown apart.

  Whoever was in the cabin had been warned by the wolf and had put out his candles. This left whatever adversary was outside with the initiative while all the man inside had to do was wait.

  Davy was considering a stalk when a quiet deep voice spoke from somewhere near
the rear of the house. “Fish or cut bait. You can’t burn me out. You can’t knock down the walls. If you move, I’ll put you down with a broken back for the rest of your life.”

  The voice had been deep and rumbling, which meant the man was big. It hadn’t sounded worried. Davy almost smiled. Whoever he was, he’d been tested before. Davy hung the rifle in the crook of his arm and called back, “My name’s Crockett! I got no bone to pick with you.”

  For a moment there was silence, then the large man said, “Step out where I can see you if you’re Davy Crockett.”

  The wolf had stopped snarling at the sound of its owner’s voice. Davy moved clear of the large tree, walked toward the side of the mule pen, halted, and waited. The other man said, “A mite closer.”

  Davy went down the side of the pen until the other man said, “I’ll be blessed! I seen you with Jackson’s army some time back. You was with another feller, older’n you. Come ahead.”

  The man was large, almost big enough to hand-wrestle a bear. He had a gray beard and a mop of bushy hair that likely hadn’t seen soap or a comb in months.

  When they shook hands, the older man’s fist engulfed Davy’s hand. He led the way to the lean-to, from there through a slab door inside the main cabin, but he stopped before opening the door to say, “I got two hurt fellers inside. Come blunderin’ along like drunks. My dog helped me find ’em.”

  Inside, the bear of a man went around lighting candles. He pointed to a pair of pallets. “One of ’em’s not goin’ to make it.” He pointed to one of the bundles near his fireplace but what caught and held Davy’s attention was an elegant beaver hat that looked worse than the last time he had seen it.

  The large man said, “Most of the time he’s out of his head. Look at them boots ’n’ that hat. He ain’t one of us for a fact.”

  The second pallet held another motionless figure, buried under robes. The big man said, “I knew that ’un years back. He sold guns an’ powder to the Creeks. His name’s Ezra Baldridge. By the way, I’m Carl Mitchell. Baldridge ain’t hurt bad but the other one …” Mitchell wagged his head. “I couldn’t make out his name.”

  Davy leaned Betsy aside, crossed to Beaver Hat, and studied the sweaty face of the man on the pallet. It was the man he had eavesdropped on before the wagon fight.

  The large man came over, leaned, squinted, and said, “He won’t make it till dawn.”

  Davy asked if the large man had whiskey. Mitchell nodded. “I got whiskey. I make it out back in decent weather.”

  “Let’s pour some down … what’d you say his name was?”

  “I couldn’t make it out.”

  From the second pallet Ezra Baldridge said, “Name I know him by is Mason. He’s some sort of trader. I been with him some months. Guide sort of.”

  Mitchell brought the jug. While Davy held up the man’s head, Mitchell poured whiskey until the wounded man had to swallow.

  Davy went to the other wounded man. When their eyes met, Davy said, “You ’n’ another feller was with Beaver Hat when you met Charley Ben’s renegades.”

  The injured man’s eyes widened. “You wasn’t there. Who are you?”

  Mitchell boomed the answer. “He’s Davy Crockett. You never heard of Davy Crockett?”

  The gray-faced man under robes on the floor weakly nodded. “Yup, I’ve heard of Crockett, but you wasn’t around when we met them Indians.”

  “I was there,” Davy stated. “Back in the forest. I heard what Mason told the Indians about little hand bombs. What I’d like to know is how you ’n’ Mason knew how to meet the Creeks.”

  “Mason got an Indian to find a good meetin’ place. He found a big white rock. Indians set store by such things. When the Indian come back, he sent me to find the Choctaws an’ set up a meetin’ at the white rock.”

  Davy hoisted the jug, swallowed twice, handed it back to the large man who also swallowed twice, then put the jug on a handmade table with one leg shorter than the others, which tipped from the jug’s weight.

  Davy moved back to Beaver Hat, who was sweating. His face was red and his eyes were brightly fixed on Davy. He had heard what his companion had said, and spoke in an almost normal tone of voice.

  “Mister Mitchell told me he’s never seen a man walk away who’s been shot through like I’ve been.”

  The large man solemnly nodded his head as he regarded the man called Mason. “I can’t figure how you got this far.”

  Mason ignored the large man. “Davy Crockett,” he said almost pensively. “Where I met Charley Ben they had scouts out.”

  Davy nodded. “Did you count ’em when they came back?”

  Mason’s thin lips quirked. “One shy, but Indians come an’ go like autumn leaves. Mister Mitchell, another pull on the jug?”

  Davy shook his head. “You figured you’d shot me,” he said, making it more of a statement than a question.

  Mason’s answer was crisp. “If you’d got shot, you wouldn’t be standin’ there, would you?”

  Davy had another question. “What happened to you and your friend?”

  “When we reached the road, the Indians didn’t want to leave the forest an’ they didn’t want to go north, so me ’n’ Ezra started out alone. They shot us from behind, took our guns and horses, and rode back into the forest.” Mason made a mirthless smile. “They were mad that another band of renegades was already waiting for the wagons. Charley Ben accused me of double-crossing him. He lost warriors in the wagon fight. I was glad to get shed of him.” Mason’s face was losing color as he muttered. “I had no idea others were after those wagons.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Siege!

  Davy emptied both shot pouches of the wounded men; each pouch contained steel musket balls. Because Mason had lapsed into a stupor, Davy knelt beside Baldridge’s pallet, holding two steel balls in his hand. As he did this, he said, “There was you ’n’ Mason an’ another man at the meeting with Charley Ben’s raiders. Where is he an’ what’s his name?”

  Mitchell let the wounded man have a sip of whiskey before Davy got his answer. “That’d be Moses Owens. Him ’n’ me was together better’n two years.”

  “Where is he now?” Davy asked.

  “I got no idea, but I think he rode off with the Indians after that scrap with the soldiers at the wagons.” The wounded man ran a dry tongue over parched lips. Mitchell interpreted this correctly and shook his head. “You had enough.”

  Davy looked over where Mason was feebly moving under his blankets. Mitchell said, “Won’t be long. He bled like a stuck hog.”

  Davy returned to Mason’s pallet, but the man’s eyes did not focus; his face was gray and, although his lips moved, no sound came out. Mitchell stepped past, knelt to feel Mason’s neck, and stood up as he said one word, “Gone.”

  He had been right; it wasn’t quite dawn, but it was close enough.

  Mitchell put food on his rickety table. Davy ate, drank spring water, and listened to Mitchell give the details of how he had found the wounded men.

  He eventually returned to the pallet of the remaining gunshot man to ask where Baldridge had got those steel musket balls. The answer offered no surprise. “From Mason. Him ’n’ Owens met me north of Shoal Creek. They had a pack horse with them steel slugs on it. He give us both a couple handfuls. He said they shot truer’n lead slugs, an’ for a fact they do.”

  “Where were you ’n’ Mason going up north?”

  “I don’t rightly know where. He told me there’d be a town up yonder. He was mad that Owens didn’t come with us.”

  “Owens left you ’n’ him after the wagon fight?”

  “Yes, I already told you that. I figured the Red Sticks killed him or he went over to them.”

  The wolf growled. Mitchell went around, blowing out candles. In an almost off-hand way he said, “This place is gettin’ right popular,” and dis
appeared through his lean-to door, musket in hand.

  Davy sat in darkness, listening to the snarling animal. It was not raising the kind of ruckus it had raised when he had approached. This time the snarling was more like a growl.

  Baldridge spoke softly in darkness. “Indians. They’re all around, bands of ’em killing anything that moves. They’ll kill us.”

  Davy said nothing. He went to the hide window, not to peer out but to listen. The wolf’s growls were diminishing.

  Mitchell returned without a sound, unusual for a man his size and heft. He leaned the rifle aside and spoke quietly, “Nothin’ as far as I could figure. My dog’ll sound like that sometimes when varmints are passin’ along.”

  He would have relit the candles but Davy thought it wouldn’t hurt to wait a bit. Mitchell shrugged in silence.

  In darkness the wounded man said, “They sneak up on you like ghosts. They’re out there, sure as I’m lying here.”

  Davy returned to Baldridge’s pallet to ask a question. “Which one of you tried to shoot me?”

  Baldridge tipped his head as far back as it would go and said, “It was him. He’d seen you with the wagons. I expect he knew who you were. Anyway, after the fight he took me ’n’ some of them Choctaws to your clearing.”

  “How’d he know where it was?” Davy asked.

  Baldridge feebly shook his head. “I’ve got no idea, but he knew. The Indians didn’t like crouching in the trees. They were going to leave when Mason offered them some gold money.” Baldridge nodded in the direction of a pair of saddlebags. “In a pouch on the left side.”

  “Did you see Mason shoot?”

  “I was behind him when we thought it was you stepped outside. I’d have got you plumb center. Who was that feller he shot?”

  Mitchell was at the table with Mason’s saddlebags, pawing inside like a bear at a honey tree. He found the doeskin pouch and held it aloft, grinning from ear to ear. He asked Baldridge why the Indians hadn’t taken the pouch. The answer was peevish. “They didn’t know he had it. Money doesn’t mean much to Indians anyway. I knew he had money. I’d seen the pouch when he gave some to the Choctaws at the Crockett place. I never knew how much … listen!”