Natchez Under-the-Hill

by Stan Applegate

  Zeb’s grampa sat back and smiled. “That would solve our problem of gettin’ back. We have four settled draft horses to take north. I wasn’t sure how I’d do it.”

  “It would probably be impossible without an escort. The outlaws are becoming increasingly dangerous. Some of the gangs are even large enough to challenge groups of well-armed men traveling on the Nashville Road.”

  The old man nodded. “Your patrol will make all the difference.”

  “I will place information about the escort in the Weekly Chronicle. It comes out day after tomorrow, so we may get some response in the next few days.”

  Mr. Culpepper and Zeb’s grampa stood up as Captain Morrison got to his feet.

  Captain Morrison touched his helmet with his right hand. “I will send you a written agreement. I hope you won’t mind that while we are using the pasture as a staging area it will be army property. That is done to help protect your property and the people who will be going with us.”

  “Just as long as you make it clear that it’s only temporary. I plan to put those forty acres back into hay come spring.” Captain Morrison mounted his horse. “We should be gone,” he said, “by mid-December. Thank you once again for your cooperation.”

  He touched the rim of his helmet and then he and the sergeant cantered down the long Culpepper driveway to the highway, heading for Fort Dearborn.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Horseplay

  October 16, 1811

  Every day Zeb and Hannah rode over to the Culpepper farm. Hannah’s mother often went with them. When she did, she sat on the Culpeppers’ back porch and sewed.

  Zeb, Hannah, and Katie exercised the horses each day, rain or shine. During heavy rainstorms, they worked the horses in the big barn.

  In the late afternoons, when Zeb, Hannah, and Hannah’s mother returned to the McAllister house, Dr. McAllister often invited Zeb into the laboratory, where he showed Zeb how he was trying to develop a means of preventing smallpox.

  Zeb asked many questions about serums, cowpox, and vaccines. On the second day with Dr. McAllister, he shook his head. “It’s all beyond me.”

  “No, it isn’t. You have a good mind, Zeb. The Jefferson School, the one Nashoba was visiting, would be an excellent place for you to get more education.”

  While Zeb met with Dr. McAllister, Hannah sat at the kitchen table and wrote in the leather-bound notebook Zeb had given to her.

  Zeb’s uncle Ira had given Zeb two of the leather-bound books back home. While they were traveling down the Natchez Road, Hannah had showed so much interest in writing that Zeb had given her one of the books and his pencil.

  She had written in the book almost every day as they traveled down the Natchez Road, but she made Zeb promise never to read it. It appeared to Zeb that after little more than a month she was at least halfway through the notebook.

  One day when Zeb had ridden from the McAllisters to the Culpepper farm to work with Kapucha, the Choctaw pony he had gentled in Yowani, a family arrived in an open farm wagon. The wheels wobbled on worn axles, squeaking in protest. An old horse, plodding slowly with his head down, pulled the wagon, his body wet with the effort.

  Zeb’s grampa, who had been sitting on the porch, stood up to greet them just as Mr. Culpepper trotted his horse up to the wagon.

  Mr. Culpepper pulled his horse in and swung down off the saddle. He walked over to where the missionary was standing and held out his hand. “I’m John Culpepper. You folks planning to go north with the patrol?”

  The man nodded. “I’m David Lodge,” he said. “We hope to go with them as far as Yowani.”

  Mr. Culpepper pointed toward the lower forty acres. “The army patrol is using my back pasture as a staging area. You may camp down there.”

  Mr. Culpepper walked around the wagon, pulling on the wheel and looking at the undercarriage. He was shaking his head as he headed back to where Mr. Lodge was standing. “I hope you won’t mind my being frank, sir, but that wagon will never make a trip on the Nashville Road as far as Yowani.” He patted the horse’s neck. “This horse won’t make it, either. Should have been put out to pasture a long time ago.”

  Mr. Lodge looked back at the wagon and the poor little horse. “Mr. Moore, the man we bought it from, said it would get us to Yowani. He said it was the best he could do for the money we had.”

  “You had better deal with someone else.”

  The man’s two little girls had climbed down and were twined around his legs. He patted them on their heads. “We can’t,” he said. “We don’t have any more money.”

  “What are you going to live on?”

  “I will try to do a little tutoring while we are waiting to leave.”

  “Tutoring? How much education do you have?”

  “College and then seminary. I am a minister with the Presbyterian Church. I plan to go to Yowani as a missionary.”

  Culpepper grinned. “Seminary, and you’ve had a college education as well. We may just be able to give you all the students you need for the next couple of months. My daughter and her friend had been taking lessons here, but their teacher has gone back East. And there are four other girls their ages who took lessons with them.”

  “That would be wonderful,” the missionary said. He exhaled as if a huge weight had been lifted from his shoulders.

  Zeb walked over to them as Mr. Lodge reached up and helped his tall, slim wife step down from the wagon. Her dress, Zeb thought, looks like one of the fine dresses I’ve seen ladies wear in Natchez.

  “This is my wife, Ruth.” He put his hand on the head of the eldest girl. “This is Mary, and this little one is Beth.”

  “I am delighted to meet you,” Mr. Culpepper said. “This is Zebulon D’Evereux.” He gestured up to the porch. “And that is Zeb’s grampa, Daniel Ryan.”

  The old man, his left arm in a sling, stepped down from the porch. He shook hands with the missionary and nodded his head to Mrs. Lodge. “Pleased to meet you. Looks like we’ll be travelin’ together.”

  The missionary smiled. “You’re going to Yowani, too?”

  “To Yowani and beyond, all the way to Franklin, just a few miles this side of Nashville. I look forward to travelin’ with you.”

  Zeb’s grampa patted the little horse. “Mr. Culpepper is right, sir,” he said. “This horse couldn’t possibly make the trip. But we can loan you one of our draft horses,” the old man suggested. “You’d be doin’ us a favor. If you don’t use her, we’ll hafta lead her.”

  “You really wouldn’t mind? …”

  “I wish you’d accept our offer, Mr. Lodge.”

  While Mr. Culpepper and Zeb’s grampa talked with the Lodges, Zeb looked into the wagon bed, where he saw two canvas bags and a small wooden box. Nothing else. No canvas. No bedrolls.

  “Where will you stay while you’re waiting for the convoy to leave?” Culpepper asked Mr. Lodge.

  “We thought we’d stay in the wagon. Get used to what it will be like on the trail.”

  Culpepper stroked his chin. “It’s getting colder at night now, and there is a good possibility of rain tonight.” He pointed to a little cottage next to the horse barns. “Since you’ll be tutoring here, why don’t you stay in the foreman’s house? He moved west into the new territory to start his own horse ranch. It’s empty until I find someone to take his place.”

  On the first day of the six girls’ morning classes, Zeb, Hannah, and Mrs. McAllister rode over to the Culpepper place together. The missionary’s wife, Mary Lodge, joined Hannah’s mother on the porch. They sewed and talked and watched their children. Hannah’s mother must hate to let Hannah out of her sight, even for a moment, Zeb thought. But she knows that she can’t keep her a prisoner in her own house.

  When it was time for the noon meal, four girls returned to Washington. Zeb noticed that even though Hannah had talked fondly of these girls, he never saw them being very friendly to Hannah and Katie. Maybe they are jealous of Hannah and Katie’s friendship or something silly like t
hat, he thought.

  In the early afternoon, Katie and Hannah exercised the Culpepper horses and those being boarded there. In addition to Christmas and Kapucha, Zeb rode each of the draft horses to keep them in shape for the long trip north. Sometimes the missionary joined him, riding the mare that was going to pull their wagon.

  Once the chores were done, Zeb discovered that Hannah and Katie were as competitive as he was. They raced Christmas and Suba and Katie’s favorite gelding. They even invented races, and that is where the trouble started.

  One day Katie proposed a different kind of race. They were sitting on the fence rail just after the noon meal. “Why don’t we each run to our horses, tack up, and then move them to the paddock and out on the oval. We can gallop once around the oval. Whoever gets back to the paddock first wins.”

  They ran into the barn. Zeb was throwing his saddle on Christmas when he heard Hannah cry out, “Oh, no!”

  “What is it?”

  “She took the box I need to stand on to saddle Suba!” Hannah grabbed an empty bucket, flipped it over, stood on it, and finished saddling Suba. She and Zeb quickly led the horses out of the barn. But by then Katie was already coming around the far end of the oval. She rode over to them and grinned. “You two sure are slow,” she said.

  That afternoon, when Hannah was exercising Harlequin, she rode him over to the rail where Katie and Zeb were sitting. “Want to try him out?” she asked Katie.

  Katie shrugged. “Sure,” she said. She hopped down off the rail. Hannah slipped off Harlequin. She held the cantle of the saddle. “Want me to hold him while you mount?”

  “For heaven’s sakes, Hannah. I can mount without your help.”

  Katie swung up onto the horse. The little horse started to twist and turn, jumping sideways and hopping around. Katie sat him easily. She smiled at Hannah and Zeb and sat back in the saddle. Suddenly the horse began to buck. Katie had to make an emergency dismount before she was thrown to the ground.

  Hannah ran to Harlequin and grabbed the reins. She stroked his neck and then went around to the right side and adjusted the saddle pad. She slapped her hand against her pants and then mounted Harlequin and rode him back to the fence.

  Katie was standing with her hands on her hips. “That horse is crazy. What did you do?”

  She stepped closer and stared at Hannah’s pants.

  “Burrs!” she shouted. “You put burrs under the saddle while I mounted!”

  When Katie saw the sly grin on Hannah’s face, she relaxed and smiled. “All right. All right. You win,” she said. “No more tricks.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Sail Maker

  October 25, 1811

  A week after the missionary family arrived, Zeb was sitting with the McAllisters at the supper table. He was telling them about some of the strange people who had come out to the Culpeppers’ to talk with the captain about going north with the patrol. A number of merchants arrived at the staging site with armed guards they had recruited from among the boaters down at the docks. Captain Morrison told them that the gold coins they were carrying would be an enormous temptation to men who owed them no loyalty. In spite of the warning, the merchants were usually too impatient for a six-week to two-month wait. They would leave the next morning to head north on the Nashville Road. Captain Morrison doubted they’d ever be seen again.

  Zeb told them that Kaintucks heading north on foot now stopped to gather at the Culpepper place until they had at least twenty-five men. They sometimes talked, almost wistfully, about going with the patrol, but it was only possible for those going on horseback.

  “I need to do some things in Natchez tomorrow morning,” Zeb said finally. “Is there anything I can get for you while I’m there?”

  “I’d like to go with you, Zeb, if you don’t mind,” Hannah said. “Mama wants me to talk with Miss Phillipa about having some town clothes made.” She made a funny grimace. “Can you imagine? She wants to know what girls my age are wearing, and I’m s’posed to bring home some fabric samples from Foley’s General Store.”

  “It’s time for you to dress the way other girls do,” her mother said.

  “I know. I’ll do it,” Hannah groaned. “I just think it’s funny. With my short hair I’ll look like a boy in his sister’s clothes.”

  “Your hair is already growing back. You’ll look fine.”

  Hannah fingered her hair. “They cut it about a week before I met Zeb. They thought I looked too Choctaw, so Elizabeth, one of the Mason gang women, took some sheep shears and chopped off the braid. When she tried to even it up, she made it worse. She said it was my fault because I kept yelling and screaming and I wouldn’t hold still.”

  Zeb remembered the red switch marks on the backs of her legs. That’s probably how they finally forced her to let them cut it. There is so much she will probably never tell her mother.

  That evening after supper, Hannah’s mother sat in her rocker and sewed. Zeb and Dr. McAllister headed to the laboratory, and Hannah sat at the kitchen table, writing in her diary with a quill, rather than the pencil she had used on the road.

  “You musta had lot happen today, Miz Hannah,” Zeb heard Sarah observe, “for you to be writin’ so much tonight.”

  “It isn’t what happened today, Sarah,” Hannah said. “Something Mama said brought back memories that I want to put down in my diary.”

  The next morning Zeb and Hannah left for Natchez.

  Zeb hoped no one would recognize him. His hair was cut short—Hannah had seen to that—and he wore his grampa’s broad-brimmed hat. He was now wearing town clothes and a pair of dress boots. They were hand-me-downs, borrowed from Katie Culpepper’s brother, Sean, who had gone East to college.

  He was riding Maggie, a small horse he had borrowed from Mr. Culpepper. Hannah was riding one of the Culpepper’s ponies. She wore some of the boy’s clothes she had brought from Yowani. They headed to Natchez, laughing at each other.

  They paid the toll and crossed the bridge at Catherine Creek on the outskirts of the city. Then they continued on Jefferson Street.

  Zeb thought of all he and his grampa had talked about as they had planned the trip back to Franklin. He looked up. Hannah was watching him, but she didn’t say anything. They had always respected each other’s silences on the trail. He smiled. “Sorry,” he said. “I was thinkin’ about all I hafta do.”

  “Me, too,” Hannah said. “I keep thinkin’ about how much I like it here, and then I think of Yowani. Life is so different here.”

  Zeb took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. It was now about an inch long. “At least when you cut it, you didn’t do it with sheep shears,” he said. Hannah grinned.

  They stopped at Foley’s General Store. “I’ll meet you back here in about an hour,” Zeb said. Hannah nodded as she climbed the steps to the door.

  As Zeb headed down Silver Street to Natchez Under-the-Hill, the sun had already burned off most of the early morning fog.

  He stopped at a Levee Street building on the river side of the road. A sign hung over the door.

  HENRY YADKIN

  SAIL MAKER

  Zeb entered the sail maker’s shop. The morning sun streamed into the big room, and sails and fabric hung from the ceiling in neat rows. Zeb was immediately aware of the not unpleasant musty smell of canvas and hemp rope, and the faint tang of turpentine.

  The sail maker, seated at the far end of a table, was pushing a large curved needle up through heavy canvas. He looked up as Zeb’s footsteps echoed softly on the wood floor.

  Zeb pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. “Mr. Yadkin?”

  The man nodded. “What can I do for you?”

  “Do you ever make tents? I’d like a tent somethin’ like this, in two pieces like an army tent.”

  The sail maker looked at the drawing. “A tent about a foot higher and a foot wider than the army-issue tent, with one-foot side walls? It’ll take about a week. And I need a deposit.”

  Zeb nodded. He lo
oked around the room.

  “I was surprised Natchez has a sail maker. You can’t have many sails to make here.”

  The man pulled the thread through the canvas. “Most of my sail making is for the keelboats headed downriver to New Orleans. Those boats need sails to help them get upriver, at least back to Natchez.”

  “And the big sails?”

  “We do get a few big ships, oceangoing vessels, coming up from New Orleans. It’s usually a difficult journey against that strong current. But this time a’ year there’s often a strong southerly wind.”

  Mr. Yadkin paused. I hear they’re building a boat that’s meant to run on steam. It’s supposed to go not only down the Mississippi, but upriver as well!” He shook his head. “I doubt it could make it. But if it did, it sure would change my line of work.”

  Zeb stopped at the bank, then went by the Weekly Chronicle. Inside, a man was kneeling on the floor, picking up pieces of type. He looked up as Zeb came in. Zeb stared down at the man. “You!” he said. “You’re the man I saw back at Mt. Locust Inn. Ya told me to look for the bald-headed man!”

  The man stood up and squinted at Zeb. “Cut your hair, didn’t you?” he said. “Did you find your grampa?”

  Zeb nodded. “Yes, thank you. Sir, when we met, you asked me about my uncle Ira. Do you know him?”

  “We were roommates at the University of Virginia. Good friends ever since. He’s the one who told me that Natchez needed a newspaper.”

  Zeb kneeled down. “Let me give you a hand with that type.”

  “So Ira Hamilton put you to work, did he?”

  Zeb nodded, gathering the lead letters in his hands. “I was a printer’s devil for Uncle Ira, but I’m not lookin’ for a job.”

  “What can I do for you, then?”

  Zeb dropped the type gently into a small wooden box. “Grampa wanted a copy of the newspaper, and he wanted me to ask if you had any news from the Nashville or Franklin area.”