The Land Breakers

by John Ehle

  She crawled over to where it had slept and felt the dry dust there.

  That wagon was way off yet, but it was coming toward her from one direction or another. Maybe it was her uncle coming out in his wagon to gather her in.

  She sneaked into the woods and sat down behind a laurel bush.

  Soon she heard people talking, and her uncle’s wasn’t among the voices. The people were coming up the rise, so they were coming in from the Watauga road direction, too. She craned her neck forward to get a sight of them.

  She saw a man first of all. He was walking in front, a big man of fifty-five or sixty years, so big she had not seen anybody to measure up to him. He was like a fifty-gallon barrel with legs and arms stuck on it, she thought. He carried a rifle in one hand and held his horse’s reins with the other. He had a beautiful bay horse, no more than six years old, with a white streak on its forehead, a long mane and silken tail, and it wore a saddle made of pigskin and a saddle blanket made of lamb’s fur.

  Behind the horse came a small, narrow little sled being drawn by a great ox, and the sled was packed almost to overflowing with goods, some of them under leather sheets and some in the open. Next came a strong, fine-looking old boar and two small new sows. Then a woman came along. She was old and lined, and her skin was leathery and shiny, and she was leading a cow by a piece of rope. Near her was an old dog.

  The man stopped, for he had got well ahead of the ox. He waited for the sled and the woman to catch up and he said, speaking out in a voice that rumbled in the hills everywhere, “Air ye comin’? I say, air ye comin’?”

  “Don’t you see when you got sight?” she said sternly.

  “Yesterday we made sorry time, carrying them pigs across the ford, but we’re going to do poorer today, with that ox not moving faster than a man can crawl through a laurel slick. Come on, come on.” He took out a twist of cured tobacco, unsheathed his knife and cut off a piece. He was about to put the tobacco in his mouth when he froze in place, stood staring at the road. Mina could see him plainly now; he stood there staring down at the bear’s tracks. Slowly he looked up the road and to the side, without so much as moving his head.

  Then he shook his head as if to clear it. He robbed his eyes with his tobacco hand, and he commenced to chew on the tobacco. “Well, I declare,” he murmured, still chewing to loosen the twist. “Huh,” he said, grunting.

  “What ye stopped fer?” the old woman called to him.

  “You hesh,” he said. He set his jaw and peered about. Suddenly he moved, and he moved swiftly; he seemed to deny when he moved that he was an old man at all, for he was at the edge of the woods before Mina got a breath in her chest. His rifle was to his shoulder and his finger was on the trigger.

  “No, you don’t! No, you don’t!” She came out from behind the laurel bush and moved toward him, and he turned to her, startled, and backed off until the brush was against him. “You leave him alone!” she said fiercely. “Don’t you kill him!” Out the corner of her eye she saw the horse rare back; the woman grabbed hold of the dog and was trying to calm it, and the pigs had run. Mina knew she must have scared that big man out of his wits, too, for he was shaking in his shoes. She guessed she was enough to frighten anybody the way she had come down from the bushes, not dressed in more than two yards of cloth and it old and thin and torn, her hair strangely roustled, too.

  A smile began to work at the corners of the man’s mouth, as if he had decided the worst of it was over. He licked his lips, then looked back at his wife, who had let the cow go and had come up beside the ox, where she could see the girl better. “Air ye daft?” the old woman asked the girl.

  Mina glared at her.

  “I say, air ye daft?”

  “No, I ain’t daft.”

  The woman looked about her, lest another witch-child come roaring out of the thickets.

  The man chuckled low. “She give me a fright, Florence,” he said.

  “She give me one, too. And you’ve got your pigs scattered down the mountainside.”

  “I never seed the like afore,” he said. “I was aimin’ at an old bear, and from my backside come this unseasonable attack. I nigh shot myself getting turned around.”

  “Well, I wish you had,” the woman said. “You told me you was taking me back to civilization, and this ain’t goin’ there.” She was still considering Mina critically, not even glancing at the man when she talked. “I don’t know what you’re a doin’ up here,” she said.

  “I’m walking,” Mina said.

  The man spat out the tobacco, reached into his shirt and took out a piece of boiled lean meat and bit off a chew. Just the sight of him eating made Mina’s stomach growl. He heard it, too, and so did the old woman.

  “Give her a bite,” the woman said.

  “You hush and go find them hogs,” he said.

  “And get et by the bear?”

  The man was still looking at the girl, an incredulous smile on his face.

  “If you’d a been such a good hunter,” Mina said, wanting to escape blame, “you’d a saw where I’d walked. But you just had eyes for the bear’s tracks.”

  “I saw where you walked,” he said, “but I couldn’t figure it all out.” He glanced at the tracks on the road, then over where the bear had slept. “And ain’t yet,” he said. His face moved gently as he chewed the meat. “But that’s the biggest bear I’ve ever saw, I’ll say that.”

  He offered her the piece of pork, but she wouldn’t take it. He came closer to her, moving slowly, and held the pork out, held it so close she could smell it, but she shook her head. Her stomach growled, and he held the pork right under her nose and whiffed it about. “Air ye hungry?” he said.

  He put the pork at her lips and gently pushed it into her mouth. She bit off a little piece. And all the while the woman was standing there by that great ox, her arms crossed, looking on with a speculative smile.

  “There’s bread in the wagon,” she said.

  “Give her a bite,” he said. “But you’ll have to put it in her mouth for her.” From his shirt he took out a handful of corn and scattered it on the road. “Sou, sou, sou,” he called, and started looking for his pigs.

  They had bacon frying a little while later. Mina found a soft place beside the road and lay there thinking about how good it was to be with other people, not to have the world to herself. She yawned and scratched her itch bites and yawned again, and stretched.

  The old woman was complaining. “You said you’d take me to civilization again.”

  “Naw, I said I’d take you where the Indians wasn’t. It was the Indians you was afeared of.”

  “You’re too old to fight Indians is what I said.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I can’t lie asleep no longer in Indian country. And you said you’d take me out of it and to a civilized place.”

  “Hush and let me think,” he said. “Your talking gets to sound like a mill wheel after a freshet. You ought to know I’d be a lost soul back in tame country, where the most excitement that happens in a year’s time is that the ducks fly overhead. I ain’t going to go there, but to a place where I can hunt and spend my time, some’ers away from the Indians, fer I admit them and the wolves is the pests of this country.”

  “I’d be pesty, too, if that bunch of you from Watauga kept a shooting at me all the time. If you’d let them Injuns alone, you might a come out better.”

  He cursed in soft, easy language, as if the idea were beneath thoughtful reply.

  Mina sat cuddled up beside the road, near the sled. They had quite a few possessions, she noticed. They had two chests that probably were full of cloth and bowls; they had a spinning wheel that had been broken down into its parts; they had the pieces for a loom; they had two iron pots, one stuck down inside the other, and a set of plowshares and axheads. They had coffee beans and a bagged ham. They had a show of side meat.

  “I’ve not got much longer,” the man said, “and I want to spe
nd it the way I like.”

  “You always have had your way.”

  “I aim to hunt and farm a little and rest easy, fer I know that I’ll come to a halt soon.”

  “You’ve got as long as me,” she said.

  “Florence, I’ve not got as long as you, and you know it, so hush.”

  “You’re the one that’s talking.” Then they were quiet, and the bird songs were heard clearly. The woods were full of birds asking who these people were, where they came from, where they were going, why they had left and why they had traveled this trail north from the Watauga road.

  “What you reckon we’ve come into with that girl?” the woman asked, her voice so whispery that Mina could scarcely hear her.

  “Come into a wildcat,” the man said. “The last time I was so scared was by a wildcat, that whiny cry a wildcat’s got. Not much in a wildcat’s cry at all except open terror. Well, that’s the way her voice was.”

  Mina twisted anxiously. It wasn’t entirely so, she told herself.

  “Well, is she daft?”

  “She don’t appear to be. Her eyes are clear.”

  “She’s in need of care and teaching,” the woman said. “She’s starved and she’s most naked. She could at least put some flax cloth on if she’s got no wool, and she could stop scratching so much.”

  “She’s dressed all right to suit me. I wish I was young agin and saw her coming across a meadow. She’s got keeness to her a young man needs, and she’s got right pretty features.”

  “Some woman ought to take her to hand and put her in cloth and comb out her hair, might even fit shoes on her, teach her to do woman work, to make cloth and such.” Her voice had got so low it cracked as she spoke.

  He cleared his throat. “I don’t object,” he said simply. “Do as you please.” Then he said, “Henry, get off that hunting shirt. I told you afore not to lie on my shirt. Here, give me that.”

  “Don’t stir the dog up. He’s old enough—”

  “Now let me temper the dog. I’ve told him not to get on my things.”

  “Well, he likes you so much. He just likes you, that’s all. And why shouldn’t he? He sees more of you in your hunting than I see of you to home.”

  “Well, I don’t want my dog lying on my things.” He cleared his throat. “Air ye finished with cooking the supper, or air ye going to take the rest of the night?”

  “I’m not finished. The bread’s not browned. I ain’t served brownless bread yet, and I’m not going to take up shiftless ways.”

  “Lord, I’ve eat bread so mildly cooked it was mealy white. And I’ve spent about twenty years of my fifty-seven waiting for your bread to get brown enough to suit ye. I don’t care how brown it is, so long as it’s hot.”

  “You’d eat the meal raw, I think.”

  “I’ve done it. I’ve done it out in the woods. I’ve took a piece of raw meat and beat berries into it, then soaked meal in water and eat a meal, fer I had no fire.”

  “Anybody that would eat raw meat ain’t worth cooking for.”

  “It’s tasty with berries in it,” he said, and Mina had to smile.

  It was funny to listen to them, for they talked so grand to one another, fussing all the time but not getting angry with one another, talking fierce with easy pleasure.

  “Henry, if you get your nose in that fire, you’re going to have no whiskers left on yer mouth,” he said.

  “Here, Henry, you want a piece of pork?”

  “Now damn it, don’t feed my dog afore I get a bite.”

  “Here, Henry, I’ll break ye off a crust of bread—”

  “You’ll let the steam out of the loaf.”

  “I thought you liked raw meal and water.”

  “I say, here we are, with the dog eating and me hungry. It’s something to write a letter about.”

  “You got nobody to write one to, except one might be taken to your boy if you can get something wild to deliver it to him.”

  The man grumbled. He complained in murmured oaths. Then he said, “I hope I have time to see some more country.” It was like a prayer, a little song to heaven, seemed to Mina, and the old woman didn’t say anything.

  The man raised his voice. “Hey, bear girl,” he called out, “hey, you with the strange pets, come on over here and get your food.”

  He certainly can talk loud, Mina thought.

  “Come on over here and tell us where in tarnation we air. I met a rider at the Watauga road who told me there was a settlement back in here called Harristown.”

  Mina sat up. “Harristown?” she said, surprised. She hadn’t heard that name before.

  The big man appeared above her. “What’s the settlement’s name if it’s not that?”

  “It’s—named for my papa.”

  “That’s what that man on the horse told, that it was named for his papa. What’s your papa’s name?”

  “Ernest Plover.”

  “Uh huh. Florence,” he said, looking over toward the cook fire, “we’re going to live in Plovertown.”

  The woman grunted.

  “How many people you got living there now?” he asked.

  “It’s got more’n I can count,” Mina said.

  “Has it got twenty?”

  “It’s got more’n ten in my family,” she said. “And it’s four in the German’s family, and four in the Mooney Wright family, and ole man Harrison has three in his family and six more hands to work for him, and there was two nice new people last autumn, but they got et by snakes come cold weather, one of them did and the other one lost her senses and had to be come for from the lowlands.”

  “Et by snakes?” he said.

  She had to tell him the story, which always made her shiver for part of a day. The old woman’s teeth got to chattering as she listened, and the old man’s eyes got big and bright, and he kept clucking his tongue and shaking his head. “Snakebit seven times, you say? Listen to that, Florence.”

  Mina told about the wolves attacking that past winter, too, and how Tinkler Harrison’s horse had got so scared it had gone skidding across the ice. With every story, as the valley began to appear to be crammed full of marvels, the old woman trembled all the more, and the man got gleeful as a boy with his own pup. “Hey, Henry,” he said at one point, “sounds like we’ve come to the right place, don’t hit?”

  When Mina was quiet enough to give him a chance to talk, he told stories about his own experiences. He told about Indians and the way they had of coming down on a place and burning every cabin and taking the corn from the crib, the stock from the pens, taking the youngins away to raise for their own needs or to trade for Indian children at the trading places, or trade for salt or whiskey, and how it was a time getting the children sorted and rationed out to their parents, for sometimes their parents had been scalped or shot, or had moved on to the Cumberland or somewhere, and sometimes the youngins didn’t know their own parents, and sometimes they had come to live like the Indians and cried when they were left behind with the white folks.

  “A child ain’t to blame,” the old woman said. “A child is only a small thing that needs light to grow.” She punched a stick into the fire and spread the coals about. “I’ve seen many a child grow,” she said, “though not but one was mine.”

  He took out a pipe and a pack of tobacco and lighted it with a coal stem. “That boy of ourn grew up straight.”

  “I vow,” she said.

  “They won’t never get him,” he said quietly. “Neither the critters nor the Indians. He’s bigger’n me, even.”

  “Is that the truth?” Mina said, surprised.

  “That’s right smart, ain’t it?” he said, and winked at her.

  “You look strong as an ox, all right,” she said.

  “I’m stronger’n that. I’m as strong as my boy, and he once’t killed a bear with his hands.” When he saw her shake her head in disbelief, he said, “It weren’t but a yearling, but it was a bear. I had shot its mama, and this ’un come down out of a tree almost
on top of me, and Josh caught it and carried it to the pine needles with him, wrestled with it.” He pushed the lighted wood deeper into the bed of tobacco in his pipe and puffed it to smoking.

  “Did Josh choke him to death with his bare hands?”

  “You’d never choke a bear with your hands. His paws would flail you afore you got it done. He’s got claws on each paw that’ll tear flesh open to the bone. And his claws won’t come in like a cat’s; they’re fastened stiff. He can cut bark off a tree, can split a tree trunk with them claws. And he’s got more strength than a man has got.”

  “How did Josh do it then, if’n a bear’s so smart?”

  “You mean did he plan out a fancy scheme?”

  “I’m only asking how he done it. You claim to know.”

  “He did it natural. As I recall, he got one foot on the bear’s flank and a knee on his throat, and he had his hands free to try to pin the bear’s arms down. That’s how.”

  Mina sniffed and poked a stick into the fire. “What did he do then?” she said.

  “Nothing to do. The bear died.”

  “Well, law me, he sure must be a good hunter,” she said suddenly. “I never heard such big talk afore.” She looked proudly at the woman, but the woman wasn’t listening. Her thoughts appeared to be a long way off, and after a while she sighed and blinked, as if coming back to the place she was in, and then, without even looking at Mina, she took a comb from her hair and handed it to her.

  “Why, I can’t take a present,” Mina said.

  The woman put it on Mina’s lap. “Them as are poor can’t allus be proud,” she said.

  “I never took no present in my life,” Mina said defiantly.

  “Take it, and you’re welcome,” the old woman said. “I own two more combs. What you reckon I could do with three combs?”

  Mina looked down at the comb. It was bone and pretty and she wanted it. She picked it up, held it gently in her hand. She had never had a bone comb. “I never had nobody give me a present afore,” she said. “I don’t rightly know what to tell you.”