Arrowmaker (Pennsylvania Frontier Series)

by Roy F. Chandler

  Rob discovered Wheelwright to be the exception as a pair of men he had no recollection of meeting approached to greet him and ask his opinion on Indian affairs. Recalling the crowd that had gathered to watch his abuse, Rob accepted their salutations with instinctive wariness. He suspected their enthusiasm for him resulted from Croghan’s fabricated yarns of his thrilling life in the wilderness. When they spoke of events he had never experienced, he chose to avoid denying or confirming the imaginative tales. If George Croghan’s windy creations helped keep things peaceful in the village, Rob figured he should go along.

  His meeting with Becky was rewarding. Although her mother fluttered and postured, they spoke without reservation, the warmth of their feelings overflowing into held hands and touching knees.

  Becky made light of her actions with the carving knife and touched his shortened hair that had grown only slightly down his neck. He was effusive in his admiration for her courage and quick actions. He told her of his trip through the mountains and of hiring the Moyers to finish the logs he had downed.

  Rob explained his worry over spending David’s money, for he would then have little to offer her. He spoke last of the following spring and that all would finally be ready. And, would she wait until then? Her answer assured him, and despite her mother’s noisy stirrings and rustlings, he kissed her happily on a mouth warm and receptive.

  — — —

  The Moyers examined Rob’s downed trees, studied his sketches, and rumbled to each other. They honed their axes and sharpened their two-man saws, and chips and sawdust began to fly at a rate Rob would not have thought possible. Squared logs seemed ready for hauling throughout each day.

  Rather than disrupt their rhythm, the Moyers preferred to haul logs to the house site late in the day with their two mules doing the heavy work. The system suited Rob who had his own chores. Keeping the camp in meat took little time as the Moyers ate without comment whatever he placed before them.

  He had been told that the brothers made only two demands, good logs and prompt pay. In their quiet way, they had informed one recalcitrant employer that if he did not pay the promised money they would cut off his legs. Impressed, the man had paid. Rob delved into David’s small hoard, paid the Moyer’s weekly, and the building moved swiftly ahead.

  Hunting was pleasant, and knowing the ground, Rob rarely failed to return with meat. He was hunting west of the Middle Ridge when he saw a figure leading a burdened horse crossing Buffalo Creek. Curious, Rob moved to a position where the traveler would be in closer view. His heart leaped as he recognized Shikee’s stride, and he was about to call when he grasped the significance of the laden pack horse. The blanket-wrapped burden lay across the horse and was topped by personal belongings so familiar that Rob’s emotions tore, and a sob broke his reserve. Shikee was bringing E’shan’s body home to the Little Buffalo. Rob sat abruptly, his sense of loss profound. Although he had realized E’shan’s failing health, the fact of his death was magnified by its suddenness.

  He let Shikee come closer before uttering the lonely wolf cry. Shikee raised a hand in recognition and waited Rob’s approach. Shikee had painted black stripes over his scars of honor and daubed his features with mud in token of his mourning. Rob paused at the creek to smear his own face with earth before greeting his friend and grandfather.

  E’shan had died quietly, sitting by his fire and smoking. He had uttered a sigh and toppled sideways—gone in an instant. Shikee had allowed only token wailing in the lodge. In the warmth of summer, he had to make a swift journey to inter E’shan’s remains on the Little Buffalo.

  Shikee was unsure of the best resting place for his grandfather’s body. Beneath the great oak where he had worked so many moons seemed right, so did the shaded knoll above Rob’s house where the view of the meadows lay unobstructed. Sight of the old lodge fallen into ruin decided Shikee on the hill site, and Rob was especially pleased.

  When he had gathered David’s mouldering remains from their first burial, he had chosen the knoll as that grandfather’s final resting place—and in the distant future it would be his own. It seemed right that E’shan should also rest there. They bade his spirit well on its journey and buried their grandfather facing west so the valley would lie before him. His monument was a certain stone that both would recognize but strangers would not suspect.

  Shikee planned to leave Aughwick. With the land soon to belong to the white man it was said that all Indians, even Delawares, remaining within the mountains would also belong to the whites. Shikee would go west to the river called Allegheny. There the hunting was said to be good, and his lodge would be happy. He thought he might leave Aughwick the following summer. With his friend moved so far, Rob expected his Indian ties to be greatly weakened, and his thoughts would turn more often to white ways.

  Croghan brought six horses loaded with trade goods across the mountain. He unloaded at Rob’s station and together they led the unburdened horses back across Kittatinny to the mountain’s south slope. They recovered Rob’s iron and lashed the rust-covered rods on five of the animals. The sixth would carry the anvil.

  The old gravesite had sunken since David Shatto’s removal, and the anvil head lay exposed. When Rob dug it free, he lifted the one hundred and fifty pounds with little effort and with satisfaction measured his strength against his struggle with the same weight years before.

  Rob set up his forge east and downstream of his unfinished home where prevailing winds would carry smoke and noise away. He erected a shanty roof, to keep rain from his tools, replaced rotted leather on the old bellows, and felt ready to begin. Croghan had agreed to return in a month for his first load of Rob’s iron goods.

  The Moyers took time from their squaring to help Rob lay up logs for charcoal burning. The stack had to be constructed so that air could not freely circulate inside the logs. Otherwise, the wood would simply burn. Done correctly, the logs cooked into charcoal which could provide the fierce but controllable heat necessary to soften iron.

  Rob divided his days between hunting and blacksmithing. He began before dawn and hunted until successful then hurried to his forge. For the rest of the day the forest rang with the sound of his hammer.

  19

  1754 – Iron

  Since E’shan’s death, a plan had been forming in Rob’s mind. Knives and tomahawks required large amounts of iron and considerable heating and forging. At the present time, he would have to resupply with expensive iron from a furnace some miles southeast of Harris Ferry. He needed a product requiring less iron. Rob thought of The Warrior and the bone arrowheads that had given him his name. He remembered E’shan, the arrowmaker now gone. Iron arrowpoints might be the answer. Iron arrowheads would be extremely effective, and if they were accepted by Indian hunters, the demand would be recurring as points were often lost during a hunt.

  Rob found iron points easy to make. He heated the end of an iron rod, pounded it into rough shape, and cut it off. He reheated and finished the point with a light hammer.

  Rob moved his anvil close to the forge and prepared to make arrowheads in quantity. By placing a number of rods in the coals, he could save time by working one rod while the others heated.

  David had a small store of bronze from which he had shaped small rifle parts. On impulse, Rob softened and hammered bronze into a handful of points and was pleased with the ease of working the softer metal. The results were handsome, shiny, copper-colored arrowheads. Perhaps they too would appeal to the hunters as something special. Bronze was made by melting together copper and tin with David’s mixture also containing a little zinc. If the bronze tips took hold, Rob could make them without the hotter fire required to melt iron.

  George Croghan was enthusiastic about the iron arrowheads, and he swore that the bronze points would bring even better trade. He took Rob’s small stock and recommended that Rob concentrate on making more. Croghan was en route to Shamokin sixty miles up the Susquehanna, and would offer the new arrowpoints to the Senecas who lived there. If the
y traded well, he would pack all that Rob could make into the Ohio country where the tribes were thickly settled in many large villages. Croghan believed Rob might have struck on something big. Rob surely hoped so.

  Work at the forge depleted iron at a serious rate. David Shatto had been a gunsmith, and his stock of iron had been planned for making gunlocks and gun barrels. Rob pondered the problem of replenishment, weighing his reduced money reserve and the time and expense of packing iron over the mountain. It could be better to manufacture his own iron.

  Iron ore deposits were common across the valley. Croghan and Simon Girty had both mentioned them before Rob crossed Kittatinny, and he had seen many such ore banks within a few miles of his forge. The problem lay in converting the ore to usable iron.

  A stack furnace was the usual method of cooking iron ore. A tall stone chimney was built and layers of ore, charcoal, and wood were burned within at furious temperatures raised by pumping large bellows. The melted iron sank to the bottom of the chimney and was drained into sand molds often called pigs. Construction of such a furnace would consume too much time, and making charcoal in the quantities required would demand a half dozen wood cutters. Rob intended trying a far less efficient but possibly practical iron making method.

  Three miles to the east a large spring flowed from beneath a limestone out-cropping. The flow was so strong the Indians called it Big Spring. Near the spring, iron deposits lay exposed. From the richest of those ore beds Rob planned to make bloom iron.

  Leaving the Moyers to their work, Rob shouldered his felling ax and shovel and spent a day dropping and piling dead trees and branches. He chose a spot close by an ore deposit that lay in a natural clearing. When the woodpile reached twice his own height, he shoveled a mass of the rusty looking ore onto the woodpile. He was fortunate to have chosen a day with a rising wind that could raise his fire’s heat. He lit the bottom of the pile in many places so the stack would burn around its perimeter creating its own draft to heat and hopefully melt the ore within the flames.

  The fire roared into a gigantic conflagration as the dry hard woods sent flame and heat soaring a hundred feet skyward. As the fire subsided, Rob could see a seething bed of coals pulsing at the center. If his plan was successful, the heavy iron would have melted and flowed downward forming one or more lumps of crude iron.

  Rob allowed the pile to cool until a fall rain shower assured him that heat would be gone. He poked through the cinders and charred ash until his stick struck something solid. Clearing away the ashes, he uncovered an irregular lump of the crudest iron he had ever seen. About fifty pounds in weight, it resembled an unearthly flower with long and irregular tendrils where melted iron had flowed in low channels. The iron was grossly impure with dirt and ashes mixed in. To make it useful would require many heatings with poundings and turnings, but it was iron, and it had cost him only labor. Rob found three blooms in his single stack and estimated that he had nearly one hundred pounds of iron for his forge. He assembled a travois similar to the one he had used to move Shikee and skidded the unwieldy blooms cross-country.

  The impure iron broke easily under his hammer. He heated fist-sized pieces and hammered out the impurities before shaping the lump into a convenient sized bar, which he could later draw into a rod or could hammer into flat stock.

  There would be few ore deposits rich enough to make bloom iron without charcoal, but Rob had seen another probable out-cropping on a high ridge near the Juniata between the Little Buffalo and Big Buffalo Creeks. Perhaps the richer ore would deliver enough extra weight of iron to make the longer carry worthwhile.

  Rob thought that if he again made iron, it might pay to make his blooms from the best ore and break them into easily carried loads which he could recover one at a time when he hunted in that direction.

  He would weigh all of that as he worked. Three days of iron making had gained him enough iron to keep his forge busy with arrowpoints for a month, and Croghan would soon be back from Shamokin to tell if the work was worthwhile.

  Croghan could scarcely believe it himself! The profits from Rob’s arrowheads were immense. It was almost embarrassing. Never had he seen Indians so eager to buy, and in that evaluation he included whiskey. Croghan had upped his prices again and again as his stock had run low, and still they bought. An iron arrowhead had already become a symbol of status in Shamokin. Croghan was impatient to load Rob’s small stock onto a pack and head back up the Susquehanna.

  With difficulty, Rob prevailed on Croghan to go to Carlisle and exchange his pelts, wampum, and coins for solid English money. The trader complained that although Rob would have a nice piece of coin coming from his share of their profits, exchanging in Carlisle would cost him. Rob insisted, and declared that Becky Reed would hold his money to keep in trust toward the purchase of his land. Meanwhile, Rob would labor his utmost and provide the trader with a horse-load of points.

  Seeing the sense of the plan, Croghan agreed. He laid over at Rob’s, hunting for them all so Rob could spend uninterrupted hours turning out arrowpoints. Even after the others retired, the ring of Rob’s hammer on the anvil broke their rest.

  As eager as he was to make and trade his points, Rob Shatto was aware that George Croghan was favoring him over other possible and perhaps greater profits. Now that iron arrowpoints had proven their worth, the trader could easily have chosen other blacksmiths who would have turned out the products more quickly. That Croghan stuck with his friend was special, and Rob believed he again owed George Croghan.

  There was one additional reason for Croghan preferring Rob’s work. The wily trader could claim with all honesty that his arrowheads were made by Quehana, whose points were used by The Warrior. If the mightiest fighter of all of the nations chose Quehana’s work, who would choose any other?

  Croghan departed and was gone a week. During his absence, the forests along the Little Buffalo rang with the echoes of ax and hammer. Rob half-resented the Moyers’ need for help in raising the massive sills that would support his upper story. He saw in the arrowheads a solution to his need for money. The builders would use all but a little of David’s hoard, but if Croghan’s estimate of the Indian desire for Quehana’s iron points also proved valid along the Ohio, Rob Shatto might solve his ready cash problems for a long time to come.

  Rob was stoking his forge for a day’s work when a pair of Indians appeared at the forest edge. That they openly showed themselves indicated peaceful intent, and Rob waved them forward while he unobtrusively checked the position of the pistol at his back.

  The Iroquois hunters were Mohawk, a tribe whose villages lay far to the north in the New York Colony. The men were young, and their equipment was leaned like their bodies from long days on the trail. The single-minded Moyers barely glanced at the visitors before returning to their work. The hunters, or perhaps they were warriors, Rob could not tell, observed the customary courtesies, and sat and shared a pipe of Rob’s tobacco.

  The visitors attempted a language mix of Delaware, French and English, but most words Rob could not make out and assumed them to be Mohawk.

  Their wishes were plain enough. The medicine of Quehana was strong, had not The Warrior declared it? In Shamokin they of the Mohawk, had seen Quehana’s points of iron. They had tried to trade, but no more were to be had. They had then sought direction to the lodge of Quehana to trade for his points of iron.

  Because they traveled far in the Endless Hills they had no furs or wampum, but the French had given them money. Would Quehana trade points for the money of the French?

  Rob drew from his store a handful of points. He laid them carefully in rows between them. If a man treated his own goods cheaply, the purchaser might value them less. So, he handled each point as if it were individually precious. As he placed the rows of points, Rob saw the hunters’ eyes light with poorly concealed hunger. Rob figured these Mohawks desired those arrowheads about as much as they ever wanted anything.

  The hunters examined the points without touching until Rob offe
red a pair. They studied the points carefully as though weighing their usefulness, but Rob suspected that visions of great status and profit in their own village swam in their minds.

  The Mohawks gabbled together as Rob waited with his own Indian-like patience. Reaching agreement, they removed their hunting bags and ceremoniously emptied the contents before them.

  Rob was startled. The men did not bargain. They had signaled, “We offer all that we have.” They pushed their money forward separating it from the bags’ other contents, and Rob saw coins of many nations. There were French Louis, but English and Spanish gold and silver was also mixed in. The money offered far exceeded David’s small coin trove. Rob could not believe that the French had given such a sum to simple Mohawk hunters, but whatever the source, there it was for the taking.

  Rob found himself on the horns of a dilemma. He wished to keep the value of his points high, yet the money offered could buy a double horse load of points. The Indians did not value the money, and if he returned part of their offering he would cheapen his points in their eyes. He better understood Thomas Reed’s hesitation in giving full value for his coin when he and Shikee bought the gunpowder.

  He pretended to examine coins while debating his actions. Then, mixing his own Delaware and English with hand talk, he said, “Quehana is honored that warriors of the noble Mohawk nation seek his arrowpoints.” Their heads raised in pride at Quehana’s respect for their tribe.

  “Quehana accepts the French money,” He drew the coins to him, “and gives his brothers the points of iron.” Rob raised each point and presented them alternately to each brave whose eagerness was betrayed in tense and quivering fingertips. Rob could imagine their feelings. To these men of the Mohawk the simple points were as valuable as jewels would have been to him.