Arrowmaker (Pennsylvania Frontier Series)

by Roy F. Chandler

  Finished, Rob bade them stay seated and turned again to his store of points. He placed a number in David’s old storage box and returned to the Mohawks.

  “Because my brothers have journeyed far to seek Quehana, he wishes to give these presents to his brothers.”

  As carefully as before, he alternately gave each brave three additional points.

  “And, that they may gain honor in their lodges, Quehana also gives these gifts.” He laid before each overwhelmed man two more iron points.

  “And that the men of the Mohawk know that Quehana, named by The Warrior, is himself with honor, he gives these gifts.”

  Rob gave each brave a brightly shining bronze arrowhead. He hoped he had not overdone it.

  From their gleaming eyes, Rob believed he had it about right, and for a moment he feared one’s reserve might break and the brave would hug him. The Mohawks turned at the forest edge and raised their bows in solemn salute, but a few moments later the woods echoed with a Mohawk cry of exultation as the young men headed north with their treasures. At his forge, Rob examined his own side of the bargaining and wished he dared make the woods ring with his own yelp of glee.

  Following Croghan’s second trip to Shamokin, Rob Shatto’s immediate money problems were solved. Becky Reed held in trust more gold and silver than Rob’s land could possibly cost, and the Mohawk coins were hidden in the woods near his house.

  George Croghan had again loaded his animals, this time traveling into the western lands. Croghan was seriously concerned by French efforts to control the Ohio country. It was rumored that Fort Duquesne at the forks of the Ohio had been reinforced, and Croghan intended to determine the truth of that matter before returning east.

  20

  1754 – House & Land

  Rob and the Moyers raised the upper story of the house during the Indian summer of 1754. The November days had turned warm, and the men worked steadily, unhampered by heavy clothing or summer insects.

  The log walls rose, and the vast expanse of upper floor was laid and pinned into place. The Moyers preferred wooden pegs, and Rob approved. He did not wish to use his valuable iron providing unnecessary nails.

  The heavy ridge pole was lifted, and the massive rafters required their combined efforts to work into place. Because of the weight of clay tiles that would lie on the roof planking, rafters were squared far heavier and closer together than would be customary for even one of the large barns becoming popular further east.

  Drilling peg holes was laborious. Roof planking required hundreds of such holes and regular sharpening of drills, but when finished, the planked roof looked tight enough to shed water—even without the tiles.

  Andrew Montour arrived at Rob’s place accompanied by his brother-in-law, Will Dason, who with Montour’s unspoken permission had also taken up land along Montour’s Run. Sattelihu brought a horse and had come to help Rob place tile on his roof. How they knew Rob was ready to tile seemed one of those mysteries of the frontier. They simply knew.

  The horse was harnessed to a crude stone boat, and tiles were skidded to the house. Andrew passed tiles to Will and a Moyer on a scaffold, who laid them along the roof edge until Rob and the Moyer brother could put them in place.

  Even the methodical Moyers seemed impressed by the planning that allowed the tiles to fit so perfectly. The tiling proceeded without incident except for the disturbance of a nest of copperheads that had taken winter residence within the tile stack. When tiling was completed, the five men stood back to survey their work. The house stood like a fortress, far stronger than the stockaded cabins usually encountered on the frontier. The house had been nearly three years abuilding. Rob thought it should stand a hundred years, to be enjoyed by generations of Shattos.

  The Moyers disappeared within to resume their laying of the wooden ground floor. Rob, Andrew, and Will bathed in the chill creek and rested by a warming campfire. Sattelihu told of a man named Johnson who had moved far into the New York wilds and used Indian workers to make bricks and build a two story mansion many miles distant from even the meanest cabin. They discussed the increasing rush of squatters into Sherman’s Valley and the passing through of land speculators with shifty eyes that marked choice locations in small notebooks.

  In the first month of the new year of 1755 a final meeting of Sachems was to be reopened in Albany, and both George Croghan and Sattelihu were to be present as interpreters. The Albany meeting would ratify and pay in full the Penns’ summer purchase of much of the Endless Hills, and Rob Shatto could soon thereafter own his land.

  Montour reported that the Indians along Cisna Run were mostly gone, and only a few remained on Duncan’s Island at the mouth of the Juniata. White squatters were clearing cabin sites along the rivers and creeks, and Montour had given up trying to remove them. The squatters were ruining the country faster than Sattelihu would have believed possible. They ripped out the old beaver dams that had kept the streams from flooding, they burned the forest to make their clearings, and they shot anything they saw whether they could eat the meat or not. An Indian was not safe in the woods. A settler seeing any Indian seemed to panic and let go with his musket.

  Rob hoped Shikee would use care when he visited. Just months before he had moved without caution to bring E’shan’s body home. Remembering the free days, roaming the woods and meeting no one, Rob, too, was saddened by the abuse of the land.

  Predicting open warfare with the French by spring, Montour was even more discouraging than Croghan. A campaign against Fort Duquesne was already organizing. A General named Braddock would command over two thousand British regulars, and colonial militia from Virginia under Colonel Washington would accompany the expedition.

  Montour believed an English success would secure the forks of the Ohio and drive the French north. Hostile Indians would withdraw, and there could be peace on the frontier. A French victory would raise tomahawks and bring savage Indian warfare to the border. The prospects appeared uncertain, but the English were mustering an overwhelming force and should prevail. Rob hoped Montour was correct. Despite occasional outbursts of savagery, the Endless Hills had been spared open warfare. Rob did not wish to bring his bride into a wilderness preparing for conflict.

  Despite the rumors of war, Indians appeared regularly at Rob’s stand. They sought Quehana’s iron points and were willing to trade whatever was asked. Pondering the inter-tribal demand for his arrowheads, Rob assumed it a combination of a superior point and that Quehana, maker of points for The Warrior, had produced them. The need for his points seemed almost religious in nature, as though by having Quehana’s iron points a warrior or hunter stood closer to the redman’s mighty fighter, The Warrior.

  Other traders would be quick to enter the market with their own points and would, without doubt, claim their points were also made by Quehana. There was nothing Rob could do about that, but by spring, he and Croghan would have taken the cream of the trade, and within a year, iron arrowheads would become so common that their mysticism would be gone, and Quehana’s would be no better than other iron implements.

  Indians desiring trade appeared at the forest edge, hand raised in the peace sign, and calling for Rob’s attention. He often returned from the hunt to find braves waiting beneath the trees. Never were his goods rifled or his forge entered. Except during war, Indian honor precluded entrance to another’s lodge without invitation.

  Rob talked long with visiting redmen. He asked about the French and was told that their arm was long. He inquired of the tribes and was informed of discontent, poor hunting, hunger in the cold months, and disrespect toward tribal leaders. The villages were withdrawing en masse to the Ohio country, but they could move no further as they now touched the lands of western tribes. The French spoke constantly of war that would drive white settlers into the sea. Many listened, but no one knew who would act.

  Although his house was outwardly complete, much work remained. Rob had purchased axes and planes from the Moyers who could replace their worn tools with
new. There were doors and shutters to be fitted, hinges to be forged, and basic furniture to be fashioned.

  The Moyers accepted their final pay and Rob’s bonus with their customary equanimity. Their parting handshakes were crushing, and they marched stolidly toward the south and their next work.

  Again alone, Rob hung his doors and moved into the house. Winter crowded in, and he spent hours with a blaze roaring in his hearth. He carved wooden spoons, plates, and mugs. From his forge came hinges, dippers, and fat lamps. David’s notebooks on iron mongery gave him ideas, and his memory served up shapes of other household items he had once seen. Rob’s apprenticeship with his grandfather served him well. Provided he had the time, there was little that he could not make.

  Croghan came from the Ohio with his horses foundering under overloads of furs and pelts and his pouch bulging with coin. The trader stayed only overnight to rest himself and his worn animals. Croghan had need to rush to Albany and assume his duties as interpreter. Rob wished that he could have stayed on, for the nights were long and the days lonely.

  Rob’s Christmas was cold with wolves howling close in the hills and snow drifting in the valleys. As a result of the months of log squaring, he had wood aplenty, and he burned it with abandon, enjoying the warmth as he worked on his house fittings.

  On the first day of February, 1755, Rob arrived at Reed’s Ordinary. He was dressed much as George Croghan had been on his first visit in forty-nine. Tanned skins made up his clothing, and he had adopted the Indian fur muff to protect his hands.

  The Ordinary was crowded with men waiting the opening of the land office on the third day of the month, and Rob heard his name whispered as he crossed the room to be warmly greeted by Thomas Reed.

  The storekeeper was aware of Rob’s increased financial solvency as well as his daughter’s unswerving intent to marry the tall woodsman. Rob’s business successes added dimensions to Reed’s evaluation of Rob Shatto as a son-in-law. Reed could appreciate business acumen, and becoming resigned to his daughter’s choice, he gradually recognized Rob’s ability to emerge ever stronger and better positioned. Now, he supported Becky’s choice, although her eventual departure to the wilderness worried him mightily.

  The business of warranting Rob’s land was almost anti-climactic. A clerk recorded his measurements and marks and blocked in their locations on a large map of the new country—now a part of Lancaster County, or perhaps Cumberland County, that detail was still in discussion. Rob made full payment and received both his warrant and a thin, impersonal smile from the clerk who merely called, “Next.”

  But it was done! The plan he and David had devised was well underway. He owned both house and land, and he was but twenty-two years old. He hoped that David could know that things went well for him and suspected that he did.

  Becky could not hear enough about the land and the house. The Shatto plantation ran from the crest of all surrounding ridges so that no one could build or live within their view. He described the acres of woods and meadow that made the drainage for the Little Buffalo. He talked long of Shikee and the Indians. He spoke earnestly of George Croghan, Sattelihu, and the Moyers. Rob warned of probable troubled times and his plans for their safety. He hoped that he did not paint so bright a picture that reality would prove disappointing, but always Becky asked for more.

  It was decided that they would marry in April.

  He would come during the second week. In the meantime, he would continue preparing the house to become a home.

  Becky would be ready when he came.

  21

  1755 - The Tracker

  Spring began early, and although rotting snow drifts lay in sheltered hollows and rain still held winter’s chill shock, March saw trees budding and air warming. Good weather drove Rob from winter seclusion. He sniffed the breezes like a bear newly out of hibernation and decided to enjoy a quick exploration of the valleys. He shouldered a small pack that would allow him to rest well at night and set out.

  Rob knew that settlers had been building along the creeks, and a few of the early squatters had returned to claim their old clearings and patches. He was particularly interested in a family of Robinsons that had begun farming some nine miles to the west. The Robinsons, unlike some settlers, appeared to be stayers that were sinking deep roots.

  On this occasion, however, Rob traveled down the Little Juniata Creek finding trees freshly girdled but no cabins. The valley of the Little Juniata was narrow at its mouth. Although the creek would provide easy travel, the land was rocky and the area damp. He was surprised that men chose to live there.

  The Indians were gone from Duncan’s Island, and white traders living there were a motley band of whiskey traders to whom Rob took immediate dislike. He turned south, crossed Sherman’s Creek in a broken-down dugout left for such use, and worked his way along the face of the ridges where they sloped to the Susquehanna.

  A considerable number of people had settled in the cove and were already squabbling over altered boundary markers and rights to dam Cove Creek. Rob lingered only briefly.

  He retraced his steps north and found a party of whites busy at the mouth of Sherman’s Creek. They had crossed the Susquehanna in their own canoe. The group was already excited about something. Rob did not wish to be mistaken for an Indian, and he called before showing himself.

  Rob crossed the creek standing in the dugout, poling his way to the north bank, giving them time to look him over. The group consisted of two men, a woman, and a young boy. Rob greeted them formally, and they returned his greeting with reservation until the woman stepped forward exclaiming, “Why land sakes, yore that Robbie Shatto, ain’t you!”

  “Why, yes Ma’am, I am.” She looked somehow familiar, and Rob peered closely trying to place her face.

  She turned to one of the men. “La, John, this here’s Rob Shatto, the boy that gave Simon the tomahawk way back when we lived here on the crick.”

  Rob had it then. Mary Girty. And he remembered the skinny child that slipped so easily among the stumps and girdled trees.

  The man gripped Rob’s offered hand, and explanations began. He was John Turner, who had shot The Fish, avenging the stabbing of the senior Simon Girty. The preceding year, he and Mary Girty had married taking up residence on the east bank of the Susquehanna. The family lived well, but young Simon had become a cross for John to bear. Now, the boy had run off. He had been seen wading the river, and they thought he might be heading for the old Girty place on Sherman’s Creek.

  John Turner studied the prints Simon had left in the river bank mud, but it was plain to Rob that he saw little. The man’s thick-soled work shoes and heavy-heeled stance counted him out as a woodsman, and Rob doubted that if the runaway chose to leave the path Turner could follow track. Having lived with a frontiersman, Mary Girty was aware of her new husband’s inability to cope with the wilderness into which her son had disappeared. Brave and honorable John Turner might be, but unless Simon wished to be found, they would see neither hide nor hair of him. The mother’s eyes pleaded with Rob, although her lips feared to put the question lest Rob refuse, and her sudden hope be dashed.

  Rob asked, “What did he take with him, Mary?”

  Hope rising, she stumbled over her words. “Why, he took a pack with some corn and some bacon. He’s got his blanket and his bow and his knife, an’ fer sure he’s got that wore-down tomahawk you give him, Rob. He cain’t be more’n a little ahead of us. I reckon you could catch him sure.”

  John Turner and his friend stood silent, aware of Rob’s obvious familiarity with the woods, but mildly piqued that Mary had so plainly thrust them aside.

  “I’m not so sure about that, Mary. He’s moving mighty fast according to his tracks.”

  “Oh, he’s a Injun alright, Rob. Don’t like nothin’ but the woods, that young’n. But, you can catch him, cain’t you?”

  “I reckon, unless he takes to the water.” Rob stopped then remembering his own dash for freedom and his panicked fear of being caug
ht and returned. “I’ll come up to him, if I can, an’ I’ll talk with him but, Mary, if he won’t agree to come back I won’t force him.”

  Turner began an objection but choked it off. He could not himself track the lad, he was sure. The boy was not really his either, and that made it hard.

  Mary nodded mutely. “Do what ya can, Rob. We all want him back, an’ I reckon yore our best hope. Maybe you can make him see that the woods ain’t no place for a fourteen year ol’ boy.”

  They turned toward their canoe. Neither the boy James or the other man had spoken the entire time, and Rob thought them a subdued and beaten looking group.

  Rob took Simon’s trail with some pleasure. He dropped into his own lope, reading the trail ahead with ease and judging the boy’s destination as the old Girty clearing.

  Only a few burned poles remained of the Girty cabin, and the clearing was already over-grown with head-high brush. As was often the case, new settlers avoided the old clearings lest someone appear with prior claim.

  Simon’s tracks led directly to the cabin ruins, and Rob saw where he had squatted to eat corn. That the boy did not sit on a stump or rock in the white manner warned Rob not to expect an easy catch. Simon understood the importance of keeping his seat dry and doubtless knew other woods lore as well.

  The boy’s tracks led randomly about the over-grown clearing as though he had wandered reviewing old sights, but Rob quickly realized that Simon was actually hiding his trail. Rabbit-like, he circled and wound on his own trail so that a pursuer could not tell where or in what direction he left the clearing.

  With increased care, Rob circled outside the clearing edge searching for sign. He saw footprints where Simon had reentered the clearing and began to move on before suspicion touched his mind. Rob retraced his steps and examined the footprints more carefully. He squatted close chuckling to himself. The young devil had deliberately left a clear trail, but he was walking backward. The trick was old, but, the great Quehana had nearly been caught by it.