Whatever had possessed him to give up trying for the Cumberland and made him turn north had served him right well. Be a lot safer here than on west, anyhow. Good meadows were all cleared to farm—if he took a notion. Old Scatter Harris had it about right this time. He’d live good here, he would. No more brawlin’ in taverns and drinking himself sick. He was landed now! Called for a celebration. Scat wondered if there was a jug around the place.
Rob came out of the woods at Castle Knob. He had held to the high ground so that his first glimpse of home would be from his old hideout in the hemlocks. The meadows of the Little Buffalo came into view, and he feasted his eyes on rich summer grass with the stream sparkling through the middle. His gaze ranged downstream leaving the best for last and lifted finally to look upon the home he had struggled so hard to complete.
The house nestled into the notch seeming itself a part of nature. The stone walls rose to blend with the dark of seasoned wood, and the brown of his tiles were already mottled with a coating of green moss. Distant voices shattered his reverie, and he drew his gaze tighter on the notch. Figures moved there.
Puzzled, Rob circled through the hemlocks and approached with his woodsman’s silence until he lay hidden close above the house. With amazement he saw a horde of children swarming about his place. Even as he watched, a pair of rangy youths tore a board from the old wagon and scaled it into the stream. A fat, stringy-haired woman came to his door and dumped a bucket of slops into the yard. Rob recognized the oaken bucket he had laboriously coopered as a surprise for his bride. Lips tight with anger, Rob laid aside his pouch and rifle. Shadow-like, he closed on the doorway.
Scat Harris glanced up from his plate as the doorway darkened. He heart leaped to his throat as he saw the biggest Injun he’d ever laid eyes on standing looking at him. The damned redskin was bigger than he was, though maybe not so wide. It wasn’t until the Indian spoke that Harris recognized that it was just a white man in Injun clothes, and his confidence returned in a rush.
“Get out of my house!” The words were clear but soft, and Scat missed the bite of anger in the voice. Scat prepared to argue. No one was rousting him from his rightful holdings!
“This here ain’t yore house, Mister. It’s my place!”
A tremendous blow smashed into the side of Harris’s head lifting him bodily from the stool and slamming him to the floor. The voice said again, “Get out of my house.”
More angered than hurt, Harris came up swinging. Bellowing with rage he drove with his bullet head to pin and crush his enemy as he had in a hundred tavern brawls.
A hard-driven foot smashed full into his face, stunning his mind and stopping him in his tracks. Again, a sledging blow crashed against his ear, and he felt the wooden floor strike his face. The bastard must be using a club on him! Well, that was a game Scat Harris knew how to play.
The voice again, “Get out while you can!”
Harris heard his wife squalling and thought how this stranger was beating him like an animal in front of his own family. Old Scat would change that in about one lick, and then he would feed the carcass to the wolves.
Scat rose slowly, his arms protecting his head, his tiny pig eyes glittering behind them. Rob watched coldly, anger chilling his heart. He anticipated the man’s cunning lunge for the carving knife near the plate on his big table. The tomahawk slid from his belt with practiced ease, and he swung the razored edge solidly across the man’s reaching fingers.
Harris’s maddened bellow was echoed by his wife’s horrified scream as his severed fingers flew across the table. The tomahawk remained sunk deep in the smoothed oak as Harris hugged his ruined hand to his chest, whimpering in fear, his courage gone with his fingers.
The monster that had calmly chopped off his fingers pointed toward the door, and Harris, clutching desperately at his blood spurting hand, scrabbled to escape. His woman ran after him screeching and wringing her hands.
Rob followed them to the door and watched the man sitting in the dirt staring dully at his stumps of fingers as his life’s blood pumped away. Rob took a strip of rawhide from a wall peg and turned it tightly around the man’s wrist until the bleeding stopped. The man appeared too stunned to act, so Rob turned to the woman who had quieted and stood silently clutching her hands to her elbows.
“Woman!” Her ox-like eyes turned to Rob. “Load your belongings and leave this valley. Travel far and take nothing of mine, or I will follow and take your scalps!” The woman visibly blanched, and Rob doubted there would be pilferage or loitering.
Amid great turmoil, the Harris family threw their belongings into their wagon, harnessed their animals, and scrambled aboard. The woman and the oldest boy hoisted the stupefied Harris to his seat, and Rob held the team for a moment.
“When you have gone a mile, loosen the cord on his wrist. If he bleeds badly, heat a knife blade until it glows and touch it to each bleeder. Otherwise, he will die.”
Harris groaned loudly from mounting pain and thought of hot iron searing his flesh.
“And woman, do not come this way again!” Rob released the team, and the wagon rolled away.
Rob recovered his rifle from the hillside, and with his anger cooling, prepared to clean his home. He regretted the deep gash in his table. It would be there forever, but the man was lucky. He had chopped three fingers from the reaching hand. The tomahawk could have been buried in his head and the table spared.
Rob looked about his filthy and littered home remembering the years when his property had been safe no matter how long he had been away. Those days were gone. The white man had come.
— — —
For two weeks Rob struggled to complete his duties in Carlisle. He tendered his report of the fighting in the ravine, but so many reports had already come that he thought his own version tardy and unimportant. He instinctively held back mentioning the death of Wheelwright and the burying of the payroll money. Will Sweet could take care of that. The last thing Rob desired was to be dragged off on a mission to recover the buried coin.
Of the fighting, only one fact stood clear in Rob’s mind. The Virginians, the friendly Indians, and the frontiersmen survived. Spread out under cover of the forest, they suffered virtually no casualties. Grouped tactics would not work when fighting in deep woods. Croghan had told them, Washington had been telling them that for years, Sattelihu spoke about it, the Chief Scarroady said it, and Rob Shatto had seen it. Rob wondered if the point was as clear to the military as it was to him.
Gathering stores to return to the Little Buffalo was difficult. Although the harvest was at hand, Sherman’s Valley settlers had deserted their clearings and taken shelter in Shippensburg and Carlisle. Others fled as far as Lancaster, and more than a few gave up altogether vowing never to return. Supplies of all kinds were suddenly hard to come by as refugees fled before expected Indian uprising.
Rob wondered if his confidence in his friendship with the Delaware might be misplaced. He purchased extra muskets, powder, and shot. He loaded supplies to carry his family through a long winter and prepared to return to the valley. Thomas Reed railed in vain. Neither Becky nor Rob considered waiting out the troubles in the relative safety of Carlisle.
Leading pack animals, Rob crossed the mountain three times bearing supplies and equipment for their home. He saw little Indian sign, but word came to Carlisle of attacks along Tuscarora Mountain and of war parties sweeping from Conococheague and down Sherman’s Creek itself. He had prepared as thoroughly as he could, and with their heavily laden pack horses, Becky, Flat, and Rob began their return to the Little Buffalo.
Descending the north side of Kittatinny Mountain they sighted a white man wearing torn regimentals walking slowly along the trail. Rob halted his party, and they watched the man from a distance. The English soldier appeared weary and walked with a decided limp. Despite the distant traveler’s harmless appearance, Rob scanned the woods carefully before he approached.
No frontiersman, the soldier believed himself alone until
Rob’s voice spoke close to his ear. “You travel far, Gunner.”
Sweet whirled in astonishment. “Rob! It is you, Rob!” Elation showed on the Gunner’s haggard features. “I could not be sure … I dared not ask directions, you see …” The man was close to tears, and Rob took his arm urging him to wait until the rest of the party came up.
Introducing Becky and Flat gave the gunner time to compose himself. A man courageous in battle, the Gunner had found the lone travel in strange country exhausting. They rested while Sweet explained his presence on the frontier.
“Well, Robbie, I rode the horse like we planned, right on down to Cumberland. Nothin’ there but confusion. Nobody knew who was alive or who had passed over. With Braddock and most of the officers dead, things were mighty mixed up. I took a good look and decided I’d had enough.
“For over twenty years I’ve served behind a gun, and it’s enough! I kept thinkin’ about all you told of your plantation and the land out here for the taking. I figured to ask for shelter with you till I could get my leg in shape enough to begin my own place.
“Far as anyone else knows, Will Sweet is layin’ out in that ravine alongside Wheelwright an’ Braddock himself. Figure I’ll take a new name out here, shed these clothes, an’ no one’ll place me as an old King’s Gunner.”
Sweet looked hopefully at Rob. “Thought I might like the name Will Miller. Miller always had a good ring to it according to my ears.”
He continued, “Didn’t have nothin‘ to wear but my old uniform. Had to keep hid all the time, so I turned the horse loose. My leg give me trouble up till real recent, but I’ve been feelin’ my way along, slippin’ off the paths if anyone approached. Don’t think anybody’s laid eyes on me for days—till you walked right up on me like that. Either I’m gettin’ plumb wore out, or you can move mighty light when yore of a mind.”
Rob could appreciate the danger in the gunner’s decision to leave the Army. If found, Sweet would be executed as a deserter. No consideration would be given for twenty years of honorable service. All that would count was that he had departed without formal permission. That such permission was never granted would also mean nothing.
Rob could also understand Sweet having had his fill. Seeing close hand the soldier’s life, Rob wondered why any of them remained. With the big woods handy, he’d have been gone in a minute.
After a lifetime of service under the King’s protecting wing, Gunner Sweet might have a hard time adjusting to being on his own. The man had stamina and courage, and Rob knew he stood pain with an Indian’s stolidity. Sweet, now William Miller, could be a good man to have around.
To Rob, Will Miller looked mighty peaked. That he had been eating slim was plain. Rob decided to camp along the creek and get a good meal into his new neighbor. Miller could stay with them until he felt ready to strike out on his own. The former Gunner would be help to Rob as well. A man at the house would ease his mind considerably when he had to be out scouting around, or hunting, or even out in the fields turning sod.
William Miller moved into Rob’s upper floor. The women fashioned him clothing with Flat fussing over the fitting as if Miller was a long separated family member newly returned. They burned the old uniform without ceremony. Until his leg improved enough for work, Miller busied himself with the lighter tasks about the place.
Despite his desire, Rob knew little about farming. He had seen farms worked, of course, but his practical experience was severely limited. Miller, on the other hand, proved to be well informed on the subject. His youth on his father’s small farm remained clear in his mind. They combined their knowledge, and Rob began turning the first meadow sod.
Rich top soil lay deep in the Little Buffalo meadows. Centuries of natural erosion had washed the best earth from the slopes above and deposited it on the valley floor. Generations of beavers had built their dams and flooded the fields killing off large growth, and their voracious feeding eliminated smaller trees and brush. Their periodic flooding had spread additional layers of rich silt across the fields. The beavers were gone and their dams had rotted away, but rich loam lay waiting the turn of a plow.
They had decided to cultivate a small plot for pumpkins, squash, and the common garden vegetables. The big field, which would take many months to prepare, would eventually be fifty acres in extent. They chose sloping fields that rose slightly above the old lodge site north of the stream. That choice avoided a small pond created by a stone and earth dam thrown up during E’shan’s day for bathing and scrubbing. The springs that began the creek also lay to the south, but that land would be forever boggy.
Fifty acres was a large bite. Few farmers within the mountain valleys could boast such a field cleared and plowed. With families existing on the crops raised on five acres of half-shaded woods, cultivating a single fifty-acre field seemed indeed ambitious.
The season was too far advanced for planting corn, and they prepared their land for the following spring. Sods resisted stubbornly. Hardy grasses had deep roots and patches of raspberry demanded scything and root chopping with little progress appearing. The Shatto harvest his year would be meadow grass made into hay for winter forage.
They sat of an evening before the fire, each concerned with their chosen task when Shikee’s familiar owl hoot sounded from the hillside. Rob’s ear detected the special lilt in the call, but the others heard nothing unusual. Even Flat continued her work on a pair of Will’s moccasins.
Unbarring the back door, Rob let himself into the darkness. He slipped into the trees and hooted softly an answer to Shikee’s owl. The Delaware appeared as silent as a shadow from downstream, and the two gripped hands with their open affection.
Shikee marveled at his brother’s great size. Truly, Quehana grew with each moon’s passing, and he now rivaled The Warrior in size and strength. Rob assured him that becoming muscular was simple enough. All he, Shikee, had to do was grasp a hoe or the handles of a plow from dawn to dark and he, too, could become strong of arm and especially attractive to beautiful maidens.
Shikee bore the expected ill-tidings. The Delaware and Shawnee prepared for war. With the spring, they would take up the hatchet, and war parties would sweep from the safety of the Ohio and Allegheny country to destroy the English settlements with fire and scalping knife. Many war parties were already marching, but they destroyed along the western rivers and the great thrust to the east would come following the winter cold.
It was Shikee’s hope to spare his brother the wrath of The People. He had brought with him ten ovals of cured deer hide on which the blue Turtle of Shikee’s clan had been painted. The totems were powerful medicine, and Delaware war parties would not attack a cabin protected by the sign. Shikee also spoke widely of the friendship of Quehana and spread among the lodges word of the totems protecting the arrowmaker and his people.
Shikee was made much of by Rob’s family. As she had always done, Flat favored him with tender morsels, and Becky in her thoughtful way touched his brightly painted scars and appeared visibly impressed.
The Delaware gave his good news. Red Bird had given him a son to be called E’shanis after the old arrowmaker. Shikee accepted their congratulations with pride and gratification.
In the early morning, Rob and Shikee pegged the Turtle Clan totems to trees bordering Rob’s land. They argued contentedly over the probable approaches that should be protected. When the ten were posted and they sat in the old place on Castle Knob, Shikee told of his intended departure.
“The day of the Indian is gone from this land, Quehana. There is no peace in the villages. The flute is seldom heard, and squaws fight over the white man’s cloth and beads. The Great Spirit has turned his eyes and nothing is the same. Even The Warrior appears no more. Some say he has gone to the western mountains where many believe the land of the Great Spirit can be entered by climbing high where men cannot easily breath.”
Rob nodded mute understanding as Shikee continued.
“There is other talk of the Shining Mountains far
to the west. They are said to rise many moons past the Father of Waters. Those are the mountain to which The Warrior may have ventured. It is said that those mountains are so high that winter snow lies even in the summer. Could it be so, Quehana?”
Rob nodded. “It could be so, Shikee. There are such mountains in the old lands beyond the salt sea. Whites, too, claim to have seen western mountains that shine in the morning sun. Whites call them the Rocky Mountains.”
“The Indian name is better, Quehana. Our people see the shine on the peaks many marches away. Shining Mountains is a good name.
“In the spring, when the ice is gone yet the rivers run swift, I will take my lodge and journey to the Shining Mountains. There I will live as our people should. Our wars will be with Indians, and honor will again count above killing. Our ways will be our ancestors’, and the hunting will be good. My sons will grow in the new country and perhaps live their whole lives before the white men come.”
The adventure glowed in his brother’s eyes, and Rob could envy his freedom to go. Rob gave the thoughts time to settle in his mind, and Shikee, too, drifted into his own visions of the great journey.
Finally, Rob said, “Quehana wishes his brother well and envies his brave journey. But Shikee, I wish with all of my heart that it need not be so. I wish that we could live here on the Little Buffalo as we did when E’shan made his points under the oak, that we could hunt and see only a few lodges of our brothers, and that no guns frightened the deer. But I know that can never be.”
Then Rob spoke of memories that surely stalked within the mind of Shikee as they did his own.
“Remember, my brother, when we wrestled the hunter Long Knife in the pond below, and he nearly drowned us both? Remember how Kneeling Buffalo and E’shan grew old sitting beneath the oak, disagreeing with everything either thought about? Those were the best times, and that is how men should live. When you are gone, I will have only Flat to speak to about those younger moons. I miss them greatly, my brother.
Arrowmaker (Pennsylvania Frontier Series) Page 19
