by John Buchan
In a hollow among the woods we came to a place which sent him on his knees, peering and sniffing like a wild-cat.
“What make you of that?” he asked.
I saw nothing but a bare patch in the grass, some broken twigs, and a few ashes.
“It’s an old camp,” I said.
“Ay,” said he. “Nothing more? Use your wits, man.”
I used them, but they gave me no help.
“This is the way I read it, then,” he said. “Three men camped here before midday. They were Cherokees, of the Matabaw tribe, and one was a maker of arrows. They were not hunting, and they were in a mighty hurry. Just now they’re maybe ten miles off, or maybe they’re watching us. This is no healthy country for you and me.”
He took me homeward at a speed which well-nigh foundered me, and, when I questioned him, he told me where he got his knowledge.
They were three men, for there were three different footmarks in the ashes’ edge, and they were Cherokees because they made their fire in the Cherokee way, so that the smoke ran in a tunnel into the scrub. They were Matabaws from the pattern of their moccasins. They were in a hurry, for they did not wait to scatter the ashes and clear up the place; and they were not hunting, for they cooked no flesh. One was an arrow-maker, for he had been hardening arrow-points in the fire, and left behind him the arrow-maker’s thong.
“But how could you know how long back this had happened?” I asked.
“The sap was still wet in the twigs, so it could not have been much above an hour since they left. Besides, the smoke had blown south, for the grass smelt of it that side. Now the wind was more to the east when we left, and, if you remember, it changed to the north about midday.”
I said it was a marvel, and he grunted. “The marvel is what they’ve been doing in the Tidewater, for from the Tidewater I’ll swear they came.”
Next day he led me eastward, away back in the direction of the manors. This was an easier day, for he went slow, as if seeking for something. He picked up some kind of a trail, which we followed through the long afternoon. Then he found something, which he pocketed with a cry of satisfaction. We were then on the edge of a ridge, whence we looked south to the orchards of Henricus.
“That is my arrow-maker,” he cried, showing me a round stone whorl. “He’s a careless lad, and he’ll lose half his belongings ere he wins to the hills.”
I was prepared for the wild Cherokees on our journey of yesterday, but it amazed me that the savages should come scouting into the Tidewater itself. He smiled grimly when I said this, and took from his pocket a crumpled feather.
“That’s a Cherokee badge,” he said. “I found that a fortnight back on the river-side an hour’s ride out of James Town. And it wasna there when I had passed the same place the day before. The Tidewater thinks it has put the fear of God on the hill tribes, and here’s a red Cherokee snowking about its back doors.”
The last day he took me north up a stream called the North Fork, which joined with his own river. I had left my musket behind, for this heavy travel made me crave to go light, and I had no use for it. But that day it seemed we were to go hunting.
He carried an old gun, and slew with it a deer in a marshy hollow — a pretty shot, for the animal was ill-placed. We broiled a steak for our midday meal, and presently clambered up a high woody ridge which looked down on a stream and a piece of green meadow.
Suddenly he stopped. “A buck,” he whispered. “See what you can do, you that were so ready with your pistol.” And he thrust his gun into my hand.
The beast was some thirty paces off in the dusk of the thicket. It nettled me to have to shoot with a strange weapon, and I thought too lightly of the mark. I fired, and the bullet whistled over its back. He laughed scornfully.
I handed it back to him. “It throws high, and you did not warn me. Load quick, and I’ll try again.”
I heard the deer crashing through the hill-side thicket, and guessed that presently it would come out in the meadow. I was right, and before the gun was in my hands again the beast was over the stream.
It was a long range and a difficult mark, but I had to take the risk, for I was on my trial. I allowed for the throw of the musket and the steepness of the hill, and pulled the trigger. The shot might have been better, for I had aimed for the shoulder, and hit the neck. The buck leaped into the air, ran three yards, and toppled over. By the grace of God, I had found the single chance in a hundred.
Frew looked at me with sincere respect. “That’s braw shooting,” he said. “I can’t say I ever saw its equal.”
That night in the smoky cabin he talked freely for once. “I never had a wife or bairn, and I lean on no man. I can fend for myself, and cook my dinner, and mend my coat when it’s wanting it. When Bacon died I saw what was coming to this land, and I came here to await it. I’ve had some sudden calls from the red gentry, but they havena got me yet, and they’ll no get me before my time. I’m in the Lord’s hands, and He has a job for Simon Frew. Go back to your money-bags, Mr. Garvald. Beat the English merchants, my lad, and take my blessing with you. But keep that gun of yours by your bedside, for the time is coming when a man’s hands will have to keep his head.”
CHAPTER 7. I BECOME AN UNPOPULAR CHARACTER
I did not waste time in getting to work. I had already written to my uncle, telling him my plans, and presently I received his consent. I arranged that cargoes of such goods as I thought most suitable for Virginian sales should arrive at regular seasons independent of the tobacco harvest. Then I set about equipping a store. On the high land north of James Town, by the road to Middle Plantation, I bought some acres of cleared soil, and had built for me a modest dwelling. Beside it stood a large brick building, one half fitted as a tobacco shed, where the leaf could lie for months, if need be, without taking harm, and the other arranged as a merchant’s store with roomy cellars and wide garrets. I relinquished the warehouse by the James Town quay, and to my joy I was able to relinquish Mr. Lambie. That timid soul had been on thorns ever since I mooted my new projects. He implored me to put them from me; he drew such pictures of the power of the English traders, you would have thought them the prince merchants of Venice; he saw all his hard-won gentility gone at a blow, and himself an outcast precluded for ever from great men’s recognition. He could not bear it, and though he was loyal to my uncle’s firm in his own way, he sought a change. One day he announced that he had been offered a post as steward to a big planter at Henricus, and when I warmly bade him accept it, he smiled wanly, and said he had done so a week agone. We parted very civilly, and I chose as manager my servant, John Faulkner.
This is not a history of my trading ventures, or I would tell at length the steps I took to found a new way of business. I went among the planters, offering to buy tobacco from the coming harvest, and to pay for it in bonds which could be exchanged for goods at my store. I also offered to provide shipment in the autumn for tobacco and other wares, and I fixed the charge for freight — a very moderate one — in advance. My plan was to clear out my store before the return of the ships, and to have thereby a large quantity of tobacco mortgaged to me. I hoped that thus I would win the friendship and custom of the planters, since I offered them a more convenient way of sale and higher profits. I hoped by breaking down the English monopoly to induce a continual and wholesome commerce in the land. For this purpose it was necessary to get coin into the people’s hands, so, using my uncle’s credit, I had a parcel of English money from the New York goldsmiths.
In a week I found myself the most-talked-of man in the dominion, and soon I saw the troubles that credit brings. I had picked up a very correct notion of the fortunes of most of the planters, and the men who were most eager to sell to me were just those I could least trust. Some fellow who was near bankrupt from dice and cock-fighting would offer me five hundred hogsheads, when I knew that his ill-guided estate could scarce produce half. I was not a merchant out of charity, and I had to decline many offers, and so made many foes. Still
, one way and another, I was not long in clearing out my store, and I found myself with some three times the amount of tobacco in prospect that I had sent home at the last harvest.
That was very well, but there was the devil to pay besides. Every wastrel I sent off empty-handed was my enemy; the agents of the Englishmen looked sourly at me; and many a man who was swindled grossly by the Bristol buyers saw me as a marauder instead of a benefactor. For this I was prepared; but what staggered me was the way that some of the better sort of the gentry came to regard me. It was not that they did not give me their custom; that I did not expect, for gunpowder alone would change the habits of a Virginian Tory. But my new business seemed to them such a downcome that they passed me by with a cock of the chin. Before they had treated me hospitably, and made me welcome at their houses. I had hunted the fox with them — very little to my credit; and shot wildfowl in their company with better success. I had dined with them, and danced in their halls at Christmas. Then I had been a gentleman; now I was a shopkeeper, a creature about the level of a redemptioner. The thing was so childish that it made me angry. It was right for one of them to sell his tobacco on his own wharf to a tarry skipper who cheated him grossly, but wrong for me to sell kebbucks and linsey-woolsey at an even bargain. I gave up the puzzle. Some folks’ notions of gentility are beyond my wits.
I had taken to going to the church in James Town, first at Mr. Lambie’s desire, and then because I liked the sermons. There on a Sunday you would see the fashion of the neighbourhood, for the planters’ ladies rode in on pillions, and the planters themselves, in gold-embroidered waistcoats and plush breeches and new-powdered wigs, leaned on the tombstones, and exchanged snuffmulls and gossip. In the old ramshackle graveyard you would see such a parade of satin bodices and tabby petticoats and lace headgear as made it blossom like the rose. I went to church one Sunday in my second summer, and, being late, went up the aisle looking for a place. The men at the seat-ends would not stir to accommodate me, and I had to find rest in the cock-loft. I thought nothing of it, but the close of the service was to enlighten me. As I went down the churchyard not a man or woman gave me greeting, and when I spoke to any I was not answered. These were men with whom I had been on the friendliest terms; women, too, who only a week before had chaffered with me at the store. It was clear that the little society had marooned me to an isle by myself. I was a leper, unfit for gentlefolks’ company, because, forsooth, I had sold goods, which every one of them did also, and had tried to sell them fair.
The thing made me very bitter. I sat in my house during the hot noons when no one stirred, and black anger filled my heart. I grew as peevish as a slighted girl, and would no doubt have fretted myself into some signal folly, had not an event occurred which braced my soul again. This was the arrival of the English convoy.
When I heard that the ships were sighted, I made certain of trouble. I had meantime added to my staff two other young men, who, like Faulkner, lived with me at the store. Also I had got four stalwart negro slaves who slept in a hut in my garden. ‘Twas a strong enough force to repel a drunken posse from the plantations, and I had a fancy that it would be needed in the coming weeks.
Two days later, going down the street of James Town, I met one of the English skippers, a redfaced, bottle-nosed old ruffian called Bullivant. He was full of apple-jack, and strutted across the way to accost me.
“What’s this I hear, Sawney?” he cried. “You’re setting up as a pedlar, and trying to cut in on our trade. Od twist me, but we’ll put an end to that, my bully-boy. D’you think the King, God bless him, made the laws for a red-haired, flea-bitten Sawney to diddle true-born Englishmen? What’ll the King’s Bench say to that, think ye?”
He was very abusive, but very uncertain on his legs. I said good-humouredly that I welcomed process of law, and would defend my action. He shook his head, and said something about law not being everything, and England being a long road off. He had clearly some great threat to be delivered of, but just then he sat down so heavily that he had no breath for anything but curses.
But the drunkard had given me a notion. I hurried home and gave instructions to my men to keep a special guard on the store. Then I set off in a pinnace to find my three ships, which were now lading up and down among the creeks.
That was the beginning of a fortnight’s struggle, when every man’s hand was against me, and I enjoyed myself surprisingly. I was never at rest by land or water. The ships were the least of the business, for the dour Scots seamen were a match for all comers. I made them anchor at twilight in mid-stream for safety’s sake, for in that drouthy clime a firebrand might play havoc with them. The worst that happened was that one moonless night a band of rascals, rigged out as Indian braves, came yelling down to the quay where some tobacco was waiting to be shipped, and before my men were warned had tipped a couple of hogsheads into the water. They got no further, for we fell upon them with marling-spikes and hatchets, stripped them of their feathers, and sent them to cool their heads in the muddy river. The ring-leader I haled to James Town, and had the pleasure of seeing him grinning through a collar in the common stocks.
Then I hied me back to my store, which was my worst anxiety, I was followed by ill names as I went down the street, and one day in a tavern, a young fool drew his shabble on me. But I would quarrel with no man, for that was a luxury beyond a trader. There had been an attack on my tobacco shed by some of the English seamen, and in the mellay one of my blacks got an ugly wound from a cutlass. It was only a foretaste, and I set my house in order.
One afternoon John Faulkner brought me word that mischief would be afoot at the darkening. I put each man to his station, and I had the sense to picket them a little distance from the house. The Englishmen were clumsy conspirators. We watched them arrive, let them pass, and followed silently on their heels. Their business was wreckage, and they fixed a charge of powder by the tobacco shed, laid and lit a fuse, and retired discreetly into the bushes to watch their handiwork.
Then we fell upon them, and the hindquarters of all bore witness to our greeting.
I caught the fellow who had laid the fuse, tied the whole thing round his neck, clapped a pistol to his ear, and marched him before me into the town. “If you are minded to bolt,” I said, “remember you have a charge of gunpowder lobbing below your chin. I have but to flash my pistol into it, and they will be picking the bits of you off the high trees.”
I took the rascal, his knees knocking under him, straight to the ordinary where the English merchants chiefly forgathered. A dozen of them sat over a bowl of punch, when the door was opened and I kicked my Guy Fawkes inside. I may have misjudged them, but I thought every eye looked furtive as they saw my prisoner.
“Gentlemen,” said I, “I restore you your property. This is a penitent thief who desires to make a confession.”
My pistol was at his temple, the powder was round his neck, and he must have seen a certain resolution in my face. Anyhow, sweating and quaking, he blurted out his story, and when he offered to halt I made rings with the barrel on the flesh of his neck.
“It is a damned lie,” cried one of them, a handsome, over-dressed fellow who had been conspicuous for his public insolence towards me.
“Nay,” said I, “our penitent’s tale has the note of truth. One word to you, gentlemen. I am hospitably inclined, and if any one of you will so far honour me as to come himself instead of dispatching his servant, his welcome will be the warmer. I bid you good-night and leave you this fellow in proof of my goodwill. Keep him away from the candle, I pray you, or you will all go to hell before your time.”
That was the end of my worst troubles, and presently my lading was finished and my store replenished. Then came the time for the return sailing, and the last enterprise of my friends was to go off without my three vessels. But I got an order from the Governor, delivered readily but with much profanity, to the commander of the frigates to delay till the convoy was complete. I breathed more freely as I saw the last hulls grow small
in the estuary. For now, as I reasoned it out, the planters must begin to compare my prices with the Englishmen’s, and must come to see where their advantage lay.
But I had counted my chickens too soon, and was to be woefully disappointed. At that time all the coast of America from New England to the Main was infested by pirate vessels. Some sailed under English letters of marque, and preyed only on the shipping of France, with whom we were at war. Some who had formed themselves into a company called the Brethren of the Coast robbed the Spanish treasure-ships and merchantmen in the south waters, and rarely came north to our parts save to careen or provision. They were mostly English and Welsh, with a few Frenchmen, and though I had little to say for their doings, they left British ships in the main unmolested, and were welcomed as a godsend by our coast dwellers, since they smuggled goods to them which would have been twice the cost if bought at the convoy markets. Lastly, there were one or two horrid desperadoes who ravaged the seas like tigers. Such an one was the man Cosh, and that Teach, surnamed Blackbeard, of whom we hear too much to-day. But, on the whole, we of Virginia suffered not at all from these gentlemen of fortune, and piracy, though the common peril of the seas, entered but little into the estimation of the merchants.
Judge, then, of my disgust when I got news a week later that one of my ships, the Ayr brig, had straggled from the convoy, and been seized, rifled, and burned to the water by pirates almost in sight of Cape Charles. The loss was grievous, but what angered me was the mystery of such a happening. I knew the brig was a slow sailer, but how in the name of honesty could she be suffered in broad daylight to fall into such a fate? I remembered the hostility of the Englishmen, and feared she had had foul play. Just after Christmas-tide I expected two ships to replenish the stock in my store. They arrived safe, but only by the skin of their teeth, for both had been chased from their first entrance into American waters, and only their big topsails and a favouring wind brought them off. I examined the captains closely on the matter, and they were positive that their assailant was not Cosh or any one of his kidney, but a ship of the Brethren, who ordinarily were on the best of terms with our merchantmen.
