Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1966

by Battle at Bear Paw Gap (v1. 1)

  The party came to the edge of the road. On the far side rose rocky heights, shaggy with trees beginning to show the colors of fall, and at the highest point rose the great rounded knob that gave this place the name of Bear Paw Gap. The tavern was in view from where Tsukala halted them, plain to see within its bristly stockade of poles. As Tsukala flung out both arms to call his companions close to him within cover, they saw puffs of smoke from the steep rocks across the road from the inn, heard the sound of exploding powder.

  “Some of them are high up there,” said Tsukala quickly. “They can shoot down at the house from where they are. We must go after them and chase them down. Come.”

  “How about the one who got away in our yard?” Mark asked.

  “No, he will not cross the road, he would be shot by your friends. He cannot go and tell those up there. Come, I say.”

  Tsukala bent double as he sneaked behind concealing trees westward again. Mark followed him, and could hear the others coming behind them. Tsukala came to a place where two great trees grew on opposite sides of the road, their branches almost meeting above.

  “Here,” he said, “these leaves will keep them from seeing us from where they are, high up. Cross where I do.”

  He fairly darted across to the far side. Mark sprang the width of the road a moment later, and looked back to see Stoke and Schneider make the crossing in turn, with, close behind them, the swift, slender form of Celia, still carrying her rifle.

  “I said for you to stay safe at our house,” Mark scolded her.

  “Nay, Mark, I feel safer when I am with you.”

  Mark had no time to say more to her, for Tsukala was climbing up the ridge, hoisting his body from rock to rock among gnarled roots and tangled growth. Mark made haste to climb after him, and so did the others.

  It was a steep scramble there on the slope of the ridge called Jarrett’s Ridge, and the way was impeded by trees, logs, boulders, clutters of brush; but all the more reason to feel that the climb was not being watched or even suspected. Mark had no sense of weariness as he reached the summit beside Tsukala, but both Stoke and Schneider puffed a little with their efforts. Mark slid down a few steps and gave Celia his hand and helped her up.

  “You shouldn’t have come,” Mark admonished her again.

  “Do not say that, young warrior,” Tsukala said. “Girl with sun hair is brave. She has the heart of a warrior. Let her come with us.”

  “What is our task now?” Stoke inquired of Tsukala.

  Shots crackled again, from the direction of the fighting. Tsukala glanced up at the sun, and so did Mark. It had descended well down the western sky, to a point where it lacked perhaps an hour and a half of sunset.

  “We go here above them,” Tsukala issued his orders. “I go first, and young warrior behind me. Then you others. Look for what I do. This,” and he swept his arm in a beckoning gesture, “you come on. And this,” he held his hand behind him, palm spread, “you stop and wait. You hear me?”

  “Aye,” said Stoke.

  “Ja” said Schneider.

  “I understand,” said Celia.

  Tsukala picked his way among the scattered rocks on the ridge, ever peering through trees and foliage ahead. Mark kept second position, his rifle poised.

  It seemed a very short while until Tsukala, coming to a breast high rock, halted suddenly and lifted his head to look above it. He made the beckoning gesture, very deliberately. Mark came close beside him at the big rock. Stoke joined them, and Schneider. Celia cautiously drew up behind the group.

  From there they could see down ridge, through a light fringe of leafy branches that would conceal their own heads lifting above the natural breastworks. Mark saw at once that they had come close to the upward thrust of the Bear Paw knob, and that below them, down a rough, steep descent of rocks, the tavern lay at the side of the road. Its surrounding palisade was plain to see, with trees in bunches and belts all around. No sign of life moved there on the lower ground of the gap. Those within the tavern held their shelter, those without held their cover.

  Tsukala’s fingers snapped in the hunter’s signal to call attention, and he stretched his hand toward a point on the downward slope, perhaps forty yards at a slant beneath them. Half hidden in a tangle of scrub lurked a human shape, watching toward the tavern below. Mark saw a brown, naked back, a shock of sooty hair.

  Schneider slid the barrel of his musket forward above the rock, but Tsukala’s hand quickly struck it up. Tsukala thrust his scowling face toward Schneider and shook his head violently. His left hand, holding his bow with the arrow across it, made a sweeping gesture. He pointed here and there with the arrow. His right hand held up two fingers, then three, then four. Tsukala meant that there were others near by, and that they might be hiding there in any numbers.

  “Hold your fire,” said Mark as softly as he could, with his mouth close to Schneider’s ear, and Schneider subsided. All were silent, motionless, straining their eyes to see.

  At another point, more to the left and somewhat farther down the slanting height than the point where the first man lay, bushes jiggled. Mark crept along past the rock where his friends were grouped, reached a twisted tree that clutched with its roots at a stony slant. He flung himself at its base to get a clearer look beneath the branches. Those bushes were a thick tangle, but Mark thought he could make out a faint outline among them. It looked gray, like sooty ashes, not brown like the skin of an Indian warrior. His mind flew back to the scrap of homespun he had torn from the garment of the lurker at the mill—was that only the night before last, or an eternity ago? And that lurker had been a white man; Quill Moxley, surely Quill Moxley. The white leader of the Indian attackers was there below Mark.

  But Tsukala had commanded them all to wait and hold their fire. Plainly Tsukala wanted to learn, if he could, what force held this vantage position on the slope above the tavern. Mark looked at the bushes again, to impress upon his mind the exact location where they grew. Then he slid back to the others, and nudged Tsukala. He put his hand to his cheek to make the sign for red, and touched his hunting shirt to signify a coat. Redcoat—a Britisher, a white enemy—that was the best he could do to give his information without speaking. He pointed to the bushes below. Tsukala nodded his comprehension.

  All of them studied the space below. After a time, Stoke snapped his fingers and pointed toward the right. An evergreen had fallen there, its green needles cloaking a ledge of rock. Mark narrowed his eyes to look and saw no movement or other indication of life there. But Stoke held his fingers spread upward in front of his brow, as though to pantomime a bonnet of feathers. Tsukala looked, too, nodded and tightened his lips as though to denote he understood.

  Mark looked from one to the other, frowned and twiddled his hand on his wrist in the query sign. Tsukala stooped to the foot of the rock, where a tuft of grass grew in a crevice. He touched the grass, then touched his hair, and pointed down toward the fallen tree.

  Mark made a second study of the prone branches. Now he could make out a paler patch of green among them, and suddenly he knew what it was. An Indian sheltered there, and he had bound handfuls of grass around his head to hide it.

  Farther below around the tavern, whoops drifted up. The Indians there were shouting to hearten each other, or perhaps as some sort of signal. It must have been the latter, he decided, for gunfire burst out again at various quarters on the slope just below Mark and his friends. Mark saw gray puffs of powder smoke, one from where he thought Moxley hid, another from the man half in view below, another from the grass-headed one among the evergreen boughs. And three other puffs rose at various points —no, four puffs, because one sprang up almost immediately below the rock, within a score of places near where they waited.

  Tsukala swung his head to fix each of the group in turn. His pointing hand darted. He indicated Schneider, then the man Schneider had wanted to shoot. Stoke he gestured to give attention to the one huddled among the branches of the fallen evergreen. He pointed to Mark, and
from Mark he pointed to Mox- ley’s hiding. Celia came to rest her rifle on the jagged top of the stone and Tsukala touched the barrel of the rifle and pointed to where a puff of smoke was dissolving in the air. He drew his arrow to its barbed head, and aimed it for yet another point.

  “Yell!” he commanded suddenly, and raised his voice in a shrill, prolonged Cherokee war cry.

  “Hi!” yelped Stoke, and “Hi!” Mark echoed him.

  “Hourra!” bellowed Schneider.

  Tsukala sped his arrow toward the place he had chosen. Mark fired at where he thought Moxley’s gray shirt had shown, and the others fired in almost the same second with him.

  Again they yelled, all of them together, and Mark turned to reach for the extra rifle he had given Stoke, but Stoke had dropped his own gun to fire with the second. Bram Schneider, too, had drawn a horse pistol, and it went off with a great crash of sound.

  Men were jumping from their hiding places on the slope below, to run in terror.

  Schneider hoisted himself, scrambled over the breast-high rock, and seemed to dive down as into a deep pool of water. Mark heard a half-strangled cry as Schneider threw himself heavily upon the man below them, and there was a crashing, struggling sound of furious wrestling. But the other Indians almost tumbled down the slope to get away from that attack, so sudden and incomprehensible from above them. Tsukala was ducking around the rock in pursuit, and as he went he snatched another shaft from his quiver.

  “After theml” thundered Stoke. “Charge!”

  Mark was already on his way down. He slipped and scuffed on the rocks. He put another charge into his rifle as he went, and he wondered, as though with a far edge of his mind, how often he had fired bullets that day. He almost fell, but saved himself by clutching at the bough of a hickory. He heard shouts and yells somewhere below, and the voices were ones he recognized—the voices of his friends. They sounded exultant, victorious.

  Then he landed on his feet in the road, an abrupt shock to his soles. He was just opposite the big barred gate of the palisade. The yard of the tavern within seemed full of men with guns. His father was there, rushing and forcing his broad body by main strength between two of the poles. Seth Ramsey also came at a run, and climbed over the gate like a monkey. He and Hugh Jarrett ran as though pursuing fugitive game.

  Even as Mark turned to join in the charge, he wondered where to go. He saw no enemies, he heard no shots from them. Hugh Jarrett stopped his run. “Zounds, we’ve driven them off!” he roared.

  It seemed true. Mark raced to join his father. From the tail of his eye he saw others at the door of the tavern, Mace Hollon and Esau and two others he did not recognize. Hugh Jarrett had stopped next to a tulip tree, and he looked up and cried out happily as he saw Mark hurrying toward him.

  “Heaven be praised, my son, you’re safe,” he gasped out. “How have things gone at the mill?” “We drove them off, and none of us were harmed,” Mark made haste to reply. “And here?”

  “Simon Durwell came galloping in on Bolly,” said Hugh Jarrett. Mark took time to see that his father’s massive brow was bound with a strip of linen, and that a spot of blood showed on the cloth.

  “Sir, you’re wounded,” Mark said.

  “Nay, ’tis naught. A bullet only ploughed my scalp there at the side. Your Uncle Mace took an arrow in his shoulder, but he, too, is not greatly hurt. We were able to get into the tavern, all of us. And I think we did sore damage to those Indians. I’d have been happy could I have known you were safe.” Celia also came across the road to them. She still carried her rifle. Several settlers ran past into the woods, shouting, and a gun went off.

  “Those red renegades have lost their fight,”

  Mark’s father exulted. “Was it you, Mark, who opened on them from the top of the ridge yonder? Seth Ramsey said that he heard one of them cry out about an attack of evil spirits.”

  Then Schneider came along the road. With his left hand he gripped the scalp lock of a cowering Indian, and his other hand flourished his pistol. Schneider urged the captive toward Mark and the others.

  “Don’t try to run, Injun,” Schneider said.

  “No run,” the fellow said weakly. “Good Indian —no fight.” He spread his hands to show they were empty of weapons.

  Mark snatched a knife from the Indian’s belt. “Hold him close, Schneider,” Mark warned. “Is this the one you took up there on the slope? He seems to speak some English. Maybe he can tell us what happed to Moxley.”

  “Moxley,” repeated the Indian, half dreamily. He blinked his eyes, and Mark judged that Schneider had clubbed him soundly with the pistol, to subdue him.

  “Moxley,” said the Indian again, “told us lies. Said we could get good things—scalps—”

  “I fired at Moxley,” said Mark. “I hope I drilled him.”

  “No, you didn’t!” howled a voice from the slope.

  Moxley stood there, a score of yards above them.

  He stood tall, lean, gray-shirted. His red hair fluttered in the breeze. His rifle was at his shoulder.

  “One more shot, curse your souls every one!” Moxley shouted at them, and fired.

  Mark heard Celia catch her breath, he saw her stagger. Mark’s father caught her in his arms to keep her from falling.

  Moxley spun around and fled up slope again among the trees. Mark bounded across the road to climb after him.

  CHAPTER XIV

  A Reckoning

  So FURIOUSLY and swiftly did Mark burst into a run that his charge carried him half a dozen steps up the slant of the lower slope, and he held his rifle high, in a burning hope that he could come into fair sight and range of Moxley. As he mounted upward, something came flying down toward him—Moxley’s gun, hurled at him with deadly force, like a javelin. Mark had just time to throw himself flat among broken rocks and ferns, and the gun went flying above him. It struck below with a clank.

  “ ’Twas you I meant to shoot, Mark Jarrett!” Moxley yelled down from between two trees, some yards above.

  Mark slid on the abrupt pitch of the face of the slanting ridge, and thought he would drop back to the road. He clung to a bunch of leaves with his free hand, so tightly that they crushed in his grip. He got his feet under him, hoisted himself erect, and charged upward again with surging efforts of his leg muscles. He did not care that Moxley might have an advantage on that upper reach of the slope. He only wanted to come within sight of his enemy, to lay violent hands upon him.

  But Moxley was not where he had stood to throw that gun at Mark. It was easy to follow his retreat, for he had crushed leaves, had broken twigs. It was not a straight trail upward, but off on an angle across the ascent. Mark scaled the rocks and roots, his left hand clutching the rifle by its balance. It was loaded. He burned to fire it off once more, point blank at Moxley.

  Voices chattered excitedly below. Maybe some of his friends would be coming to help him. But he did not wait for help. Just then, he wanted no help. He seemed to have but one aim in life, and that aim was to catch and settle with Moxley for all time, personally and alone.

  Moxley kept out of sight, among the trees that thronged the slope, rank after rank, like a green army drawn up in close order. The trail he left slanted across, and it led toward that highest lump of crag on the ridge, the big rock shaped like the paw of a bear. Mark’s breath came in great labored gasps. But he did not falter in his pursuit. Once he mustered that struggling breath to give a shout, to call on Moxley to turn and face and fight him. Then he told himself to save all his wind. He would need it.

  It seemed like a climb of hours, though it could not have lasted more than fifteen or twenty straining minutes, before he came out upon a shelflike jut of rock. From there he could see the Bear Paw. If the slope of the ridge itself was as steep as the pitch of a great roof, that upper rock was like a chimney, and its side was as abrupt as a chute. Clumps of stubborn bush clung to its knobby lumps of rock, and among them he saw an active, gray-shirted form, climbing upward with grasping drags of
its hands, spurning digs of its moccasined feet. Up came Mark’s rifle. Its muzzle swayed—he was wearier than he had taken thought to realize. But he tried to set the sights, and pressed the trigger.

  But there was a futile click. His pan had been improperly primed, the charge had not taken fire. Moxley kept climbing. Mark groaned in utter disappointment, and seized his powder horn to prime the pan anew. He must be sure with it now.

  Bear Paw arose perhaps forty feet among the backbone of the ridge, and Moxley was hoisting himself to its rounded summit. For a moment, Moxley showed a plain outline against the blue September sky, next to a gnarled twist of a spruce tree growing there at the edge. Mark aimed, trying to catch that clear target made by his enemy. But before he could catch Moxley in his sights, Moxley dropped out of sight at the top of the rock. Mark groaned again, loudly and angrily.

  At least, Moxley had no rifle. He had flung his weapon at Mark. Boldly Mark pushed into the open, toward that last ascent.

  “Ha, boy, never attempt it,” Moxley’s harsh, warning voice drifted down to him. “From up here I’ve a fair shot at you, and I’d roundly relish the chance to finish you off forever.”

  Mark paused, looking up. “You lie, Moxley,” he snapped. “You are ever a liar. You flung away your rifle, trying to hit me with it down below.”

  “I did not fling away my pistols. I have two of them, charged and ready. Nay, I should have held my peace and let you come up into close range of them. I was wrong to warn you.”

  Mark slid back into the cover of the trees, almost at the foot of Bear Paw.

  “I do not believe your pistols,” he said.

  “Yet come on up if you’re so mush-headed a fool and hero,” Moxley invited him. “This time I’ll make sure of shooting you. How I missed you down there at the road, I know not.”

  “Your bullet struck Celia Vesper, you skulking coward,” Mark said angrily.

  “Oh, indeed, and did I wound that poor goldenhaired orphan girl? Believe me, I’m heartily sorry for my carelessness.”