Daniel Boone: Westward Trail

by Barrett Jr. Neal

  There were so many prints there, one on top of the other, it was hard to tell them apart. But he was only looking for one, one he would know for certain if he found it. If you followed a man’s moccasins long enough, they became as familiar as his face.

  Finally, he stood and crossed the creek again, circling out wide until he was sure there were no more tracks. If Flint had been there, he had kept to his horse. There was no reason to think he was involved with the massacre, but the idea pestered at the edge of his mind. The Indians had found and killed someone he cared for—again. It was hard to think about that without thinking about Black Knife.

  When he returned to camp, he discovered many of the settlers preparing to go back home.

  He stood beside Becky at the head of the valley, watching the party gather for the return trip. The clouds had parted early, letting the sun break through to sweep the mist off the mountains. In the sudden light, the trees burst red and yellow, as though the whole forest was aflame. Squire came up and stood with Daniel and Becky.

  “You can’t blame ’em,” Squire said. “They’re scared out of their wits, Daniel, every damn one of ’em.”

  “By God,” Boone replied angrily, “they haven’t lost nothin’ but a couple of pigs. I lost a son!”

  “They figure they’ll lose the same, Dan,” Becky whispered sadly, “you know that. And you can’t say they’re wrong. The Shawnees haven’t gone back home. They’ll be waiting somewhere past the gap.”

  “I know they will. They’re always goin’ to be there. It ain’t nothin’ new.”

  Squire held his gaze a long moment. “You’re not the same as those folks, Daniel.”

  No, Daniel thought bitterly, I know I’m not. I’m not the same as anyone. But I wish sometimes that I was.

  “Dave Gass says we can stay in his cabin at Castle’s Woods,” he told Becky. “I guess I’ll have to take him up on it. We got nowhere else to go.”

  “I guess, Daniel.”

  He took her shoulders and turned her around to face him. “Becky, if you hate me for what I’ve done, I won’t blame you for it. I sold everything we had for this. Took your home from you and everything in it. And by God, I killed your son, Becky. Just as sure as if I’d done it myself!”

  She saw the lost, terrible look in his eyes and held him to her. Squire looked away. The column began moving down the valley, the outriders shouting for everyone to take their places and not to wander off. Still, she held him there against her, afraid to let him go. Oh, Lord, Daniel, she thought desperately, I’ll try to take the hurt away. I’ll try as hard as I can.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Sometimes a hunter would see him, a lone figure against the bleak winter sky, or a trapper on the Holston or the Clinch might catch a glimpse of a tall figure in black deerskin, whose hair was clubbed and plaited at the neck. He spent the long, cold days that way, staying to himself and putting meat on the table for his family. Dave Gass or Will Russell would come to see him when he was home, but their visits were always short. If Daniel had been a solitary man before, he was even more so now.

  He tried hard to let the wounds heal, to make the hurt go away. The children needed him, and so did Becky. He tried to reach out to them, but there was nothing in him to give anymore. James’ death had left an emptiness that Daniel could find nothing to fill.

  Christmas was an agony, more than he could bear. He left the house on Christmas Day and roamed alone in the hills for a month before coming back home. When he finally returned, Becky said nothing. It hurt her that he would take neither her love nor her comforting. In time he would, she knew, but there was little she could do to hurry that time along.

  Two nights after he came back, Daniel went to her and brought her into his arms. Rebecca nearly cried out with joy. It had been so long. Lord, how she needed him. It had been so very, very long!

  Then, Daniel abruptly pulled away from her and stared deeply into her eyes. Becky could only look back, puzzled.

  “There’s somethin’ I got to say,” he said quietly. “Somethin’ I got to tell you, Becky.”

  “Then do it, Daniel.”

  He shook his head and turned away. “Maybe I can, an’ maybe I can’t. It’s got to be done, though.”

  She listened quietly. He told her about the Indian girl, about how he had found her and what had happened between them. It took him a long time to tell it all. When he finished, she held his face affectionately between her hands. “Daniel, you didn’t have to tell me. It doesn’t hurt the love between us any. You know that, don’t you? Oh, God, Daniel, what a terrible agony for you. And that poor girl. I’m so sorry!”

  “Becky.…” He stared at her in wonder. “Can you really understand? Can you, truly?”

  “Of course, Daniel. Of course I can. That’s all of it now ’cause, it’s over.”

  “No!” He jerked away from her and hid his face in his hands. “It’s not, Becky. Oh, God, I wish it was!”

  She came to him quickly, tried to pull his hands away and stop the racking sobs.

  “Don’t you see?” he said. “I don’t know, Becky. I don’t know if it was Flint who got my boy. If it was, it was me who brought him to kill our James!”

  It was a bad night, one of the worst she could remember, but when it was over, she knew something had changed in him, some of the darkness had drained out of him. It would take a while, but he would heal. And when he did, she could heal, too.

  Spring brought plenty of news to Castle’s Woods, but none of it was good. The massacre at Wallen’s Ridge had only been the beginning, a pebble dropped in a bloody pond, and the ripples were spreading wider every day. Isaac Crabtree, who had taken an arrow the night James died, had recently walked up and shot a Cherokee at a horse race on the Watauga. The Indian had done nothing to deserve it, but he was an Indian, and that was enough for Crabtree. The Royal Governor set up a reward for anyone who would bring in the murderer, but no one was interested. Folks said it would be easier to find a regiment of men who would hide him than to scare up a dozen who would turn him in.

  Then Daniel Greathouse, a thief and a ne’er-do-well, committed an act that set the frontier aflame. One night Greathouse murdered the family of a Mingo chief named Tahgahjute, a long-time friend of the settlers whom they had nicknamed Logan. Greathouse found the Indians camped on Yellow Creek, not far from the Ohio River, got them drunk on whiskey, and slaughtered them all. Among the victims were Logan’s brother and sister-in-law, heavy with child. Not content with the killings, Greathouse had then scalped the male corpses and taken the unborn child from its mother’s womb. The warriors who came on the scene after found the child impaled on a stake.

  “It sure isn’t all on the Indians’ side now,” Russell remarked soberly to Boone. “Now they got an axe to grind, and matters are going to get hot.”

  Russell was right, Daniel knew. Only the week before, Michael Stoner had ridden back from North Carolina with the story that two Shawnee chiefs had been caught and executed for taking part in the business at Wallen’s Ridge. But so were a couple of Cherokees, who were made to pay whether they had had anything to do with the incident or not.

  The storm spread quickly. Word reached Daniel that the Shawnees and Mingos in Kentucky had put aside their differences and gone on the warpath against the whites together. Settlements all along the Ohio were in flames. The river itself had been effectively closed to boat traffic by Shawnee war parties.

  Then James Harrod had taken thirty-one men deep into Kentucky, staking out settlements on Indian lands. Surveyors were streaming in from the north in spite of the Shawnees, and what the Indians had feared most was coming to pass. Watching from the hills, they saw white men laying out plots of land right in the middle of their hunting grounds. Daniel knew what they were thinking: if we don’t stop the white man now, we’ll never stop him at all.

  In spite of the danger, Daniel rode out to visit his son’s grave in May. Wolves had been there and scraped some of the stones away, but Daniel pi
led them high again. In the night, he heard Indians about and led his horse quietly back down the valley. He didn’t tell Becky where he had been, but Becky knew. When she saw the look on his face, she didn’t have to ask.

  A month after Daniel’s trip to Wallen’s Ridge, Will Russell stopped by. Accepting a cup of whiskey, he drank it in one swallow, then got to his subject. “Governor Dunmore’s real itchy about this Indian business, Dan’l. It’s gettin’ out of hand, and more so every day. Now, he’s afraid Chief Logan’s goin’ to start his own little war.”

  Daniel nodded. “Don’t hardly blame him. I reckon I would, too.”

  “There’s truth in that, but it isn’t going to solve anythin’.”

  “Well, it had to happen.” Daniel refilled Russell’s cup to the brim. “We been steppin’ on their toes and them on ours from the beginning. God knows you and me have got enough bad juice in our craws to hate Indians, but I can’t bring myself to go killin’ ’em. Hell, I know ’em too well.”

  Russell let out a breath. “You’re right, friend. You’re right as you can be.” He set down his cup and looked squarely at Daniel. “The governor asked Colonel Preston up in Fincastle to get me to help settle the matter. I’m comin’ to you to see if you’ll lend me a hand.” Daniel waited, and Russell went on. “Dunmore’s worried about those surveyors runnin’ loose in Kentucky. He thinks they’re likely to get themselves killed if nobody warns ’em what’s comin’.”

  Daniel made a face. “Hell, Will, it was Preston sent ’em in there in the first place.”

  “I know that.”

  “Now he wants someone to bail ’em out.”

  “For more than one reason,” Will explained firmly, “an’ this is Dunmore’s thinkin’, not Preston’s. The govemor’d like to see ’em come out alive not just for their own sakes, but also for the sake of the frontier and what’s likely to happen to it. The more people get killed—Indian or white—the worse this thing’s goin’ to get.”

  “Will, it’s goin’ to happen anyway. It’s gone too far to stop.”

  “Maybe.” Russell held up a hand. “Maybe not.” Daniel leaned back and looked into his cup. “What you want me to do, Will?”

  “Go in and bring ’em out if you can. You and Mike Stoner.”

  “Good man.”

  “That he is. And you’re another one.”

  “Where exactly are these surveyors s’posed to be?”

  Russell cleared his throat. “That’s, ah—kind of the problem, Dan’l. They were makin’ surveys up at Ohio Falls, down in the valley and on the Licking, too. And along the Cumberland, if they could.”

  Daniel stared. “Goddamn, Will—that about takes in all Kentucky!”

  Russell gave him a painful grin. “Sort of does, doesn’t it? Why d’you think I came to you?”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Daniel and Mike Stoner left Castle’s Woods on June 27 and crossed the Cumberlands into Kentucky. The land lay full and lush before them. The trees were bursting with green, and Daniel swore he could feel the grass growing under his feet. Somehow, though, this familiar beauty brought him little pleasure, a lack of feeling that troubled him greatly. For the first time, he felt no joy in this land. It wasn’t his alone anymore. Men were crawling over it like fleas on a dog, men who didn’t know it or understand it and who had no business being there—men like the surveyors he and Stoner were after—damn fools who had hiked into Kentucky with no idea what they would find there. He couldn’t help hating them for even setting foot there.

  “What we should have done was to bring Lord Dunmore with us,” Stoner said dryly. “We could use a good coon dog, ja?”

  Daniel snorted in disgust. “Yeah, that’d be a help. Dunmore’s like all the rest of them politicians that tell other folks where to go. Likely he figures Kentucky’s laid out like London.”

  Neither of the two discussed the enormity of their task. They were both experienced woodsmen and there was no need to belabor the point. It was dangerous for a white man to set foot in Kentucky right now, no matter how well he knew the land. The Shawnees and Mingos were madder than stirred-up cottonmouths. Daniel and Stoner saw sign behind every bush, even before they crossed the mountains. The days when a man could wander safely about the country, if he watched his step, were over. Now, Indian war parties looking for blood sniffed out every river and stream.

  Daniel headed away from the mountains for the north fork of the Kentucky River. If the surveyors had come down the Licking, he and Stoner would likely pick up their trail somewhere north or west—unless they had gone farther east, he thought darkly.

  From the start, the two men made small fires or no fires at all. They were well aware of the Indians almost always nearby. At night, Daniel and Stoner ate their jerky and corn sitting back to back in case a war party came down upon them.

  As they traveled past the Kentucky up to the Licking River, Boone grew more cautious than ever. The Ohio wasn’t far off, and the Shawnees were everywhere hereabout. One morning in early July, Stoner crept back into camp, soaked to the skin and stinking to high heaven. Daniel started to comment, but Stoner waved him off.

  “Don’t say nothing, Daniel. I can smell it worse than you can.”

  Daniel held back a grin; “What the hell you been doin’, son?”

  “Crawling on my belly in a swamp,” Stoner grumbled. “For three miles, maybe four. There were a hundred Shawnees in the valley by the river. I have to get past them and this is the only way.” He gave Daniel a grave look. “They have a white man, Daniel, maybe one of the fellows we look for.”

  Daniel frowned. “Is he alive?”

  “Ja, alive.”

  “Damn.”

  Stoner got out of his clothes and began to disassemble his rifle to clean it.

  “Reckon I’ll go take a look,” Daniel said, and started gathering up his powder horn and pouch.

  Stoner guessed his thoughts. “Flint is not with them, Daniel. I looked for him.”

  “Uh-huh. I’ll just mosey up, anyhow. Give you a chance to get yourself smellin’ better.”

  “You find a better way to get up there than the swamp, I will be glad to hear it.”

  “I will, for certain. Rather run a foot race with the Indians than stink like that.”

  He knew Stoner was right, the swamp was safer, but Daniel risked the more open path along the limestone ridges over the river. The Shawnees were camped in the valley under a high bluff where the water snaked into the trees. Just as Stoner had reported, there were close to a hundred of them, all mounted, armed and streaked with paint. A full-scale war party on the move. Daniel guessed they were ranging due south, crisscrossing the rivers to see what they could find—which was exactly what he and Stoner were doing.

  A damn fool business, he told himself. The Indians will find the surveyors before we do, and we’ll be lucky to get back with our scalps.

  There was little left of the man they had captured. He was either dead or close to it. They had skinned him alive and rubbed dirt and salt all over him, then tied him to a spit over slow-burning coals. With any luck, he was too far gone to know what was happening to him. Daniel knew he didn’t dare risk burying the poor bastard after the Shawnees left. If they came back and saw that other white men had been there, they would turn the country upside down until they found them.

  After a few minutes, Daniel recognized an old friend among the Shawnees. There was no mistaking the broad, stocky figure of Captain Will, sitting straight and stern on his spotted pony. The red jacket was a little dirtier now, but it was Will for certain. With a last look at the charred body over the fire, Boone bellied down the ridge and made his way back to Stoner.

  Daniel decided they were advancing too far north. Another two days up the Licking would take them right to the Ohio. If any surveyors had come this far, they were already dead. It was time to turn southwest, toward the Kentucky River.

  That afternoon, the pair rode over, a low hill and came upon an enormous salt lick just north
of the river. A small herd of buffalo was roaming about, rooting in the ground for salt. It was an old lick, a place in which the animals, after centuries of use, had worn a maze of deep trenches that riddled the earth for nearly a mile.

  Stoner, when he saw the trenches, grinned and dismounted.

  “What the hell you fixin’ to do?” asked Daniel. “You watch. You watch and see, Dan’l.”

  “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

  Stoner scurried down into the nearest gully and followed the maze for twenty or thirty yards. In a minute, Daniel understood what the man was doing. Stoner crept up quietly on a large bull buffalo that was pushing its nose into the trench dust, waved his cap around n sharp corner that hid him from the animnal and shouted. The buffalo jerked up, started to bolt, then changed its mind. Instead of running like it was supposed to, it turned and drove its head through the wall of dirt and came after Stoner. Stoner raced through the trenches, a foot ahead of shaggy’s horns.

  “Goddamn, Dan’l!” he shouted. “Shoot him! Shoot him!”

  Daniel threw back his head and laughed. In a moment, Stoner leaped out of the gully, got to his feet, and, while brushing dirt off his clothes, cursed like a madman.

  “You didn’t shoot!”

  “Figured you’d make it.”

  Stoner glared. “Ja? You figured better than I did.”

  “Well, at least you don’t smell like a swamp anymore. Now you smell like buffalo dung. I reckon that’s a damn sight better.”

  A day and a half after Stoner’s adventure at the lick, the pair passed Otter Creek and the stand of sycamores that spread out into the valley. The sight made Daniel’s stomach knot. Here was the place he had set out for nine months before, with his own family and the other settlers behind him. By now, he and James and Israel would have built a fine cabin here. They would have survived through a winter, done some hunting and planted crops over past the meadow. Daniel set his jaw and turned away. Stoner, saying nothing, followed him.