Daniel Boone: Westward Trail

by Barrett Jr. Neal

  “Good. Tsiyu-gunsini says you are a man of honor. He says it is possible for a white man to show honor, though such a thing is rare. I ask a favor of honor from you now. I think you will want to hear it.”

  Stooping into the lodge, she came back quickly with a knife in a deerhide sheath. Drawing the knife, she handed it to Daniel. It was a fine blade, sharp and free of rust, the handle, made of polished bone. The handle was wound tightly with dark strands of hair. The butt had been carved in the shape of a buffalo’s head.

  “This knife belonged to my husband,” said the woman. “It is to cut only once. The sickness took him before he could find the man he sought. If you take the knife, you take his debt of honor.”

  Daniel thrust the blade into its sheath. “You don’t have to ask me, Flower-by-the-Rock. The debt is already mine.”

  “Tsiyu-gunsini said this was so.” She looked at him a long moment. “Place it where it belongs, Wide Mouth. And place it slowly.”

  “You got my word on that,” he told her. He glanced at the lodge, then back to the woman. “Look. I gotta ask you.…”

  “No.” Flower-by-the-Rock caught his eyes and held them. “She is no longer a human being. She is less than a child. She does not know me, and she would not know you. She is my daughter, but my shame is that I cannot look upon her face. There is no face there, Wide Mouth.” Tears welled in her eyes and she set her lips tightly. “Do you think Black Knife would have brought her to me if she was a person still?”

  Daniel didn’t answer. He gazed at the lodge once more, thrust the knife into his belt and walked away through the forest.

  The Agreement of Sycamore Shoals was signed on March 17, 1775. By then, Daniel was some fifty miles west on the Holston with thirty experienced woodsmen, already blazing a trail to Kentucky.

  There was great feasting on the Watauga. Dick Henderson broke out the rum he had been saving for the Indians until the treaty was safely signed. The six cabins, where the payment of goods and weapons was stored, were opened, and the price of Kentucky was presented to the Cherokees. Not everyone was happy with his share. The treasure looked inexhaustible in the cabins, but seemed a great deal smaller shared among fifteen hundred men, women and children.

  One brave complained loudly about the single worn shirt he received. He stalked up and down before the white man’s camp, shouting that he could take enough skins in Kentucky in a single day to buy a dozen such shirts.

  Attakullaculla got two rifles, a red blanket, and a blue coat, which, he thought, looked almost as good as Henderson’s.

  Dragging Canoe took nothing.

  Chapter Thirty

  When Daniel and Mike Stoner saw the tall plume of smoke rising from the river, they exchanged quick smiles and kicked their mounts into a gallop. Rounding the bend of the Holston, they whooped and hollered as the green tip of Long Island came into sight. At the same time, the men on shore saw them. Rifle shots cracked in the air and a ragged volley of cheers echoed through the valley. Stirred by the sight of his friends, Daniel splashed across the narrows, waving his hat. Squire, Ben Cutbirth and a dozen others waded out to meet him. In a moment they were all crowded about, shouting, laughing and pounding Daniel and Stoner on their backs. Dave Gass passed them a jug of whiskey and Daniel raised it to his mouth, letting the fiery liquid burn his belly and run down his cheeks. The men roared and Daniel passed the jug to Stoner.

  “Don’t give it to the Dutchman,” Gass shouted in alarm. “I’ve seen him take a swallow before!”

  “You are about to see another,” Mike told him flatly and nearly emptied the jug before Gass could jerk it away.

  Daniel looked around at the thirty men who had gathered to follow him west. He had picked them all himself and they were the best on the frontier. Squire, Stoner, Gass, Cutbirth, Dick Callaway, Will Twitty, Felix Walker and young Will Hays, who’d just married Daniel’s daughter Susannah. Lord God, he thought in wonder, she would be fifteen in the fall. It seemed like only yesterday she had been toddlin’ around in the yard.

  Boone’s heart swelled with pride. “Damnation,” he grinned, “if I’d have had you boys in ’69, we’d have likely settled China by now!” The woodsmen cheered him again and Daniel grabbed the jug back from Gass, but when he turned it upside down, only a single drop fell to the ground. Again the men cheered.

  “Dan’l,” said his new son-in-law, “tell us what’s happening at the Shoals. How long we goin’ to have to sit here?”

  “Will, we ain’t goin’ to sit here at all. We’re goin’ now! First thing in the morning, by damn!” It would be at least a week before Henderson and the Indians quit fussing with the treaty, but Daniel was here, and the men were ready. By God, it didn’t make sense to sit around and wait. Nothing could stop them now!

  At noon the first day out, Ben Cutbirth shot a bear on the Holston. Every man on the trek said it was a sure omen of a good beginning. The cooking fires sizzled with succulent red meat that night.

  Then, leaving the Holston behind, Boone led his woodsmen overland toward the Clinch. The country was rough and tangled, crowded with tall trees and dense thickets. Rugged mountains loomed on every side. Sometimes traveling would be easier through a valley meadow, and all the cutters had to do was mark an occasional tree for the settlers to follow. A few yards farther, however, and they would inevitably run into heavy forest or a dense field of cane. Then, the air would echo with the sharp ring of axes and loud curses.

  Daniel figured Castle’s Woods was still some forty-odd miles to the northeast. Another day or so and they could turn due north to cross the Clinch. Then the traveling would go a little easier for a while.

  That evening, Captain Will Twitty sought out Daniel and took him aside. Twitty was a great hulk of a fellow, built more like a bear than a man, and Daniel liked him. Twitty had brought seven good woodsmen from North Carolina, a slave named Sam, and ever at Twitty’s side, the meanest yellow bulldog Daniel had ever seen. Stoner said that if they met any Indians, all twenty-nine of the party could hide in the brush and let Twitty and his dog do all the fighting.

  “I ain’t a man to carry tales,” Twitty said gruffly, “but I thought you ought to know, Dan’l. That goddamn Callaway’s shootin’ off his mouth more’n he ought to. He told my man Walker we could make better time movin’ north right now, ’stead of plowin’ down the valley. He’s full of crap an’ everybody knows it, but he’s gettin’ folks irritated.”

  Daniel nodded. Callaway was a good frontiersman from the Yadkin but a little puffed up with his own importance. He had once been a colonel in the Virginia Militia. “I appreciate it, Will. Dick’s likely feeling his oats some.”

  “Yeah?” Twitty shot a fierce look over his shoulder. “Well, he better feel ’em somewhere I can’t hear it. I’ll have my dog chew his behind off.”

  Daniel grinned.

  At Moccasin Gap, Boone’s party crossed the awesome Clinch Mountains and began working their way northwest toward Wallen’s Ridge. James was buried there, only a few miles away, but Daniel didn’t visit the grave. James wasn’t lying in the ground. He was riding right there beside him. Daniel could feel his presence every mile of the way. We’ll go through the Cumberland together this time, he said silently. We shook on it, son, and we’ll do it.

  Just this side of the Clinch River he found what he was looking for—the familiar track of the Warrior’s Path. The men were cheered, for now the work would go faster. The Warrior’s Path was no post road, but it was less difficult than an unmarked wilderness.

  After they crossed the Clinch, Daniel sent scouts ahead and to the rear at either flank. Some of the men made light of his cautiousness, but Daniel didn’t waver. “I don’t recall no Shawnees at Sycamore Shoals,” he said dryly. “I figure they ain’t too interested in Dick Henderson’s deed to Kentucky.”

  “I wouldn’t worry,” Dick Callaway said absently. “We made short work of the Shawnees at Point Pleasant, Boone. They’ll give us no more trouble, I assure you.”

 
“That sure makes my scalp feel better,” said Gass. Callaway shot him a withering look and whipped his horse away.

  Following the Warrior’s Path over the Powell Mountains, the woodsmen wound down into the valley to Martin’s Station. The Indians had burned Martin out, but he was stubbornly rebuilding.

  Now the great range of the Cumberlands, the awesome white giant to the West, marked their way. Boone and his men covered the miles quickly. Then one bright spring morning, he reined in his horse and stared at the sight ahead. The mountains rose over a thousand feet toward the clear blue sky. The yawning gap in the Cumberlands was so bright in the sun it hurt Daniel’s eyes to look at it.

  “It’s the same every time,” Squire said by his side. “If I came here every day, I don’t think I’d ever get used to it.”

  The party snaked through the green valley and climbed the slope to the top, where Daniel sat for a long moment looking down on Kentucky. He stayed there, waiting until the others started down, then got off his horse and led it to the side of the gap. Peering upward, he studied the sheer white wall thrusting out of the earth at his feet. Finally, he found what he was looking for—a fault in the stone where a man could make his way up. Strapping James’ rifle to his shoulder, he started his climb. He scraped the calloused palms of his hands as he held tight to the rock, and he cut his knee twice. In less than a hundred feet the fault closed up and he could go no higher. Hugging the wall as best he could, he took James’ rifle from his shoulder and jammed it into the rock. It held better than he had hoped, wedged securely up to the breech. It would stay there, he knew, until the long years rusted and flaked the barrel down to powder. Maybe part of it would last forever.

  Wrapping his arm about the stock, he pulled the short hatchet from his belt and began to laboriously scrape at the hard granite face of the mountain. It took nearly an hour to get the inscription the way he wanted it, and when he was through, the hatchet was dulled to worthlessness. Still, the words were there, and he nodded his head in satisfaction. No one would ever climb up there and see it, but Daniel hadn’t done it for other eyes to see.

  “All right, son,” he said softly, “you made it, now. Can’t anyone pass through without you knowin’.”

  His eyes clouded, and he made his way slowly back down the wall, leaving the rifle wedged in stone, and the legend he had carved beside it:

  The way stretched clear from the eastern foothills to the broad lands watered by the Cumberland River. Ahead lay more miles of steep hills, dense forests and stretches of choking cane. The way behind was smooth compared to what they would face to the west. His cutters would earn their pay and then some. There were a hundred creeks to cross and dark, swampy ground, where a man sank in up to his knees and came out smelling like thousand-year-old mud.

  “Where’s all this goddamn beautiful country we been hearin’ about?” Cutbirth called out cheerfully. “I sure hope this ain’t my piece of land that I’m right now clearing.”

  “Naw, you’re workin’ on Stoner’s place right now,” Daniel joked. “Mike’s goin’ to build a cabin right here an’ go into gator farmin’. Bringin’ a whole herd of ’em up from Florida. Goin’ to teach ’em to hunt buffalo.”

  The woodsmen whooped and jeered and Mike Stoner told them all what they could do with their comments.

  More canebrakes faced the party, and though Daniel had a special feeling for the tough, fibrous growth that grew thick as a man’s leg, his woodsmen cursed every mile of it. They grew tired of Boone saying what a fine place it was to hide from Indians and threatened to scalp him themselves if he spoke of it again.

  Finally they reached Big Hill, the summit Daniel had climbed on his first trip west, and the men stopped grumbling. Rolling meadows and lush fields of new bluegrass stretched out before them. They had nearly worn their axes to nubs, but it was worth it to them. This was what the money they would make for this trip would buy them—over four hundred prime acres in the heart of Kentucky.

  “Well, there’s the bluegrass you been belly-achin’ about,” Daniel told Cutbirth. “Pick you out a piece ’fore it’s all gone.”

  Ben Cutbirth whistled softly and shook his head. “Dan, there’s enough here for everybody. Strike me dead if there ain’t.”

  “You think so, hah?” Stoner said warily. “You wait, Ben. Dick Henderson is coming over those mountains in a couple of weeks with half the goddamn country.”

  “Mike, not everyone wants to live in Kentucky.”

  Stoner scratched his chin. “Ja, you are right, there is one, I hear. King George, he is not coming. He does not like white Americans, much less red ones.”

  Daniel laughed. “He’s put his finger on it, Ben. I ain’t heard of anyone else stayin’ home.”

  “Damn,” Ben said glumly. “What’s west of Kentucky, Dan’l?”

  Two nights later, on March 24, Boone’s party made camp at Taylor’s Fork. There were low hills to their back, and a gentle slope to the river. High fires lit the night, and Dave Gass broke out the last jug of whiskey he had squirreled away for the occasion.

  Daniel walked down to the river and gazed north. Otter Creek was no more than a dozen miles away. He would be there before the next day was halfway done. He could already see the place clearly—the great stand of sycamores, the green meadows where he and Rebecca would build their home and plant crops. After all the years, all the pain and sorrow, the dream was now only a day away. They would put up a fort and start laying out cabins, and when things got going, he would return home for Becky and the children. His share for cutting the road through the wilderness was two thousand acres. And he would get even more in the end. Henderson had promised him that, and by God he would take what he could. He had damn sure paid out enough to earn some back.

  The celebration lasted into the night. Daniel posted guards, but no one took his duties too seriously. They had cut their way through nearly two hundred and fifty miles, from the Holston to the belly of Kentucky, in fifteen days. On this night, they felt no less than lords of the land.

  And they slept so soundly when the celebration was finished that no one heard the crackling of twigs and rustling of brush in the forest, alien sounds in the tranquil night.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Daniel jerked up quickly. Rifle fire lit the clearing and a bullet chunked wood at his head. He grabbed his weapon, rolled to one side and got off a shot. Cries of alarm mixed with the howls of Shawnee braves. Twitty’s dog barked and Boone heard a man scream. Scuttling back in the brush, he bumped into Squire.

  “Grabbed my goddamn shirt ’stead of my pouch,” Squire cursed. “Give me some fixin’s, Daniel!” Daniel tossed his horn and pouch and bellied up to a tree. The clearing was quiet. Then, gunfire cracked from behind. One woodsman, then another and another poured lead into the woods. An Indian yelped. Daniel saw him stagger and drag himself off. Horses hooves made a sudden, fluttering beat into the shadows.

  “They’re gone,” Stoner said quietly. He was a few yards to the left somewhere. Daniel stood up slowly, grabbed his horn and pouch from Squire and reloaded.

  The pale grey of dawn filtered through the branches. As he walked into the clearing, Stoner moved up beside him. “Squire, get the boys back in here and set out guards. Take a look at the horses. I think they took a couple.”

  “Daniel…”

  Boone peered through the half-light, saw Captain Twitty and rushed to him. Twitty’s face grimaced in pain. “Got me in the knees,” he said tightly. “Damn—both of ’em, I guess.”

  “Take it easy, Will. Couple of bullets can’t hurt a man your size.” Tearing the man’s trousers, he saw Twitty was right. The wounds were bad. One knee was open clear to the shattered bone. The other wasn’t much better, and both were bleeding fast. Daniel started ripping cloth and tying the legs up tight.

  “You know what?” Twitty said feebly. “That worthless dog of mine saved my hide. Would’ve lost my hair, but that little devil run ’em off!” He grinned beneath the pain. “Can you belie
ve that?”

  Men were moving back into camp. Daniel, after calling one of them over to finish with Twitty, searched out Gass. “Well, what’s it look like?”

  “Better’n it could have been. Twitty’s slave caught it. Dead back there in the brush. Felix Walker’s got a bullet in his ass, but it ain’t too bad. Look at that, Dan’l.” He nodded to the right. Daniel saw Twitty’s bulldog, a tomahawk buried in his head.

  “Will’s right. Fiesty little bastard. The captain’s in bad shape, Dave. Wounds like that ain’t good out here.”

  “Uh-huh. But we was lucky as hell. I saw them bastards. Wasn’t more than six.”

  “Six Shawnees is ’bout enough,” said Daniel.

  Squire reported four horses and one man, Lew Draper, missing—likely the Indians had gotten them all. Daniel was angry, but mostly at himself. He had known the guards weren’t taking their jobs seriously, but he hadn’t pushed them.

  Dick Callaway took the incident in stride. He had brought his own black slave along to cook, a gaunt, taciturn woman named Lucy, and while the others were still burying Twitty’s man Sam, Callaway sat calmly down to breakfast. Daniel heard he had remarked that Taylor’s Fork was obviously a bad location for a campsite. Mike Stoner’s Dutch temper turned him red when he heard that, and he threatened to teach Callaway a lesson, but Boone told him to leave the man alone. “You can’t stop a fellow from bein’ miserable,” he said. “Dick’s got a natural bent for it.”

  “A good bent is what I would give him,” muttered Stoner. “I would shut that fool up for sure!”

  Daniel was anxious to move on to Otter Creek. The Shawnees would be back, and next time he knew they would bring reinforcements. They would soon have to begin building a fort for their own safety, and for Henderson’s folks, who would be coming through the gap in the next few months.

  With a sudden chill, he realized that the whole dream could end right here—could have ended last night, for that matter. The words of Dragging Canoe came back to him. “A storm over Kentucky—a dark and bloody ground.…” He couldn’t let that happen. Not now, not half a day south of the goal he had worked for, ached for in his heart since that night so long ago when Findley had spun tales of a new garden of Eden. God A’mighty, how long had it been? Twenty years since they had followed Braddock’s army to Duquesne? Sometimes, it felt like only yesterday, but right now, it seemed much more than a lifetime away.