Chip Shatto (Perry County Series)

by Roy F. Chandler

  "Tiny Doyle, I'm ashamed of you! That's my man you're pickin' on an' this here's his friend Chip Shatto." She punctuated her words with jerks on the offending ear. Doyle took it, dropping his fists and sinking into his collar in embarrassment.

  "Well, I surely didn't know, Miss Hella. I wouldn't of thumped 'em if I'd knowed they was your'n."

  Hella was unyielding, "Well, I should hope not! But I didn't see you helping me when that friend of yours tried to attack me on the square. Where were you then, Tiny Doyle?"

  The Halifaxers appeared nervous and Doyle began to look at his former comrades aggressively. "Well, I didn't know about that, Miss Hella. Just which one was it did that?" His cucumber fingers began making fists again.

  "Now, don't start in again, Tiny Doyle. You and me've been friends too long to let this fight in' spoil the day. Isn't that so, Tiny?" The giant nodded and a particularly sappy smile changed his features.

  "Carter, and you, Chip, just come over here and shake hands with my friend Tiny Doyle." Carter made it under his own power but Tinker, who had arrived only a little behind Hella, found it necessary to prod Chip within Doyle's range.

  Carter took Doyle's hand and Chip saw his face whiten and his knees fold a little so he was ready and jammed his hand in tight when his turn came. Even so, the giant's grip tightened and kept tightening until he thought he might have to go for his knife after all, but Doyle was just being enthusiastic and quickly released Chip's benumbed paw.

  They managed "pleased to meet you's" and other niceties before they were led passively away with Hella bubbling about how pleasant her friend Tiny really was.

  Carter looked sickly at Chip and held up a limp right hand, "He's gone and crippled me, Chip."

  "That so, Carter? I didn't notice anything." Though painful, his fingers still functioned, so Chip was grateful.

  The Liverpool fight gave Chip more than a little to think about. Of course it was astounding how Hella had stormed in and folded Tiny Doyle up like a punctured pig's bladder. More remarkable to him had been his own attitudes and actions during the battle. A year earlier he would have been dead cold serious. If it had been necessary or even convenient, he would have cut Doyle open like a carp.

  This time it had seemed almost like a game and Carter, who had fought vicious wars from forecastle to aft cabin, had acted about as he had. Where had the killer instincts gone? Had a year in Perry County taken that much hardness from him? Had Tinker filtered the bitter lessons so much that winning anyway you could was no longer all that counted?

  They were things to ponder and he began observing himself, making sure his body stayed hard and agile while judging carefully that the unaccustomed easing of violent actions was sensible maturing and not an encroaching weakening.

  The more he looked, the better he liked how he was changing. The new Chip Shatto didn't scare people as readily and, without skin clothing and handy guns, he could settle more comfortably into his farming role.

  He had to admit that the Halifax group would never have started in if he'd been dressed mountain style with his pistols hung ready, but he doubted such happenings as the Liverpool fight would be common and, if they did appear, he would spend more effort avoiding them.

  It turned out that when whiskey wasn't fogging his limited intellect, Tiny Doyle was a decent sort and Chip liked the big man—as long as you took care not to shake hands with him.

  ++++

  Chapter 17

  Old Rob regularly complained that Chip and Carter were just a pair of loafers who had no intentions of doing anything more than courting their women and getting in a little hunting now and then.

  Chip pointed to the homes, barns, and various out-buildings that were up, but Rob mentioned the fallow fields and empty lofts. Chip had to admit his father had him there. Because of the war, manpower was so short that the farmer working Chip's land on shares hadn't been able to get to much. The best Chip could claim was, "Wait till next year."

  Roth, on the other hand, didn't seem to give a hoot that his ready cash was dwindling. He went blithely along, buying and spending more than Chip did. Chip wasn't sure that Carter fully understood just how poorly farming paid, but Roth was a grown man and would have to succeed or fail on his own—which didn't spare him Chip's advice—or rescue Chip from Carter's rejection of it.

  Carter even bought a dog. The first Chip knew of it was when he encountered the beast in Roth's yard. The animal stood waist high when it crouched and that was the way Chip met it. Carter's animal made a timber wolf appear friendly. It snarled a grizzly-like rumble, barked with a maniacal menace that made Chip's teeth ache, and advanced in the meanest fighting crouch that he had ever seen. Wink quick, Chip got into his own stance, knife out front and balanced to give with the brute's attack.

  Carter appeared in his door and walked out to lean against a porch post. Chip hollered over, trying not to further excite the animal. "Call this thing off, Roth, or I'm going to cut him into real thin dog steaks."

  "Oh relax, Chip, he just sounds mean. He don't bite. Just reach out and pat him."

  Chip would have as soon reached into a stove for glowing coals. He watched anxiously as the dog edged closer then, as though suddenly transformed, it began wriggling like a puppy and thrashing its tail for attention. It's head lolled and a tongue as big as a steer's hung out half a foot.

  Carter said blandly, "I call him Doyle."

  Chip had to laugh at the apt comparison, but added, "What in hell have you got him for? Damned beast would scare a ghost."

  "He'll keep prowlers away."

  "He'll keep everybody away! Hella seen him yet?"

  "We picked him out together. Got a good buy because his owner went off to the Army."

  "Huh, I'd go to the Army myself, if I could get rid of a thing like that." Chip scratched the dog behind an ear and it sort of groaned in ecstasy. "You're some dog, Doyle" and he beat it friendly like on a muscular shoulder. The animal pranced at his heels as he crossed to the house.

  He sat on the porch edge, which put him eye to eye with Doyle. "God, he looks like a big puppy. But a minute ago I thought sure he was going to jump me."

  "Yup, we won't be bothered with peddlers."

  Chip flipped his knife in his hand and threw it into Carter's chopping block where it burled itself an inch deep. "Another step or two and I'd have let him digest about six inches of that blade."

  Carter said, "Might have made him mad, Chip."

  Doyle was a complete failure. Once he felt at home he quit looking dangerous and just lay in the way greeting people with only a lackadaisical tall thump. Chip grew to really like the hulking animal and claimed the dog looked and acted more like his owner every day.

  ++++

  They intended keeping the weddings small, but Roth's got out of hand when friends of Hella's arrived unexpectedly. Carter raced frantically around borrowing food and trying to provide for the influx. Chip watched, amused, and didn't mention for a few months that he had sent announcements and open invitations up and down both rivers. The marriage almost got lost amid the visiting, with even the gigantic form of Tiny Doyle in attendance,

  Chip thought Carter's confusion and chagrin reward enough, but when Roth ended up having to shake hands twice with Tiny Doyle, Chip knew the wedding was a success.

  His own marriage was properly sedate. At his mother's direction, Tinker had been taken away two weeks before.

  Chip had put her on the cars at Millerstown and she had spent the weeks at Shatto's on the Little Buffalo.

  Amy groomed her and talked to her of womanly things.

  Old Rob doted over her and spoke often of his longing for close-by grandchildren. They walked and rode together becoming friends and family.

  Chip's wedding was held in the Bloomfield Lutheran Church. The Rob Shattos were members, though they were so rarely in attendance that few knew it. Chip dressed carefully and looked civilized. As his man, Carter did his best, but the ring in his ear made him look wild and his foldi
ng knife made his pocket bulge.

  Tinker was given away by Cadwallader Jones, the family's oldest friend and, adorned in her wedding finery, she about tore Chip's heart out. They stood together, Chip like a mighty oak and Tinker barely to his shoulder.

  Amy wept openly and old Rob comforted her with hand pats and many throat clearings. The Rob Shattos were old for this. Ted had married en route to the west and Chip had delayed so long it had seemed possible that he might never choose a bride.

  Ami-ta-chena Cummens Shatto looked with pride on her tall son and with pleasure at his bride. Chip had chosen well. If living became difficult, he had a wife who could stand beside him without wilting.

  How tiny Tinker looked beside Chip. Yet her small sturdiness complemented his masculine strength. How easily they could pass for brother and sister. Tanned skin, dark eyes, and crow wing hair, they shared the Shatto look.

  Did a woman choose a man like herself? Or did she select a husband much like her father? The questions often arose, and in considering them now, Amy supposed both could be answered positively, for a daughter could be much like her father and so choose a man who was like herself and her parent. Tad had been an adventurer as had Chip, and as Tad had been, so were Chip and Tinker highly self-sufficient and individualistic.

  She touched at her eyes with a lace handkerchief and abandoned her fuzzy reasoning. Beside her Rob sighed deeply, and after all the years, she recognized his contented sounds and gently placed her hand in his.

  ++++

  Carter had listened to the sound of Chip's sledge striking steel as long as he could stand it. He pulled on a heavy coat, gloves, and a knit cap that Hella had made for him and braved the January cold to determine what his friend was attempting.

  Even from a distance he could see steam rising off Chip's body where he had doffed his coat to work better. Carter nodded and squatted close-by until Chip paused to get a breath. What he was doing was plain enough. He was driving a long star drill into the shale ledge above the small coal seam that poked out of Turkey Ridge. It was his second hole and he was already in pretty deep.

  "You planning on blowing a big hole, Chip?"

  "Yup, I'm tired of picking at what you can see, with just about enough coal to make it irritating. If this vein widens I'm going to find out."

  "Doubt it will."

  "I doubt it, too, but I'm still going to find out."

  "Well, my first bosun warned me that only a fool holds while another sledges, but it'll go a lot faster if I turn the bit for you." He got two hands on the drill and gave it a half turn. Chip struck it a good shot and Carter turned it again. They got into the rhythm and the drill went in faster.

  When it was deep enough, Chip put his coat back on and they stood looking at their work.

  "That ought to lift out a good bit."

  "Probably slide the whole ridge into your yard."

  Chip snorted disdainfully. "Tell you what, Roth, you help on this job and you can have enough coal to keep your kitchen warm."

  It was Carter's turn to snort. "Sure, and if this seam opens up you'll have a whole mine to yourself."

  "Well, look at it this way. You're such a meddlesome cuss and so damned nosy, you'll be over here all the time anyway, poking your thick head between the drill and my hammer most likely, so you may as well get something for what you're going to do anyway."

  Carter couldn't disagree with that, "Alright, but let's put in another hole before we blast. You hold and I'll swing awhile."

  Chip knelt down and Carter got his gloves off. "You sure you know how to swing a sledge, Roth?"

  Carter looked indignant, "Of course I do! Ship builders use them all the time." He swung accurately and hard. "Why just ask my old spike holding partner how good I am. They call him 'No Fingers Brown'." Chip shuddered and kept his head well out of the way.

  The women often watched from a north window while their men labored away. The broken face became a ragged hole and then a short tunnel but the coal vein stayed about the same.

  Hella was sure both men were crazy, sweating and straining in the winter cold for just about nothing. Tinker explained it to her.

  "Men like we have need things to do, Hella. We're lucky they find interests close-by, because if they didn't, they would ride off until they found them,

  "Some men go to the taverns and drown their energies, and others go there and pound on each other for the same reasons. Right now our men are moving half a mountain because it makes them feel good. Next year they may chop out the forest or dig a hole down to China."

  Hella laughed in agreement. "Of course you're right, and I do enjoy watching them. They're like a pair of young bears, always.... Why look at them argue.... They simply love it. Men are strange creatures, Tinker."

  "That's why they need us, Hella." They smiled in shared understanding.

  ++++

  In Italy, Jonathan Starling brooded away the days knowing that the war was nearly over and he could soon depart for his own land.

  Spain too had proven a false haven, offering nothing and consuming his gold. In desperation he had disguised himself with a bandanna over his nose and held up a traveling family that he knew to be wealthy. He had almost expected recognition and suspected that he saw it in the Grandee's eyes. He did not care, as his escape was prepared, and within hours he sailed on a fishing boat.

  The robbery was lucrative, but it ensured the blackening of his name and he feared contacting the socially prominent even across the Mediterranean. He lived meanly, near the waterfront, numbing his emotions with cheaper wines while planning enterprises he would undertake at home.

  Starling's once lean figure thickened and his features coarsened with drinker's veins tracing their fine lattice-work across cheek and crooked nose. Quickness of movement was replaced by a more ponderous strength, but he believed that when he so chose he would be able to reverse his condition and regain the physical speed he had once enjoyed.

  Inactivity wounded his soul as well as his body and he cursed the man called Shadow and longed for an opportunity to even the score.

  ++++

  The war ended in April. Robert Lee signed the surrender and Grant told the Southern armies to take their horses and go home. The guns silenced and thousands of war weary men took stock of where they were and what they had become. The regiments stayed for a time to be sure, and some were dispatched as occupation forces, but the men began to trickle home.

  Within weeks the trickle became a torrent and men Chip had only heard about returned to the valley.

  To a man they came home poor. Among the soldiers there were no profiteers and often the uniform they wore comprised most of their possessions.

  They returned to farms run down from lack of care and they faced the confusion of wives made strange through long separation and children years grown without a father. Some came sick or crippled by wounds and others never returned.

  The soldiers brought terrible tales with them and they occasionally carried camp fever and diseases that spread to others. The distant war ended; survival and adjustment battles began close-by. A few individuals never adjusted and some went west to gain breathing room.

  Men dressed roughly in uniform pieces—army pants or a cavalry hat—gave notice that here went a man who had served. Again there was resentment that strangers had come in and taken land while the men were away, but by now the valley knew Shatto and Roth and mutterings fell on barren soil.

  The long somnolent valley surged to life. The veterans seemed determined to make up for the years lost. There were men to do anything and, compared to campaigning, it all seemed easy.

  A man came to Chip in search of cash money to restock his farm. Chip made the loan, giving favorable terms. Others heard and Chip found himself with business he did not want. He sent to Texas for additional funds, but knew they could not arrive for many months.

  Tinker knew some of the men who appeared in the yard and who stayed on to eat and ask for assistance. Most were independent and t
he words came hard. Often Chip could see the request developing and could indicate his desire to participate before it was made. The men were grateful, though probably few were fooled.

  Turning some down was harder, but he took pains in explaining why and invited even the most ineffectual to return if he had other plans.

  Old Rob and Amy loaned him money against his western funds so he did not run out, but he was thankful when the hopeful stopped appearing. As it was, he had a hand in so many pies that he couldn't rightly keep track.

  Most would be many seasons paying back and he could only hope they kept better records than he did.

  He thought sometimes about how the war had treated the people he knew. A few had died during the fighting and others were maimed or sickly. The famous had fared best, although George McClellan, retired at thirty-seven, might question that.

  His own part was minuscule but he was glad to have done something. He heard of the death of the man he had rescued and wondered idly what had become of Jonathan Starling. McClellan probably still kept track, and if he went down to Washington, he would remember to ask.

  That had been a close time there in Mississippi and it could just as well have gone wrong. Yet, out of it had come young Doug Fleming and his best friend—by far—Carter Roth. His work had helped the country, he had gotten the hunger to soldier out of his system, and he had escaped unharmed. It was hard to fault the effort.

  Old Rob had nothing to complain about this spring. Roth's acres were pretty well planted and most of his own were in something. He had men building his lime kiln and he had bought an interest in the Wolfe canal boat.

  He could amuse himself remembering that he had insisted that Carter Roth's name be listed as navigator on the boat's papers. Old Roth had turned the color of a sick sow; then Chip suggested the job might be too tough—just to listen to him growl.

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  Chapter 18