Fort Robinson (Perry County, Pennsylvania Frontier Series)

by Roy F. Chandler

  Robert stretched, judging the sun's height and pointing down the slope. "Let's hunt Sherman's Creek. Then we'll work downstream and see if we can jump something. That will bring us to George's before dark."

  "Alright." Harry scrambled erect, beating old leaves from his pants and thinking that they didn't return to the fort anymore. Now they went to George's. Things changed for sure.

  Robert checked his priming. "I have to get a new gun. This barrel has been freshed so many times it's as thin as a toenail, and the lock is so rattley it scares game away."

  "You're just looking for an excuse to go to Lancaster, but my gun isn't as good as yours. Maybe Shcenk will loan us enough money to buy nice rifles with a silver piece on the wrist."

  Robert groaned, "Let's just shoot him and take his money."

  "If I knew where he kept it," Harry snickered, "I'd have shot him long ago."

  The mild weather had turned George mellow. He leaned comfortably on his hoe handle listening to the rise and fall of women's voices in the herb patch. The richness of newly turned earth mingled pleasantly with the usual scents of pine and wood smoke.

  Old Martha was educating the younger women on the wild stuff growing around them, although some already knew more than a little about it.

  He never ceased to marvel at the edibles Martha could find for the taking. Looking back on the lean years, George wondered if they could have made it without her knowing about dock, wild carrots, winter and watercress, mallow disks, and Jerusalem artichokes. Martha could work her way through a good open meadow and reach the far side with her basket or apron filled with astonishing discoveries.

  Of course there were her teas, steeped from chicory crown, catnip, witch hazel, boneset, dandelion, spearmint, and even needles from white pines. They eased the sick and were warming on sociable occasions.

  Everyone worked at the fall sugar making and were rarely without a loaf of maple sugar somewhere in a cupboard. In the hard times, the sugar could make living seem worthwhile.

  If nut gatherers stayed out of the deep woods, where nothing grew anyway, and far from Shcenk's hog rootings, nut trees bore in abundance. Chestnuts, walnuts, hickory nuts, and butternuts were stored in mighty numbers. In season, plums, gooseberries, blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, and persimmons added variations to the chickweed, bay lilly tubers, and ground nuts that Martha called Indian potatoes.

  If a person knew what to look for, the valley was uncommonly rich with good things to eat. There were wild grapes for a treat and wild mustard and garlic for taste. There was burdock, sheep's sorrel, and peppergrass. The staghorn sumac gave edible fruit, and there were ground cherries, wintergreen berries, and the mushrooms that only Martha was permitted to collect, for a mistake there could cause death.

  About every cabin had an herb garden of some sort, and the women were regularly swapping strange smelling plants back and forth. If they could find salt, he guessed they would about have it all, but so far, they had found none and had to buy from the settlements.

  George never had opened new fields. The clearing done around the fort gave him all the ground he could handle. When Indian trouble ceased he would be able to hire help, but until then not many people came to live in Sherman's Valley.

  Working fields close to his cabin with the fort looming over his shoulder was fairly safe, but most places still planted and harvested in companies with guards standing close. The thought brought his glance to his musket propped nearby.

  Still, Indians had not come to their area for many a season. Though there had been trouble along Raccoon Creek, it seemed as though hostiles were mostly staying north of Tuscarora.

  With their villages beyond the Ohio, sallies into Juniata were already long, and George supposed even the furthest villages knew there wasn't much left to loot in Sherman's Valley, anyway.

  Sometimes he despaired of ever being able to just go on about business without Indian thoughts intruding and making him sweat a little. It wasn't natural to live all these years with the threat of sudden death lurking just beyond the tree line. He supposed they had gotten some accustomed to it, resigned might be a better word, but it was a constant worry, never letting up, just chewing away at a person's innards.

  How old was he now? Thirty-five. Seemed hard to believe, and Mary, his oldest, had turned fifteen and was being courted sort of gentle-like by young John Black.

  Whew, how the years had moved by. Each seemed shorter than its predecessor. Why he and Ann had been married five years now. Seemed like only yesterday he had stomped over and half-dragged her into this very field so he could ask her private-like. Now they had little Esther and tiny Martha, who old Martha just about claimed for her own. Eight children! Well, he hadn't wasted time in that part of things.

  Since Robert had moved into his own place he had built onto his cabin, but they still lived as thick as fleas in there. He ached to build a proper house where there would be room for moving around and maybe a summer kitchen for hot weather cooking. He would have a porch to sit and work on when the weather was sour, and he and Ann would have their own room with maybe a chest of drawers and a pair of blanket chests. He thought a minute of dry sinks, dough trays, and hutch tables. He could build them all, if he had a place to put them.

  Which, as it always did, brought him full circle to the Indians. In his worst dreams he had never thought their move from Manada could end up like this. Then it had all seemed so simple and sensible. Move to the new country, clear land, and build homes. Instead, they barely held on, living close to the bone and too near the war hatchet.

  Still, he sensed an end to it. Settlers were claiming land way out on the Monongahela River, and others were trickling through the Cumberland Gap. Either the tribes would move to fight them off or they would draw their villages back another notch or two.

  If they withdrew further to the west one more time, Sherman's Valley would finally be free.

  If they began a war, well, this time the English held Fort Pitt and a lot in between. For Sherman's Valley it should be easier than the first time.

  The condition of the fort bothered him. He kept the gates free, but that was about all. Logs were rotting, and the poorly built inside shelters were in ruins. The ditch around the stockade worried him as much as anything. It had filled itself in over the years until it offered little obstacle. Without the ditch, the wall was too low and easily surmountable.

  They would have to do something one of these days, but the men came in reluctantly, maybe half of them believed that if they didn't fix up the fort they would never need it. Lord knows they had never planned on needing the place for this many years.

  Once, when he was off to Carlisle, Shcenk had quartered a drove of hogs inside the fort. The thought of it still raised George's hackles.

  Shcenk had the gall of a Philadelphia lawyer. The hog man had thrust his pointy jaw at George and insisted the place wasn't needed for anything anymore anyway. George picked the tastiest looking hog he could see and shot it dead. He reloaded over Shcenk's squealing and leveled down on another. Shcenk moved the drove in a hurry. In fact, he panicked them right over the graves, tipping stones and trampling plantings. Shcenk was about the most annoying man George had ever encountered.

  About everybody kept a pig or two now, although some still took a Shcenk hog on occasion. Rob Shatto had purchased Shcenk piglets and had a fair sized herd, but Shatto was one of the few people that always had cash money.

  Shcenk, too had money. Twice a year helpers came over the mountain, and Shcenk drove hogs east to market. Still, the man lived in the worst shack in the valley, spending most of his effort building hog fence.

  Shcenk corn-fed his hogs these days. Most of Sherman's Valley sold extra corn to Shcenk who paid less than fair value, but with no other market and little cash payment offered, they took what he gave.

  The last two harvests had been a little different. Rob Shatto had built a real still on his place. He had need of corn for his whiskey making. His deal was half
the whiskey made from any grain brought in. Considering the wood chopping and fire tending involved in running the still, the offer was fair, and the Robinsons took their corn and some wheat to Shatto's.

  Shcenk fumed as though being robbed, but each year brought in a bigger corn crop, so there was enough grain to go around.

  The biggest difficulty with the whiskey deal was purchasing coopered kegs. They cost considerable at Reed's store. It seemed the corn turned into whiskey and the whiskey into more kegs. Rarely did money change hands, but given time it would. In the interim, any small profit went into uncarded wool, salt, ax heads, gunpowder, and lead.

  What Ephraim Shcenk did with his profit was a mystery, and many an hour was spent speculating on where he hid the gold and what he planned to do with it.

  George could see other progress, though. Their potato crop was doing well, and having potatoes year round kept bellies full and faces smiling. He and Kirknee had dug a well back in '59. Robert claimed to have helped, too, but mostly he had been getting ready to work, spitting on his hands, getting a cold drink, or getting ready to quit.

  George grinned to himself. Robert had not changed in one respect, he was still a wonder at avoiding unpleasant tasks.

  George and Harry Kirknee had gone down about twenty feet, planking walls as they went. They hit water at seventeen feet and had a permanent water pool at the well bottom almost three feet deep. They planned to replace the wooden walls with stone when time allowed. The well spared Ann or one of the children from carrying all the way from the spring.

  Despite his protestations of staying out of things until the fighting stopped, Blue Moccasin was back in the woods. The young runner appeared at irregular intervals and kept civilized clothing at various cabins. Through Blue they stayed abreast of tribal rumblings, the movement of villages, and some of the activities of the better known sachems.

  Blue carried messages from the white fathers in Philadelphia and, as George understood it, bore messages between villages and different tribes. All the messages were carried in Blue Moccasin's head, and that seemed a truly remarkable feat in itself.

  Crossing between two unfriendly peoples as he did, Blue Moccasin lived a strange, almost dangerous life, and George did not envy him. He supposed whites waited as appreciatively for Blue's news of other whites as they did for word of Indian happenings.

  James Cummens was liked and trusted. Whatever fixing up they did at the fort would probably depend a lot on how peaceful he reported the tribes to be.

  Blue's last visit had followed the winter's first snow. He had mentioned rumblings from some of the western tribes, but the Iroquois appeared to be loyal to their English friends, and that was the most essential fact. If the Six Nations of the Iroquois rose . . . well, if that happened, they would have to dig that old stockade ditch real deep-that was for sure.

  Chapter 35

  On this fine spring day, Ephraim Shcenk, too, had special thoughts. He worked sporadically repairing his stick and clay chimney that had again given him trouble. Thrice during the winter the chimney had caught fire and liked to burn down the whole cabin.

  It was a mean shelter, and Shcenk knew it. Part was made of half-burned logs from his first cabin, and the rest was rudely notched and poorly fitted. The roof sagged, and the whole place leaned with the wind, but it would not be for much longer he figured.

  Half-angrily he slapped clay inside the stick framework, hoping he was getting it thick enough to hold away fire for a while. Trouble was, soot caught fire and blazed right in the chimney. It took stone or brick to stand chimney fires. Well, it wouldn't be too long now until he would have one or the other, and maybe both.

  Shcenk had once heard a man say, "A man that plans long, plans well," and he had followed that idea for near seven years. He liked rolling the plan in his head, and he would almost get to chuckling aloud over how sweet it was going to be.

  Once and for all he would put the whole Robinson clan right where they ought to be. Oh how they would weep! They would groan and they would plead, but he would be unrelenting and he would enjoy every blessed instant of it.

  Them and their uppity ways, them and their secret meetings, their throwing him in the creek, their half-starving him in their fort and letting his head half-rot off when he had been scalped that time.

  That Kirknee too! He had set his mind on Hannah Logan, and Kirknee had drifted in and grabbed her off. Well, he would pay along with the rest, although Kirknee had not claimed enough land to be hurt real bad.

  Without cash money, none of the Robinsons were able to warrant their land. They claimed their hundred acres or so, but the right money placed in the right hands could see those claims passed by, and the land would be sold to a man who could pay what the Penns were asking.

  He'd saved for that day since his first drove went over the mountains. He had brought his gold back and in the darkest of night buried it in a stout keg in the center of his muckiest hog lot. The keg had been rattling empty then, but now it was near full.

  He had more than enough money, he knew that. He had cultivated the right people in Carlisle. When he showed his money, they would do the rest. Shcenk almost hugged himself imagining how the Robinsons would puke up their meals knowing that after all the years they were no more than squatters on the land they'd fought over.

  He would build a fine home right where the fort now stood. He would dress well and ride his plantation on a tall horse. Others, maybe some Robinsons (the thought thrilled him), would work his fields and tend the hogs.

  All of that would take gold. He had done well with hogs, but the profits were narrowing. South of the mountain he could not have made it. Up here, he got his feed for almost nothing from farmers with no handy markets to haul to. Then he was able to sell his droves for a little less than others were asking and have certain sales.

  It had been worth the worry of living too near Indian troubles, and every abuse heaped on him by a Robinson made what was going to happen that much sweeter.

  What he needed was one or two more really profitable droves, like the one to Fort Littleton that time. Then, once the Indian scare was gone, he would make his move.

  He slapped more mud into place and snarled at a hog trying to scratch against his crude ladder. While he had been dreaming about great revenge the sun had moved a piece. He scraped the last of his clay from the bark holder and pressed it into the stick form. Maybe one more winter would do it. Maybe another year would see the Indians gone, and he would be facing George Robinson, telling him straight out that he was losing it all, and that he should best pack up and get his people off land that wasn't his.

  Shcenk's arm slowed and stopped as he lost himself in imagining how good it would be.

  Chapter 36

  As a man grew older his days should be easier with shorter hunts and longer smokes with old friends. Youths should sit before their elders listening to the wisdom of years and marveling at the clarity of word and thought. There should be small but thoughtful gifts from offspring and special attentions to give comfort after many seasons of leading, teaching, and providing for the lodge.

  Long Knife thought about these things even as his journey took him deep into the lands of the Ottawa. Instead of lounging and strolling within a village of old friends, he traveled swiftly and far. Often The Squirrel accompanied him, but other times his son remained behind, hunting and holding the lodge as one.

  It was strange that now, after so many years of proclaiming and strong speaking at councils, important leaders began heeding his words. The plans that had been ignored or shrugged aside were suddenly ideas of great moment, and chiefs and sachems listened, nodding sagely, and in the end grunting approval and agreement.

  At times, The Knife thought his hair had by itself induced serious consideration of his plans. For his own reasons, the Great Spirit had chosen to streak the hair of Long Knife with gray until he bore the silvered crown of one who had seen a hundred summers.

  Cresting a body still powerfull
y vigorous, and framing a face touched only by deeply graven mouth creases with sun lines at eye corners, the thick, shoulder length mane of almost white was startlingly impressive. It gave The Knife nobility and granted him the respect due tribal elders of advanced age. Age and wisdom were often one, and with his hair grayed, Long Knife's words gained value.

  Yet, had not the leader appeared, The Knife's great plan would have remained unused and merely a favored idea mumbled over as seasons blended and the long sleep grew closer.

  From among a hundred chiefs, many sachems, and countless healers and tellers of things to happen, Pontiac, chieftain of the western Ottawa, began a swift rise from among the many.

  He shook the hangers-on and pullers-down from his shoulders as an otter sheds water until he stood tall above the others, his brilliance acknowledged by most, and his leadership accepted by many.

  Pontiac of the Ottawa chose to resist the English. He would rally the tribes. He would arm his warriors and, in a mighty uprising, drive the whites from the mountains, perhaps into the sea itself.

  The words were brave and the mission powerful, but Pontiac's greatness lay beyond idle boasting or dreaming. The Ottawa intended to succeed, not to war heroically and withdraw afterwards to old villages. Word of clever plans created by Long Knife, a Delaware, were carried to the Ottawa, and although the tellers lacked details, Pontiac sent for the planner to hear more.

  The Knife had come. The lands of the Ottawa lay beyond those of the Six Nations, and the journey had been long. He arrived unadorned and accompanied only by a single, tall son, but his plan was honed, and his words flowed like honey, smoothly without disturbing, but they stuck to all that heard and their taste was sweet to a people preparing to war.