The Hinterlands: A Mountain Tale in Three Parts

by Robert Morgan

“I figured the Indians had been there,” he said. “They’ve been raiding all over. That’s why Chucky Jack and his men has gone after them.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He stepped closer and I could smell his foul breath. It was the breath of somebody that’s been drunk and is sobering up.

  “We fit at Kings Mountain,” he said. “That’s where I got my leg busted by a Tory musket ball. They had to chop it off with an ax. We kilt Ferguson though. We learnt the redcoats a lesson.”

  He went on to tell how they had defeated the British, and almost none of the mountain fighters was killed. He said it was like shooting turkeys. Everytime they seed a redcoat they touched him off. When they chopped his leg off all they had to give him was whiskey. They carried him back to the mountains in carts and wagons and he kept a jug by him.

  “Now it’s beginning to hurt,” he said. “Now I can feel the toes they cut off. They hurt like they was half froze and a horse had stepped on them.”

  He was close enough that it sickened me to smell his breath.

  “Don’t I know you?” he said. “Why you’re Petal Jarvis, that run off with the big feller to the West.”

  “And you’re the preacher,” I said. “The preacher that was digging for gold.”

  “I used to be a preacher,” he said. He said he had give up gold mining and become a peddler in the mountains. And then he joined up with John Sevier to fight the Tories.

  “They’ve gone now to fight the Indians,” he said. “They left me behind ’cause I wasn’t no help. They’ve gone over to the Tuckasegee to pay them heathen devils back.”

  I asked him again if he hadn’t seen nobody at the clearing.

  “Honey, I wish I had,” he said. “But it was deserted. Things from inside the cabin was strewed all across the yard.”

  I wanted to get going again. His words chilled me to the soles of my feet. We divided what we had in the dinner bucket with him, jelly biscuits and shoulder meat. “I’m much obliged,” he said. “I’m just grateful to be alive.”

  That seemed like the longest walk I ever took. Miles stretched out further, the more we tried to hurry. I couldn’t believe we had walked that far up the river the day before. No wonder Realus was so sure I’d never wander back to the settlement.

  I carried Willa on my hip, and then on my shoulder. Then I put her down and made her walk, but she got tired of me pulling her along and set down on the trail and bawled.

  “Come on, darling, we got to hurry,” I said.

  “Don’t want to, don’t want to,” she hollered.

  So I had to pick her up again. I made Wallace carry the quilt, but he let it unfold and drag on the leaves. It was one of Mama’s finest quilts.

  I kept thinking we had come to the place where we crossed the ridge to the river valley, but every time I was fooled. I tried to remember landmarks. They was a holly bush not too far up the slope from where we started picking foxgrapes. And every time I seen a holly bush, I thought this is where we turn, but it wasn’t. When you’re in a hurry, landmarks look different. I kept thinking about what the preacher had said about the cabin being deserted and our things scattered over the yard.

  Finally we come to a place on the river bank where the weeds had all been trampled down, and Wallace said, “This is where we started picking yesterday.” I didn’t recognize it, but he pointed to a rock on the bank where I had stood to reach some of the vines and I seen he was right. They was grapes dumped out in the weeds where the Indians had emptied our first basket.

  I lit out up the ridge, grabbing saplings with one hand and pulling Willa with the other. I clawed in moss and clutched at rocks and stomped my heels into the steep ground for footholds. Willa cried she was tired, but I didn’t stop to comfort her. And I let Wallace and Lewis come along behind as best they could.

  They was laurels on the other side and we had to fight our way through the thickets. I kept bumping my head on low branches. Willa tripped several times and I had to pick her up as we come out along the creek, just half a mile below the footlog.

  They wasn’t a thing moving around the place, except a rooster and a couple of hens in the yard. I looked up and down the clearing, but they wasn’t no sign of your Grandpa. I expected to hear Trail’s bark, but they was no sign of him. Where we had girdled the first field, the trees had rotted down to trunks that stood like statues among the cornstalks, but Realus wasn’t there. And beyond that I could see the new ground, but he wasn’t there.

  When we got across the footlog I seen what the preacher said was true. The yard was all strewed with our things, quilts and pots and pans, bottles and gourds. The Indians had took what they wanted and throwed the rest away. The baby’s cradle had been busted up and cornmeal was scattered around my flowerbed.

  “Where’s Pa gone to?” Wallace said.

  “He must have gone to look for us,” I said. It was what I hoped was true, that he had been far out in the woods looking for us when the Indians had come. Or he might have gone to one of the settlements for help.

  I seen what had happened to all the chickens and guineas but the rooster and two hens. The Indians had kilt them all and plucked them by the washpot and boiled them. They had had a big feast the night before or that morning. I reckoned it was this morning, since the fire was still smoldering. You could see tracks in the yard where they had run the chickens and guineas down.

  Everything in the house was turned over. The beds had been stripped and the cooking things throwed around. My herbs and spices and all my medicine had been emptied on the floor. That was how they found the whiskey jug, by going through the things on the medicine shelf.

  Ain’t nothing takes the wind out of you like seeing all your things broke and scattered. The toys and dolls we had made for the children had been throwed out and trampled on. The family Bible had been throwed in the weeds behind the cabin. I felt like setting down on the ground and crying, and would have, except they was so much that had to be done.

  The horse was gone from the barn, and I figured either the Indians had took him, or your Grandpa had rode him to look for us. The back end of the crib had been busted open and they had rode their horses over the spilled ears. Realus had picked most of the corn and filled the crib, and a lot of the new corn was ruint. The barn was deserted except for swallows fluttering in the loft and mice swishing around the shucks and hay.

  I run to the spring house and opened the door with dread. But the Indians had left the pitchers of milk. The water was rippling as usual around the cider and butter. A panful of late beans was cooling in the water. Spring lizards played in the edges of the pool like nothing had happened.

  When I come out of the spring house I heard the cowbell up on the west ridge. The cows and hogs was out in the woods and maybe the Indians had missed them.

  “Bring me the milk bucket,” I said to Wallace.

  “It’s gone,” he hollered back.

  We had carried all our buckets, including the milk bucket, to pick grapes in. I took the lard bucket Mama give us the dinner in and washed it in the branch. Then we run up to the milk gap ’cause I knowed Old Daisy’s bag would be busting full if she hadn’t been milked since yesterday. It was enough to make her go dry.

  They was no sign of your Grandpa at the milk gap either. I carried up some corn to give to Daisy and the heifers. Sure enough, the cow’s bag was so full it was sore, and she kicked a few times when I tried to milk. But she wanted to get rid of that milk, and finally she let me squeeze her tits down to the strippings while she bawled and carried on.

  When I finished milking, I walked to the brow of the ridge and looked down on the creek valley. Every stump in the fields looked like a man now and cast a long shadow. I thought your Grandpa might be in the woods somewhere and hurt. He might have cut his foot while chopping. Maybe if I hollered, he could hear me. Then I thought if they was Indians in the valley they would hear and come looking for us. A shout would tell them where I was. But I thought of your Grandpa with his leg
broke, somewhere in the woods or along the creek, and I didn’t care about Indians.

  I put the bucket of foaming milk down and placed my hands to the sides of my mouth, and I hollered, “Realus” in all four directions of the wind. When I hollered across the creek an echo come back from that ridge like somebody was answering me. I called a couple of more times, and the reply was an echo. They was nothing else to do but go back to the house.

  Before it got dark, we cleaned up the cabin and carried all our stuff back from the yard. It was like a flood had hit the house and poured everything out. The quilts had dirt on them and the cooking pots and pans had to be washed in the creek. They wasn’t no way to save many of the herbs and spices poured out. Some of the gourds had been stepped on and crushed. They was just enough salt to keep us for a few days. The can of tea had mostly spilled out, but I saved all I could.

  While we worked, the prettiest hunter’s moon come up. It was like a big lantern raised above the trees. The light was so bright you could see pumpkins in the fields and shadows from every post and bush. It was a perfect night for coon hunting, or for Indians traveling to the settlements.

  Later that night I laid awake, watching the light come through the cracks at the eaves and around the door. The light looked blue where it streaked into the cabin. I thought I heard voices, then decided it was just the creek, or the waterfall up the creek. Or maybe it was a wolf barking. I drifted toward sleep, only to wake again, thinking I had heard something. I thought it might be your Grandpa out in the woods hollering where a tree had fell on him, or the Indians had left him to die in some cove.

  I went back to sleep and then woke again, and this time I did hear voices. “Whoa,” somebody called, and “Steady there.”

  Fear shot through me so hard it hurt my bones. They was still a spark in the fireplace and I lit my candle from it. My hands was shaking as I wrapped the quilt around my shoulders, and stood by the door listening. It sounded like a bunch of men coming into the yard on horses. Some was splashing across the creek and others was already in the yard.

  “Ho there,” somebody hollered. “Anybody home?” I leaned against the door trying to see through a crack.

  “We’re looking for Indians,” the voice said. “Have you seen any Indians?”

  At least they are white men, I thought. I remembered what the wounded preacher had told us about Chucky Jack and his men looking for Indians. I pulled out the door bolt and opened it.

  In the moonlight you could see riders on horses. They looked twelve feet high in the air and none of them had on uniforms. Some had coonskin caps and some was wearing buckskin. Some had on regular coats and hats, but all carried rifle-guns across their saddles. I stood in the door shielding my candle from the draft.

  One of the men rode up close. “Ma’am, we’re looking for Indians,” he said. “Have you seen a bunch of Indians, ten or twelve of them?”

  I told them about the Indians we had seen over on the river. And I told him they had looted our place and took half our things and killed our chickens. And I told him my man had disappeared.

  “What was his name?” the man said.

  “Realus Richards,” I said. “We seen one of the Indians wearing his shirt and hat.”

  “We ain’t seen him,” the man said. “We been over on the Tuckasegee doing a little job.”

  They talked among theirselves for a while, and I pointed across the ridge where the river valley was. Some of the men kept riding around the yard looking at things in the moonlight. They looked in the shed and in the chicken coop, and one rode out to the spring house like they thought we might be hiding Indians. Some of the men had bandages, and one had his arm in a sling.

  I was relieved when they finally left, splashing across the creek and heading up the ridge. Maybe they was Chucky Jack’s men and they was going to fight the Indians again. Or maybe they was just outlaws. I couldn’t tell. But I was happy to see them gone.

  “Who was all them?” Wallace said.

  “They was soldiers looking for Indians,” I said. I didn’t know he had woke up, but there he was standing behind me.

  “Had they found Pa?” he said.

  “They wasn’t looking for Pa,” I said. “Now go back to bed.”

  After I put the candle out and laid in the dark for a while, it seemed like I had dreamed about the soldiers coming to the door. The figures on horseback in the moonlight was like ghosts. They hadn’t told me no names. I would look for their tracks the next day, though it would be hard to tell their tracks from the Indian tracks. I laid there a long time, and when I did get to sleep I dreamed your Grandpa was among the soldiers, and that he didn’t come forward because he so ashamed. He had took the horse and some tea and his things and rode with the soldiers.

  When I woke up, it was daylight and I heard Old Daisy’s cowbell on the ridge. It was milking time, and I had a kind of headache from laying awake so much of the night. They was frost outside, not a heavy frost, just a whiteness on the grass and in the shade of the cabin like the moonlight had stayed there.

  While I was washing the milk bucket I smelled this rich kind of odor. I thought at first it must be the smell of leaves souring after frost had hit them. When leaves start falling and pile up in ditches they give off a stink. But when I climbed up to the milk gap I didn’t smell it no more. Around cows you smell their breath and fresh manure on the cold ground. Old Daisy smelled like the cud she had been chewing.

  Not being milked for a whole day had turned her half-dry. At that rate she’d be completely dry before winter started, and she wasn’t due to freshen until March. While I milked, I tried to think what we could do to look for your Grandpa. Since the soldiers the night before had come up the creek, they didn’t seem much use to go down that way looking.

  We could search up the creek in the laurel thickets and in the rocky places over the creek. And I thought maybe me and the younguns could circle the clearing. I figured if we went all the way around the place, from the creek above to the creek bank below the new ground, we might see some sign of where Realus had been. When we left to pick grapes he was gathering corn. He must have picked all the corn that day, judging from the amount spilled by the crib. But they wasn’t no sign of the horse and sled. Maybe we could find tracks into the woods and follow them.

  Soon as I got back to the cabin and strained the milk and put the pitcher in the spring house, I boiled some grits for the younguns and told them my plan. They wasn’t much butter left but I let them have a little maple sugar to sprinkle on the grits.

  “You mean we’re going to look for tracks like Indians does?” Lewis said.

  “We’ll look for any sign we can find,” I said. “Maybe they’s a track where he drug the sled into the woods. Maybe he was going for more wood.”

  “Maybe he went hunting,” Wallace said. “His gun is gone.”

  When we stepped outside I caught that sickening smell again. The breeze come right down the creek from the west. “Let’s go down the creek and start,” I said.

  We begun looking above the spring house, at the edge of the laurel thicket. Wallace was solemn and didn’t say nothing, but Lewis and Willa thought it was like some kind of game. They darted in and out of the bushes.

  “I found a track,” Lewis said.

  We run to look, but it was just a place where a rock had been dislodged. “That ain’t no track,” Wallace said.

  “I found a track, I found a track,” Willa said. She pointed to a place where a weedstalk had been broke. They was a deer track in the soft ground.

  “We’re looking for people tracks,” Wallace said. “We’re looking for Pa’s tracks.”

  I tried to keep from feeling hopeless. We went slower and slower along the edge of the woods, examining the ground under dogwoods and young hemlocks. We come to the milk gap on the ridge, and of course they was only cow tracks there. Whatever sign might have been there the day before had been trampled on.

  As we come down the ridge toward the fields, Willa
tripped over a limb and rolled several times. I run to pick her up, and as I brushed off her coat and hair I seen the sled inside the trees. There the sled set, with several sticks of wood in its bed.

  The singletree was hooked to the front of the sled, and the trace chains was still attached. Whoever took the horse had unhooked the chains from the horse collar. The sled was pointed toward the new ground, and the horse tracks went that way. Your Grandpa had sawed wood, and was headed back to the clearing.

  We come out of the woods almost at the creek, and looked back toward the cabin. They was some big weeds around the edge of the new ground where your Grandpa hadn’t mowed, queen-of-the-meadow and ironweed mostly, but the tops of the corn had been cut, and we could see all the way past the scarecrow to the barn.

  “Why’s they so many flies around the scarecrow?” Lewis said.

  And then we all smelled it. The breeze must have changed, for it hit us suddenly. It was a rich rotten stink, worse than any carrion. It was almost sweet and stifling.

  “Shoooo!” Willa said, and held her nose.

  “Ugh,” Lewis said.

  They is some bad smells people actually like. Everybody likes to cherish their own wind and a baby loves to smell its filth until it’s cold. But the stench of rotting flesh everybody hates because it is the stink of death. It’s the smell of our end. Preachers would say it’s the smell of sickness and our fallen condition. I shuddered at the fetor on the breeze.

  I seen they was something wrong with the scarecrow. A scarecrow is normally sticks holding up old clothes. But this scarecrow was clothes holding up what was inside them. It was like a body crucified in its rags. Flies swelled and shrunk around its head.

  “You all stay back,” I said to the children.

  “Mama, I’m scared,” Willa said and started crying.

  “Lewis, you hold Willa,” I said. I took a step toward the scarecrow, and Wallace followed. “You stay back too,” I said.

  I put my apron over my nose the smell was so bad. Somehow I couldn’t go up to the scarecrow from behind. It was like slipping up on something. I circled around and edged closer. It was a man all right, put inside the scarecrow’s rags and tied to the posts. The body was twisted in the clothes and the straw hat had fell down on the face.