Over the Misty Mountains

by Gilbert, Morris

  ****

  “Where have you been?”

  “Just out walking,” Rhoda said. She had entered the tavern again and found Cartier sitting at his usual table with a bottle of whiskey before him. He looked rough and irritable.

  “Fix me something to eat!”

  “All right. What do you want—eggs and bacon?”

  “Anything. My stomach feels like it’s been cut open with a Chickasaw knife.” He glared over at the proprietor and asked, “What’s that rotgut you’re sellin’?”

  “If you don’t like it, don’t drink here!” Dutch Hartog turned to face Cartier. He was in a rough business, and tough characters came and went. He waited for Cartier to respond, his hand on the counter. All he had to do was drop his hand to come up with either a knife or a bung starter, both of which he had used often.

  Cartier stared at the thick-bodied proprietor and decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. He shook his head and went back to his drinking. When Rhoda finally brought his breakfast, he gulped it down wolfishly, making guttural sounds until it was all gone. Shoving the wooden chair back, he grabbed her and pulled her down onto his lap. He kissed her roughly, and she submitted without enthusiasm.

  “Here,” he said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a gold coin. “Go buy yourself a new dress or something. A bonnet.”

  Rhoda took the coin and bit it. She had seen that his pocket was full. “Where’d you get all that money, Jack?”

  “Never mind. There’s plenty more where that came from.”

  “Do you ever go over the mountains?” she asked, suddenly thinking of Josh Spencer.

  “Why are you askin’?”

  “I just saw Josh Spencer. He’s headin’ over that way.”

  A crafty look crossed the face of the trapper. He said something in French under his breath, then asked in English, “When did you see him?”

  “Just now. Before I came in here.”

  “Which way was he going?”

  “He didn’t say. Just over the mountains. He mentioned something about Daniel Boone.”

  The memory of the brawl came suddenly to Cartier, and his brutal face hardened. He was not a man to forgive easily, and filed away in his mind was the notion that someday he would get even with both Boone and Josh Spencer. “You been beddin’ down with Spencer?”

  “What business is it of yours?”

  The massive hand of the trapper closed on Rhoda’s back. He clenched the flesh together hard and she cried out, “Don’t! You’re hurting me!”

  “I asked you a question!”

  “What do you care? I don’t belong to you!”

  “You do when I pay for you! Now answer me!”

  “No! Let me go!”

  Jacques Cartier slowly released her. Rhoda got up and gave him a frightened look, then turned and left. Cartier began drinking more heavily. He was a shrewd, crafty man who saw men like Boone and Josh Spencer as a threat to his business, which he kept mostly to himself.

  “I’ll find him out there,” he said. “Then we’ll see!” he muttered. Shuddering as the raw whiskey hit his stomach, he continued to drink and began to make some kind of plans for revenge.

  When Rhoda returned later in the day, she asked Dutch, “What happened to Jack Carter?”

  “Don’t know. He left right after you talked to him.”

  “Where was he going? Did he say?”

  “He never says anything. I don’t trust that fellow,” Dutch said. “I could do without his business.”

  Rhoda stepped outside of The Brown Stag and looked up and down the street. It had begun to snow again, and she shivered. She thought of Josh, and for one moment her heart seemed to lose some of its hardness. “I wish I could’ve gone with him,” she whispered—then she thought of what she was, and she shook her head, bitterness tingeing the sheen of her eyes and twisting her lips into a sarcastic line. “But he wouldn’t want the likes of me.”

  Chapter Four

  Cry of a Hawk

  The face of Faith Spencer appeared as sharply and clearly in Jehoshaphat Spencer’s dream as if it were a painting set before his eyes. Unlike most dreams, in which scenes and faces floated through his mind in a ghostly fashion, the features, so long beloved, were suddenly just there. In one of those inexplicable moments of the dream experience, Josh simultaneously knew he was dreaming, but the face that he saw was conjured up of memories drawn from the past and had the reality of a canvas painted by a master.

  He lay quietly, aware of the bitter cold that encased his body, which was no less real than the warmth that came from the image of Faith. He studied the dark brown hair that fell to her waist and was conscious of the fine lace of the light pink party gown that he had seen her wear on several occasions. Her eyes, brown and warm, and flecked with tiny touches of gold, studied him provocatively, and the lips that he had kissed a thousand times softened with compassion and then opened to speak. He was conscious also of the frailty that had drawn him to her as a young woman—yet at the same time of the spiritual strength that had been an element of her makeup as much as the color of her eyes, or the straightness of her nose, or her delicate cheekbones.

  From somewhere far away, he heard sounds, high and keening, and even as the sounds brushed against the levels of his consciousness, he tried to hang on to the sensation as though it were reality. She seemed to smile at him, and then her features began to fade, and a pale iridescence gathered around her in a halolike fashion. Then slowly, but with a tragic finality, the face began to break apart. It was like an image in water that had been suddenly stirred. As the sound became louder, and the face and the image of his wife withdrew and dissolved, Josh cried out, “Faith—!”

  The sound of his own voice was hoarse and desperate. Vaguely hopeless, and coming out of sleep with a rush, he was suddenly frightened—for nothing was familiar. He had gone to sleep next to the fire that he had built under a towering hemlock tree beside a frozen stream. For a long time he had lain awake watching the stars as they did their great dance across the velvety blackness of the sky. He remembered seeing the snowflakes joining the stars, different only in that their movements were faster and more active than those distant orbs of frozen fire that dotted the heavens.

  Now as he came out of sleep, bitterly disappointed by the loss of the vision of Faith’s features, he was aware of a weight pressing down on him. He panicked as the thought brushed across the edge of his conscious mind, I’ve been buried alive! Frantically he lunged, and with a sob of relief, his arms broke through the blanket of snow that had fallen upon him. The snow was no more than six or seven inches deep, and was so light that he sat upright with a gasp and a shudder. As he brushed the snow away from his face with his forearm, he stared around in a confused fashion.

  Everything was changed. It had been snowing, it seemed, all night, and now the hemlock tree overhead was laden with a shimmering mantle of white velvet. Throwing his blankets aside, he saw that at some point the branches overhead had dislodged a load of snow on the fire so that everywhere he looked a plush carpet of glistening snow met his eyes. He squinted against the brilliance of the scene and stood to his feet as the morning sun touched the tiny grains, reflecting them like jewels. He had slept in his clothes, as he had every night during his journey. Looking around he saw his horse stamping and pawing at the ground where he had tied him out with a long piece of rawhide the night before. Josh’s blankets and saddle and few belongings made a lump on the smoothness of the ground, and at once he felt a wave of disgust mixed with humor begin to rise within him.

  “If you can sleep through a snowstorm, there’d be nothing to stop an Indian from walking right up to your camp and slitting your throat!” he muttered to himself.

  As he began to clear away a place to build a fire, he considered the journey that he had made from Williamsburg. It had been an exhilarating time for Josh, and the farther he got from civilization, the more aware he was of the outside world.

  This new world consisted of trees
that grew ever larger as he moved farther west. High overhead, he could hear birds calling out as squirrels scampered through the branches. A few times he caught sight of a shy Virginia deer, which he had stalked, once successfully, and feasted on the meat for several days. The absence of human voices was a pleasure to him, and for days he had not spoken with a single soul. Once he had seen a party of hunters and had turned his horse into a grove of magnificent first-growth firs simply to avoid their company. He had had enough of human relationships for a while, and despite the bitter coldness and hardships of the trail, he welcomed the challenge and the distraction the solitude brought him. The silence had sunk into his spirit like a soothing balm.

  From the distance came the mournful cry of a timber wolf, and Josh held himself still, savoring the wildness of the sound. Somehow he felt a kinship to the big lobo, for he had come to love the wild and untamed forest that spread out like a large carpet over the land.

  “I missed something,” he murmured. “All those years I stayed in town, I was in a prison—and didn’t have the sense to know it!”

  The thought amused him, and he smiled stiffly, his lips numb from the breeze that bore tiny fragments of ice. Since moving from the world of men into the world of beasts, he had found himself more aware of the ironies of life. He’d always had a keen sense of humor, but it had not been kind—as humor often strikes at the weaknesses of others. But the months of solitude had caused him to look down deep into his own heart, and he had learned to smile at his own foibles as he did now.

  Standing to his feet, he looked toward the creek. “Bit of fish might go down nice,” he said, and the sound of his voice seemed loud in the silence of the glade. Moving his pack he pulled out a small leather pouch no more than three inches square. He opened it and removed his fishing tackle, which consisted of a hook and thin strong line. Removing his gloves, he blew on his fingers, then threaded the line through the eye of the hook. Pulling a small chunk of bacon from his food sack, he made his way to the creek.

  The narrow stream was no more than six feet wide, shrunken to its wintery dimensions, though in spring when the ice melted it would be much larger. Taking his hatchet, Hawke hacked away at the ice until he’d roughed out a ragged splintery hole, then baited his hook and dropped it into the frigid waters. The ice was too thick and opaque to see through, but an instant tug on the line brought a yell from the solitary fisherman.

  “Got you!”

  Quickly he pulled on the line, and when he got the fish out of the water, he carefully grabbed it by the lower jaw and ignored the flopping of the bass. “Well, I guess you’ll do just fine for breakfast!”

  Making his way back to his campsite, he quickly cleaned the fish, throwing the head and entrails into the brush. His horse snorted and bucked, startled at the unexpected noise.

  “Calm down, boy,” Josh said. “You wouldn’t begrudge a man a good breakfast, would you now?”

  Raking back the snow, he cleared a small spot, then rose and moved into the brush. The weeds were dead and dry, rustling under his feet. He began to break off small stems, and when he had a double handful, he moved back and made a small pyramid of them. He made two more trips, each time bringing back larger twigs, until finally he had a pyramid nearly a foot in diameter. His hands were numb, and when he pulled out his powder horn, he could hardly feel the smoothness of the horn. Pouring a small amount of powder on the pile, he capped the powder horn carefully—very carefully. His life depended on his rifle, and if it had no powder, he was helpless.

  His face was rapt and intent as he worked. When he pulled flint and steel from his possible bag and struck it, a spark fell on the powder, igniting it with a small puff of sound. “That’s it,” he muttered as he nursed the tiny blaze.

  Carefully he fed small twigs onto the growing blaze, adding larger ones, then he sat back on his heels and stared at the orange and red tongues of fire with satisfaction. Holding his palms out, he felt the warmth slowly creep into his frozen hands, until finally he singed his left palm and jerked it back.

  He impaled the fish on a sharp green stick that he had sharpened to a point, then held it over the fire. Soon the delicious smell of seared fish filled the air, and his stomach knotted. Pulling the fish back, he added a pinch of salt, then pulled off a piece of the flaky white flesh with his thumb and forefinger. He juggled it around until it cooled, then popped it into his mouth and savored the hot meal. He devoured all the fish, then said, “Should have caught another one—reckon I can cook me up another breakfast. Two breakfasts never hurt a man.” He moved to the creek, drank thirstily, then filled the small sauce pan with creek water.

  Walking back to the fire, he dug into the leather sack that held the rest of the ingredients for his meal. He kneaded the dough on a clean slab of bark, wetted it with the river water, added a pinch of salt, and then rapidly and skillfully molded it into cakes. After setting them on a flat stone and moving the stone into the heat of the fire, he took a handful of dried meat from another pouch. Taking a long piece of curled bark, he laid the meat on it and poured water over the strips to soften them. When he had laid out half a dozen strips, he stretched them across the prongs of a forked stick. Hunched by the fire, he held the stick of meat over the coals. When the meat sizzled out its fat and curled crisp and brown to the edges, he pulled it off the stick, onto another piece of bark, and then began taking up the cakes, shifting them rapidly so he would not burn his fingers. Finally he picked up the iron pot, moved over, and sat down.

  Hungrily he devoured the food, and then for a while he sat there thinking of where he was. He had a mind that could hold a piece of country in it, almost as if it were on the pages of a book. He had gone over it carefully, retracing the steps and the route he had taken since leaving Williamsburg, and he knew that he was now close to Holston country near the Watauga River. Soon he would be reaching the area Daniel Boone had told him about. There had been something about the man that had drawn Josh, and now he thought of the lean face and the light blue eyes with something almost mystical in them. He smiled as he thought of the time he asked Boone, “Were you ever lost, Daniel?”

  “Lost? Well, not so’s you’d mention it. Of course”—the blue eyes had lit up with mild amusement—“I was a little bit confused once for about a week—but not so as you might say, lost.”

  “Must be nice to be like that,” Josh said aloud. “Most of us stay lost all of our lives.” His quick shift from the physical to the spiritual was a habit of his. The lostness of a man in a woods was a simple and uncomplicated affair—unlike the kind of lostness that had fallen upon him when Faith had passed out of his life. The thoughts disturbed him, and he quickly arose, made up his pack, and after feeding the horse a bagful of oats, he swung into the saddle and made his way along the creek. Josh’s eyes moved from side to side, for he had already developed the habit of watching, as much as possible, for any movement that might signal danger.

  He had a sudden memory of Saul Elliott, an old backwoodsman who had taught him, when he was just a boy, much of what he knew about his woodsmanship. “Don’t ever fix your eyes on an object, Josh,” Elliott had said. “Kind of shift ’em back and forth, from side to side, and as far ahead as possible. If you get to starin’ at somethin’, you can be trapped. Kind of freezes you, like.”

  Moving briskly through the deep woods, his mind studied the trees and their various uses. Some of the ash trees grew a hundred feet high, and he knew they would be good for paddles and for oars and for leaching lye. It made good wood for a puncheon floor because it whitened under use. Then there was hickory, the best of all woods for an ax or a hatchet handle. He saw the stands of oaks, and already his mind was thinking of the cabin he would build somewhere. Once he saw a young elm bordering on a hazelnut thicket, and he thought, I remember Ma saying that makes a good poultice for cuts and bad wounds.

  All day long he moved forward steadily, not pushing his animal, but simply soaking in the silence of the dense woods about him. He saw a few an
imals, but no bear. They’ll be all holed up. A humorous thought struck him. I wish a man could do that. Just go hide out somewhere and sleep all winter long, and come out in the spring all fresh and ready for the world. Don’t reckon I’d miss too much if I did that.

  Once Josh saw a flash, a movement by a frozen stream, but by the time he had unlimbered his musket, the small animal was gone. Must have been a fisher or a mink or maybe a rabbit. . . .

  Worry suddenly crept like a worm into his thinking. Even in the peace that had enveloped him like a warm cape since leaving Williamsburg and putting his life behind him, somehow arose the thought, What am I going to do with myself? I can’t wander around the woods until I’m an old man.

  The thought nibbled at the edges of his consciousness, and he could not get rid of it. One part of him was imaginative, creative, but the other was analytical—his mother had once said to him with exasperation, “I do declare, Josh! You have to organize everything and put it into a compartment—like a woman storing her spices!”

  Josh had never forgotten that statement, and now he tried desperately to throw off all thoughts of the future. Reaching down, he patted his horse on the shoulder, saying firmly, “I don’t want to have any more worries than you do, Rusty. As long as you got something to eat, you’re all right. I envy you that.”

  Still, the little voice that served as a spokesman for the analytical side of his spirit said, “But a man’s not a horse. He can go back and relive the past. And even more, he can jump ahead in his mind and know that something lies out there ahead of him.”

  Turning aside from the disturbing thoughts that gnawed at him, Josh deliberately forced himself to think on his immediate needs. Need something for the pot tonight, he thought and checked the priming in his rifle. Tying the horse out, he fed him some of the oats, noting that one more feed was all the bag held. He moved on into the deep thickets. Finally he found a trail with some tracks and stopped with his back up against a huge beech tree. He held the rifle loosely but firmly in his hands. That was another secret Elliott had given him. “When you’re huntin’, boy, just become a tree yourself. Animals see movement quicker than they smell things. So if you can just be still long enough, something’s gonna show its head.”