Over the Misty Mountains

by Gilbert, Morris

  ****

  “What do you think, Hawk?” William Bean asked.

  Hawk looked over the crowd that had gathered in the space by the bend of the river and said, “I think our plan has got a good chance of succeeding, William. But one thing bothers me.”

  Rhoda had told Bean all about Cartier’s visit, and it was obvious that the Frenchman was planning a raid against the settlers. So the men had gotten together and planned to ambush Cartier and his Indians. They would have them all in one place at one time. Bean looked over the crowd and thought hard. “It looks like a good meeting to me.”

  Now Bean scratched his head and said, “What’s wrong with it?”

  “If scouts get close enough, they’ll notice something peculiar about this crowd.”

  Again Bean studied the milling mass before him and said, “It looks ordinary to me.”

  Hawk shook his head and said, “There’re no children.”

  Bean’s jaw suddenly dropped and said, “That’s right! I hadn’t thought about that. But we couldn’t have the children there.” He grinned and said, “Nor the women either.”

  Hawk returned his grin. “I’ll do almost anything for the settlement, but I downright refuse to put on a dress!” He looked over and said, “Look at Jed Smith.” Grinning, he continued, “He looks mighty pretty, doesn’t he?”

  The plan that had finally evolved was to secure the women and children in a safe place. Someone said that if Jacques and his band of Indians saw a crowd of people with no women, they would know something was wrong. After much coercion, ten of the men finally agreed to put on dresses and bonnets and stay on the inside of the crowd.

  Bean smiled faintly, but then his brow clouded. “It ought to work, but we don’t know how many will be coming at us.”

  “I reckon we’ll know pretty soon,” Hawk said.

  He looked over the terrain they had deliberately chosen and said, “Look. They can’t come across the river. We could wipe ’em out, and they know that. So they’ve got to come from that direction.” He turned and pointed to the west, where the thick woods gathered and towered on a massive rise.

  “You’re right,” Bean said. “And I’ve got a hunch those woods are filled with Indians wanting to scalp us.”

  “Well, when they do come, they’ll have quite a surprise.”

  “We got the men in place. They didn’t like taking orders from a Cherokee, but he knows Indian ways best.” At Hawk’s insistence, Sequatchie had been put in charge of the men that lay hidden in the forest. The plan was simple. When Cartier and his Indians attacked through the woods, the crowd, serving as bait, would turn and form a battle line. They would retreat as far as the river, and hopefully Cartier and his band would follow them. Then out of the woods, Sequatchie would lead the bulk of the settlers, and the attackers would be caught as if in a vice.

  “It’s a good plan,” William said. He looked over and nodded at Hawk. “You should’ve been a general.”

  “Not me. I just wish this thing were over.”

  “I reckon all of us wish that.”

  The two men stood talking, and then they walked over to where Paul Anderson was standing.

  “I reckon it’s about time for the charade, Paul. Why don’t you get up on that little rise and start preaching a sermon to us.”

  Paul Anderson was wearing his usual dark suit and white shirt and tie. This time, however, something was different. He held a rifle in his hands. He looked at the two men and said, “No sense wasting a congregation. I stayed up last night asking God for a good sermon. Some of you need it!”

  “I reckon that’s gospel,” William Bean grinned. “All right. Go to it, preacher, and let her fly!”

  Anderson nodded, walked to the rise of ground, and laid his rifle down at his feet. He took out his Bible, opened it, and lifted his voice, which rose above the hubbub. “All right! Gather around! We’re ready to begin the service.”

  Hawk kept on the outskirts of the crowd. He had posted George and John Russell on the other side, and the three of them turned their backs to the speaker, their eyes searching the woods for the first sign of trouble. He heard the preacher’s voice, and the words came to him. “The subject this morning is on repentance. The Scripture says, ‘Repent or you shall perish. . . .’”

  The sermon went on for some time, and Hawk’s eyes never left the massive front of huge trees. Still, at the same time, he was taking in the words of the speaker. Paul Anderson spoke powerfully, repeating the phrase, “‘Except you repent, you shall all likewise perish!’” over and over again. Anderson had the habit in his preaching of repeating his text at least ten, sometimes twenty times. When a person heard one of his sermons, the Scripture would go through his mind over and over after he left.

  I reckon he’s preaching to me, Hawk thought. He was not afraid. He had been living close to death for too long to be afraid, but he well knew that within the next few minutes he might be lying dead with an Indian tomahawk in his skull or a bullet in his heart. His thoughts moved past that, and he wondered about eternity. No heaven for me, he thought, and a sadness came over him. He envied men like Paul, and women like Elizabeth and Rhoda, who had settled the matter of eternity. His thoughts went back to Williamsburg as he waited. He thought of his parents and his son. As always, when the face of Jacob came before him, his heart grew heavy, and he said, “I deserve eternity in hell—if for no other reason than for the way I’ve abandoned my boy!”

  The sadness lasted for only a moment, for a sudden movement caught his eyes. He straightened up and grasped his musket. It was only a flash, but he recognized that someone was moving over to the left of the grove. His eyes swept the edge of the tree line, and he began to see other movements. They’re coming, he thought. He raised his voice and said, “Don’t turn around, but get your muskets handy. They’ll be here soon.”

  “I see ’em,” George Russell’s voice came calmly. “They’re massing over here on this side, too.”

  Anderson never faltered. His voice continued to rise and fall, but then suddenly out of the trees a line of half-naked Indians broke, and the quietness of the air was suddenly rent by the screech of war cries.

  “Here they come!” Hawk said. “Break up and form a line of battle. Don’t mass! Form two lines so we can give ’em volleys!”

  It was Hawk’s idea to put the men in two lines. All of the men were experts with the muskets and could reload in less than thirty seconds. Now instantly they broke into two lines with ten yards between them. The first line knelt down to where they could brace themselves and not miss. The Indians began to fire when they were a hundred yards away, and the whistling of a musket ball came so close that Hawk flinched. He was on the left flank of the front line with John Russell on the other flank. When the Indians closed to within fifty yards, Hawk yelled, “Fire!”

  A thunderous crash of muskets broke out, and it seemed that every shot hit its target. Indians fell kicking, some of them lay still, others struggled to their feet, wounded, but there were many others behind them that rushed on. Hawk said, “Go back and reload!” The men who had just fired quickly arose, and the line behind them moved forward. While the first were reloading, the cry came to fire, and again the thunder of musketry broke the air. The sound of dying men and the screams of rage from the Indians filled the field. Up and down the line of settlers, men began to drop, for the Indians had stopped to take better aim.

  Hawk fell in to fire his second volley, and he looked around and saw Anderson standing beside him. “Preacher, you better get out of here!”

  Anderson shook his head grimly and lifted his musket. Hawk saw the mass of Indians coming and said, “I think there’s too many of them. I never saw so many Indians in one place in my life.”

  Hawk gave the command to fire, and the battle continued more fiercely than anything Hawk had ever seen. Scores of Indians came boiling out of the woods. Hawk searched them for Jacques Cartier but caught no sight of the big Frenchman.

  Step by step, foo
t by foot, the settlers were forced back to the river. His face grimy with smoke, Anderson said, “We can’t go any farther than this.” He looked back; the river was right behind them.

  “No, but look over there, and there—and there!” Hawk cried out.

  From their hiding places in two small groves that flanked the open field, the groups of riflemen suddenly appeared. They were led by Sequatchie, and they hit the attacking Indians like twin blows. Screams of rage rent the air as the Indians realized they had walked into a trap.

  “All right! We’ve got them! Move forward!” Hawk shouted.

  The battle was really over then, for the Indians were caught in the middle. Some of the settlers dropped, but the attacking Indians could not fight against the barrage of fire that came against them from three sides. They lost their courage immediately and began to flee.

  Cartier was frantic with rage. He saw that he had been outmaneuvered and shouted for the Indians to retreat. He himself turned and, knowing the ground better than the others, took a shortcut. He had not gone far when he saw movement ahead. He threw up his rifle and pulled the trigger, but his powder had gotten wet, and his rifle did not fire. Flipping out his knife, he leaped and grabbed a woman who had tried to hide herself.

  Rhoda had been with the rest of the women in the hiding place, but when she had heard the sound of battle begin, she had decided to move forward and try to see what was going on in the open space. Now she knew she had made a terrible mistake. Cartier grabbed her and pressed his large knife against her throat. “You betrayed me! I will kill you!”

  “Go ahead,” Rhoda said calmly. “You’re through, Jacques. The Indians will never follow you again. They’ll probably kill you themselves if they catch you for leading them into a trap and getting so many of them killed!”

  Cartier gritted his teeth. “Aye, it would be too easy to kill you now!” he said. “I will take you with me. I will make you wish you had never been born. A little at a time you will die!”

  She tried to run, but he grabbed her and dragged her through the forest.

  Cartier did not see that another woman had appeared. Elizabeth had seen Rhoda leave and had grown worried. She had followed after her to persuade her to come back to safety but had stopped when Cartier had suddenly appeared.

  “I’ve got to tell Hawk!” she whispered, then turned and ran as hard as she could toward the battle.

  ****

  As soon as Elizabeth got to Hawk and told him what had happened, he said instantly, “I’ll go fetch her back.” His face was blackened with powder smoke, and he glanced over the field that was littered with dead and wounded settlers and Indians. “Show me where you saw him.”

  Sequatchie came at once and said, “What is this?”

  “Cartier’s taken Rhoda.”

  Paul Anderson and William Bean were standing close and came over when they saw Elizabeth. “We’ll form a party and follow them,” Bean said.

  “No,” Hawk said. “You’ll just get in the way.” His eyes met Elizabeth’s, and he did something he had not done before in his life that he could remember. He said slowly, “You stay and pray. All of you. Sequatchie and I will go, but I want you to pray for Rhoda.”

  “For Rhoda, and for you and Sequatchie,” Paul Anderson said. Elizabeth reached out and touched Hawk’s chest. “God will watch over you,” she said simply.

  A sudden quietness fell over the scene. Everyone there knew Hawk was not a man who believed in prayer, but he had asked for it!

  Hawk turned suddenly and said, “Give me plenty of powder and ammunition.” He filled his powder horn and his bullet pouch, and Sequatchie did the same. Then he said, “Come, Elizabeth. Show me where you saw them.”

  ****

  “He cannot travel fast with the woman,” Sequatchie said. “And he makes no attempt to hide his trail.”

  The two had followed hard after Jacques and Rhoda. He had gotten a considerable head start, but he was slowed down by Rhoda. If he had been alone, he could have probably escaped, for he knew the woods as well as Hawk.

  “It will not go well for the woman. He knows she betrayed him,” Sequatchie said. “God”—he looked up—“protect this woman’s life.”

  The two were walking along, and Hawk did not lift his eyes from the ground, but he said softly, “Amen.”

  Sequatchie was surprised. It was the second voluntary thing that Hawk had ever said concerning God. “Maybe something good will come out of this,” he muttered to himself. “My friend is seeing that he needs God—maybe more than ever.”

  The eyes of the two saw signs that most people would have missed. A tiny indention in a soft spot of ground, a broken twig, a vine torn from a tree. Following the man’s trail was simple, for they had lived for years by being vigilant and careful and watching their surroundings.

  “They are not far ahead, I think,” Sequatchie said.

  “No.” Hawk pointed to a clear footprint beside a soft spot. The edges of it were crumbling. “Not more than a few minutes.”

  The two men were now moving at a fast trot, their heads down, and as they swung out into a small meadow, no more than twenty feet across, a shot suddenly rang out. Hawk flinched as a musket ball grazed his neck, just where it joined his shoulder. He looked up and saw a movement in the brush across the clearing, but he dared not fire for fear of hitting Rhoda. He said, “Come on! He can’t shoot again. He doesn’t have time to reload.” Both men raced across the opening. They were halfway across when Jacques Cartier stepped out into the open. He had lost his hat, and anger and rage twisted and contorted his face. His left hand gripped Rhoda by the neck, holding her with his powerful grasp as if she were a child. In his right hand he had a long wicked-looking knife held across her throat.

  “Stop where you are!” he said. “Or I will slit the neck of the woman!”

  Instantly Hawk and Sequatchie stopped. Both knew that the man had nothing to lose.

  “Let the woman go!” Hawk said. His neck was bleeding, but he ignored the burning pain.

  “And then you will kill me, eh?”

  “No, you can go, Cartier. If you let her go.”

  “Why do you think I would believe you, Spencer? You think I trust your word?”

  “My word’s always been good, Cartier. If you knew me, you would know that.”

  Cartier advanced, holding the knife against Rhoda’s throat. Rhoda’s eyes were fixed on Hawk, and she made no outcry. There was no fear in her eyes, Hawk saw. He wondered at this, yet somehow he knew that it had something to do with her newfound faith in God. It was not a natural courage.

  When Jacques Cartier was ten feet away, he said, “Now, you have two loaded muskets. You can kill me if you wish, but one move and I slit her throat. I will do that before I die.”

  “What do you want, Cartier?” Hawk demanded.

  “Lay your muskets down and back away. I will let you have the woman, but not as long as you have those muskets.”

  “Do as he says, Sequatchie.” Hawk laid his musket on the ground, and Sequatchie did the same. He straightened up and said, “Now, let the woman go.”

  “First you back away!”

  Hawk and Sequatchie took several steps backward.

  Hawk knew there was no goodness in the man and he did not trust him. The thought jumped into his mind, As soon as he gets the muskets, he’ll kill us both, and then he’ll kill Rhoda.

  “That’s right. Back up!”

  When the men were five feet away from the muskets, Cartier moved forward until he stood over the muskets. He had the knife in one hand and Rhoda in the other, and for a moment he hesitated. He could not seem to decide whether to sheathe the knife or loose his hold on Rhoda. Finally he said, “You stay right there, Rhoda!” He let go of her and bent down to pick up one of the muskets.

  Rhoda had understood from the beginning that death waited for all of them if Cartier got his hand on one of those muskets. As soon as he bent over, she threw herself at him with all of her strength. Her fingernails
sank into his face, and the huge man flinched in pain. With a roar he knocked her backward with his powerful arm, but it had put him off balance. He quickly grabbed the musket, but he had no time to level it and fire. Hawk was on him like a cat.

  It would not be a matter of muskets now, but a fight of brute strength. He did have time to swing the butt, which caught Hawk high on the head, and for a moment Hawk could see nothing but flashing blinding lights.

  As Hawk fell to the ground, Sequatchie threw himself forward. Sequatchie landed several blows on the large man, but Cartier stopped him in his tracks with one blow of his powerful fist. Rhoda screamed as Cartier saw his chance, picked up the musket, and leveled it at Hawk, an evil light in his eyes.

  “Now, this will be the last time I will have you to think about!”

  In that brief moment, it was as if time froze. Hawk knew he was a dead man, and great regret washed over him as he thought of his life. A wave of remorse suddenly overwhelmed him. It was not fear, but a deep sadness that he had wasted his life so foolishly. The night Faith had died, and how he had run away, abandoning his son, suddenly flashed before him.

  At the same time, as memories filled his heart and mind, his hand went to his belt. In one smooth lightning motion, Hawk pulled the knife and threw it. He had only a split second, for Cartier had aimed the gun at his heart.

  The blade sailed through the air and bit into Cartier’s heart. At the same instant his finger tightened, and the musket exploded. At least, he thought as he fell backward dying, I’ve killed him.

  But the bullet passed over Hawk’s head, and Hawk slowly rose to his feet.

  Rhoda ran to him at once. They looked at the Frenchman, whose eyes were glazed with death. “It’s all over, Rhoda. You’re all right.”

  Sequatchie came and looked down at the man who had been responsible for so much pain. “He was an evil man. I wish he had known Jesus.”

  Hawk shot his friend a glance. He remembered now, more clearly than ever, the remorse that had come when he was staring death in the face—and it was still there. He knew now that those feelings of regret would never go away.