The Land Breakers

by John Ehle

  The second action was the face of Paul, where she saw a greedy confidence, a love of sport and adventure; he welcomed the acceptance of his challenge by the beast; he relished it. She was at once terrified of him, and immensely surprised, and in a way pleased by him, accepting his confidence as her own.

  The third action was the loading of the gun. While the bear moved toward them, Paul took the ramrod, took from his hunting bag a piece of tow, rammed the tow into the barrel, took his powder horn and pulled out the stopper with his teeth, poured powder into the muzzle until he was sure he had enough, took a piece of deerskin, which he put over the muzzle; into this he centered a bullet. With the ramrod he pushed the bullet down into place. All this he did while the bear was charging up the path toward them, was nearing the rock on which they stood.

  Paul’s hands moved swiftly to the firing pin. He shook the gun, trying to get a few grains of powder to fall through. The bear was coming up the rock on which they stood, slobber slopping from its mouth. Its teeth were white and shiny, its eyes were fierce with hatred. With a roar it was before them. Paul raised the rifle. Nancy saw his hand close in on the trigger. Even as the first drops of blood from the bear touched the stock of the rifle, she saw the flint strike the fizzen steel. A spark leaped out. There was a crash of sound, then a thud as the bullet landed in the bulky mass of fur before them.

  Paul dropped the rifle. His hand appeared a moment later, a knife in it. The knife was about to strike out when the bear fell off the rock, tumbling backward to the soft earth, where it landed dead.

  Nancy sank down on the rock, realizing fully for the first time what they had done.

  * * *

  Mooney wasn’t back even at the close of the tenth day. Lorry spent every hour of that day and the next one wondering where he could be, rehearsing in her mind what she would do if he did not come back at all, what she would say to her father, what he would likely say to her, what she would tell the boys. She remembered afresh how it had been when first she had begun waiting for Lacey years before. She had learned waiting then, as if it were a trade, as if it were like cobbling or basket-weaving. Don’t tell her about waiting. It was harder than other work, she thought, for it lingered longer. One could finish other work; one could come to the end of cooking a meal, for example, and know it was done, whether good or not, but waiting lingered. There was a lot more painful to a woman, but waiting got into the mind and got to be a part of every thought and even of sleep at night, so that nothing was restful. And after a while the waiting throb was all she knew; it was the first thing she knew of a day, and the last one of a night.

  On the twelfth day she was milking. The sun was quite low, just barely visible to the eye, and his shadow fell on the ground near where she sat. She looked up, wondering if she dared show all the pleasure she felt on seeing him again, knowing she would not, for it was not her manner to show her feelings openly.

  Quickly, awkward in haste, trying not to appear to be overanxious, she brushed her hair back from her face and drew her dress closer around her throat. “I declare,” she said, “I’ve been wondering when you would come back.”

  He smiled down at her for a moment more, considering her fondly; then he sat down on the milking log beside her. He glanced around, then looked at the cabin door. “Somebody here?”

  “A young thing and his wife has been staying here nights. They’re sleeping yet.”

  “I bet you give them your bed.”

  “It’s less trouble to make a pallet on the floor for one than for two.”

  “Did you hear any corn shucks rattle in the night, over where they lay?”

  Lorry gazed straight ahead. “I never listened.”

  “You didn’t?” he said, laughing softly. “Look here,” he said. She saw it was a gourd which had been notched, and inside it two tiny trees were growing.

  “What in the world is that?” she said. “I never saw the like.”

  “I never did, either, but I needed a way to carry two peach trees.”

  Lorry took the gourd. They were nicely formed little trees and she was pleased beyond reason to have them.

  Verlin came outside, solemnly looking at Mooney. He came over and sat down beside him. “You got back?” he said.

  “Why? You didn’t think I could go so far and come again?”

  “It took longer than you allowed it would.”

  “Did it now?”

  “Took three days more.”

  “Listen to him, he can add figures so long as they don’t go past ten.”

  “Mama was worried.”

  “I was worried? I wasn’t the one mooning about this clearing, stumbling over ever’ stob and stump in it.”

  She planted the two trees, then went down to the cabin. Mooney was inside by then, talking with Paul and Nancy Larkins. They were sitting before the fire, and Mooney was telling about his plans for this place. They liked him, she could tell, and were a bit awed by his size and friendliness. She started cooking the eggs and meat, and it was along about then that she thought she heard a yapping noise from somewhere in the room. She wondered if a fox pup had got inside, but she knew that was unlikely.

  She heard the sound again, and this time Fate heard it, too. “I heard something yapping,” she said.

  “Whereabouts?” Mooney said.

  “A little dog noise,” she said.

  “Did you hear a noise, Verlin?” Mooney asked.

  Verlin shook his head, but Fate said he had and began to search under the bed.

  “I tell you this,” Mooney said, continuing his conversation, “it’ll all open up in time. The settlers are down there seeking land, but the land’s up here. They don’t trust the mountains now, and they don’t like the roads. How can they get their stock to market over such roads as these, they say. But I told them a way would be found. A way is always found.”

  “I believe it,” Paul said.

  “We can grow might nigh all we need right here, and what we manage to drive down to market will more than buy the rest. Within two year I want to drive my stock down there and let others see it can be done. I told them to be looking for me and Verlin coming down the road, driving pigs and sheep.”

  Strength seemed to radiate out from him as he talked. It bound the others to him, brought them all, except for Fate, into a close communion there by the fire.

  “Already Harrison’s place is looking like a rich plantation. He’s making progress. I’m making out here.”

  “I’m going to clear soon,” Paul said.

  “Yeh, tame it down and we’ll have a good place, don’t you think so?”

  “I do,” Paul said. He meant it, too. He understood. Maybe Ernest Plover didn’t see it yet. But here was a neighbor who would be of help; the two families could help each other.

  Lorry served breakfast, and even as they started eating, once more she heard the yapping noise. Mooney, smiling, reached into his hunting shirt and drew his hands out. He held a small furry animal. Two shiny, bright, dark eyes looked up at them.

  Both boys held out their hands for it, but Mooney reached across the table and gave it to Lorry. “It’s for you,” he said, “to help watch the place. I worked three days cutting cordwood to earn her.”

  It was soft as down and light as a feather, a tan pup with liver spots on its fur. Lorry got misty-eyed looking down at it and was speechless, for she never had known how to thank anybody for a present.

  * * *

  Mooney helped Paul Larkins cut trees for a cabin. The young man was a hard worker and followed suggestions well, but he was surprised to find it took so long to get a tree cut. A tree didn’t yield to his strength of will or daring, but only to the continual cutting of his ax. Sometimes half a morning would pass and he would still be cutting on the same tree; he was forever and a day being surprised by that.

  Mooney also visited the other settlers and kept up with what was happening. He never went to Tinkler Harrison’s house, but he walked along the river one day, in the gro
ve of trees that had been left standing along the bank, and examined its features. He saw Belle come outdoors and water a few pansy plants that were growing near the river-side door.

  The house was long and low, unlike any he had seen in Pennsylvania or Virginia. Its river-side door must have been eight feet high and four feet wide. It was, to his way of thinking, foolish to build such a big door, better to have a small opening, but the old man had made what he wanted. The house had two great stone chimneys, large roof shakes, and ten shimmering panes of glass. Mooney was impressed with it, in spite of his animosity toward Harrison.

  Another day he walked to the German’s clearing, he and Verlin, and they watched Nicholas and his boy start digging a hole. Better for the family to get trees cut, Mooney thought, so that the logs could dry out; better to get solid walls up than to worry about a cellar. “I think I’d get a cabin built,” he said, being careful about making a suggestion to strangers. “I’d put four thick walls and a solid roof around me, for they’re up there.” He said the last referring to the mountain, the wild things there.

  Nicholas studied him thoughtfully, and said nothing.

  “They’ve probably been gathering in close from other valleys, too,” Mooney said. “Maybe they know in such mind as they’ve got that we’re unfriendly to them.”

  Nicholas was not in any way convinced, Mooney realized. Not many people considered the dangers of the mountain in the same way he did. To him the beasts up there were part of a single mind, which encompassed the mountain, the vines and patches and rocks and caves and snakes and buzzards and hawks and eagles and all the rest. The single mind must realize now that a tide of change was happening, and it would come to resent and fear that more and more. But Nicholas Bentz and his wife didn’t understand.

  They talked a while longer, mostly about which trees might be girdled now and which ones should be left until the leaves had fallen.

  Come dusk, Mooney and Verlin went on down the road, and they were no sooner halfway along that path than they heard the German woman begin talking stridently. When they looked back, they saw Nicholas climb down into the hole and begin grubbing out dirt.

  “Going to put geese down there, Verlin,” Mooney said, smiling. “Nail them to a board and fatten them.” Verlin looked up, surprised. “That’s the way they do it, then eat their livers. Got to have a place to store sauerkraut, too. Lord, I’d dig a pit for a privy afore I’d dig one for a cellar for kraut, but nobody who’s not a German has ever figured out a German’s mind.”

  But he liked Nicholas very well. He and Nicholas and Paul could work together, he decided.

  Of the three, he was the only one who had crops planted, and he worked his fields every day, wondering what success he would have come harvest time. He had cabbage in two short rows, but rabbits had got to much of them. Seemed like he and Lorry couldn’t make a fence that would keep rabbits out. Even one paled in brush and chinked wouldn’t keep them out, he suspected.

  They had the field of flax, but the bull nettles had troubled it, growing faster than the crop, so they had had to make paths through the patch in order to get to the weeds and pull them up. A crop would be made, but it would take much cleaning to get the food fiber out of it.

  The sweet potatoes were in such rich soil that they were vine-growing faster than a proper pace. The roots were not as large as they should be; they were dry-typed, too, and fibery and tough. A sow bear and cub had got into one of the rows a few nights before and had eaten their fill, breaking up the hills and laying about destructively. In the cornfield, the pumpkin vines were forming large pumpkins. The bean vines hung profusely from the corn stalks, and on the stalks were large ears of corn. The corn was their best crop. The corn was the miracle that would save them, be their bread and stock feed and stored food. Even after all the loss from insects and animals, Mooney hoped to have four thousand ears of corn in all. If he had not had trouble, he might have had three times that much, but he was not going to fret about that. Half of the four thousand he would save to feed the family and to make bread occasionally for the dog. The other half he would use for seed, and to feed the chickens and to fatten, come fall, two pigs.

  He walked through his corn patch often, studying it, picking insects off the tasseled ears and hoping he would not have bad luck with it, that it would hold true and be sufficient. He worried about the chance of some late ailment striking it, a flock of locust or other blight. Lorry would relieve his worries as best she could. “I can taste corn pudding right now, as if I had some in my mouth,” she would say. “I’m going to make a pan of gritted bread tonight.” She would touch the big ears, encased in their protective covering. “It does seem like it’s all right,” she would say. “Are those sapling logs going to be enough for the crib?”

  He had skinned a hundred sapling logs, each about six inches through. He had cut some of them into eight-foot lengths and some into twelve-foot lengths, and they were well seasoned by now, and were notched. He planned to build walls of sixteen logs each. He had cut a few roof boards and he had a length of oak to split for shingles. The crib would hold the crop, or that part of it he would need to carry through the winter.

  It took a world of work and cutting of wood to build anything, he knew that. It took a hunger for work and a cold will, even to cut saplings on the edge of the clearing and stack them for fences or for field fires, though that was easy labor when compared with hacking away at two-foot trees in order to get sun room for a bigger crop next year, or with the work of grubbing rocks, rolling them down the hill toward the spring, where in time he hoped to put a springhouse. Lorry needed one to keep meat from spoiling and to keep the milk and cool it so that she could churn butter, once he had made her a churn.

  Work, that was the secret of it. Work cutting and splitting until your strength was ebbing, then go down to the river bottom to trail the cow and horse, drive them home to the clearing, put them in the stable and lower the night log across the door. Go into the house and eat your supper, deer meat usually, a reminder always that the wilderness was close by, and bread made of new corn, and, of late, a piece of boiled cabbage.

  10

  If he had a crock he might make vinegar out of the wild grapes, he thought. With vinegar, Lorry could make pickled beans. But he had no crock or barrel, and no time to make one, so he took a length of buckeye log, which was soft and pliable, and into one end of it gouged a deep trough. He put it inside the cabin, and the boys filled it with muscadine grapes they gathered and crushed. By the next morning, fermentation had started; there was a creamy bead of suds on top of the mass. There would be a weak wine in a few weeks and vinegar soon after.

  They went out to find bee honey one day. They left as soon as the sun was warm; Mooney told Verlin to be in charge of the sweetening pot, into which he had put some of the wine. “Set the pot out in the sun, boys, and when it gets warm, you’ll see the bees start to gather.”

  So they did, and Mooney, taking his ax and gun with him, moved the pot to the top of the clearing and waited nearby for the bees to gather again, to find it and feed on it. “When you boys see a bee leave, try to follow it. See, there—there goes one, Verlin, up that way.”

  Verlin took off running.

  “Stay with him now,” he called.

  The boys followed the bees as best they could. Mooney would move the sweetening pot always to the farthest point the boys had reached and set it down. Then would come a spell of waiting and talking, while bees fed again.

  It was Verlin who called out, after an hour’s chase, that he had come to the bee tree.

  It was so, an old, rotted trunk. “I can taste that honey now, can’t you?” Mooney said, looking about proudly. “Nothing better’n honey to me. Let’s fill this pot and get home, ain’t that what you say, Verlin? Get home and have hot bread and honey tonight.” He whistled and shook his head. “Can you taste it?”

  Both boys nodded. They were chewing on their tongues hungrily. They had not had a taste of honey since
they had lived in Virginia.

  Mooney stuck a wad of grass in the hive’s entrance hole; then he knocked a hole in the base of the trunk. He knelt nearby and studied the hole. He cut a piece of bark and on the bark laid a pile of twigs and leaves. He lighted them and put the fire, bark and all, into the hole of the tree. He covered the fire with green grass, so that smoke began to billow up.

  “You watch out for them bees that are arriving,” he told the boys.

  “They want in,” Verlin said.

  “They must like a smoky house then,” he said.

  The boys squatted near him on their haunches and considered the bee tree.

  “Look at them red squirrels. See them?” He pointed toward a chestnut tree. “See there?”

  “We’ve seen squirrels afore,” Fate said, pretending he wasn’t interested in common sights.

  “Hump,” Mooney said. “I tell you what, those squirrels have a good year ahead. There’s going to be mast for everybody this year—nuts and acorns aplenty. Up in Pennsylvania one year the mast failed and the wild things got to fighting for their lives. It’s mean; nature has a mean streak in her.”

  The boys stared before them, considering that.

  “But it’s good,” he said, and winked at Verlin. “Honey’s the best food to have. We’re going to have honey and hot corn bread tonight. I tell you, Verlin, I started to buy your mama some wheat flour when I was down in Morganton. I come within a breath of doing it. At least I could get her enough to thicken gravy with, I thought. But I found I had no means. I had to have salt to cure meat, for I’m sick and tired of deer, ain’t you?”

  Both boys nodded.

  “They tell me an Injun won’t eat deer, he’s so tired of it. I’m like he is. No, I’ve had my fill of deer and turkey both. But listen, I can see the time coming when we pull chairs up to the table and there before us is wheat bread, honey and cured ham—all three. Think of that. Make you drool? My mouth waters like a baby’s that’s been shown a nipple. Oh my.” He shook his head and moaned, and the boys moaned, too.