1.11. CHAPTER XI
FRAGMENTARY
MR. BOONE'S visit lasted but a day. I was a great deal
with Colonel Clark in the few weeks that followed before
his departure for Virginia. He held himself a little aloof
(as a leader should) from the captains in the station,
without seeming to offend them. But he had a fancy for
James Ray and for me, and he often took me into the
woods with him by day, and talked with me of an
evening.
“I'm going away to Virginia, Davy,” he said; “will
you not go with me? We'll see Williamsburg, and come
back in the spring, and I'll have you a little rifle made.”
My look must have been wistful.
“I can't leave Polly Ann and Tom,” I answered.
“Well,” he said, “I like that. Faith to your friends is
a big equipment for life.”
“But why are you going?” I asked.
“Because I love Kentucky best of all things in the
world,” he answered, smiling.
“And what are you going to do?” I insisted.
“Ah,” he said, “that I can't tell even to you.”
“To catch Hamilton?” I ventured at random.
He looked at me queerly.
“Would you go along, Davy?” said he, laughing now.
“Would you take Tom?”
“Among the first,” answered Colonel Clark, heartily.
We were seated under the elm near the spring, and at
that instant I saw Tom coming toward us. I jumped up,
thinking to please him by this intelligence, when Colonel
Clark pulled me down again.
“Davy,” said he, almost roughly, I thought, “remember
that we have been joking. Do you understand?—joking.
You have a tongue in your mouth, but sense enough in
your head, I believe, to hold it.” He turned to Tom.
“McChesney, this is a queer lad you brought us,” said
he.
“He's a little deevil,” agreed Tom, for that had become
a formula with him.
It was all very mysterious to me, and I lay awake many
a night with curiosity, trying to solve a puzzle that was
none of my business. And one day, to cap the matter,
two woodsmen arrived at Harrodstown with clothes frayed
and bodies lean from a long journey. Not one of the
hundred questions with which they were beset would they
answer, nor say where they had been or why, save that
they had carried out certain orders of Clark, who was
locked up with them in a cabin for several hours.
The first of October, the day of Colonel Clark's
departure, dawned crisp and clear. He was to take with
him the disheartened and the cowed, the weaklings who
loved neither work nor exposure nor danger. And before
he set out of the gate he made a little speech to the
assembled people.
“My friends,” he said, “you know me. I put the
interests of Kentucky before my own. Last year when
I left to represent her at Williamsburg there were some
who said I would desert her. It was for her sake I made
that journey, suffered the tortures of hell from scalded
feet, was near to dying in the mountains. It was for her
sake that I importuned the governor and council for
powder and lead, and when they refused it I said to them,
`Gentlemen, a country that is not worth defending is not
worth claiming.' ”
At these words the settlers gave a great shout, waving
their coonskin hats in the air.
“Ay, that ye did,” cried Bill Cowan, “and got the
amminition.”
“I made that journey for her sake, I say,” Colonel
Clark continued, “and even so I am making this one.
I pray you trust me, and God bless and keep you while
I am gone.”
He did not forget to speak to me as he walked between
our lines, and told me to be a good boy and that
he would see me in the spring. Some of the women shed
tears as he passed through the gate, and many of us
climbed to sentry box and cabin roof that we might see
the last of the little company wending its way across the
fields. A motley company it was, the refuse of the station,
headed by its cherished captain. So they started back
over the weary road that led to that now far-away land of
civilization and safety.
During the balmy Indian summer, when the sharper lines
of nature are softened by the haze, some came to us from
across the mountains to make up for the deserters. From
time to time a little group would straggle to the gates of
the station, weary and footsore, but overjoyed at the sight
of white faces again: the fathers walking ahead with
watchful eyes, the women and older children driving the
horses, and the babies slung to the pack in hickory withes.
Nay, some of our best citizens came to Kentucky swinging
to the tail of a patient animal. The Indians were still
abroad, and in small war parties darted hither and thither
with incredible swiftness. And at night we would gather
at the fire around our new emigrants to listen to the
stories they had to tell,—familiar stories to all of us.
Sometimes it had been the gobble of a wild turkey that
had lured to danger, again a wood-owl had cried strangely
in the night.
Winter came, and passed—somehow. I cannot dwell
here on the tediousness of it, and the one bright spot it
has left in my memory concerns Polly Ann. Did man,
woman, or child fall sick, it was Polly Ann who nursed
them. She had by nature the God-given gift of healing,
knew by heart all the simple remedies that backwoods
lore had inherited from the north of Ireland or borrowed
from the Indians. Her sympathy and loving-kindness
did more than these, her never tiring and ever cheerful
watchfulness. She was deft, too, was Polly Ann, and
spun from nettle bark many a cut of linen that could
scarce be told from flax. Before the sap began to run
again in the maples there was not a soul in Harrodstown
who did not love her, and I truly believe that most of
them would have risked their lives to do her bidding.
Then came the sugaring, the warm days and the freezing
nights when the earth stirs in her sleep and the taps drip
from red sunrise to red sunset. Old and young went to
the camps, the women and children boiling and graining,
the squads of men posted in guards round about. And
after that the days flew so quickly that it seemed as if the
woods had burst suddenly into white flower, and it was
spring again. And then—a joy to be long remembered
—I went on a hunting trip with Tom and Cowan and
three others where the Kentucky tumbles between its
darkly wooded cliffs. And other wonders of that strange
land I saw then for the first time: great licks, trampled
down for acres by the wild herds, where the salt water
oozes out of the hoofprints. On the edge of one of these
licks we paused and stared breathless at giant bones
sticking here and there in the black mud, and great skulls of
fearful beasts half-embedded. This was called the Big
Bone Lick, and some travellers that went before us had
made their tents with the thighs of these monsters of a
past age.
A danger past is oft a danger forgotten. Men went out
to build the homes of which they had dreamed through the
long winter. Axes rang amidst the white dogwoods and
the crabs and redbuds, and there were riotous log-raisings
in the clearings. But I think the building of Tom's house
was the most joyous occasion of all, and for none in the
settlement would men work more willingly than for him
and Polly Ann. The cabin went up as if by magic. It
stood on a rise upon the bank of the river in a grove of
oaks and hickories, with a big persimmon tree in front of
the door. It was in the shade of this tree that Polly Ann
sat watching Tom and me through the mild spring days
as we barked the roof, and none ever felt greater joy and
pride in a home than she. We had our first supper on
a wide puncheon under the persimmon tree on the few
pewter plates we had fetched across the mountain, the
blue smoke from our own hearth rising in the valley until
the cold night air spread it out in a line above us, while
the horses grazed at the river's edge.
After that we went to ploughing, an occupation which
Tom fancied but little, for he loved the life of a hunter
best of all. But there was corn to be raised and fodder
for the horses, and a truck-patch to be cleared near the
house.
One day a great event happened,—and after the manner
of many great events, it began in mystery. Leaping on
the roan mare, I was riding like mad for Harrodstown to
fetch Mrs. Cowan. And she, when she heard the summons,
abandoned a turkey on the spit, pitched her brats out of
the door, seized the mare, and dashing through the gates
at a gallop left me to make my way back afoot. Scenting
a sensation, I hurried along the wooded trace at a dog
trot, and when I came in sight of the cabin there was Mrs.
Cowan sitting on the step, holding in her long but motherly
arms something bundled up in nettle linen, while Tom
stood sheepishly by, staring at it.
“Shucks,” Mrs. Cowan was saying loudly, “I reckon
ye're as little use to-day as Swein Poulsson,—standin'
there on one foot. Ye anger me—just grinning at it
like a fool—and yer own doin'. Have ye forgot how
to talk?”
Tom grinned the more, but was saved the effort of a
reply by a loud noise from the bundle.
“Here's another,” cried Mrs. Cowan to me. “Ye
needn't act as if it was an animal. Faith, yereself was like
that once, all red an' crinkled. But I warrant ye didn't
have the heft,” and she lifted it, judicially. “A grand
baby,” attacking Tom again, “and ye're no more worthy
to be his father than Davy here.”
Then I heard a voice calling me, and pushing past Mrs.
Cowan, I ran into the cabin. Polly Ann lay on the log
bedstead, and she turned to mine a face radiant with a
happiness I had not imagined.
“Oh, Davy, have ye seen him? Have ye seen little
Tom? Davy, I reckon I'll never be so happy again.
Fetch him here, Mrs. Cowan.”
Mrs. Cowan, with a glance of contempt at Tom and me,
put the bundle tenderly down on the coarse brown sheet
beside her.
Poor little Tom! Only the first fortnight of his
existence was spent in peace. I have a pathetic memory
of it all—of our little home, of our hopes for it, of our
days of labor and nights of planning to make it complete.
And then, one morning when the three of us were turning
over the black loam in the patch, while the baby slept
peacefully in the shade, a sound came to our ears that
made us pause and listen with bated breath. It was the
sound of many guns, muffled in the distant forest. With
a cry Polly Ann flew to the hickory cradle under the tree,
Tom sprang for the rifle that was never far from his side,
while with a kind of instinct I ran to catch the spancelled
horses by the river. In silence and sorrow we fled through
the tall cane, nor dared to take one last look at the
cabin, or the fields lying black in the spring sunlight. The
shots had ceased, but ere we had reached the little clearing
McCann had made they began again, though as distant as
before. Tom went ahead, while I led the mare and Polly
Ann clutched the child to her breast. But when we came
in sight of the fort across the clearings the gates were
closed. There was nothing to do but cower in the thicket,
listening while the battle went on afar, Polly Ann trying
to still the cries of the child, lest they should bring death
upon us. At length the shooting ceased; stillness reigned;
then came a faint halloo, and out of the forest beyond us a
man rode, waving his hat at the fort. After him came
others. The gates opened, and we rushed pell-mell across
the fields to safety.
The Indians had shot at a party shelling corn at
Captain Bowman's plantation, and killed two, while the others
had taken refuge in the crib. Fired at from every brake,
James Ray had ridden to Harrodstown for succor, and
the savages had been beaten off. But only the foolhardy
returned to their clearings now. We were on the edge of
another dreaded summer of siege, the prospect of banishment
from the homes we could almost see, staring us in
the face, and the labors of the spring lost again. There
was bitter talk within the gates that night, and many
declared angrily that Colonel Clark had abandoned us.
But I remembered what he had said, and had faith in him.
It was that very night, too, I sat with Cowan, who had
duty in one of the sentry boxes, and we heard a voice
calling softly under us. Fearing treachery, Cowan cried out
for a sign. Then the answer came back loudly to open to
a runner with a message from Colonel Clark to Captain
Harrod. Cowan let the man in, while I ran for the captain,
and in five minutes it seemed as if every man and
woman and child in the fort were awake and crowding
around the man by the gates, their eager faces reddened
by the smoking pine knots. Where was Clark? What
had he been doing? Had he deserted them?
“Deserted ye!” cried the runner, and swore a great
oath. Wasn't Clark even then on the Ohio raising a
great army with authority from the Commonwealth of
Virginia to rid them of the red scourge? And would
they desert him? Or would they be men and bring from
Harrodstown the company he asked for? Then Captain
Harrod read the letter asking him to raise the company,
and before day had dawned they were ready for the word
to march—ready to leave cabin and clearing, and wife
and child, trusting in Clark's judgment for time and
place. Never were volunteers mustered more quickly
than in that cool April night by the gates of Harrodstown
Station.
“And we'll fetch Davy along, for luck,” cried Cowan,
catching sight of me beside him.
“Sure we'll be wanting a dhrummer b'y,” said McCann.
And so they enrolled me.