The Crossing

  CHAPTER XI. FRAGMENTARY

  Mr. Boone’s visit lasted but a day. I was a great deal with ColonelClark in the few weeks that followed before his departure for Virginia.He held himself a little aloof (as a leader should) from the captainsin the station, without seeming to offend them. But he had a fancy forJames Ray and for me, and he often took me into the woods with him byday, 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 alittle 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 equipmentfor 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 Isaw Tom coming toward us. I jumped up, thinking to please him by thisintelligence, when Colonel Clark pulled me down again.

  “Davy,” said he, almost roughly, I thought, “remember that we have beenjoking. 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 withhim.

  It was all very mysterious to me, and I lay awake many a night withcuriosity, trying to solve a puzzle that was none of my business. Andone day, to cap the matter, two woodsmen arrived at Harrodstown withclothes frayed and bodies lean from a long journey. Not one of thehundred questions with which they were beset would they answer, norsay where they had been or why, save that they had carried out certainorders of Clark, who was locked up with them in a cabin for severalhours.

  The first of October, the day of Colonel Clark’s departure, dawned crispand clear. He was to take with him the disheartened and the cowed, theweaklings who loved neither work nor exposure nor danger. And before heset 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 Kentuckybefore my own. Last year when I left to represent her at Williamsburgthere were some who said I would desert her. It was for her sake I madethat journey, suffered the tortures of hell from scalded feet, was nearto dying in the mountains. It was for her sake that I importuned thegovernor and council for powder and lead, and when they refused it Isaid to them, ‘Gentlemen, a country that is not worth defending is notworth claiming.’”

  At these words the settlers gave a great shout, waving their coonskinhats 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, “andeven so I am making this one. I pray you trust me, and God bless andkeep you while I am gone.”

  He did not forget to speak to me as he walked between our lines, andtold me to be a good boy and that he would see me in the spring. Someof the women shed tears as he passed through the gate, and many of usclimbed to sentry box and cabin roof that we might see the last of thelittle company wending its way across the fields. A motley company itwas, the refuse of the station, headed by its cherished captain. So theystarted back over the weary road that led to that now far-away land ofcivilization and safety.

  During the balmy Indian summer, when the sharper lines of nature aresoftened by the haze, some came to us from across the mountains to makeup for the deserters. From time to time a little group would straggle tothe gates of the station, weary and footsore, but overjoyed at the sightof white faces again: the fathers walking ahead with watchful eyes, thewomen and older children driving the horses, and the babies slung to thepack in hickory withes. Nay, some of our best citizens came to Kentuckyswinging to the tail of a patient animal. The Indians were still abroad,and in small war parties darted hither and thither with incredibleswiftness. And at night we would gather at the fire around our newemigrants to listen to the stories they had to tell,--familiar storiesto all of us. Sometimes it had been the gobble of a wild turkey that hadlured to danger, again a wood-owl had cried strangely in the night.

  Winter came, and passed--somehow. I cannot dwell here on the tediousnessof it, and the one bright spot it has left in my memory concerns PollyAnn. Did man, woman, or child fall sick, it was Polly Ann who nursedthem. She had by nature the God-given gift of healing, knew by heart allthe simple remedies that backwoods lore had inherited from the north ofIreland or borrowed from the Indians. Her sympathy and loving-kindnessdid more than these, her never tiring and ever cheerful watchfulness.She was deft, too, was Polly Ann, and spun from nettle bark many a cutof linen that could scarce be told from flax. Before the sap began torun again in the maples there was not a soul in Harrodstown who did notlove her, and I truly believe that most of them would have risked theirlives to do her bidding.

  Then came the sugaring, the warm days and the freezing nights whenthe earth stirs in her sleep and the taps drip from red sunrise to redsunset. Old and young went to the camps, the women and children boilingand graining, the squads of men posted in guards round about. And afterthat the days flew so quickly that it seemed as if the woods had burstsuddenly into white flower, and it was spring again. And then--a joyto be long remembered--I went on a hunting trip with Tom and Cowanand three others where the Kentucky tumbles between its darkly woodedcliffs. And other wonders of that strange land I saw then for the firsttime: great licks, trampled down for acres by the wild herds, wherethe salt water oozes out of the hoofprints. On the edge of one of theselicks we paused and stared breathless at giant bones sticking hereand there in the black mud, and great skulls of fearful beastshalf-embedded. This was called the Big Bone Lick, and some travellersthat went before us had made their tents with the thighs of thesemonsters of a past age.

  A danger past is oft a danger forgotten. Men went out to build the homesof which they had dreamed through the long winter. Axes rang amidstthe white dogwoods and the crabs and redbuds, and there were riotouslog-raisings in the clearings. But I think the building of Tom’s housewas the most joyous occasion of all, and for none in the settlementwould men work more willingly than for him and Polly Ann. The cabin wentup as if by magic. It stood on a rise upon the bank of the river in agrove of oaks and hickories, with a big persimmon tree in front of thedoor. It was in the shade of this tree that Polly Ann sat watching Tomand me through the mild spring days as we barked the roof, and none everfelt greater joy and pride in a home than she. We had our first supperon a wide puncheon under the persimmon tree on the few pewter plateswe had fetched across the mountain, the blue smoke from our own hearthrising in the valley until the cold night air spread it out in a lineabove us, while the horses grazed at the river’s edge.

  After that we went to ploughing, an occupation which Tom fancied butlittle, for he loved the life of a hunter best of all. But there wascorn to be raised and fodder for the horses, and a truck-patch to becleared near the house.

  One day a great event happened,--and after the manner of many greatevents, it began in mystery. Leaping on the roan mare, I was riding likemad for Harrodstown to fetch Mrs. Cowan. And she, when she heard thesummons, abandoned a turkey on the spit, pitched her brats out of thedoor, seized the mare, and dashing through the gates at a gallop leftme to make my way back afoot. Scenting a sensation, I hurried along thewooded trace at a dog trot, and when I came in sight of the cabin therewas Mrs. Cowan sitting on the
step, holding in her long but motherlyarms something bundled up in nettle linen, while Tom stood sheepishlyby, staring at it.

  “Shucks,” Mrs. Cowan was saying loudly, “I reckon ye’re as little useto-day as Swein Poulsson,--standin’ there on one foot. Ye anger me--justgrinning at it like a fool--and yer own doin’. Have ye forgot how totalk?”

  Tom grinned the more, but was saved the effort of a reply by a loudnoise from the bundle.

  “Here’s another,” cried Mrs. Cowan to me. “Ye needn’t act as if it wasan animal. Faith, yereself was like that once, all red an’ crinkled. ButI warrant ye didn’t have the heft,” and she lifted it, judicially. “Agrand baby,” attacking Tom again, “and ye’re no more worthy to be hisfather than Davy here.”

  Then I heard a voice calling me, and pushing past Mrs. Cowan, I ran intothe cabin. Polly Ann lay on the log bedstead, and she turned to mine aface radiant with a happiness I had not imagined.

  “Oh, Davy, have ye seen him? Have ye seen little Tom? Davy, I reckonI’ll never be so happy again. Fetch him here, Mrs. Cowan.”

  Mrs. Cowan, with a glance of contempt at Tom and me, put the bundletenderly down on the coarse brown sheet beside her.

  Poor little Tom! Only the first fortnight of his existence was spent inpeace. I have a pathetic memory of it all--of our little home, of ourhopes for it, of our days of labor and nights of planning to make itcomplete. And then, one morning when the three of us were turning overthe black loam in the patch, while the baby slept peacefully in theshade, a sound came to our ears that made us pause and listen with batedbreath. 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, Tomsprang for the rifle that was never far from his side, while with akind of instinct I ran to catch the spancelled horses by the river. Insilence and sorrow we fled through the tall cane, nor dared to takeone last look at the cabin, or the fields lying black in the springsunlight. The shots had ceased, but ere we had reached the littleclearing 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 toher breast. But when we came in sight of the fort across the clearingsthe 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 thecries of the child, lest they should bring death upon us. At length theshooting ceased; stillness reigned; then came a faint halloo, and out ofthe forest beyond us a man rode, waving his hat at the fort. After himcame others. The gates opened, and we rushed pell-mell across the fieldsto safety.

  The Indians had shot at a party shelling corn at Captain Bowman’splantation, and killed two, while the others had taken refuge in thecrib. Fired at from every brake, James Ray had ridden to Harrodstownfor succor, and the savages had been beaten off. But only the foolhardyreturned to their clearings now. We were on the edge of another dreadedsummer of siege, the prospect of banishment from the homes we couldalmost see, staring us in the face, and the labors of the spring lostagain. There was bitter talk within the gates that night, and manydeclared angrily that Colonel Clark had abandoned us. But I rememberedwhat he had said, and had faith in him.

  It was that very night, too, I sat with Cowan, who had duty in one ofthe sentry boxes, and we heard a voice calling softly under us. Fearingtreachery, Cowan cried out for a sign. Then the answer came back loudlyto 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 minutesit seemed as if every man and woman and child in the fort were awake andcrowding around the man by the gates, their eager faces reddened bythe smoking pine knots. Where was Clark? What had he been doing? Had hedeserted them?

  “Deserted ye!” cried the runner, and swore a great oath. Wasn’t Clarkeven then on the Ohio raising a great army with authority from theCommonwealth of Virginia to rid them of the red scourge? And would theydesert him? Or would they be men and bring from Harrodstown the companyhe asked for? Then Captain Harrod read the letter asking him to raisethe company, and before day had dawned they were ready for the word tomarch--ready to leave cabin and clearing, and wife and child, trustingin Clark’s judgment for time and place. Never were volunteers musteredmore quickly than in that cool April night by the gates of HarrodstownStation.

  “And we’ll fetch Davy along, for luck,” cried Cowan, catching sight ofme beside him.

  “Sure we’ll be wanting a dhrummer b’y,” said McCann.

  And so they enrolled me.