Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1966 (8 page)

 
          
“Again
I say, none of us must venture lightly into the woods below the river,” Jarrett
ordered. “At present, I think that at this point we are strong—my household and
my brother Mace’s, and all ready to face and fight any rascally raiders. Leland
Stoke, you say the same for those at your cave—’tis a true natural fortress,
and can be held. The gathering at Seth Ramsey’s is likewise strong. Only at the
mill, as I deem it, have we a chancey point in our line.”

 
          
“Yet
I’ll hold the mill,” pronounced Durwell stoutly. “You neighbors of mine need
that mill, and ’tis my home and my castle. I’ve not come through a bloody war
with England to be faint at the thought of more fighting.

 
          
It
was voted that men from the various households make it their business to visit
the mill frequently, always armed and vigilant. On that decision, the meeting
broke up.

 
          
Mark
and Will spent the rest of the day adding final touches to their new sleeping
room. They laid rafters and put a shed roof of split slabs upon it, then
covered this roof with sheets of bark and then carried clay to spread upon it
to make it fireproof. The door was constructed, pegged, and hung in place upon
leather hinges. Mark chopped hickory branches into proper lengths and whittled
them into bowed brackets. These he spiked within, two on the door and two more
at the jambs. Through these he fitted another length of hickory, to serve as a
bar. He gouged a loophole in the door, and another in the shutter which he
hinged to the window hole.

 
          
Finished,
the small addition stood against the wall of the house at the southern end,
flush with the front. The window looked to rearward. All sides of the Jarrett
home could be commanded by defending gunfire if necessary.

 
          
“Our
next task will be to cut a doorway into the house, and fix a floor within
here,” Mark said to Will.

           
“But tonight it is already stout
enough for us to sleep well protected.”

 
          
“I’ll
sleep the better to know that you’re not outside,” said Celia, putting final
big chunks of wet clay between the logs.

 
          
“We
thank you for your help, Celia,” said Mark, fitting forked twigs inside to hold
his rifle and
Will’s
bow. “Come,
it’s
near supper time, as I judge.”

 
          
But
supper time at the Jarrett’s was a quiet meal. Everyone pondered what a new day
would bring. Later that night, Mark and
Will
lay down
in their new room upon beds of evergreen boughs, and Mark felt wakeful, as he
had the night before.

 
          
Resolutely
he drove worries from his mind. He set himself to thinking of how bountiful the
crops had been, how gratifying the first harvest at Bear Paw Gap.

 
          
Their
various corn patches had yielded famously. Three corn cribs were well filled
with ripe ears. Mark had heard that one might estimate the store of shelled
corn at a bushel for every two cubic feet of corn in the ear. He lay and
thought of a corn crib— six feet by four, he judged, and the corn within stacked
four feet high. That meant twenty-four by four—ninety-six cubic feet. Divided
by two worked out to nearly fifty bushels. At a bushel a week, the Jarretts had
enough in one crib for a year, and the other cribs would feed the horses Oscar
and
Bolly
, and the cow Meg. He and his father and Will
had reaped grass in the clearings to stack hay for their animals, too.

 
          
And
he thought of how his mother and Celia had strung the latest gatherings of
beans in their pods, made long ropes of them to hang and dry in the kitchen. In
mid-winter, those dried beans could be soaked and cooked with savory smoked
meat. Out in the yard, buried in a row of holes with pine needles raked above
them, were stores of potatoes.

 
          
Future
years would bring future harvests. He thought of young fruit trees, planted in
the spring. They had been no more than switches, but they had taken root, put
forth leaves. Soon they would bear cherries and apples.

 
          
He
slept, and he did not dream of Indians or fighting. He thought that Celia came to
him and gave him a red apple to eat, and that it was the sweetest, juiciest
apple he had ever tasted.

 
          
The
Attack

 
          
Before
breakfast, Tsukala appeared at the riverside again and talked to Mark. “I go
into those woods,” Tsukala told him. “There, below the river.”

 
          
“My
father does not want us to go there,” Mark said. “He thinks we should make
ourselves ready and wait here, for whatever they may try to do.”

 
          
Tsukala
shook his head. “I will not wait,” he said slowly. “Your father is the chief of
these white people. But I was here before you came. I am my own chief. I go
now.”

 
          
“Go,
then,” Mark bade him, the Cherokee fashion of farewell, and Tsukala slipped
into the woods and out of sight.

 
          
Mark
worked in the early morning hours to cut an inner door from the new sleeping
chamber to the living room of the house. He sawed through log after log,
setting in short chunks to support the logs where they were newly severed. When
the opening was complete, he spiked heavy split slabs within it for a jamb,
then
went out to chop out more planks for a door.

           
Then he heard his mother and Celia,
arguing at the front door, and strolled around to see why they disputed.

 
          
“But
we are almost out of corn meal, Mrs. Jarrett,” Celia was explaining. “Alice and
Anthony and I shelled a full bushel of corn these last two days, and ’tis only
a short trip to the mill.”

 
          
“You
shall not make that trip alone,” Mrs. Jarrett decreed firmly. “Where have your
ears been, Celia, with all this talk of murdering, sneaking Indians at hand.
Let my husband or Mark carry the corn for grinding.”

 
          
“But
I have scarce ventured out of the yard for so long,” Celia pleaded. “I feel
like a prisoner.”

 
          
“But
you are safe,” Mrs. Jarrett told her. “You do not go to the mill alone.”

 
          
“If
Celia wants to go, I’ll go with her as a guard,” Mark suggested, looking at
Celia’s pink cheeks.

 
          
“And
I, let me come,” put in Will, hurrying toward them.

 
          
“Not
you,” Mark said. “Stay here and spike together our inner door. When I come
back, we’ll hang it.”

 
          
Will
grimaced, but subsided.

 
          
“We
can carry the corn on
Bolly
,” Mark went on. “She’s a
swift runner, and Celia will ride on her next to the sack. In case of any
breath of danger, Celia will gallop back home. I’ll challenge any foe, red or
white, among these woods I know so well.”

 
          
“And
I will not fear to travel any path with Mark beside me,” said Celia, her eyes
bright as she smiled.

 
          
“Be
it so, but both of you keep your eyes and wits sharp,” Mrs. Jarrett admonished
them soberly.

 
          
Mark
strode to the stable yard and saddled and bridled
Bolly
,
a sprightly, clean-limbed mare. He led her to the house, and fetched out the
bag of shelled corn and hoisted it across the saddle bow, then took his rifle
and horn and bullet-pouch.

 
          
“Here,
Mark, if you’re for an errand at the mill,” said his father from the door.

 
          
Jarrett
appeared, holding another rifle in his big hands. “Take this, for Simon Durwell
to add to his weapons,” he said. “One more ready shot in a hurry might be
needed there some day.”

 
          
“Do
you let him have one of our guns?” Mark asked. “Nay, I do not know this one,
which is it?” “You, too, have forgotten it,” his father grinned. “I myself did
not call it to mind, back there in its dark corner, when we sat yesterday and
counted the firearms we had. Why, Mark, we took this from Quill Moxley himself,
last spring when he was discovered to be an enemy and not a friend.
’Tis a right good gun, too, better and truer by far than the man
who fetched it to Bear Paw Gap.”

           
He held out the gun, and Mark took
it and surveyed it with the eyes of a practiced hunter. He would have liked to
have it himself, had he not grown so used to his own rifle.

 
          
“And
take with it this big horn of powder and these bullets, also taken from Moxley
when we banished him,” added his father passing them over. “Tell Durwell ’tis
lent him to keep and use if need be, until times are once more peaceful and he
cares to hand it back.”

 
          
Mark
checked trigger action, firing pan and the spark of the flint. Then he rammed
down a charge of powder and ball. He slung Moxley’s rifle to
Bolly’s
saddle horn with a loop of rawhide thong, and helped Celia to mount and sit
sidewise on the mare’s back. Taking his own rifle by the balance in his left
hand and the bridle rein in the other, he led
Bolly
away.

 
          
“We’ll
not be gone longer than we need to grind the meal for next week’s eating,”
Celia called back to Mrs. Jarrett.

 
          
“See
that you aren’t,” boomed Mark’s father from the doorway, “else I’ll be coming
to see what’s keeping you.”

 
          
Celia
laughed at that, and to Mark it sounded like a cheerful, carefree laugh. Celia
was glad to go visiting, even three miles away. Mark could have wished that he
was as sure and complete a protection for her as she appeared to feel.

           
As they came out upon the road, a
wagon trundled along from the tavern. It was drawn by two horses and piled high
with goods under a brown canvas sheet well tied down. Two men sat together at
the front, one driving, the other holding a long brown gun upright with its
butt between his feet. They wore broad hats and rough clothes, and gave Mark
and Celia a friendly good day. Mark led
Bolly
along
beside the wagon, grateful for the company and that extra gun.

 
          
“Is
this the truth we hear from the landlord yonder, that Indians are out in these
parts?” asked the driver. “I had thought the Indians had long been pressed away
from this country and were hunting in new lands along the
Mississippi River
.”

 
          
“This
is but a straggling band, and we don’t tremble at them,” Mark replied, trying
to sound confident and casual. “Mr. Hollon felt that the news should be carried
along, that settlers elsewhere might be warned to keep a watch.”

 
          
“I
want no redskin imps scrambling and screeching around us,” said the man with
the gun. “Here in this wagon are all my friend and I possess in the world—
goods for sale to householders in the
Tennessee
settlements. We hope to make a proper
fortune for
ourselves,
and no shares with Indians or
other thieves. That’s why I carry this little popper here,” and he slapped the
gun’s long barrel with his palm. “She’s loaded and primed, ready to stand off
trouble.”

           
“And I have another piece, just
under the seat here,” added the driver. “We seek to start no warfare, young
sir, but if warfare starts, we’ll finish it the best way a good man can
manage.”

 
          
The
wagon rolled along, and Mark walked fast to lead
Bolly
in its company. They approached the mill, and the driver and his companion bade
them Godspeed and continued along the road, while Mark led
Bolly
up to the shed where the millstones waited to grind their corn.

 
          
Mark
saw that the door to Durwell’s living quarters was pierced with a loophole, and
that rough shutters hung half-open at the windows. Durwell came out and greeted
them as Mark unslung the bag of corn. Schneider, too, appeared and trotted to
lift the water gate. The wheel began to turn and the stones moved. Schneider
scooped out corn and fed it into the hopper. Mark tied
Bolly’s
halter to a railing and leaned against one of the upright posts that supported
the roof above the open space where the millstones worked, while Durwell
chatted with him and Celia.

 
          
“Did
you have aught of alarm last night?” Durwell asked.

 
          
“None
at all,” replied Mark, setting down his rifle butt. “I slept in my new
quarters, and I dreamed of eating apples.”

 
          
“Did
you so, Mark?” cried Celia. “So did I dream of apples, and of eating
them.
What might that signify?”

 
          
“Why,
probably that we will have good fruit on our orchard trees ere many more
seasons,” said Mark.

 
          
Durwell
grinned. “It might mean more than that, when a spruce lad and a fair maid
chance to dream the same thing,” he said.

 
          
Mark
felt embarrassed, and hid the feeling by unslinging the other rifle from
Bolly’s
saddle.

 
          
“Here,
sir, my father lends you this,” he said, handing it to Durwell. “And this
powder and shot as well. Pray heaven there’s no sudden need for shooting this
autumn.”

 
          
“Zooks,
’tis a handsome piece,” said Durwell, admiring the rifle. “But you won’t leave
yourselves short of guns?”

 
          
“Not
we,” Mark assured him. “That rifle belonged to Quill Moxley, and when he left
Bear Paw Gap we kept it for a remembrance of him.”

 
          
“And
now, as Tsukala thinks, he may be back at the Gap to reclaim it,” mused
Durwell. “I saw Moxley but the one time, briefly. If I should see him again
hereabout, I’ll give him both ends of his rifle, where he’ll sorely regret
them.”

 
          
He
walked into the closed part of the shed, where he and Schneider lived, and
through the open door Mark saw him place the rifle across deer antlers on the
wall, where two other guns also hung. Celia gazed upward at bushes along the
side of the mill pond, where berries gleamed ripely, and trotted there to pick
some. When Durwell came back into the open, he and Mark turned the conversation
to more peaceful matters.

 
          
Mark
said gratefully that the fall harvest everywhere seemed a plentiful one.
Durwell spoke on his part of good business at the mill. He ground meal for all
the homes around Bear Paw Gap, and his modest share of each load of corn was
enough to feed him and Bram Schneider and to sell to those who stopped on their
way through.

 
          
“Indeed,
I think I must begin to buy more corn from your family or from the others, and
perhaps grow a crop myself next year,” he said. “Travel grows ever more brisk
along this road, and the people in the wagons are eager for good, fresh-ground
meal. I’ve been thinking that I could set up as storekeeper as well as miller,
and do right well at it.”

 
          
“Ja,
storekeeping is goot,” contributed
Schneider from his post at the grinding stones. “Maybe I start to bake bread
and cake here. Many strangers would pay money for such.”

 
          
Celia
returned from the berry bushes. She had found broad leaves on a tulip tree, and
had fashioned them into a sort of basket with twigs for pins. This she had
filled to the top with huge, ripe blackberries.

           
“These are better, I think, than
those your mother and I have picked for jam,” she said to Mark. “Here, I
brought some for you, and for Mr. Durwell and Mr. Schneider, too.”

 
          
“Come,
let’s have a true feast,” invited Durwell. “In yonder is a pot of fine honey we
took from a bee tree, and we strained it but two nights ago. Celia’s berries
will taste sweeter than ever.”

 
          
They
went into the main room. Durwell put bowls out on the table and Celia divided
her berries into four portions. Durwell poured honey upon these, then took a
knife and cut slices from a round, crisp-crusted pone of corn bread. He brought
out spoons, and they carried the bowls out into the open mill shed and gave
Schneider a helping. All ate with good appetite, laughing and chattering
together. When they had finished, Celia carried the bowls and spoons to the dam
and knelt to wash them in the bright waters that raced to turn the wheel.
Durwell watched her, smiling.