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.
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