The Crossing

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Clark had been standing quietly on the bank while I had scalped my first
redskin. Then he called Tom McChesney to him and questioned him closely
about our journey, the signs we had seen, and, finally, the news in the
Watauga settlements. While this was going on the others gathered round
them.

"What now?" asked Cowan, when he had finished.

"Back to Harrodstown," answered the Colonel, shortly.

There was a brief silence, followed by a hoarse murmur from a thick-set
man at the edge of the crowd, who shouldered his way to the centre of it.

"We set out to hunt a fight, and my pluck is to clean up. We ain't
finished 'em yet."

The man had a deep, coarse voice that was a piece with his roughness.

"I reckon this band ain't a-goin' to harry the station any more, McGary,"
cried Cowan.

"By Job, what did we come out for? Who'll take the trail with me?"

There were some who answered him, and straightway they began to quarrel
among themselves, filling the woods with a babel of voices. While I
stood listening to these disputes with a boy's awe of a man's quarrel,
what was my astonishment to feel a hand on my shoulder. It was Colonel
Clark's, and he was not paying the least attention to the dispute.

"Davy," said he, "you look as if you could make a fire."

"Yes, sir," I answered, gasping.

"Well," said he, "make one."

I lighted a piece of punk with the flint, and, wrapping it up in some dry
brush, soon had a blaze started. Looking up, I caught his eye on me
again.

"Mrs. McChesney," said Colonel Clark to Polly Ann, "you look as if you
could make johnny-cake. Have you any meal?"

"That I have," cried Polly Ann, "though it's fair mouldy. Davy, run and
fetch it."

I ran to the pack on the sorrel mare. When I returned Mr. Clark said:--

"That seems a handy boy, Mrs. McChesney."

"Handy!" cried Polly Ann, "I reckon he's more than handy. Didn't he save
my life twice on our way out here?"

"And how was that?" said the Colonel.

"Run and fetch some water, Davy," said Polly Ann, and straightway
launched forth into a vivid description of my exploits, as she mixed the
meal. Nay, she went so far as to tell how she came by me. The young
Colonel listened gravely, though with a gleam now and then in his blue
eyes. Leaning on his long rifle, he paid no manner of attention to the
angry voices near by,--which conduct to me was little short of the
marvellous.

"Now, Davy," said he, at length, "the rest of your history."

"There is little of it, sir," I answered. "I was born in the Yadkin
country, lived alone with my father, who was a Scotchman. He hated a man
named Cameron, took me to Charlestown, and left me with some kin of his
who had a place called Temple Bow, and went off to fight Cameron and the
Cherokees." There I gulped. "He was killed at Cherokee Ford, and--and I
ran away from Temple Bow, and found Polly Ann."

This time I caught something of surprise on the Colonel's face.

"By thunder, Davy," said he, "but you have a clean gift for brief
narrative. Where did you learn it?"

"My father was a gentleman once, and taught me to speak and read," I
answered, as I brought a flat piece of limestone for Polly Ann's baking.

"And what would you like best to be when you grow up, Davy?" he asked.

"Six feet," said I, so promptly that he laughed.

"Faith," said Polly Ann, looking at me comically, "he may be many things,
but I'll warrant he'll never be that."

I have often thought since that young Mr. Clark showed much of the wisdom
of the famous king of Israel on that day. Polly Ann cooked a piece of a
deer which one of the woodsmen had with him, and the quarrel died of
itself when we sat down to this and the johnny-cake. By noon we had taken
up the trace for Harrodstown, marching with scouts ahead and behind. Mr.
Clark walked mostly alone, seemingly wrapped in thought. At times he had
short talks with different men, oftenest--I noted with pride--with Tom
McChesney. And more than once when he halted he called me to him, my
answers to his questions seeming to amuse him. Indeed, I became a kind
of pet with the backwoodsmen, Cowan often flinging me to his shoulder as
he swung along. The pack was taken from the sorrel mare and divided
among the party, and Polly Ann made to ride that we might move the
faster.

It must have been the next afternoon, about four, that the rough stockade
of Harrodstown greeted our eyes as we stole cautiously to the edge of the
forest. And the sight of no roofs and spires could have been more
welcome than that of these logs and cabins, broiling in the midsummer
sun. At a little distance from the fort, a silent testimony of siege,
the stumpy, cleared fields were overgrown with weeds, tall and rank, the
corn choked. Nearer the stockade, where the keepers of the fort might
venture out at times, a more orderly growth met the eye. It was young
James Ray whom Colonel Clark singled to creep with our message to the
gates. At six, when the smoke was rising from the stone chimneys behind
the palisades, Ray came back to say that all was well. Then we went
forward quickly, hands waved a welcome above the logs, the great wooden
gates swung open, and at last we had reached the haven for which we had
suffered so much. Mangy dogs barked at our feet, men and women ran
forward joyfully to seize our hands and greet us.

And so we came to Kaintuckee.



CHAPTER X

HARRODSTOWN

The old forts like Harrodstown and Boonesboro and Logan's at St. Asaph's
have long since passed away. It is many, many years since I lived
through that summer of siege in Harrodstown, the horrors of it are faded
and dim, the discomforts lost to a boy thrilled with a new experience. I
have read in my old age the books of travellers in Kentucky, English and
French, who wrote much of squalor and strife and sin and little of those
qualities that go to the conquest of an empire and the making of a
people. Perchance my own pages may be colored by gratitude and love for
the pioneers amongst whom I found myself, and thankfulness to God that we
had reached them alive.

I know not how many had been cooped up in the little fort since the early
spring, awaiting the chance to go back to their weed-choked clearings.
The fort at Harrodstown was like an hundred others I have since seen, but
sufficiently surprising to me then. Imagine a great parallelogram made
of log cabins set end to end, their common outside wall being the wall of
the fort, and loopholed. At the four corners of the parallelogram the
cabins jutted out, with ports in the angle in order to give a flanking
fire in case the savages reached the palisade. And then there were huge
log gates with watch-towers on either sides where sentries sat day and
night scanning the forest line. Within the fort was a big common dotted
with forest trees, where such cattle as had been saved browsed on the
scanty grass. There had been but the one scrawny horse before our
arrival.

And the settlers! How shall I describe them as they crowded around us
inside the gate? Some stared at us with sallow faces and eyes brightened
by the fever, yet others had the red glow of health. Many of the men
wore rough beards, unkempt, and yellow, weather-worn hunting shirts,
often stained with blood. The barefooted women wore sunbonnets and loose
homespun gowns, some of linen made from nettles, while the children
swarmed here and there and everywhere in any costume that chance had
given them. All seemingly talking at once, they plied us with question
after question of the trace, the Watauga settlements, the news in the
Carolinys, and how the war went.

"A lad is it, this one," said an Irish voice near me, "and a woman! The
dear help us, and who'd 'ave thought to see a woman come over the
mountain this year! Where did ye find them, Bill Cowan?"

"Near the Crab Orchard, and the lad killed and sculped a six-foot brave."

"The Saints save us! And what'll be his name?"

"Davy," said my friend.

"Is it Davy? Sure his namesake killed a giant, too."

"And is he come along, also?" said another. His shy blue eyes and stiff
blond hair gave him a strange appearance in a hunting shirt.

"Hist to him! Who will ye be talkin' about, Poulsson? Is it King David
ye mane?"

There was a roar of laughter, and this was my introduction to Terence
McCann and Swein Poulsson. The fort being crowded, we were put into a
cabin with Terence and Cowan and Cowan's wife--a tall, gaunt woman with a
sharp tongue and a kind heart--and her four brats, "All hugemsmug
together," as Cowan said. And that night we supped upon dried buffalo
meat and boiled nettle-tops, for of such was the fare in Harrodstown that
summer.

"Tom McChesney kept his faith." One other man was to keep his faith with
the little community--George Rogers Clark. And I soon learned that
trustworthiness is held in greater esteem in a border community than
anywhere else. Of course, the love of the frontier was in the grain of
these men. But what did they come back to? Day after day would the sun
rise over the forest and beat down upon the little enclosure in which we
were penned. The row of cabins leaning against the stockade marked the
boundaries of our diminutive world. Beyond them, invisible, lurked a
relentless foe. Within, the greater souls alone were calm, and a man's
worth was set down to a hair's breadth. Some were always to be found
squatting on their door-steps cursing the hour which had seen them depart
for this land; some wrestled and fought on the common, for a fist fight
with a fair field and no favor was a favorite amusement of the
backwoodsmen. My big friend, Cowan, was the champion of these, and often
of an evening the whole of the inhabitants would gather near the spring
to see him fight those who had the courage to stand up to him. His
muscles were like hickory wood, and I have known a man insensible for a
quarter of an hour after one of his blows. Strangely enough, he never
fought in anger, and was the first to the spring for a gourd of water
after the fight was over. But Tom McChesney was the best wrestler of the
lot, and could make a wider leap than any other man in Harrodstown.

Tom's reputation did not end there, for he became one of the two
bread-winners of the station. I would better have said meat-winners. Woe
be to the incautious who, lulled by a week of fancied security, ventured
out into the dishevelled field for a little food! In the early days of
the siege man after man had gone forth for game, never to return. Until
Tom came, one only had been successful,--that lad of seventeen, whose
achievements were the envy of my boyish soul, James Ray. He slept in the
cabin next to Cowan's, and long before the dawn had revealed the forest
line had been wont to steal out of the gates on the one scrawny horse the
Indians had left them, gain the Salt River, and make his way thence
through the water to some distant place where the listening savages could
not hear his shot. And now Tom took his turn. Often did I sit with
Polly Ann till midnight in the sentry's tower, straining my ears for the
owl's hoot that warned us of his coming. Sometimes he was empty-handed,
but sometimes a deer hung limp and black across his saddle, or a pair of
turkeys swung from his shoulder.

"Arrah, darlin'," said Terence to Polly Ann, "'tis yer husband and James
is the jools av the fort. Sure I niver loved me father as I do thim."

I would have given kingdoms in those days to have been seventeen and
James Ray. When he was in the fort I dogged his footsteps, and listened
with a painful yearning to the stories of his escapes from the roving
bands. And as many a character is watered in its growth by hero-worship,
so my own grew firmer in the contemplation of Ray's resourcefulness. My
strange life had far removed me from lads of my own age, and he took a
fancy to me, perhaps because of the very persistence of my devotion to
him. I cleaned his gun, filled his powder flask, and ran to do his every
bidding.

I used in the hot summer days to lie under the elm tree and listen to the
settlers' talk about a man named Henderson, who had bought a great part
of Kentucky from the Indians, and had gone out with Boone to found
Boonesboro some two years before. They spoke of much that I did not
understand concerning the discountenance by Virginia of these claims,
speculating as to whether Henderson's grants were good. For some of them
held these grants, and others Virginia grants--a fruitful source of
quarrel between them. Some spoke, too, of Washington and his ragged
soldiers going up and down the old colonies and fighting for a freedom
which there seemed little chance of getting. But their anger seemed to
blaze most fiercely when they spoke of a mysterious British general named
Hamilton, whom they called "the ha'r buyer," and who from his stronghold
in the north country across the great Ohio sent down these hordes of
savages to harry us. I learned to hate Hamilton with the rest, and
pictured him with the visage of a fiend. We laid at his door every
outrage that had happened at the three stations, and put upon him the
blood of those who had been carried off to torture in the Indian villages
of the northern forests. And when--amidst great excitement--a spent
runner would arrive from Boonesboro or St. Asaph's and beg Mr. Clark for
a squad, it was commonly with the first breath that came into his body
that he cursed Hamilton.

So the summer wore away, while we lived from hand to mouth on such scanty
fare as the two of them shot and what we could venture to gather in the
unkempt fields near the gates. A winter of famine lurked ahead, and men
were goaded near to madness at the thought of clearings made and corn
planted in the spring within reach of their hands, as it were, and they
might not harvest it. At length, when a fortnight had passed, and Tom
and Ray had gone forth day after day without sight or fresh sign of
Indians, the weight lifted from our hearts. There were many things that
might yet be planted and come to maturity before the late Kentucky
frosts.

The pressure within the fort, like a flood, opened the gates of it,
despite the sturdily disapproving figure of a young man who stood silent
under the sentry box, leaning on his Deckard. He was Colonel George
Rogers Clark,[1] Commander-in-chief of the backwoodsmen of Kentucky,
whose power was reenforced by that strange thing called an education. It
was this, no doubt, gave him command of words when he chose to use them.

[1] It appears that Mr. Clark had not yet received the title of
Colonel, though he held command.--EDITOR.



"Faith," said Terence, as we passed him, "'tis a foine man he is, and a
gintleman born. Wasn't it him gathered the Convintion here in
Harrodstown last year that chose him and another to go to the Virginia
legislatoor? And him but a lad, ye might say. The divil fly away wid
his caution! Sure the redskins is as toired as us, and gone home to the
wives and childher, bad cess to thim."

And so the first day the gates were opened we went into the fields a
little way; and the next day a little farther. They had once seemed to
me an unexplored and forbidden country as I searched them with my eyes
from the sentry boxes. And yet I felt a shame to go with Polly Ann and
Mrs. Cowan and the women while James Ray and Tom sat with the guard of
men between us and the forest line. Like a child on a holiday, Polly Ann
ran hither and thither among the stalks, her black hair flying and a song
on her lips.

"Soon we'll be having a little home of our own, Davy," she cried; "Tom
has the place chose on a knoll by the river, and the land is rich with
hickory and pawpaw. I reckon we may be going there next week."

Caution being born into me with all the strength of a vice, I said
nothing. Whereupon she seized me in her strong hands and shook me.

"Ye little imp!" said she, while the women paused in their work to laugh
at us.

"The boy is right, Polly Ann," said Mrs. Harrod, "and he's got more sense
than most of the men in the fort."

"Ay, that he has," the gaunt Mrs. Cowan put in, eying me fiercely, while
she gave one of her own offsprings a slap that sent him spinning.

Whatever Polly Ann might have said would have been to the point, but it
was lost, for just then the sound of a shot came down the wind, and a
half a score of women stampeded through the stalks, carrying me down like
a reed before them. When I staggered to my feet Polly Ann and Mrs. Cowan
and Mrs. Harrod were standing alone. For there was little of fear in
those three.

"Shucks!" said Mrs. Cowan, "I reckon it's that Jim Ray shooting at a
mark," and she began to pick nettles again.

"Vimmen is a shy critter," remarked Swein Poulsson, coming up. I had a
shrewd notion that he had run with the others.

"Wimmen!" Mrs. Cowan fairly roared. "Wimmen! Tell us how ye went in
March with the boys to fight the varmints at the Sugar Orchard, Swein!"

We all laughed, for we loved him none the less. His little blue eyes
were perfectly solemn as he answered:--

"Ve send you fight Injuns mit your tongue, Mrs. Cowan. Then we haf no
more troubles."

"Land of Canaan!" cried she, "I reckon I could do more harm with it than
you with a gun."

There were many such false alarms in the bright days following, and never
a bullet sped from the shadow of the forest. Each day we went farther
afield, and each night trooped merrily in through the gates with hopes of
homes and clearings rising in our hearts--until the motionless figure of
the young Virginian met our eye. It was then that men began to scoff at
him behind his back, though some spoke with sufficient backwoods
bluntness to his face. And yet he gave no sign of anger or impatience.
Not so the other leaders. No sooner did the danger seem past than bitter
strife sprang up within the walls. Even the two captains were mortal
enemies. One was Harrod, a tall, spare, dark-haired man of great
endurance,--a type of the best that conquered the land for the nation;
the other, that Hugh McGary of whom I have spoken, coarse and brutal, if
you like, but fearless and a leader of men withal.

A certain Sunday morning, I remember, broke with a cloud-flecked sky, and
as we were preparing to go afield with such ploughs as could be got
together (we were to sow turnips) the loud sounds of a quarrel came from
the elm at the spring. With one accord men and women and children
flocked thither, and as we ran we heard McGary's voice above the rest.
Worming my way, boylike, through the crowd, I came upon McGary and Harrod
glaring at each other in the centre of it.

"By Job! there's no devil if I'll stand back from my clearing and waste
the rest of the summer for the fears of a pack of cowards. I'll take a
posse and march to Shawanee Springs this day, and see any man a fair
fight that tries to stop me."

"And who's in command here?" demanded Harrod.

"I am, for one," said McGary, with an oath, "and my corn's on the ear.
I've held back long enough, I tell you, and I'll starve this winter for
you nor any one else."

Harrod turned.

"Where's Clark?" he said to Bowman.

"Clark!" roared McGary, "Clark be d--d. Ye'd think he was a woman." He
strode up to Harrod until their faces almost touched, and his voice shook
with the intensity of his anger. "By G--d, you nor Clark nor any one
else will stop me, I say!" He swung around and faced the people. "Come
on, boys! We'll fetch that corn, or know the reason why."

A responding murmur showed that the bulk of them were with him. Weary of
the pent-up life, longing for action, and starved for a good meal, the
anger of his many followers against Clark and Harrod was nigh as great as
his. He started roughly to shoulder his way out, and whether from
accident or design Captain Harrod slipped in front of him, I never knew.
The thing that followed happened quickly as the catching of my breath. I
saw McGary powdering his pan, and Harrod his, and felt the crowd giving
back like buffalo. All at once the circle had vanished, and the two men
were standing not five paces apart with their rifles clutched across
their bodies, each watching, catlike, for the other to level. It was a
cry that startled us--and them. There was a vision of a woman flying
across the common, and we saw the dauntless Mrs. Harrod snatching her
husband's gun from his resisting hands. So she saved his life and
McGary's.

At this point Colonel Clark was seen coming from the gate. When he got
to Harrod and McGary the quarrel blazed up again, but now it was between
the three of them, and Clark took Harrod's rifle from Mrs. Harrod and
held it. However, it was presently decided that McGary should wait one
more day before going to his clearing, whereupon the gates were opened,
the picked men going ahead to take station as a guard, and soon we were
hard at work, ploughing here and mowing there, and in another place
putting seed in the ground: in the cheer of the work hardships were
forgotten, and we paused now and again to laugh at some sally of Terence
McCann's or odd word of Swein Poulsson's. As the day wore on to
afternoon a blue haze--harbinger of autumn--settled over fort and forest.
Bees hummed in the air as they searched hither and thither amongst the
flowers, or shot straight as a bullet for a distant hive. But presently
a rifle cracked, and we raised our heads.

"Hist!" said Terence, "the bhoys on watch is that warlike! Whin there's
no redskins to kill they must be wastin' good powdher on a three."

I leaped upon a stump and scanned the line of sentries between us and the
woods; only their heads and shoulders appeared above the rank growth. I
saw them looking from one to another questioningly, some shouting words I
could not hear. Then I saw some running; and next, as I stood there
wondering, came another crack, and then a volley like the noise of a
great fire licking into dry wood, and things that were not bees humming
round about. A distant man in a yellow hunting shirt stumbled, and was
drowned in the tangle as in water. Around me men dropped plough-handles
and women baskets, and as we ran our legs grew numb and our bodies cold
at a sound which had haunted us in dreams by night--the war-whoop. The
deep and guttural song of it rose and fell with a horrid fierceness. An
agonized voice was in my ears, and I halted, ashamed. It was Polly
Ann's.

"Davy!" she cried, "Davy, have ye seen Tom?"

Two men dashed by. I seized one by the fringe of his shirt, and he flung
me from my feet. The other leaped me as I knelt.

"Run, ye fools!" he shouted. But we stood still, with yearning eyes
staring back through the frantic forms for a sight of Tom's.

"I'll go back!" I cried, "I'll go back for him. Do you run to the fort."
For suddenly I seemed to forget my fear, nor did even the hideous notes
of the scalp halloo disturb me. Before Polly Ann could catch me I had
turned and started, stumbled,--I thought on a stump,--and fallen headlong
among the nettles with a stinging pain in my leg. Staggering to my feet,
I tried to run on, fell again, and putting down my hand found it smeared
with blood. A man came by, paused an instant while his eye caught me,
and ran on again. I shall remember his face and name to my dying day;
but there is no reason to put it down here. In a few seconds' space as I
lay I suffered all the pains of captivity and of death by torture, that
cry of savage man an hundred times more frightful than savage beast
sounding in my ears, and plainly nearer now by half the first distance.
Nearer, and nearer yet--and then I heard my name called. I was lifted
from the ground, and found myself in the lithe arms of Polly Ann.

"Set me down!" I screamed, "set me down!" and must have added some of the
curses I had heard in the fort. But she clutched me tightly (God bless
the memory of those frontier women!), and flew like a deer toward the
gates. Over her shoulder I glanced back. A spare three hundred yards
away in a ragged line a hundred red devils were bounding after us with
feathers flying and mouths open as they yelled. Again I cried to her to
set me down; but though her heart beat faster and her breath came
shorter, she held me the tighter. Second by second they gained on us,
relentlessly. Were we near the fort? Hoarse shouts answered the
question, but they seemed distant--too distant. The savages were
gaining, and Polly Ann's breath quicker still. She staggered, but the
brave soul had no thought of faltering. I had a sight of a man on a
plough horse with dangling harness coming up from somewhere, of the man
leaping off, of ourselves being pitched on the animal's bony back and
clinging there at the gallop, the man running at the side. Shots
whistled over our heads, and here was the brown fort. Its big gates
swung together as we dashed through the narrowed opening. Then, as he
lifted us off, I knew that the man who had saved us was Tom himself. The
gates closed with a bang, and a patter of bullets beat against them like
rain.

Through the shouting and confusion came a cry in a voice I knew, now
pleading, now commanding.

"Open, open! For God's sake open!"