Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1966 Read online

  BATTLE at Bear Paw Gap

  MANLY WADE WELLMAN

  ALSO BY MANLY WADE WELLMAN

  Flag on the Levee

  Young Squire Morgan

  Lights Over Skeleton Ridge

  The Ghost Battalion

  Ride Rebels!

  Appomattox Road

  Third String Center

  Rifles at Ramsour’s Mill

  Battle for King’s Mountain

  Clash on the Catawba

  The South Fork Rangers

  The River Pirates

  Master of Scare Hollow

  The Great Riverboat Race

  Mystery at Bear Paw Gap

  Specter of Bear Paw Gap

  IVES WASHBURN, INC.

  NEW YORK

  IVES WASHBURN, INC., Publishers

  750 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017

  BATTLE AT BEAR PAW GAP

  COPYRIGHT © 1966 BY MANLY WADE WELLMAN

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce

  this book, or parts thereof, in any form, except for

  the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 66-23422

  for

  Nancy Butler “Look in thy heart, and write! . . .

  Contents

  CHAPTER I

  CHAPTER II

  CHAPTER III

  CHAPTER IV

  CHAPTER V

  CHAPTER VI

  CHAPTER VII

  CHAPTER VIII

  CHAPTER IX

  CHAPTER X

  CHAPTER XI

  CHAPTER XII

  CHAPTER XIII

  CHAPTER XIV

  CHAPTER XV

  CHAPTER I

  The Mill in the Forest

  The TREES and cliffs resounded with the flat busy sound of axes, there by the Black Willow River where the settlers of the Bear Paw Gap region gathered to build a grist mill and start it to grinding corn.

  Young Mark Jarrett swung powerfully to split the butt of an oak log. He shoved a wedge into the split, worried his axe free and swung again with the flat back of the blade, to drive the wedge deeper. All around Mark in the bright September afternoon were his kinsmen and neighbors. Counting himself and his cousin Esau, who at twenty was a year older than Mark, there were an even dozen stout workmen in homespun hunting shirts and deerskin leggings and moccasins. Women and children were at hand, also busy, another dozen or so. And only five months earlier, in April 1792, Mark and his parents and his little brother Will had first come to seek a home in this pass of the wild North Carolina mountains.

  “Are you almost finished, son?” cried tall Hugh Jarrett, stooping to gather four thick wooden slabs in his mighty arms. “When you have riven that tree, ’twill be enough to finish with.”

  “I’ll fetch along the rest of the slabs, Father,” promised Mark, driving in a second wedge. The tough oak wood split loudly.

  The mill would belong to Simon Durwell, who in August had taken title here where a creek tumbled down Jarrett’s Ridge from the northward, flowed under a rough wooden bridge on the road to Tennessee, and emptied into the Black Willow. Durwell’s friends had come, from Bear Paw Gap where the Jarretts had homesteaded and Mark’s Uncle Mace Hollon kept a tavern and a smithy; from the far side of Jarrett’s Ridge, where the Ramseys, the Sheltons, the Laphams lived ; and from three miles west, where Captain Leland Stoke, his wife and his son and daughter-in-law had built snugly in the grotto called Trap Cave. The men put finishing touches to the mill house and the dam, while the women prepared a bountiful evening meal and the smaller children helped as they could.

  Mark paused in his labors and looked toward the cooking fires across the creek. He saw his mother Anne Jarrett, dark-haired and vigorous, and his aunt Sarah, and slender, blonde Celia Vesper who had been adopted by the Jarretts along with Celia’s little cousins Alice and Anthony. Celia waved a hand to greet Mark. He waved back, and returned to splitting each half of the log again.

  “I’ll help you, Mark, and get these pieces to the dam that much sooner,” volunteered his stocky cousin Esau, approaching. Esau was broad and dark-haired where Mark was sinewy-lean and tawny. Each made haste to divide his half of the log, then each took two slabs and bore them toward the creek.

  That creek was stoutly dammed. Two logs of locust wood, slow to soak and crumble, had been set across from bank to bank, five feet apart, and a close- set row of upright poles driven along each log on the upstream side. Into the space between had been heaped big stones, with earth packed between and upon them, and the whole mass solidified by pounding with the square end of a log. On the bank, somewhat below, stood the shedlike mill structure, partially open toward the dam. At the other side was a tight leanto of logs where Stoke and his helper, the German Bram Schneider, would live. The whole structure had a roof of stout chestnut shingles. The dam itself rose more than the height of a man, holding back the gathered waters of the creek, and at the end next to the mill house a low spillway was closed by a gatelike arrangement of stout planks cleated together and set in a framework, to slide up or down as necessary.

  Mark remembered early adventures among these wooded heights and shadowed streams, when wolves howled and trees crowded close by night, and danger was a near neighbor. But he remembered, too, that much of the danger had been imaginary; it had been an effort by the backwoods swindlers, Quill Moxley and Epps Emmondson, who had wanted to scare the Jarretts away and have Bear Paw Gap for themselves. Once bravely faced, the weird secrets had been unmasked as trickery, and Moxley and Emmondson had been exposed and sent away to stand trial.

  Three neighbors from across Jarrett’s Ridge, Seth Ramsey and tall, knobby Joseph Shelton and Philip Latham, arranged the slabs Mark had split like a footwalk of boards at the top of the dam. Captain Stoke’s son Michael plied an auger to pierce the slabs, and through the holes stakes were driven into the earth of the dam. Below the spillway, Stoke and Durwell fitted on a troughlike flume. This had been made by Tsukala, the Cherokee medicine man who had been the settlers’ friend and advisor from the first. Tsukala had split a log and hollowed one half with coals of fire, like an Indian canoe, then scooped away the burnt wood to make a channel for water.

  “All done here,” announced Ramsey, straightening his wiry little body and mopping his cheerful face. “What next, friends?”

  “The wheel is next,” Simon Durwell replied. He came up from the channel to where the great wooden wheel lay. It was some six feet in diameter, made of strong oak timbers that rayed out from a central hub of spokes ressembling iron. Planks were nailed from spoke to spoke to hold them rigid, and each spoke was furnished at the end with a bucketlike arrangement to catch the water. Mark and Esau, with Mark’s father and Joseph Shelton, joined Durwell to stand around the wheel.

  “Ready with the axle?” called Mr. Jarrett, and Ramsey and Michael Stoke fetched it, a long, massive rod of iron. “Now, up with the wheel on its rim.”

  Willing hands raised the wheel. Ramsey guided the axle through the central ring. Mace Hollon came, studied the fit, and from the pocket of his smith’s apron produced a few small wedgelike bits of iron. With his heavy, short-handled hammer he drove these in, on both sides between axle and collar, binding the whole into a rigid fabric.

  “ ’Tis solid,” he pronounced. “You may set it in place.”

  They bore the wheel to the lower side of the dam, where on either side of the gated spillway thick supports of mortared stones had been raised. On the tops of these other metal collars were set, into which the ends of the axle slid. When the wheel was centered below the log flume, Mace Hollon set iron pins through holes in the axle ends to keep
the wheel turning where it was set. Then the wheel was connected to the mill mechanism inside the shed, with cogs that Mace Hollon had hammered out at his forge. He inspected again, and peered at the two massive millstones hung in place.

  “Up with the water gate, and let’s see how it works!” boomed out Mark’s father. “Do you see to it, Mark and Esau.”

  Gladly the two climbed the dam. Catching hold of the gate, they hoisted it in its frame. The water that had risen in the pond burst through, rushed down the flume, and the wheel began to turn with a steady, clanking sweep.

  “All we need now is corn to grind,” Mark heard Durwell say.

  “Corn is at hand,” spoke up Mark’s mother. “Celia, fetch hither a bag of it, please.”

  “Then the mill begins its work this first minute,” said Durwell, taking the sack and trickling shelled corn into the hopper above the stones. All of them watched, then applauded as a stream of bright meal came out below into a bushel measure set ready.

  “Look!” squealed Jimmy Ramsey, pointing. “A panther!”

  From the inner door to the leanto strolled a sleek, dark creature, waving a long tail and looking with wide green eyes at the noisy millstones.

  “Nay, Jim, ’tis just Mr. Durwell’s cat,” Ramsey reassured his son. “Gentle and friendly, for all his bigness.”

  All the children watched the cat. Its thick fur was shiny black, except for big white front paws like mittens, and a white expanse of breast, like a genteel shirt front. The cat was big. Mark judged that it might weigh twenty pounds, and its body and legs looked powerfully graceful. Plump Bram Schneider, Dur- well’s German helper, stooped to stroke the massive round head.

  “Ja, ist gut katz,” he grinned. “Goot cat. Ve buy him from a vagon passing through, for a silver shilling. Need him to keep away rats and mice.”

  Tsukala stood gazing with interest. He wore moccasins, a breech clout of red cloth, and a sleeveless shirt of buckskin, laced up in front. Between his black braids of hair his dark face was grave.

  “See,” he said, “he looks men in the eye. Brave animal.”

  And the cat returned Tsukala’s stare with quiet assurance.

  “Won’t he run off?” asked little Alice Vesper, also venturing to stroke the smooth fur.

  "Nein ” said Schneider. “I put butter on his paws. He vash it off, then he know this is his home. He vill stay here.”

  “What’s his name?” Alice asked, but Schneider shook his head.

  “Ve haf not gif him a name yet.”

  “Wessah,” said Tsukala suddenly.

  Mark looked at his friend, and so did Schneider. “Votyou say, Tsukala?” Schneider asked.

  “Cherokees know cats,” replied Tsukala. “Name them Wessah.”

  “But what does that mean?” Mark asked.

  “Means him.” Tsukala pointed to the cat. “Cherokee name for him.”

  “And a good one,” approved Durwell, looking up from his grinding. “Thanks, Tsukala, for naming our cat. Wessah he is, from this time forth.”

  Tsukala squatted beside the cat, which still met his gaze unblinkingly. Slowly Tsukala’s brown hand smoothed the dark fur. “Wessah,” said Tsukala again. “See, he knows his name.”

  Wessah purred loudly. The children clustered around. “How, Tsukala,” asked Will Jarrett, “doth he understand you?”

  “Wessah talks Cherokee,” was Tsukala’s grave answer. “Hear him.”

  The children listened and the older watchers smiled. “Why, he only purrs,” argued Jimmy Ramsey’s twin sister Becky.

  “No,” insisted Tsukala, “he counts, like Cherokee*. Says, taladu nungi, taladu nungi.”

  Becky and Jimmy stooped with ears close to Wessah. “Aye, he says that,” agreed Jimmy excitedly.

  "Taladu nungi ” said Tsukala again. “He counts— sixteen four, sixteen four.”

  “Sixteen four,” echoed Anthony Vesper. “What are those numbers?”

  “Ask Wessah,” Tsukala bade him.

  Meanwhile, Mrs. Jarrett and Celia had opened another sack of shelled corn, and Durwell fed it into the hopper. The meal piled into the measure. Joseph Shelton’s plump wife Tabitha took a pinch in her fingers, looked at it, then put it on her tongue.

  “La, neighbors, ’tis as yellow as gold and as sweet as honey,” she reported. “What a noble pone of bread this will make.”

  “Then let’s take enough to bake now,” suggested Mrs. Jarrett. “Fresh corn bread will go well with venison collops and sallet greens.”

  With a wooden scoop she dipped meal into a kettle. Mark strolled across the docklike platform and gazed at the turning, splashing wheel. He mounted the dam and gazed above the surface of the pond at the running stream and the trees on the slope above.

  His father strode after him. “Ha, Mark, let me see if I read your thoughts,” he said. “You recall how we first came here, and you think that, though ’twas only a short while ago, yet it seems long.”

  “Sir, you read my thoughts exactly.”

  “Because I have thought the same. ’Twas sunny April then, and now sunny September. But five months gone, our first day here, we felt that ill luck homesteaded with us.”

  “Aye, so we did.” Mark’s thoughts traveled back to that day, when his father had fallen from a cliff to break a leg and several ribs. But Tsukala had come; became a friend and helper. And that first day had seen the Jarretts plant the beginnings of their home among the tree-thronged mountains.

  “Oft have I said, Mark, how I esteemed your strength and sense back then,” his father said. “While I was helpless, you played the man here. And you’ve played the man since, you’ve become a strong builder and a wise hunter. And these other families thank you for how you’ve taught their small children their letters.”

  “I try to do what’s needed,” Mark said, embarrassed at this warm praise. “Mayhap I’ve helped with the beginnings. But now, sir, I look at this mill and hear its busy voice. To me it seems another assurance of a strong settlement here at Bear Paw Gap.”

  His father peered toward the road that ran between the mill and the river. A big wagon lumbered there, drawn westward by two stout horses. The wagon was piled high with goods under a canvas sheet, and a man and a woman sat in front. The man waved his whip in greeting, then reined in. Mark and his father strolled down from the dam to the road.

  “Give you good day,” said the driver. He was ruddy-faced under his broad hat. “We stopped to look at this mill. ’Tis the first we’ve seen since we left Pine Fort.”

  “It began its work this very hour,” Mr. Jarrett said. “We’re to have some of its first grinding at our supper. Will you and your lady hitch up and join us? All travelers are welcome at Bear Paw Gap.

  “Our thanks, but we must travel more miles ’ere sunset, the driver returned. “We’ve taken land for a farm in Tennessee, and burn to get there. Yet I’ll say, ’tis heartening to see mills and taverns and homes along this stretch. Had I not already my land yonder, I’d be sore tempted to stop and live here.”

  They said good-byes, and the wagon rolled on. Mark and his father returned along the path to the mill.

  Around the shed the shrill, excited cries of the children rose.

  “Mark!” Will greeted his big brother. “Wessah suddenly ran from among us. He climbed that tree by the shed, and sprang upon the roof.”

  “Nor will he come down, though we call him,” added Becky Ramsey.

  Mark looked upward. High on the ridgepole sat Wessah, motionlessly attentive. His round head turned away toward the south, and he seemed to gaze as though on guard duty.

  “Here comes Tsukala,” Becky said. “Tsukala, speak to Wessah in the Cherokee. Say that we want him to come down and play with us.”

  Tsukala smiled gravely. “Ahi, Wessah!” he called.

  Wessah turned his head to spare a moment’s glance.

  Then he returned his attention to whatever he watched far away.

  “He will not come,” Tsukala told the children. “H
e sees something, over there in the trees.”

  “Belike he watches that wagon going west,” suggested Mark, but Tsukala shook his head.

  “Wagon went on road,” said Tsukala. “Wessah sees something down there, across the river.”

  Will also looked riverward. “I see nothing. Perhaps if I climbed—”

  “Nay, Will, stay off the roof,” his father ordered.

  “But what doth Wessah watch so closely?” Anthony Vesper wondered.

  “He will not tell,” said Mark. “But come, I think supper is nearly ready.”

  All the children raced toward the cooking fires. Mark and Tsukala gazed again at the sentinel cat on the roof. Mark, too, wondered what Wessah spied and studied so raptly.

  CHAPTER II

  A Hint of Peril

  Later that week, Mark and Celia loaded the. Jarrett horses, Oscar and Bolly, with sacks of corn and headed for the mill.

  “You vant to eat goot this vinter,” Schneider greeted them, white-aproned and smiling. “Come, ve grind it up.”

  Mark went to raise the water gate and start the wheel, and Schneider pulled the lever that engaged the gears. He poured corn into the hopper, and meal came out to fall into the bushel.

  “The biggest crop of all is ripening in our fields and the fields of the others,” reminded Celia. “Mr. Ramsey hath bidden us all to a husking day after tomorrow evening.”

  “Our mill can run busy for months,” nodded Schneider. “For a man or woman or hungry child, must be a peck of meal a week. A bushel a month— twelve bushels a year—now, ve count how many people here . . .”

  “Twenty-six,” Celia told him. “Twenty-seven, with Tsukala.”

  “Dot makes tree hoondred bushels of meal and more,” Schneider reckoned. “Und more beyond that, for guests at Mr. Hollon’s tavern, and some for horses and cows. But it is a goot harvest, ja”