Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1966 Read online

  “When did he climb, Tsukala?”

  “More times than one, I think. Wessah watched from the roof. Wessah knew he was in this tree, looking. See, Big Foot left his gun here to climb.”

  He laid his palm on the trunk, and Mark saw a slight nick in the bark, where a gun sight had leaned. “Anyway, he didn’t climb up there to shoot at us,” Mark offered.

  “No. He counted white men to know their strength. Maybe shooting will come later. But he came here, left a trail for others.”

  And Tsukala pointed to where, several paces away, had been placed another flat rock, with a smaller piece upon it and a pebble on that.

  “Three rocks together,” Mark said. “What is that sign?”

  “Big Foot marked a place for his friends to gather.” Tsukala paced carefully toward the little pile of stones for a closer look.

  But Mark, staring upward among the branches of the oak, spied a tiny bit of bright red. At once he leaned his rifle against the bark, setting its sight where the prowler had set his. Then he gathered himself, leaped high and caught a branch. Nimbly he swung himself into the tree and climbed. He found the little red thing, a tuft of dyed feathers that was caught in a roughness on the main trunk. Digging it out with his thumbnail, he slid down again.

  Quickly he went to join Tsukala, who was examining the ground where the stones were piled.

  “Others came here,” Tsukala reported. “More moccasin tracks—five men, I think, maybe more. They had guns. See, one man set his gun there.” He looked at the feather tuft in Mark’s hand, and his eyes grew suddenly wide. “Where did you find that?”

  “It was up in the oak, where that big-footed man climbed.”

  Tsukala took the feathers. His face fell into a creased expression of concern.

  “Quick,” he whispered. “We go away from here. Now I know who Big Foot is.”

  “Who?”

  “Cherokee. A bad Cherokee. Come, I say.”

  In swift silence, Tsukala went back toward the east, Mark at his heels. They came to where the drinking place was, and beyond, to where a great fallen log made a rough bridge over the water. Tsukala looked up and down the river.

  “Stand ready with your gun,” he told Mark. “I go across.”

  Mark waited, finger on trigger, until Tsukala had walked along the log to the far side. There, Tsukala laid an arrow to his bowstring, and jerked with his head for Mark to follow. Then they headed to the road, and on the far side of it Tsukala squatted. Mark knelt beside him.

  “I do not think they will come here,” said Tsukala. “Now, we talk.”

  “Aye, tell me how you know that bad Cherokee.”

  Tsukala still held the feathers in his hand. “He always wore these. Red feathers, on his belt and his leggings. The feathers were his medicine, he said. His name is Jipi. His heart was a bad one, to all men.”

  Tsukala’s mouth was narrow, his mouth hard, as though he remembered old, bitter things.

  “It was a long time back,” he continued. “Back when your people fought the redcoats. The Cherokees took council. Some said, it was a white men’s war and the Cherokees should not fight. Others said, there was old friendship with the redcoats, that the

  Cherokees should help them.”

  “Some Cherokees did fight against us,” Mark said. “There was bitter fighting in 1776—sixteen years ago.”

  “I was medicine man then, with a small band that lived near this place,” Tsukala went on with his tale. “We wondered if it must be peace or war, and the old chiefs asked me to pray to Those Above, to learn the truth. I prayed, and in my heart I heard an answer. I told them that we must keep peace.”

  “Would that all men kept peace,” Mark could not help saying.

  “Ahi, young warrior, you say wise words.” Tsukala frowned at the twist of red feathers. “All chiefs but one said I was wise. But Jipi was a chief among us. He was our biggest warrior, our strongest. Some young men followed him and said he was brave and wise. Jipi said he, too, had prayed. He said we must fight both sides—your people and the redcoats.” “Make war on all white men?”

  “Yuh. He said that then white men would leave this land. The Cherokees would be strong again, in their own place. The other chiefs heard him. They said they would do what he said. They made a war party to fight some redcoats, off there,” and Tsukala stretched his arm to hold his palm toward the northeast.

  “Then?” prompted Mark.

  “We fought them, but they were many, and their hearts were brave. They killed some of us, and the others came back to camp. But Jipi had run away from that fight, when it began. We found him at camp, taking things—furs, beads, weapons. A chief’s wife saw him with her man’s tomahawk, and when she said he stole it, he struck her with it and killed her. We came and found them like that. Jipi had talked with two tongues, sent the others to fight so that he could rob them.”

  “Rob his own friends?” demanded Mark.

  “We saw him with the things in his hands, and the woman dead on the ground. We tied him up, while the chiefs talked of how to punish him. But Jipi was very strong. He broke the lines that tied him, and ran away. From that day, the Cherokees called Jipi an enemy, no longer a Cherokee, but worse than a snake, worse than a bad spirit.”

  Mark digested the story. “And now you think he has come back, for some evil,” he said at last.

  “Yuh, Jipi was a big man, and the tracks are big. The red feathers are the same as Jipi’s feathers. And Jipi is a thief and a killer. Jipi has a bad heart.”

  “And Jipi has friends,” contributed Mark. “You saw tracks with his, where they talked together. Who are those friends?”

  “More bad men, who will do bad things to your people.”

  “Then my people must be warned,” said Mark, standing up.

  “Yuh.”

  They headed swiftly back to the Jarrett home. Mr. Jarrett was in the side yard, mending harness. He heard what Tsukala had to say, and frowned over it.

  “And I’d hoped that at last we might live and labor here in peace,” said Mr. Jarrett at last. “This calls for a council. We’ll tell Mace Hollon and the others.”

  At the tavern, Mr. Jarrett talked to his brother-inlaw, while Mark mounted a horse to ride and summon Durwell and Captain Stoke, while Esau rode to call Ramsey, Shelton, and Lapham from north of the Bear Paw homesteaders, this time for the sternest of consultations.

  “Egad, gentlemen, I don’t rejoice in danger, yet never did I run from it,” stoutly declared Seth Ramsey. “I fought in the war to free our country, and if I must I’ll fight again to protect my home, even against this giant scoundrel Jipi.”

  “He sounds as tall as Goliath himself,” growled Durwell.

  “Aye, but Goliath came to his end at the hands of little David,” reminded Mace Hollon. “I’m of Seth Ramsey’s mind. A dozen years ago I fought Ferguson on Kings Mountain, and Tarleton at the Cowpens, and Cornwallis himself at Guilford Court House. I’ll not turn and run from a red-skinned enemy, more than I ran from a red-coated one.”

  “So do I swear, and so, I think, are we all agreed,” seconded big Philip Lapham. “Any settlement in wild country must muster a fighting company in case of need. Let us do that.”

  “Captain Stoke was an officer and must command us,” suggested Mark’s father, but Stoke shook his gray head.

  “Not I, friend Hugh. Your wartime service was more than mine, and you were a wise, brave sergeant. And you’ve eked a living here from the first and know the region, and are our justice of the peace, to boot.”

  “Friends, let us vote,” said Joseph Shelton. “I call on Hugh Jarrett to be our militia captain. What say you others?”

  “Hugh Jarrett,” said Simon Durwell.

  “Amen to that,” chimed in Ramsey, and the others spoke in agreement.

  “Then you’re Captain Jarrett as you are Justice Jarrett,” Stoke addressed Mark’s father. “We’re your true men when you call on us. What are your first orders, Captain?”

&nb
sp; Hugh pondered, then announced that he would appoint two lieutenants, Stoke for the men living westward on the river, Ramsey for those with homes beyond the ridge. He also urged that a fortress of some sort be planned, where the families could find shelter if necessary. The others voted to build this at Mace Hollon’s tavern. It was agreed that, in case of danger at any point, two fires would be built to send up twin columns of smoke and summon all men to the spot, under arms. And the dozen men of Bear Paw Gap would take turns in ranging the woods, to look for any hint of attackers.

  “Then let us disperse,” said Mark’s father, “and we’ll meet here at the tavern tomorrow to begin fortification.”

  CHAPTER IV

  The Invaders

  All THE neighbor men gathered at Mace Hollon’s tavern shortly after sunrise next day. Each brought his rifle and axe. They worked with vigor, though with none of the happy spirit they had showed when building the mill and husking Seth Ramsey’s corn.

  Shelton proposed a massive blockhouse of logs, but Leland Stoke had a counter suggestion. “In Lincoln County, during the war’s last year, the South Fork Rangers made a passing good defense around a country house, with an open palisade of tall poles,” he said. “Then, when attacked, they fired from the house windows. The enemy could not come through the stockade, and the spaces between made any attacker a fair mark for a rifle. The Rangers made good a stern siege, and defeated a force of greater number.”

  “That’s a sound plan,” approved Hugh Jarrett, “and one we can follow and finish without too great labor. Come, let’s chop down tall, stout saplings, of length and thickness to serve us.”

  Nine men went to fell and clear young trees among the nearby thickets, while Stoke, Durwell and Mace Hollon paced off and marked a circle to include the tavern, its supply and stock sheds, and its well. As the poles were cut and their branches sliced off, the men dragged them in. Each was sharpened at both ends and driven down, and the earth stamped firm around it. Part of the work gang cut more poles, while others shaped and drove them, each man taking his turn at these tasks.

  Sarah Hollon and Martha Arrington prepared a bountiful noon meal for the workmen, but it was no holiday occasion. The men snatched pieces of bread and slices of roast meat, washed them down with coffee and ale, and hurried back to their labors. As the sun dropped down toward the west, eighty poles had been set in a circle a hundred and twenty feet across. These uprights thrust their pointed tops eight feet above the tramped earth at their bases.

  “But they’re spaced near five feet apart,” said Sarah Hollon as she gazed at the poles while fetching out steaming platters of baked fish for supper. “Sure, those won’t keep out savages.”

  “We’ve only begun the work,” Mark’s father said. “Tomorrow we’ll make a finish.”

  Again they gathered at sunrise, to fill in the gaps of the palisade. Between the poles were set more, cut and sharpened. With practice, the men worked faster. By night, the whole stockade was finished, a well-set ring of posts with less than a foot’s interval between each two. In the last rays of the sun, they wound stout withes from pole to pole, near the pointed tops. Only a single opening showed, opposite the front door of the tavern.

  “My son Esau and I will make a stout-barred gate to hang tomorrow,” promised Mace Hollon, “and we’ll split logs to fashion shutters that can close the windows against enemy bullets. Then, friends, you shall have a refuge we can hold against a great tribe of hostile savages.”

  As they ate in the tavern yard, Tsukala came through the gateway, and with him Will.

  “We’ve been scouting the woods below the river,” Will volunteered. “We found sign of strangers there.”

  “I’ll have you stay out of danger, young Will,” his father scolded.

  “Little warrior is wise in the woods,” Tsukala defended the boy. “We saw Jipi’s big moccasin tracks. And maybe others with him were not Cherokee.”

  From his belt-bag he took something and held it out on his palm. It was a piece of wood, two inches long and broken at one end. The other end had been carefully split, and the whole smooth surface was barred with black and orange paint.

  “How, Tsukala, what is that?” asked Mace Hollon.

  “ ’Tis a piece of an arrow shaft,” guessed Mark.

  “Young warrior says truth,” nodded Tsukala. “The man took out the head to set in another shaft, and threw this away.”

  “And you mean it is no Cherokee arrow?” put in Bram Schneider, coming close. “You can tell that, nicht wahr?”

  “Chickasaw paint on it,” Tsukala said. “This color,” and he tapped the orange stripe. “Chickasaws know how to mix that paint. Chickasaws mark arrows with it.”

  “But Chickasaws don’t hunt this side of the mountains,” argued Ramsey.

  “Maybe this Chickasaw has left his tribe,” said Tsukala.

  “But you say this giant Jipi is Cherokee,” persisted Ramsey. “I’ve heard that the Chickasaws and the Cherokees are enemies.”

  “Jipi is not Cherokee now,” said Tsukala. “His people drove him out. Maybe this Chickasaw is bad, too, his people drove him out. Maybe he and Jipi and other bad men make their own tribe.”

  It sounded sensible to Mark. From the expressions on the faces of the others, it sounded sensible to them, too.

  “How many tracks did you and Will see?” asked Mr. Jarrett.

  “Maybe six men.”

  He looked around the group. “We are twice that many,” he said, “and they dare not assail us when we are together. But they might ambush a lone hunter, or they might strike a home where there are few. Now, I propose that every house be put in something like good order for defense.”

  “I was thinking that same thing,” said Ramsey. “I’ll make my own house fast. My wife can use a rifle if there’s need, and shoot true to the mark.”

  “Let no children be left alone,” continued Jarrett. “If they, or the women, do an errand—carrying grain to the mill or visiting from house to house—let an armed man go along. And I’ll name a patrol to range the woods frequently, for more sign of danger. Tsukala, will you make one?”

  “Yuh” said Tsukala readily.

  Jarrett’s eyes fixed upon Mark. “You, my son, will also be of that patrol,” he announced. “You’ve hunted here longer than any of us white settlers. I trust your judgment and courage.”

  “Aye, Tsukala and I will scout,” assented Mark, proud that he was chosen.

  “Now, if we’re to have trouble with Indians, I expect small chance of attack at night,” elaborated his father.

  “True talk,” was Tsukala’s word. “Indian warrior feels safe by day. At night, he fears. Thinks if he is killed, his spirit goes forever to the Night Land.”

  “We may thank heaven for that belief,” said Stoke earnestly. “The very moment of dawn, as I’ve heard and seen myself, is the favored moment for a surprise attack.”

  “Wherefore we’ll do well to stir awake before dawn each day, to be ready if trouble comes,” pronounced Mark’s father.

  Tsukala turned toward Mark. “Tomorrow, you and I look for enemies,” he said. “I will come early, wake you up.”

  And Tsukala was in the Jarrett yard a good hour before sunrise. But Mark was already dressed and ready. He offered Tsukala a slice of the corn bread he was munching.

  “Ahi, young warrior, you sleep lightly,” Tsukala greeted him as he accepted the bread.

  “I woke when Celia went to milk the cow,” Mark told him. “If you’re ready, so am I.”

  “Come.”

  So often had Mark and Tsukala roamed the woods around Bear Paw Gap that they found their way confidently, even in the gloom. They crossed the Black Willow River, and as the first light grayed around them they approached the place where they had found the signs of the renegade called Jipi by Tsukala. The pile of stones was still there beside the oak where Mark had found the red feathers. Tuskala stole into the open, bending low to the ground. He searched here and there in the growing light.
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br />   “Two men came here,” he reported.

  “You mean, since we were here?”

  “Two men—strangers. I think they watched toward that place you call the mill, there past the river. This is where they come to spy.”

  Mark’s hands clamped his rifle. “Let’s follow their tracks, Tsukala,” he urged, but Tsukala shook his head.

  “No. We wait here. They came two times, they will come again.”

  So saying, Tsukala slid back among some bushes and squatted there.

  Mark joined his friend. Through the crisscross of twigs they could watch the open space where the tracks showed. Tsukala neither moved nor spoke. Mark leaned his back to a stump and tried to turn himself into a watchful statue.

  The sun rose and shed its rosy light among the trees. A bird twittered above Mark’s head, and a squirrel scolded back at the bird. Time crept past. Mark found himself remembering his whole life at Bear Paw Gap. Had it been only five months long? So much had happened; difficulties met and overcome, dangers faced, a home built, new neighbors welcomed. Those unsavory backwoods schemers, Quill Moxley and Epps Emmondson, had said at least one true thing—Bear Paw Gap was a point in the wilderness chosen by fate to be settled, to be known, even to be important. Already the road through the mountain pass was traveled constantly, wagons rolled there every day and every hour. As to this threat of outcast Indians, could it be a truly serious threat to so many brave, stout, frontier people?

  Then Tsukala snapped his fingers, a soft plop of sound, to call Mark to attention. Mark saw Tsukala lift his hand and point with its lifted heel.

  Mark craned his neck to look, across the open space, as leaves stirred in a clump of evergreen scrub. Then a figure stole into view, huge and brown. It was an Indian, stripped to the waist and wearing buckskin leggings, with fluffy red on the side. In his mighty hands he bore a rifle.

  Surely this was the big Cherokee called Jipi, banished by his own tribe and slinking around Bear Paw Gap on who knew what errand of evil.