Follow the River Read online

  The creek ravine was filling with deep shadow. Pinpoints of late afternoon sunlight flashed occasionally through the foliage ahead. Under the horse she saw the pellucid creek water curling and seething over brown and mossy stone; ahead were the horses’ rumps and swishing tails and their burdens of loot, the flicking ears and bobbing mane of her own horse, the dusky, muscular backs of the warriors and the rocky, wooded slopes of the mountains that rose steep and gloomy on both sides of the creek.

  And then eventually under these proddings from her senses Mary returned to the present enough to begin to think. She thought of the unborn baby inside her, which surely would be forced soon, by this eternal jouncing and by her legs’ grip on the horse’s ribs, to give up its tenure in the refuge of her womb and come forth into this hopeless world. She thought of the attention Tommy and Georgie would need when this march should stop for the night. She thought of Bettie’s broken and bleeding arm, and wondered if she would be allowed to try to treat it. She wondered whether Will and Johnny had truly escaped the notice of the Indians, and wondered whether they might be trying to follow. That wan hope rose in her breast and would not go down.

  She thought of her mother lying dead somewhere and scalped near the burning settlement. And of Bettie’s baby, slaughtered before their very eyes. She squinted and bit into the flesh of her lip to keep that grievous memory from overpowering her. She wondered about James Cull and Philip Lybrook and Bill Preston, none of whom she had seen killed. And then about Will and John again. If they all found each other they might dare to follow us, she thought. But dear God the heathens have brought every gun there was in the settlement, I’m sure; what could they do for us if they did follow?

  And she began to wonder why she and her children, and Bettie and Henry, had not been killed. Perhaps we’re hostages against pursuit, she thought. Or we’re to be ransomed.

  Nay, she thought, more likely enslaved. Our children to grow up slaves.

  But she knew as well that they might have been spared only for the present, that they might be destined for those tortures of which all white wilderness settlers had heard. Maybe we’re to be sacrificed, she thought. Or eaten. The legends of Indian brutality stopped at nothing.

  She knew with certainty that their lives were in a precarious balance. If we make noise or slow ’em down, she thought, they’ll kill us at once. Thank God my children are no crybabies, she thought. At a first wail they’d doubtless be brained.

  I must tell Bettie these things if we get a minute together, she thought. In case she’s not thought of them. So’s she’ll know how to conduct herself.

  I would tell her now, she thought, but this chieftain seems to know our tongue. And I reckon they’d kill us if we tried to talk to each other now.

  Mary did not know how far they had come. In her trance she had not been aware of time nor of landmarks. She could not remember anything about the journey since the murder of Mr. Barger. She had no recollection of riding out of one streambed or descending into another, and so she presumed that they were still moving downstream in Sinking Creek. But, she realized, we might have crossed a mountain and I’d not have noticed.

  With a sudden surge of her heart, half of panic and half of hope, Mary Ingles realized a desperate need to know where she was.

  If I know, she thought, if I remember the way, maybe I could find my way back! Something might happen and we’d get free. And if it does, we must know the way home. To be lost is to die. She had heard William state that warning. He was always warning her and the children not to stray out of sight of the cabins. Womenfolk just tend to get lost, he’d always say; it’s just a weakness they’ve got.

  If we’re still on Sinking Creek, she thought, I could find my way back just by going upstream! It was a wonderful revelation. But if we’ve got off Sinking Creek, I’m lost.

  Must watch everything, she thought. Everything! Must look back whenever we pass something, see how it looks from the other side. Memorize how it would look coming back! And never forget it! The new excitement of this was making her forget her discomfort.

  She twisted and looked back. She saw the horses coming behind. She saw Bettie’s pain-gray face and her hanging, bloody right arm. She saw Henry Lenard stumbling along grimly, the rope jerking at his neck. And she saw one of the braves in the rear guard staring intently at her, then looking back up the creek, then staring at her, looking angry. He said something to her in a sharp voice and reached threateningly toward the tomahawk in his waistband.

  Mary scanned the landscape behind her quickly. It looked no different from what she had been seeing ahead. She faced forward. Must memorize, she thought. But I mustn’t make them suspicious.

  She peeked cautiously back over her shoulder again. The Indian was now looking back over his shoulder. I’ve made him uneasy now, she thought. Now perhaps he fears we’re being followed.

  Now Mary tried to remember everything she had ever heard the menfolk say about Sinking Creek and New River and the mountains to the west of Draper’s Meadows, hoping to remember some clue that might indicate she was indeed still on Sinking Creek. The men had hunted down into the New River Gorge, and they had come back with awesome descriptions of cliffs and rapids and jumbled boulders and mountains rising so steep they blocked all but the midday sun. Mary never had been taught to read, and thus had an unspoiled eye and ear for pictures and sounds. She could remember almost everything she had ever heard, had learned ballads and hymns on first hearing and could remember the look of almost everything and everyone she had ever seen.

  She remembered the menfolk saying that one could follow Sinking Creek about four leagues down from Draper’s Meadows, and it would suddenly vanish from sight into the ground. But you could still follow its valley, about a league farther, until the creek came out of the ground between two steep hills and flowed into the New River in sight of a great sheer cliff curved like a horseshoe. Or you might, they had said, want to find easier going by leaving the creek where it first goes underground, and veer off to the left, straight west on an easy deer path along the north slope of a straight-ridged mountain, right down to the New River’s edge. And there you’d be at an elbow bend in the river with a palisade cliff on your right and a natural stone arch straight across on the opposite shore. There’s a spring there with water that tastes like gunpowder, and Adam Harmon’s hunting shack is nearby, they had said. Mary Ingles had envisioned all those landmarks as she had heard them described. The Indians were going toward the setting sun now, and so must be headed for the New River, which was their roadway through the mountains to the unknown lands of the Northwest. Will always said he believed, from things he had heard, that the waters of the New River eventually reached a great river called, as he had heard it, the Ho-he-o, or the O-y-o, hundreds of miles through the wilderness. But no one was sure of that, of course, except perhaps the Indians, as no white man had ever explored down the wild New River Gorge farther than ten or twelve leagues.

  Mary turned over and over in her mind those remembered descriptions of geography she had never seen, all the while hugging Georgie in front of her and trying to hold her muscles against the burning weariness. The great weight of her womb felt as if it would simply tear loose and fall out of her onto the ground, but for the broad horse’s back she held between her thighs.

  Georgie seemed to be asleep, or simply dazed. His head lolled back against her bosom and she stroked his hair. She leaned forward and saw that his eyes were closed. The dried blood on his face was flaking away. He had only been scratched by briars and was not really hurt. Her heart squeezed with tender concern. Pray t’ God these heathens’ bloodlust has cooled, she thought, and they’ll not hurt my boys. Nor my baby when it comes.

  Surely they will, though, she thought. A newborn babe can only be botheration to ’em in flight. Be ready, she told herself; be strong enough to bear it if they choose to kill it.

  But Lord, how can anybody be that strong?

  But what matter if they choose to spare it or
not, she thought. It could hardly survive a birthing in this wilderness anyway. On this trail. With all this riding. It’ll prob’ly die a-bornin’. She stopped a whimper of pain and despair in her throat.

  Suddenly Mary realized that the horses were climbing. They had left the creekbed. She glanced back to memorize, if she could, their point of departure. They were on some kind of an animal path along the north side of a mountain. Behind her and below she could see a patch of water, but straight below there was only the brushy bed of a ravine.

  We must have turned off where the creek goes underground, she thought.

  Surely we cannot travel much farther this evening, she thought. Although there was more light up here on the mountainside than down in the streambed, the day was fading. She tightened her muscles once more against the enormous, sagging, aching weariness in her middle. The pain was wracking, pulling her attention away from everything else again. And her bladder, full now and pressed by the weight of the womb, aggravated her discomfort.

  We must stop soon, she thought. I’m afraid they’re going to try to reach the river before night. But we must stop. I must get off this horse soon or I’m going to just up and die.

  They rode down into the river valley at twilight. Suddenly they were out of the dark woods and under an expanse of rose-tinged sky in a bottomland overgrown with grass and wild-pea vine, with a sharp bend of the glassy river before them. Bats were stitching silently back and forth across the sky, feeding on mosquitoes.

  Even in her misery, Mary Ingles was awed by the strange beauty of the place. The river flowed from left to right across their way, then turned so sharply away that it appeared it must meet itself somewhere beyond the other dark shore inside the bend. At its sharpest crook downstream it cut under the very base of a perpendicular wall of fluted gray stone cliffs and columns and spires of stone three hundred feet high. On the inside of the bend stood a natural stone arch, gray amid the dusky woods, with a free-standing shaft of stone eighty feet tall beside it. It looked like an experimental landscape chopped out of solid stone and forest by some god trying to make a channel for a confused river. She had never seen such a place, even in the harrowing crossing of the Blue Ridge.

  The Indians had grown cheerful, on reaching the river. They laughed and raised their arms and talked back and forth along the line. They brought the horses to a halt near a spring that gave off a strong mineral odor. This, Mary thought, must be what the men called the gunpowder spring. Adam Harmon’s cabin must be hereabouts. The Indians drank from the spring, then led the animals down to the river’s edge and let them drink there. Mary held Georgie tightly to keep him from pitching forward into the river as their horse stretched its neck down.

  About fifteen of the warriors stood gazing over the river, talking in low and melodic voices. Mary prayed that they would make camp here, that they would let her dismount and relieve herself, perhaps bathe and soothe her children and talk to the other captives. She looked back at Bettie. Her sister-in-law now sat so slumped, her face pasty with pain, that it appeared little Tommy was holding her up from behind. It’s a marvel she’s not fainted, Mary thought.

  “Mi … uhm, Mister,” she said to a passing warrior. He looked up at her and she cupped one hand and made a drinking motion, then pointed around to the other captives. The Indian called something to the chieftain, who answered from the riverbank in a few words. The warrior detached a pan from one of the pack horses and filled it at the river. He brought it to Mary and handed it up to her. She held Georgie’s head and put the edge of the vessel to his lips and was pleased that he was conscious enough to drink a little from it. Then Mary gave the pan back to the Indian instead of drinking from it, and again pointed to the others. He made a soft exclamation in his throat, then took the water to them one by one.

  “Thankee, Mary,” Henry Lenard called to her softly.

  “Welcome, Mr. Lenard.”

  There. They had dared to talk, and the Indians seemed not to mind now. The warrior brought the pan of water back to Mary and she drank the rest of it, and it was good; it was almost as refreshing as having been able to speak. The Indian nodded and smiled as he took the vessel from her. It was unbelievable that they who had wrought a massacre and burned a settlement in their savage passion a few hours ago could smile and behave like humans now. That seemed like years since; this seemed like a myth-story now.

  “Bettie,” she cried. “Bettie, ca y’ hear me, hon?”

  “Aye,” came her reply after a moment.

  “How d’y do, sweet?”

  “Oh, Mary. I want to die.”

  “Nah, nah nah nah, Bettie! Won’t have that. We’re goin’ to be all right yet, dear, I do believe so.”

  “No. I’m going to die.”

  “Thomas!”

  “Hey, Mama?”

  “Y’ don’t let y’r auntie die now, or I’ll give y’ a sound hidin’, d’y hear?”

  After a moment of hestitation, the child replied, “Ay, Mama.”

  Mary smiled. Good Tommy, she thought. He’s best off with a chore at hand.

  It was odd how Mary felt now, with this unexplainable hope and good humor rising up in her, above all her pain and fatigue. I’m going giddy, she thought. But I’ll vow, if these savages don’t get murderous again, I’ll get us out o’ this somehow.

  “Oh, I will die,” Bettie moaned again.

  “Y’do, Bettie, and it’s you I’ll whip,” Mary said, feeling a bubble of outrageous hilarity in her breast. I mustn’t go crazy, she thought.

  Or maybe best I should.

  The tall chieftain now was walking toward her, apparently attracted by the talk among the captives. He was not smiling, but he did not seem annoyed, either. He stopped and looked up at Mary with curiosity, then started to say something, but didn’t. It was as if he were searching for English words he might not have. Mary was astonished that she felt no fear of him now. He was simply a person, a man standing here. Though he held all their lives in his hands, for the moment at least, Mary was not afraid of him. But Georgie was. Mary felt the child stiffening his back against her in terror as the warrior stood by the horse. She stroked the little boy’s hair and spoke to the Indian.

  “Will we stay here, Mister? We must get down.”

  He pondered her words, then pointed to the north, up toward the high, jagged escarpment. “No. There. Mo-ther be still.”

  “Oh, please, not up th …”

  “Mo-ther be still,” he repeated, more loudly. Then he turned his head and studied the slope which led up onto the cliff. Mary watched his profile and studied his demeanor to determine how close she might be to the limits of his goodwill. My Georgie’s all beshit, she thought.

  “I need to clean …”

  “Be still!” the Indian spat at her. He looked straight at her and his eyelids narrowed. It was obvious that this was all his indulgence for now. He turned and called a command, and the group of warriors dispersed and took up their places along the pack train. Mary watched the chieftain as he strode forward to the head of the column. His back was straight as a wall, and she noticed that the back of his head was flat also; a leather band around his head held three dark feathers and they stuck straight up in back. His thick black hair, parted in the middle, was held neatly in place by the headband and flowed to his shoulders. He carried himself with that same erect confidence Mary had noticed in Colonel Washington and so Mary presumed that this warrior was perhaps the equivalent of a colonel.

  We shan’t have to mollycoddle them all, at any rate, she guessed. If we can keep this gent calm, I don’t reckon he’d let the others do us harm.

  And then she got an arm around Georgie, and cooed to him as the horses moved off again. She tightened her stomach muscles as well as she could and gritted her teeth and the column turned northward away from the river’s elbow bend, climbing a steeply sloping ridge that led to the palisade’s crest. The path was closer to vertical than anything Mary had ever ridden; the horse lunged and stumbled and scrabbled for
footholds, and Mary had to squeeze her legs with all her remaining strength and grab handfuls of mane to keep herself and Georgie from sliding back over the beast’s rump. Pray Bettie’s still got strength to hang on, she thought. “Tommy,” she called back, “hold tight, dear!” She couldn’t hear his reply over the clatter of hooves and sliding rock debris. Below, almost straight below, the river gleamed like dull pewter through the black foliage. The Indians were almost invisible now in the gathering darkness, but nevertheless swarmed sure-footed as panthers up the steep ridge.

  At last the slope became more gentle, then leveled, and they rode a few yards to the left into a deep wood that she reckoned must be on the very crest of the palisade.

  And then, on this precipitous height, the column stopped, and the Indians began unloading horses. A warrior appeared beside Mary’s horse and reached up and grabbed Georgie, who reacted with a moan of terror. Don’t cry, Mary thought; don’t cry out or he’ll pitch ye over the cliff! The Indian set the little boy on the ground, and said something to Mary. With a wheeze of effort she leaned back and raised her aching right leg over the horse’s withers, sat sideways for a moment praying her legs would support her, then slid off. She staggered and stumbled and held her ponderous abdomen when her feet hit the ground, but found her balance and stayed upright. Nearby, Bettie cried out sharply in the gloom, doubtless having hurt her arm in dismounting. Tommy’s voice warned, “Don’t die, Auntie Bettie!”

  Indians led the horses off somewhere, and herded the captives into a group on a jutting, scrub-covered promontory of the ledge, then stationed a single warrior to watch them. On three sides of the huddled hostages, sheer cliffs dropped away. On the fourth side the sentinel seated himself on a rock with his musket across his knees. As the last silvery-gray of the gloaming faded out over the horizon and stars appeared overhead, the rush of water over rocks could be heard from far below. Beyond this narrow place, there was nothing but night and space. The captives kept close together, intimidated by the nearness of the precipice, and whispered consolations to each other. It was obvious that they were to be allowed no comfort but that of togetherness.