To the Far Blue Mountains (1976) s-2 Read online

  "Yes, it was." I hesitated. "Why did you come, Fitch?"

  He looked around at me, and seemed a little embarrassed. "I did na wish to go home wi' empty hands," he said, "for I made big talk of what I'd do when away upon the sea. Back yon in the village, I had dreamed dreams of going to battle and winning a princess, maybe, or a lot of gold.

  "Well, I've been four years gone and nothing to show for it but scars and the memories of bad times.

  "Bad times were never in the dreams. Oh, I kenned enough to know there's many a slip, but I had high hopes, and they laughed at me for big expectations.

  "Maybe it come of a-settin' in the chapel listening to the sermon, and thinkin' more on that chap buried in the stone box beside the altar. They had his figure carved in stone atop it, although I knew little enough about him who was buried there. He'd built the church himself, there at Acaster Malbis ... that was our village ... back in 1306 or some such time. He came of a Norman family who'd come with William the Conqueror, and they had lands from him.

  "The name of the first one was Sir Hugh de Malebisse, which somehow became Malbys or Malbis, and they do say that when he came over he had little but a name and a sword, although there may be no truth in that.

  "But I'd set there thinking of what he won with a sword, and it seemed to me that what one could do another might. Captain Sackett, I talked big. I can't go home with empty hands."

  "Why should you?" I said. "There will be land here for all, and once located, we shall scout each his piece, and all adjoining they'll be."

  "I'd like that. Will there be a stream on it? And trees?"

  "Aye. We'll see to it."

  Turning away, I added, "Keep a sharp eye and a listening ear or you'll not make it. The savages don't even need to see the color of your hair to want it."

  There was a good smell of food in the air, pleasing because it was of the country. The cooks had boiled venison and wild turkey together, which all relished.

  Seated, Abby and I ate and talked of our son to be ... or daughter. And with our food we drank the water of the Roanokes, as fresh and clear as water could be.

  We talked of our home in the blue mountains, the home that was to be, and they were fine, bold dreams we had.

  Wa-ga-su came suddenly from the darkness and spoke softly to me, and I did not move, but reached out with my swordcase and touched Jeremy upon the shoulder. He glanced from me to Wa-ga-su and got up slowly, walking to the pot for another helping, then back to us.

  "Three canoes," Wa-ga-su said, "twenty, thirty men. They are on warpath."

  "Jeremy," I said, "as quietly as can be, send Slater, Magill, and Black Tom Watkins to the boats to join Fitch, and do the rest move one by one to the shadows and to the fallen trees near the boats. Leave the fires burning."

  "What is it, Barnabas?" Abby asked.

  'There will be a fight. Get to the boats, you and Lila."

  No sound disturbed the quiet night. Men walked away and darkness remained. The men looked to their muskets. As for myself, I put three pistols in my belt and carried a musket also.

  The night was still. Somewhere a nightbird called.

  They came with a rush.

  They came with savage yells, intending to strike terror to our hearts, and had they found us unawares or sleeping, the yells and the sudden attack might have done so. Nor was the attack so well planned as I thought them usually to be.

  They had seen our fires, and without closer inspection, decided we must be gathered around them. They must have waited some time.

  When they finally charged toward the firelight, spears and tomahawks poised to strike, they came upon emptiness. One warrior, quick to perceive, had turned sharply back when Slater shot him.

  It was taken as a signal, and all of us fired. And in an instant they were gone ... vanished.

  Three bodies lay upon the earth, two obviously dead, the third only wounded. Yet he lay still.

  I could see his eyes. They were open and alert, although he had been hit hard.

  We reloaded our guns. The night was so still I could hear the rustling water among the reeds at the shore. Pim was beside me and I whispered to him, telling him to get the boats afloat and all aboard.

  He slipped away. There was still the faint smell of powder smoke mingled with the dampness of mud, wet foliage, and the smoke from our now dying fires. Behind me I heard faint movements, and Glasco came up to my side. "I don't like it," he muttered. "It was too easy."

  "You're right. We're going to pull out. I'd rather row all night than lose a single man."

  From down the shore we heard a splintering crash, then another, and then a third.

  Then all was silent again.

  At the last moment, with all aboard, I waited ... listening. There were faint, whispering movements, then silence. Overhead there were stars.

  My hands touched the rough bulwark, and in utter silence we moved away. So silently that I heard but once the sound of a paddle.

  "Will they follow?" I asked Wa-ga-su.

  "No canoe," he replied.

  "But they must have canoes."

  "No canoe," he replied, and I detected a smug satisfaction in his tone. "I fix."

  The oars dipped deep, and we moved off into the night. Abby was close beside me.

  I put my hand over hers and she leaned her head against my shoulder.

  "Tired?" I asked her.

  "Yes ..."

  "You've a right to be tired. We'll find a good place and rest."

  "No, it's all right, Barnabas. I'll be all right." She paused a moment. "There is so little time before winter comes."

  It was in all our thoughts. We were alone in an unknown land, with danger all about, and no hope of rescue if aught went wrong. We had cut all ties, but we floated together in the vast interior of this green strange land.

  We were moving toward the mountains where it would be cold during the winter, and we had meat to kill, fuel to gather, shelters to build. Our only security lay in ourselves, in what we were, and what we would become. But had I chosen from thousands those who were with me, I could not have chosen better.

  Leaving the bow, I went back to take the place of Tim Glasco at an oar, and after a half hour I shifted across the boat to give Kane O'Hara some rest. When I returned to the bow, Abby was asleep, as was Lila. I moved alongside Wa-ga-su.

  "Tell me about the river," I suggested.

  "There are villages," he replied. "One of them we will see tomorrow or the day after."

  "Are the Catawbas a strong people?" I asked.

  He shook his head somberly. "We are strong, but we have lost many men in war with the Iroquois, and we have been driven from our country in the north. The Iroquois fight everybody, kill everybody. Very savage, those people."

  He spoke English well enough, after his months with us, and I spoke a good deal of his language.

  "Then the Cherokee attacked us and we were driven to the place we live now. We will go no further. We will fight them again and again, but we will not leave."

  "Are all of your people here?"

  "No ... some are still in the north, but they will come."

  "Wa-ga-su, we have told you how many are the English. Soon they will come here.

  Many will come. Some will return, some will die, but more will come. We would be friends to your people. Think on this, and say what you think to your people."

  "You wish me to say it is good for Catawba to join with the Queen's men?"

  "I cannot advise you, Wa-ga-su. Much harm may come from it. What is right for us is not always right for you, and those of us who come are hungry for land-"

  "There is enough for all."

  "That may be. I do not know if there is ever enough. And there will be trouble with the English and the French and the Spanish even as there was trouble with the Iroquois."

  Wa-ga-su was silent.

  We continued to row.

  The first light of dawn was upon the water, vaguely yet, but swirls of water could be
seen and ripples, and the trees began to outline themselves against the morning sky. One last star hung in the sky like a far-off lamp. Turning, I spoke to Jeremy, who was at the tiller. "There!" I pointed. "We will eat and rest."

  We went up to the shore in the dawning, and beached our boats on the water, not too firmly, and tied them with slipknots, and a man remained armed with a musket in each boat. The rest stepped ashore and I walked along, gathering bits of brush and bark as I went. Others picked up driftwood, and behind some of the logs and rocks we found a smooth place some twenty feet across. Pulling some rocks together for a crude fireplace, I shredded some bark in my hands, put it down, and added twigs. Spilling a thumbnail of powder on the flattest piece of bark, I removed the charge from my pistol and, cocking it, pulled the trigger. A spark leaped into the powder and in an instant the fire was going.

  Wa-ga-su had disappeared into the brush. I warned the others, so that a hasty shot might not kill him, and walked back to the boats.

  "Keep down," I said, "and keep your eyes open. They can be all around before you see them."

  Matt Slater went down to the stream to fish. There was a deep pool just below where the boats lay and he cast his hook there.

  We ate and then slept on the grass with two men guarding; then those men slept and two more took over. Wa-ga-su returned. He had seen many deer and turkey tracks.

  Shortly after noon we started upstream again, this time using sails, as there was better wind. It was not much, but it saved us all the labor of rowing or poling against the current. We moved up slowly. When we camped at dusk we were more than twenty miles from the scene of the fight.

  Day after day, we pushed on. The stream grew narrower, the water, if possible, clearer. We hunted with our bows and arrows, killing turkeys aplenty and an occasional deer.

  And all of us were changing. We were better hunters. We had become stronger and more confident. Traveling along a stream as we were, there was always game, and there were many fish. If the Indians fished with bait, they did so rarely, and the fish were easily taken.

  At sundown on the tenth day, Lila came to me. "We must rest soon," she said. "I think we have not much longer to wait."

  "She is right," Sakim said. "I think within the week."

  Glancing west, toward where the blue mountains lay, I tried to calculate. If it was smooth water, not too many curves ... and if there were no waterfalls, could we reach the mountains in two weeks?

  Sakim shrugged. "We will see."

  Lila turned and walked back to Abigail, and I made a round of our camp.

  I mentioned two weeks to Wa-ga-su, and he shook his head no. "More far away," he told me.

  He waved ahead and to the south. "The cold will come. Sometimes snow. Much ice on rivers. I think it is best you stay with my people. The Catawba is good farmer. Much grain. You stay."

  There was hypnotic fascination in the journey by river. We moved along one bank or the other, choosing where the current was least strong, and often our way was overhung with the branches of huge old trees. At other times we were far from the banks, moving along in the brightest sunlight.

  It was already cold at night.

  Several times we saw deer swim across the stream ahead of us, and once we killed one for meat. Several times we killed turkeys, and once a bear.

  We saw few Indians but were quite sure they saw us, and looked upon us with wonderment and curiosity. Yet as the distance grew we became more confident, more excited by what lay before and around us.

  By night our flickering campfires lighted the wilderness, and sometimes we sang the old songs from home. Kane O'Hara had a fine voice, as did Jeremy. Of my own singing the least said the better. I liked to sing, and would have sung always, but my voice had no quality.

  Much was I learning, for Wa-ga-su pointed out trees and plants used by the Indian for medicine or food, and also much about Indians themselves. The Catawba and the Cherokee were ancient enemies, and the legends among the tribes were that both had come from the north, although long, long ago and before any white man had been seen, even before De Soto or Juan Pardo.

  There were mornings when the sunlight sparkled on every ripple, and shadows dappled the banks, and there were days when the rain fell in sheets and we could see only a few yards before us. Sometimes we were hard put to avoid huge drift logs that came down upon us, but each day we moved farther, each day we progressed some little bit.

  "It takes a long time," Peter Fitch mumbled, one day. "I would na have believed 'twas any so far, or there was so much empty land in the world."

  " 'Tis a miracle," Slater agreed, "and they do say there's more beyond the mountains."

  Suddenly, Fitch caught my arm. "Captain, would you look now? What is that yonder?"

  We had camped that morning under some great old trees on a broad flat bank of the river. Beyond the trees there was a wide savanna or plain, and out upon it lay a huge beast, a great, hairy black monster of a thing. As we watched, he got up suddenly, lunging to his feet and staring at us. His broad flat face, thickly matted with hair, was toward us, and his beard almost touched the ground.

  Suddenly others like him began to appear.

  Wa-ga-su came up beside me. "Good meat," he said. "Good hide also. You kill?"

  I had to think twice about that. I'd seen some bulls in my time, but nothing quite like this one, nor nearly so big. And there was wonder in me if a bullet could bring him down, but Wa-ga-su assured me the Indians often killed them, sometimes with arrows, but occasionally with spears.

  At his urging I rested my musket on its wiping-stick, aimed, and fired.

  The huge beast moved not a whit, but continued to stare at me, finally jerking his big head up and down as if irritated by me or perhaps the bullet. I had begun at once to recharge my gun, and at the shot, O'Hara and Pim had come quickly from the trees, they being closer.

  The beast then took a step toward me and suddenly bent at the knees and went down, then rolled over. The others did not run off or even seem to notice, not having heard such a sound before, and not connecting it with any danger to them.

  Wa-ga-su was now pointing at the nearest cow, and truth to tell she had turned partly away from me so I had an excellent shot at the space behind her left shoulder. Knowing full well that I had many mouths to feed, I took rest and fired again, with equal good fortune. It must be admitted that neither beast was as much as fifty yards away and in plain sight, nor were they moving. But he was standing and looking, she grazing. Now, seeming to scent blood, the others moved off a little, looked back, then walked on across the savanna, and calling the others, we moved out to butcher our beasts.

  Quill and Slater were expert at butchering, so leaving them to the task-with Wa-ga-su to advise and Fitch to help-I put Barry Magill at the edge of the woods to keep an eye out for trouble from inland while the others worked.

  Abby was lying on a pallet near the fire and I went and sat down near her, holding her hand. She looked very pale this morning and I was frightened to see her so, and guessing how I felt, she squeezed my hand. It was getting very close to her time.

  Watkins and Glasco were fishing, Pim putting a splice in a rope we had broken negotiating a falls, where we had to remove our boats from the water and take them overland, tugging and hauling them, then returning for our baggage and carrying that on our shoulders.

  Suddenly there was a low whistle from Magill, and instantly, Glasco and Watkins took up their muskets. Pim stepped to shelter behind the bole of a huge tree while Black Tom and I went through the woods.

  Our butchers had stopped cutting meat and were standing erect. Magill had his musket leveled, and Fitch was kneeling behind the carcass of the bull, holding his own musket.

  On the crest of the low rise where we had first seen the buffalo stood several Indians. Each carried a bow and a spear as well, with a quiver of arrows behind each left shoulder. As we watched, another Indian appeared, then another, and another.

  My musket was in my hands, and I
waited, watching.

  When at last they ceased to appear, at least thirty warriors lined the crest.

  Against them we could fire three shots before they would be upon us.

  Chapter 23

  They stared upon us, and we upon them, and then Wa-ga-su stepped suddenly forward and called out to them in his own tongue.

  Instantly they were alert. One of them came a few steps forward, peering at him.

  Wa-ga-su spoke again, and motioned them back, wisely guessing that any sudden advance might bring gunfire.

  He walked toward them, speaking the while, and they waited for him. Suddenly they were all about him, showing great excitement. They seemed to know him, and yet I could not be sure.

  He turned then and came to me. "They are my people," he said. "They are Catawba." Then he added, "They hunt for meat, but they have killed nothing."

  "Wa-ga-su, the cow we must have, and the hides of both, but I would not see your people hungry. They may have the bull."

  Walking out to the butchering, I explained to Quill, Slater, and Fitch. "Skin out the cow," I said, "and get the meat and hide. I think we will make some friends here."

  At Wa-ga-su's invitation, they descended upon the bull, and in no time at all fires were going and meat was roasted.

  Lila met me at the edge of the clearing. "I think we must stay here," she said.

  "Her time is upon us."

  Thoughtfully, I looked around. The grove of trees where the boats were drawn up was lovely, a peaceful place, open to the sky and with a good clear lookout in all directions, as well as a good field of fire.

  There was water, fuel, and as evidenced by the buffalo, there would be game. If my son was to be born, it would be better here.

  "Is this your country?" I asked Wa-ga-su.

  "No ... but my people are great hunters and wanderers. They travel far."

  "They have women and child with them?"

  "Many." He motioned toward the southwest. "Over there." Then he added, "You have given them much meat. They are pleased."

  "If they are your people," I said, "they are our people."

  The remark pleased him, and he repeated what he had said before, that it would be well for us to live with his people until the winter had come and gone.