Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1966
Read Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1966 Online
Authors: Battle at Bear Paw Gap (v1.1)
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
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.”