Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1966 (7 page)

 
          
The
dark shape seemed to stoop at the window. Then it straightened, and up
rose
an arm. The hand held something—a tomahawk, poised to
throw.

 
          
But
from inside burst a wild yell, and then a shot rang out, loud and abrupt as a
splitting tree. At once the shadow whipped itself back, and feet drummed on the
slope as they ran down toward the very spot where Mark and Esau lay.

 
          
“Halt!”
cried Mark, struggling to his feet.

 
          
As
he came up, the fleeing body slammed against his. Mark’s rifle flew from his
hands, and Mark tried to grapple and pin the unknown fugitive. His fingers
clutched a handful of loose shirt fabric. There was a rending noise, and the
stranger pulled free and shot away down the road. Mark stooped for his rifle,
but already the shape had vanished in the dark.

 
          
“Ha,
rogue” he heard the bellowing voice of Simon Durwell, and a door flew open. The
miller’s squat form sprang out. Light from inside gave Mark a glimpse of two
big pistols in Durwell’s hands.

 
          
“Hold
your fire, sir, it’s Mark Jarrett!” Mark warned hastily.

           
Esau was on his knee, and he sent a
rifle shot into gloom where the figure had vanished. Durwell came charging down
to where Mark and Esau stood.

 
          
“Were
you at tricks outside my window?” he barked.

 
          
“Nay,
’twas someone we don’t know,” Mark said. “He ran when you fired. And there’s no
chance of finding him in the night.”

 
          
“Who
was he, then?” Durwell questioned them. “Bram’s cat Wessah gave us warning. We
sat at supper within, and Wessah looked to the window and mewed. I saw a face
there, daubed as with Indian paint. I caught up my pistols from beside my
plate, and fired. Had I taken half a second to aim, I’d have dropped him.”

 
          
“He
had a tomahawk, ready to hurl in at you,” said Esau. “And Bram Schneider was
within, at table with you?”

 
          
“
Aye,
and why do you ask? Now he’s under the bed, I make no
doubt.” Durwell snorted with laughter. “He almost fell down in terror, and
spilled a saucepan of dumplings. Come, lads, up to the house. What do you do
out in the night?”

 
          
“We
but thought we’d make a tour of the road,” said Mark, and followed the miller
along the upward path to the house.

 
          
They
entered the outer room of the leanto where Durwell and Schneider kept their
bachelor living quarters. A fire burned on the hearth, and on the table a
tallow candle stood in a leaden sconce. In the corner farthest from the window
trembled Bram Schneider, clutching Wessah in his arms.

 
          
“You
play pranks,” Schneider accused angrily, his eyes wide in indictment. “You come
to our window, make a
teufel
face—I
tell your fathers about you!”
“ ’Twas
not we who
played pranks,” Mark assured him. “Another night-prowler was out there, poising
his tomahawk to throw in at you.”

 
          
“Who
was he?” Schneider hurled a question.

 
          
“We
don’t know that,” said Esau. “Mark tried to catch him, but he pulled away.”

 
          
“Mark
kept a remembrance of him, at least,” said Durwell, pointing, and Mark was
aware that his hand still clutched a ragged strip of cloth, torn from the man’s
shirt. He brought it and spread it upon the table, and they all looked at it.

 
          
The
fabric was coarse, gray linen, such as many frontiersmen used to make their
hunting shirts. It looked stained and grubby, as though from long wear in the
field.

 
          
“No
Indian wore that,” pronounced Durwell expertly. “Their way is to make shirts of
deerskin. Then we were spied on by a white man, for all he was smeared with war
paint.”

           
“Belike he painted his face to
disguise it,” suggested Esau.

 
          
“How,
disguise it?” Durwell echoed him. “Would he be someone we would know if we saw
his face?”

 
          
“I
had thought so,” Esau replied.

 
          
“But
how came you two to be outside even as he crept upon us?” Durwell inquired.
“What gave you that fortunate notion, even as he was coming?”

 
          
“We
but happened along,” said Mark, unwilling now to speak of Esau’s suspicions
about Schneider. “Belike this fellow is the same white man who left the tracks
Tsukala spied today, down south of the river.”

 
          
“Ach,
why did I come to such a country?”
Schneider almost wailed.

 
          
“In
any case, if he wore paint for a disguise, he was neither Mark nor Esau,” said
Durwell. “He was neither Bram nor I, for we were in here. On that much we can
agree.”

 
          
“Aye,
we all four stand in the clear,” Esau said slowly.

 
          
“Then
whose face was so
masked ?
” demanded Durwell, as
though of the night. “I cannot think it was one of our neighbors.
Stoke,
Ramsey, Lapham, Shelton, Esau’s father, and
Mark’s—each of them I’d trust as I’d trust my own soul.”

 
          
Mark
was at the window, peering out. “You say ’twas Wessah spied the fellow as he
looked in here,” he mused, and turned to gaze at the big cat in Schneider’s
arms. “He, at least, had a good look at that face. Would he
had
words, to tell us who it was.”

 
          
But
Wessah only gazed at each in turn with round, calm eyes.

 
          
Defense
Measures

 
          
SlMON
DURWILL swore that with the earliest dawn he and Schneider would hew out slabs
to make heavy shutters for their windows, and pierce them with loopholes for
rifles. Esau volunteered to spend the night at the mill and help make the
shutters the following day. Mark slipped out into the night to carry the report
back home. With him he took the rag of homespun he had torn from the visitor.

 
          
It
was a nervous trip he made along the road through the darkness, but no
suggestion of threat or challenge came to him. Back at the Jarrett home, he sat
in the living room and told his father of what had happened, while his mother,
Will, and Celia listened with wide eyes.

 
          
“If
only you’d fastened upon his wrist instead of his shirt,” said his father when
Mark had finished. “I wish we had that rogue here, a captive. Look at this
cloth, wife, you’re skilled at weaving. What can you tell us of it and its
wearer?”

 
          
Mrs.
Jarrett spread the scrap across her palm and held it up to the light of the
candle. “This is home- woven, and good work,” she said. “Here’s a stain upon
it.” She brought it closer to the light, gazed at the smudge,
then
held it to her nose.

 
          
“It
hath a tang of tobacco,” she reported.

 
          
Jarrett
put out his big hand for the piece of cloth, took it and sniffed it in turn. “I
apprehend that there’s snuff upon it,” he said. “See, there’s dark powder,
ground into the weaving. What does snuff mean to you?”

 
          
“A
fine gentleman, sir,” volunteered Will. “A dainty spark, dipping his fingers
into a silver box, and bowing and
sneezing
a dainty
sneeze.”

 
          
“Like
Captain Harthover, who was at the tavern when summer began,” added Celia.

 
          
“But
Mark says this fellow wears rough cloth and paints his face like a wild
Indian,” said his father.

 
          
“He
disguises himself,” said Mark. “I am of Tsukala’s
mind,
I think that this white leader of Indians is a criminal outlaw, driven from the
doors of honest folk.”

 
          
“We’re
honest folk, and he’ll be driven from our door if he should dare show himself,”
promised his father harshly. “Tomorrow we must make plans for double vigilance
against him.”

 
          
Mark
went to his sleeping shelter outside, along with Will, who soon was asleep. But
Mark lay in his blankets and gazed toward the house. Soon the weather would be
too cold for comfortable nights in this breeze-swept spot. Perhaps Mark might
cut down more trees and build a shedlike addition to the cabin for himself and
Will, so as not to crowd his parents and Celia and the little Vesper children.
He sighed. He was no dull plodder who enjoyed work for work’s sake, but just
then he could wish that there were no menacing Indians, no weird night runners,
no
rumors of war, in Bear Paw Gap. He would be happy
just to work to good purpose, at peaceful, necessary matters, to ply the axe
and the spade instead of the rifle.

 
          
He
woke at dawn, as was his habit. Heading for the river, he plunged in his head
and washed his face and neck and arms. He looked up, shaking water from his
soaked hair, and almost within reach of him sat Tsukala on a gnarled root, his
unstrung bow in his hand.

 
          
“Zounds,”
said Mark, embarrassed. “Had you been an enemy, you could have struck me to the
heart before I knew it.”

 
          
“Ahi,
that is true,” Tsukala agreed with
him. “I taught you to watch better than that, young warrior.”

 
          
Mark
came and sat on the root with Tsukala, and told him of the previous night’s
events at the mill. Tsukala heard him silently, and nodded his head once or
twice as he listened.

 
          
“That
bad white man knows this country,” Tsukala said when Mark ceased talking.

           
“To be sure.
Tsukala, many know this country.”
"Xo.
They go
through it. They know the road, not the country. This is someone who has hunted
here.” Tsukala gazed at his bow stave. “A bad white man who knows this
country,” he summed up. “Remember, young warrior. Remember one like that.”

 
          
“Why
should he be someone I know?”

 
          
“You
said his face was painted,” said Tsukala.
“Aye, to disguise
it.
To hide it.”

 
          
“Yuh.
Hide his
face from eyes that might know it.
From your eyes.
What bad white men do you remember?”

 
          
“There
have been several,” said Mark.
“Barney Cole and Epps
Emmondson and Quill Moxley.”
**Moxley,” Tsukala repeated. “Once he
wanted your land.”

 
          
"But
he was arrested,” Mark said. “He was carried away and shut up in prison.”

 
          
“A
man can be shut up, and then get out,” said Tsukala. “A shut door can be
opened.”

 
          
"Nay,
we would have heard the news if Moxley had escaped,” protested Mark, but at the
same time he remembered Moxley and the mischief he had done at Bear Paw Gap.

 
          
On
the very first day the Jarretts had come to their new home, they had met both
Tsukala and Quill Moxley. Tsukala, a quiet-spoken Cherokee, had at first
excited their suspicions, while Moxley, tall, plausible, and a ready profferer
of help, had seemed a most sympathetic friend. But Tsukala proved to be the
true friend, and Moxley, unmasked as a schemer who wanted to own the pass at
Bear Paw Gap and profit by it, had been driven from the region. He had
returned, had helped Barney Cole with weird tricks in an effort to frighten the
settlers away, and had been captured, condemned, and taken eastward to stand
trial and go to prison. A man at home both in a parlor and a woodland camp,
Moxley could be a false friend and a dangerous enemy to anyone.

 
          
“If
Moxley got out of jail, here would be the last place he would come,” Mark tried
to argue. “He would know that any of us would shoot him down on sight.”

 
          
“He
would stay out of sight,” was Tsukala’s rejoinder. “He would paint his face
like an Indian.”

 
          
The
two rose and headed for the Jarrett house. Mark debated no more. He thought of
Esau’s insistence that Bram Schneider must be leading the Indian raiders, and
of how Schneider had been proven innocent of the charge. But Tsukala’s guess
about Moxley might be shrewder. Let his father and other wise heads decide.

 
          
Breakfast
was cooking when Mark and Tsukala came into the yard, and his mother fetched
fish and hot bread and coffee out to them. His father came out, too, a corn
dodger in one hand, a coffee mug in the other, and heard Tsukala repeat his
theory about Moxley.

 
          
“Nay,
I’m of Mark’s opinion,” announced Jarrett. “Moxley plagued us here because he
wanted our lands. Had he won his way out of jail, he’d be a condemned fugitive
and outlaw, with a price on his red head. He could never profit by possession
of an estate hereabouts.”

 
          
“A
man with a bad heart wants revenge,” pointed out Tsukala.

 
          
“He
wants revenge, true,” nodded Jarrett. “But if that were Quill Moxley who
prowled around the mill last night, why did he only seek to tomahawk Durwell or
Schneider inside? For revenge, why did he not set fire to the mill?”

 
          
“Maybe
he wants the mill,” Tsukala said.

 
          
“I
say again, Moxley would never dare set up claim to these houses and these
acres,” said Jarrett impatiently. “Hark you, friend Tsukala, if Moxley came
putting his sharp nose into our affairs, it would give me pleasure to meet him.
I fought him once, barehanded, and made him measure his length upon the ground.
Should I ever fight him another time, I’ll warrant you I’ll put him so flat
that he’ll never get up again. In any case, Esau hath just come home to the
tavern to say that our neighbors, Stoke and Durwell from westward along the
road, are coming for a council. And Mace Hollon is sending his man riding to fetch
those from beyond the ridge. They’ll all be here by mid-morning.”

 
          
Mark
sought out Will, and the brothers took axes and went to cut timbers for their
new sleeping room. They felled light young trees from among nearby thickets,
trimmed them of branches and made them into small logs, six inches through and
ten feet long. In short order they had laid a good beginning for the addition
to the house, course upon course. Esau arrived, axe and saw in hand, to help.

 
          
“Wisely
decided, this enclosed chamber,” Esau said to Mark as he sawed logs to make an
opening for a doorway. “You’ll do well to sleep with protection from strangers
coming to visit without invitation.”

 
          
“I
was thinking that,” said Mark. “Now, we’ll want a doorway into the house, and
another leading out. That must have a strong wooden bar to hold it closed. And
but one window, with a loopholed shutter.”

 
          
“What
of the floor?” Esau asked. “You need to split puncheons for that.”

 
          
“Nay,
the floor will come later,” Mark decided. “What we want at once is four stout
walls and a roof.”

 
          
Celia
came out. She carried a wooden bucket, and she went to the spring and put in
clay and water. These she worked with her hands to make a crude mortar, and
found an old shingle for a trowel. As Mark and Esau built the poles higher for
the walls, Celia and Will chinked between the poles, using bucket after bucket
of well-kneaded clay mortar.

 
          
By
the time Durwell, Stoke, and Ramsey had arrived to confer with Jarrett, the
walls had been raised and partially chinked. Esau was fitting in rough frames
for window and door, and Mark was riving a bigger log into planks, to fasten
with cleats for the door itself. Mace Hollon came to join the council. As Mark
labored, he heard Durwell tell of the strange visitor to his mill. Then Tsukala
spoke, and the settlers listened attentively.

 
          
“Sore
trouble is coming upon us, and that soon,” declared Ramsey. “I would it was not
so far eastward to Pine Fort. We might send a call for a company of militia, to
find and fight these red devils.”

 
          
“They’d
never wait to face a strong force of fighting men,” was Hollon’s comment. “But
I am like you
others,
I think they’ll try ere long to
do whatever they came to do. And Tsukala thinks they want to capture Simon
Durwell’s mill, not destroy it outright.” “There is food there,” said Tsukala.
“Corn is there, ground into meal. So many Indians have a hard time to find
food. They can eat up a deer in one day.” “They are eating up our deer,”
grumbled Leland Stoke. “I begrudge no hungry man his food, but these are
enemies.”

           
“I’ll send news of this danger to
both the east and the west, by the next travelers who stop at the tavern,”
promised Hollon. “But meanwhile, what should we do? Must we only sit where we
are and wait?”

 
          
“Nay,
I can think of naught else to do,” said Ramsey.

 
          
The
men spoke of what preparations they could arrange. Every household had several
firearms. At the tavern there was a small arsenal, no less than three rifles
and four muskets. The Jarretts had Hugh’s hunting rifle and Mark’s, a lighter
gun for fowling, and a pistol. Stoke told his friends of good armament at his
cave, which he, his son, and their two wives could use handily. And Ramsey told
of the Sheltons and the Laphams moving to his house for the time being, which
meant a fair garrison beyond the ridge.