Fear in the Forest Page 6

  “Not with salt costin’ what it does today,” Timothy shot back.

  “No, ‘course not. But when the country gets more settled, and when I’ll have the hogs to kill, salt will be down within reason, too. You wait and see.”

  “I’ll wait,” Timothy growled, “but I’m bettin’ I won’t see any of it.”

  They turned in for the night then. Daniel lay awake for a half hour, pondering on what he had heard. In his mind, Josiah Gregg took the part of all serious-minded settlers, while Timothy represented those men—and there were many of them—who had no homes and wanted none, who went only where there was the chance to make a little money, who had no ties of any kind.

  He knew instinctively that it was men like Mr. Gregg who would make this Ohio country into a true part of the United States. They would tame the forest, and build roads and mills and flatboats, and schools and churches before they were through. In a brief flash of perception, he saw what the future could be like. But first—the thought returned to him as it had so many times—first there was the Indian menace to overcome.

  They were up early next morning, but had a hard time to find several of the pack-horses. Relieved now of their heavy loads in the daytime, the animals were less tired at night. They were inclined to stray farther in search of juicy grasses, despite their hickory hobbles.

  “If you ask me, animals can be just as contrary as people,” Henry said with a wry smile when they had finally rounded up the entire train, and were about to start out.

  “All critters can be contrary,” Josiah said, “and if you was to take up farmin’, you’d find that plants can be the same. As for weather—” He cast a look up at the sky. “No need to go further than today. Cool and pleasant when we got up, and already it’s hot enough to fry hog cracklin’s on the road.”

  It was true. The day had turned unbearably hot, and as soon as they had left the clearing around the fort and had set out on the road to Fort Hamilton, the closeness of the forest seemed to reach out for them. Daniel broke into a sweat every time he had to run along the line to examine the ponies, and when he helped Amos tighten a girth, he puffed and panted. So did Amos.

  “Whew! If we don’t git a storm to blow away this heat, there ain’t goin’ to be enough of me left to fill my moccasins,” Amos said. “I’ll be all melted down. I don’t know when we’ve had it like this.”

  Timothy kept up a continual rumble of complaint, and once Amos whispered to Daniel, “It don’t seem like he’d know enough cuss words to make it sound different by this time, but he always comes up with some new ones!”

  Daniel grinned. “I reckon he’s so busy thinkin’ up things to say about the heat, it keeps his mind off how hot he is.”

  His linsey-woolsey shirt prickled, and his deerskin leggings were uncomfortably warm. When he tried to whistle, he found his lips were too parched to pucker properly. But the men had to hurry to make up the time they had spent hunting for the horses.

  Just before noon they rounded a bend in the road and saw another pack-horse train coming toward them. The leader, a swarthy, bowlegged man with lank hair and a long upper lip, stopped briefly to talk with Josiah. It was apparent that the two knew each other. Daniel listened unashamedly.

  “Had a good trip up?” Josiah asked the man.

  “Not bad.”

  “Pretty hot today, ain’t it?”

  “Yup.”

  “Anything to watch out for on the trail?” Josiah persevered.

  “Couple trees down two miles back.”

  “Any sign of Indians?” Daniel held his breath at this.

  “Yup.”

  Now Josiah’s interest quickened. “You see any?” he said quickly.

  “Not me. Express scalped, though, near the fort yestiddy.”

  Josiah frowned. “An express scalped near the fort! How near?”

  “Other side o’ the river, ‘bout two mile. Still warm when they found him. Pigs was lappin’ up the blood. Still fresh.”

  Despite the heat, Daniel shuddered violently. His breath came short. There was still time to turn back to the safety of Fort St. Clair. Surely Mr. Gregg wouldn’t go on in the face of this news?

  “Hmmm.” Josiah was thoughtful. “We got a late start, but I reckon we can make it to Fort Hamilton before night.”

  “Keep an eye out,” the other man said, and prepared to move on.

  There was a chorus of salutations from the various pack-horse drivers as the two trains passed each other and then the silence of the forest overtook them once more. Josiah wasn’t going to turn back.

  Daniel felt as if his eyes and ears were sticking out from his head in his effort to see everything and hear everything which might be out of the ordinary. But there was nothing to see and nothing to hear. The countryside seemed completely uninhabited.

  They ate their noon meal without stopping, and Amos said, “We’re mighty short on meat. I wonder if we’ll have time this evening—” He did not finish the sentence.

  The sun was high in the heavens when Timothy reported that several of the horses were lame. His two horses had been added to Simon’s string. “Always your string that has trouble, ain’t it?” Josiah said with a grim look. “Well, we’ll have to go slower, that’s all.” He examined the two, and heaved a sigh. “I’d hate to lose ‘em. They’re good ponies.”

  Daniel whispered to Amos, “But how’ll we make it to the fort if we go slower?”

  “We won’t,” Amos said. “We’ll have to camp somewheres.”

  Daniel thought back to the evening at the Worders’ when Mr. Reese had suggested he join a pack-horse troop. What a fool he had been to leave the comparative safety of that farm! And yet, once he had heard what Mr. Worder said to the stranger, he had had to go.

  But couldn’t he have chosen some other work to do—something that would have kept him in Cincinnati, where there was at least the protection of Fort Washington? Then he shook his head, answering himself silently. What did a twelve-year-old lad have to offer? He had no trade. He could neither read nor write, although he had always thought it might be interesting to learn how someday. He was not too tall; he was not especially strong. He was, to most people, simply another mouth to feed. He should be glad that he had had the chance to work for Mr. Gregg.

  Well, he told himself, he was glad, but that didn’t keep him from having the gizzard scared right out of him most of the time. They would have to camp tonight only a few miles from where the express had been scalped yesterday. What if people did say that the time you were safest from the Indians was right after an attack! Then they would have fled away from possible pursuit.

  But this wasn’t right after the attack, this was a day and a half later. By now the Indians might have come back, looking for more scalps. His own grew cold at the thought.

  “The heat gettin’ you?” Amos asked him, after one look at his pale face.

  “No,” Daniel said slowly, thinking he might as well tell the truth. “I’m afeared, that’s all.”

  “Well,” Amos said kindly, trying to encourage him, “if you can say ‘that’s all,’ then you ain’t too scairt!”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The night passed without incident other than a thunderstorm. Daniel was surprised next morning to find that he had slept well. This cheered him immensely, and he was whistling merrily when he and Amos rounded up their string of horses in the woods. For the first time, he forgot to think about the Indians.

  “Pa says we’re goin’ to stop by home for a look-in,” Amos said. He, too, was feeling cheerful at the prospect of seeing his mother and brothers and sisters again.

  “Now?” Daniel asked. “Afore we git to Cincinnati?”

  “That’s right. It’ll be right nice to have a bite of Ma’s cookin’, too.”

  “Might be she won’t have time to make anythin’,” Daniel said cautiously, “if she’s not expectin’ us.”

  “But she is!” Amos said. “Pa says he told her he’d stop by and pick up Polly to take along to
the town. She’s to visit Aunt Lydia till we come back, and buy some things Ma wants in the stores.”

  This was the first Daniel had heard of it. He was happy to think he would see more of the Gregg family, and especially Polly who had been so kind to him. But he was shy, too. Shyer than he would have been if he had not felt so grateful to all of them for their kindness to him.

  They paused briefly at Fort Hamilton on their way, so as not to lose any time, for it would be a long trip this day. Almost at once, Daniel was aware of a different air about the fort. The men wore gloomy faces, and there was more than one who had a hangdog look about him. They came out to greet the pack-horse train, but Daniel noticed that none of them ventured very far from the fort.

  “You heard the news?” one of them asked Josiah.

  “About the express? Yes, we heard it.”

  “Terrible thing, wasn’t it? He must ha’ been kilt right after he left here. Hardly got across the river, they say. Goes to show they’re all about us.”

  “Who are?” Josiah’s voice held a stern note.

  “The Indians! Why, I haven’t slept a wink since. Got a family livin’ here outside the fort, but if those varmints can sneak down on folks that quick and that quiet, they’d never have a chance to make it to the gate in time. I’d lose my cow, too, I reckon.”

  Josiah said heartily, “I’ve a family of my own, livin’ a few miles south of here. They have no fort nearby to run to. But I don’t worry about them—too much. That’s one of the things we took on when we moved out here—the chance of Indians, just like there’s the chance of a drought, or a flood. You have to wait till it comes, and then fight it. Worryin’ about it ahead of time don’t get you nowheres.”

  Mr. Gregg was right, of course. Daniel knew that, but he knew, too, that it wasn’t as easy as it sounded to look at things the way Mr. Gregg did. Still, it was comforting to be with someone who felt that way. Some of his confidence was bound to rub off onto you.

  They pushed on to the Greggs’ homestead clearing, and this time Daniel was able to see the place in the full morning light. The dogs heard them when they were still far down the rutted lane, and ran barking and leaping to greet their master. The twins came pelting after them, and Josiah caught them both, one in each powerful arm, and lifted them up in greeting.

  By the time they reached the house, Mrs. Gregg was standing smiling in the doorway, holding little Sabrina, and Polly stood by her side, the sun’s rays caught in her tawny hair.

  At first she tried to be dignified, as befitted a young lady, but she was unable to restrain herself, and rushed to her father with a squeal of pleasure. He swung her high, too, her braids flying in an arc. “Ready to come with us?” he boomed. “We’ve not long to stay. We couldn’t make it to Fort Hamilton last night, so we’re late today.”

  His eyes sought his wife’s questioning ones, and he said, more soberly, “Two of the horses went lame, and I’m leavin’ them here. Then, when we heard there’d been a scalpin’ near the fort, we thought it wiser to make camp than to travel in the dark.”

  His words had added meaning. He said, after a brief pause, “I thought I might leave Henry here with you and the childern. I’ll pick him up on my next trip. That is, if Henry’s willin’.”

  “Glad to stay,” Henry said. “Maybe I’ll get a bit of reading done, if Mrs. Gregg doesn’t wear me out with chores!” He laughed as he spoke, and Josiah and his wife laughed, too. It was clear that Henry was an old friend of the family and would be welcome.

  “I’m ready, Pa,” Polly said. She spoke breathlessly, and Daniel could see that she was excited, for her color was deep under her freckles. “I’ve got my bundle ready, and Ma has told me over and over what she wants, and what I’m to tell Aunt Lydia.”

  Mrs. Gregg insisted that they take along some corn dodger she had baked the day before, and gave them each a generous slab of her homemade cheese. Polly was mounted on one of the ponies atop a pad of blankets, a small bundle clutched in one hand. A venison ham, a bunch of dried herbs, and a large cheese, all destined for Aunt Lydia, were tied to the packsaddle of one of the ponies. The children waved and shouted as long as the pack-horse train was in sight.

  There was not much chance to talk on the way to Cincinnati. Because they had farther to go than usual, they saved their breath for the trip. Once Polly, who was riding with Amos’ string, called out to her brother, “Did you get to see Gen’l Wayne this trip?”

  Amos answered, “Tell you all about it when we stop to eat.”

  But there was no chance to tell much when they did stop, for the horses had to be allowed to graze, and there was only time for a few hasty bites of the corn dodger and cheese before Josiah gave the signal to go on again.

  Polly’s eyes were wide at the amount of traffic on the road, and once she commented on it. “Seems like we’re meetin’ a lot of people,” she said. “Must be half of Cincinnati on the road today, and all runnin’ supply trains.”

  Daniel was near her when she spoke, and he laughed. “The nearer we get to town, the more we meet,” he agreed. “But some of the supplies get left at Fort Hamilton, and still more at St. Clair. By the time you get to the road between St. Clair and Jefferson, there’s big lonely stretches where you don’t meet nobody.”

  She accepted his explanation, but shook her head. “Still, it hardly looks like there’ll be anybody left in Cincinnati.”

  “It’s gettin’ to be a big place. Your pa says there’s more than six hunnerd people livin’ there. That’s pretty big. Gettin’ bigger all the time, too, with folks comin’ from the east in a steady stream.”

  “It’s a city!” Polly cried. “I don’t think I’d like to live in a place as crowded as that, do you?”

  Daniel hesitated. There would be safety in a crowd, wouldn’t there? Polly seemed to read his mind, and said quickly, “Look at what happened last year when there was smallpox rampagin’ all around. They say Cincinnati lost a third of its folks!” She added slyly, “That’s more’n the Indians ever kilt off. And it was so quick, too.”

  Daniel pondered her words for a long time. He had not thought about it in quite that way, but it was true that if you looked at it like this, smallpox was more to be feared than the Indians. Yet he was not afraid of smallpox, and never had been. Perhaps because he had never lived in a family where it struck.

  That thought brought another to the forefront of his mind. Suppose he had lived unscathed through a smallpox epidemic, would he have been as terrified of the disease ever afterward as he was now of the Indians? In other words, was he a coward who would always be smitten with fear of whatever danger had menaced him in the past? He did not think so, yet how could he be sure?

  When they reached Cincinnati, their first duty was to get the animals to the spot where they usually camped, to remove the packsaddles, and feed the horses. Josiah went at once, although it was late in the afternoon, to see about the next consignment he was to carry to Greeneville, and delegated Amos and Daniel to accompany Polly to her Aunt Lydia’s.

  Aunt Lydia lived in a small frame house, which impressed Daniel mightily for it was usually only the wealthy who could afford frame rather than log construction for their homes. She was married to a man named Peter Torrence; he was a trader and had gone with some flatboats to New Orleans, so that, for the present, she was alone.

  “Hasn’t she any children?” Daniel asked, not sure whether he should inquire into something so personal, yet anxious to know.

  “They all died,” Amos said in a matter-of-fact way. “Some from the ague, and two from the smallpox last year. She’s not like Ma at all, though she’s her sister. She’s tall and thin, and she’s got a right tart tongue at times.”

  “Well, she’s had troubles to try her,” Polly said. “Might be you’d have a tart tongue, too, if you’d been through what she has!”

  Daniel hung back while Polly and her brother were greeted by their aunt, but then Polly called to him, and he brought the gifts of food which Mrs. Greg
g had sent her sister.

  “This is Dan’l,” Polly said, taking his hand with a proprietary air. “He’s workin’ for Pa right now, but when the Indians have been beat, he’s goin’ to live with us.”

  Daniel flushed with pleasure. “It’s right kind of you and Amos to say that,” he said hurriedly, “but your ma and pa might feel different about it.”

  Polly looked indignant. “Why would they? You haven’t any folks, and we’ve plenty of room. You’d be workin’ for Pa, same as you are now, only it’d be work on the farm, that’s all.”

  Aunt Lydia turned a piercing gaze upon him. “He’s not as strong-lookin’ as you, Amos,” she said.

  “He’s not as old as I am, neither,” Amos said casually. “He’ll fill out with Ma’s cookin’ in a couple years. He’s strong enough for his age and size.”

  Daniel backed away then, to stand with the horse’s reins in his hand, and in a short while Amos joined him. “They’re goin’ to the stores in the mornin’,” he said. “Polly says Ma has a list a mile long of things she needs. Haven’t seen so many traders out our way these days. Guess they’re scairt of the Indians.”

  They went back to the encampment by way of Front Street—the street that ran above the river. Here most of the stores and taverns were clustered. A burst of raucous song came from one of the taverns as they paused, and a heavy figure lurched out. Amos drew Daniel to a stop.

  “Timothy,” he said in disgust. “Spendin’ his money already. Pa pays him plenty, but he won’t have a penny left by tomorrow, and what’ll he do then? Pa says he’s not goin’ to hire him again. He’s lazy, and careless, and don’t care how many lies he tells.”

  Daniel was relieved. He had never liked the man, and ever since he had watched that strange meeting in the woods at night, he had wondered about him. Could he be a spy for the British? On impulse, he told the story to Amos. But Amos, like his father, looked doubtful.

  “You think he sold his hosses to somebody—British or Indian, it don’t matter—that night? And then let ‘em loose the next day?” He shook his head. “Why’d he damage ‘em then before-hand? It don’t make sense.”