Arrowmaker (Pennsylvania Frontier Series) Read online

  Books by Roy Chandler

  Fiction—32 books

  The Perry County

  Frontier Series—14 books

  (in proper reading order)

  Arrowmaker, 1974

  Friendseeker,1982

  The Warrior, 1986

  The Black Rifle, 1976

  Fort Robinson, 1981

  Ironhawk, 1999

  Song of Blue Moccasin, 1989

  Tim Murphy, 1993

  Hawk’s Feather, 1986

  Shatto, 1979

  Ted’s Story, 1988

  Chip Shatto, 1984

  Tiff’s Game, 1991

  Shatto’s Way, 1984

  Other Novels—18 books

  All About a Foot Soldier, 1965

  The Boss’s Boy, 2007

  Chugger’s Hunt, 1990

  Cronies, 1989

  Dark Shadow, 1996

  The Didactor, 1981

  Grey’s Talent, 1995

  The Gun of Joseph Smith, 1987

  Hawk’s Revenge, 2010

  Morgan’s Park, 1997

  Old Dog, 1993

  Pardners, 2008

  The Perry Countian, 1987

  Ramsey, 1994

  Shooter Galloway, 2004

  Sniper One, 2000

  The Sweet Taste, 1990

  Tuck Morgan, Plainsman, 1991

  Nonfiction—31 books

  Antiques of Perry County, 1976

  Arms Makers, Eastern PA, 1981

  Alaskan Hunter, 1977

  Alcatraz, Hardest Years, 1989

  Behold the Longrifle, 1993

  Choose The Right Gun, 1994

  Cruising Catamaran, 1987

  Death from Afar 1, 1988

  Death from Afar 2, 1993

  Death from Afar 3, 1994

  Death from Afar 4, 1996

  Death from Afar 5, 1998

  Firefighters of Perry County, 1982

  Gunsmiths of Eastern PA, 1982

  Homes, Barns, Outbuildings, 1978

  The Hunter’s Alaska, 2005

  Hunting Alaska, 1995

  Hunting in Perry County, 1982

  The Kentucky Pistol, 1994

  Kentucky Rifle Patchboxes, 1972

  Kentucky Rifle Patchboxes 2, 1992

  The Last Black Book, 1995

  The One Shot Brotherhood, 2001

  PA Gunmakers, 1984

  Perry County Gunsmiths, 1969

  The Perry County Flavor, 1980

  Perry County in Pen & Ink, 1983

  Perry County Railroads, 1970

  Perry County Sketchbook, 1986

  Tales of Perry County, 1973

  White Feather, 1997

  ARROWMAKER

  Roy F. Chandler

  Iron Brigade Armory

  Publishers & Purveyors of Rare Books

  100 Radcliffe Circle

  Jacksonville, NC 28546

  Tel: (910) 455-3834

  Printing history:

  1st Edition, Bacon & Freeman, 1974

  2nd Edition, IBA, 2000

  e-book Edition, 2011

  ARROWMAKER© by Roy F. Chandler

  All Rights Reserved

  This is a work of fiction. The characters in this book and the situations depicted are the author’s creations. They do not and did not exist or happen.

  eBook created by www.ebookconversion.com

  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  1: 1749 – Carlisle The Beginning

  2: 1749 – The Visitor

  3: 1749 – The Plan

  4: 1749 – The Mountain

  5: 1749 – The Lodge of E’shan

  6: 1749 – Girty

  7: 1749 – Shikee

  8: 1749 – The Cat

  9: 1749 – The Warrior

  10: 1749 – The Flint Quarry

  11: 1749 – The Name Giving

  12: 1751 – The Meeting

  13: 1751 – The House Plan

  14: 1751 – Aughwick

  15: 1751 – The Moose

  16: 1752 – Planning & Building

  17: 1752 – Rebecca

  18: 1753, 1754 – Change

  19: 1754 – Iron

  20: 1754 – House & Land

  21: 1755 – The Tracker

  22: 1755 – The Homemakers

  23: 1755 – Braddock

  24: 1755 – Intruders

  25: 1755 – The Shawnee

  26: 1756 – The Desperate Year

  27: 1759 – Whiskey

  28: 1760 – The Treasure

  29: 1761 – The Muskrat

  30: 1763 – The Attack

  31: 1770 – Lime Making

  32: 1775 – The Mill

  33: 1776 – The War

  34: 1780 – Simon Girty

  35: 1805 – The New Gun

  36: 1809 – Little Rob

  37: 1816 – The Return

  38: 1816 – Black Diphtheria

  39: 1820 – The Legacy

  Introduction

  Arrowmaker is a story of the eighteenth century frontier we now call Perry County, Pennsylvania, twenty miles northwest of Harrisburg. Although Arrowmaker is a novel, the story is based on fact.

  Excepting the main characters, individuals mentioned existed. The famed Indian trader George Croghan, the half-Indian Andrew Montour, and some of the Delaware, Shawnee, and Iroquois were as I describe them. Braddock, Washington, and Armstrong are well known to even school-boy historians,

  I have chosen to use current names for the geographical features in the story. Forgotten titles would add nothing to the telling and confuse those who wish to know the ground discussed. Exceptions to this rule are Gibson’s Rock, which I describe only as “A great nose of rock thrusting into the creek.” The “nose” has been blasted away and no longer creates the obstacle it did in frontier times. To the mountain passage now known as Sterrett’s Gap, I have applied the much earlier and more deserving name, Croghan’s Gap.

  The lands and waters about which I write exist today much as they did in the 1700s. Duncan’s Island has been filled in, but it is the point where the Juniata and Susquehanna Rivers join. The cave in which Rob Shatto found Simon Girty was blown away to create a highway, but the spot is still known as Girty’s Notch. The warm springs have cooled and are not in use, but they continue to trickle close by the banks of Sherman’s Creek.

  If a reader wishes to see the meadows of the Little Buffalo as Rob saw them in 1749, he has only to take the Markleville road out of New Bloomfield for a mile and a half, and they will be spread before him. Castle Knob still looms, and where the most central farmhouse now sits, stood E’shan’s lodge and the great oak. An arrowmaker once worked there, and the farm’s truck patch turns over great numbers of flint shards, broken points, and uncut blanks. Rob’s pond lay a little west of the old millpond now unused, but a visitor can work out those kinds of detail for himself.

  Robinson’s Fort, mentioned herein, lay only a few rifle shots from the Shatto place, and the bloody ground is marked by a stone monument In normal times, the settlers’ spring still trickles from beneath the fort’s bluff, but the water table has lowered and the spring is no longer unfailing.

  The Robinsons experienced vicious fighting against both Delaware and Shawnee, and this author has devoted an entire book to the Robinson family, their stockaded fort, and the battles that occurred there. That volume is, appropriately, titled Fort Robinson.

  Budding historians and students can accept the scenes and details in Arrowmaker as historically correct and typical of the latter 1700s and the early 1800s. The time frame of this novel is accurate. Events such as attacks on Fort Robinson and Braddock’s defeat happened when and where I depict t
hem. The drought of 1805 happened, and the 1816 “year without summer” is also recorded history. The historical figures included in the story were present and acted much as I have portrayed them.

  Rob and Becky Shatto, Shikee, and E’shan are composites of people of the times, but such facts and techniques as making bloom iron, stone quarrying, lime burning, whiskey making, clay digging, and even Rob’s small coal vein are legitimate. In some cases, I have simplified a process to move the story along; on the other hand, a vein of coal such as Rob used was actually uncovered about two miles below the Shatto place.

  The flintstone ledge near Millerstown is legend. Modern man has never located the spot. The story of Braddock’s treasure has been told since the time of the massacre. When the author last heard, nine of Braddock’s cannon had been found, but the “treasure cannon” was still missing.

  If the story seems unduly violent, it isn’t. The settlers in Perry County experienced incredible suffering at Indian hands. Their histories at least match Arrowmaker in violence and primitive savagery. Since the original printing of Arrowmaker in 1975, we have become a nation virtually obsessed with political correctness to the point that accuracy is often buried beneath sensitivity and caring. Not here.

  Arrowmaker does not dwell on human abuse, but neither does it sugar over the physical and mental toughness of earlier times. Our forebearers were hardy people, and aborigines were (and continue to be) brutal in their treatment of enemies. Civilization’s laws tame us to some degree, but on the Pennsylvania frontier of the 1700s there was little Colonial law, and Delaware, Shawnee, or Iroquois laws and customs bore small resemblance to the human rights and delicate treatment of enemies that we practice today.

  When Rob Shatto came to the land, the chestnut blight had not struck, loggers had not ripped at the hills, and erosion had not bled the fields. We have done terrible things to our woods and streams. The early 1900s may have been the low point in our environmental history. Since then, improved farming practices have revitalized our soil, and our forests have grown new timber. The land is again beautiful to gaze upon.

  Arrowmaker initiated a series of frontier tales that include most of the figures encountered within this story. At this time, the series numbers some fourteen volumes with another dozen associated novels of more modern times. The result is a collection that will be read, reread, and enjoyed by many generations.

  Because we have followed the first edition’s readership, we can record with certainty that interest in Arrowmaker and the books that followed has been unusual. Most are read repeatedly, and some devotees announce rereadings into the dozens. The age span and educational range of these readers are stunning. Among the readers/collectors are scholars, managers, doctors and lawyers. Electricians, teachers, farmers, and contractors read and collect the series. Military men have collected these novels since Arrowmaker appeared, and it is pleasing to note that precocious youths down to about thirteen (mostly boys) are often dedicated fans.

  Impressionable boys, strong men—warriors in particular, even our dreamers hunger for these stories because the books’ characters rise to their hopes and expectations. Book characters become family and their vigorous lives and sometimes-violent responses appeal to a reader’s sense of how it ought to be.

  Personal honor, decisive action, doing what should be done are always present and are emphasized in these volumes. Readers wish to again meet these frontiersmen and wait expectantly for the next book to be offered. These are stories of earlier times the way we wish to know them. We do not dwell on bugs or the lack of toilet tissue. Men stand tall, riflemen shoot straight, and if the tomahawk is needed it is used.

  Do not seek explicit sex, foul language or vague solutions herein. There are none. In this series, villains get what they deserve. Yet, it is often noted that “Chandler Books” are fit reading for anyone. These books are tough, very physical, but absolutely square and honorable—the kind of reading we wish we could find on the library shelves but seldom do.

  These books are cherished. Many are purchased for passing on to later generations. Imagine that—novels so treasured that they become heirlooms, but it has been so, and we expect that appreciation to continue.

  We believe that you will value your purchase as you have no other novels ever encountered, and we will be surprised if you do not wish to own them all.

  1

  1749-Carlisle

  The Beginning

  The end grew close, but after great suffering the old man welcomed it. His life had been long and full, and now that death’s touch had lessened the pain, his concern was not for himself but for the boy.

  When his senses cleared, he felt the youth at his bedside and became aware of his grandson’s strong grip clasping his own worn and unresponsive hand. He felt the need to again tell the boy that all was well and that they could each begin his journey without fear.

  His mind sought a final time to return the youth’s grasp and thought he succeeded as he felt the boy’s hand tighten around his own. Then, the darkness closed around him, and with dimming awareness, he recognized his own curiosity about what lay ahead.

  — — —

  Rob Shatto sat on the floorboards of their wagon beside his grandfather’s wasted figure. Dawn was close, and he had often heard that it was in those darkest hours after the moon had set that men were most apt to die.

  He sat dully, wearied by the long vigil, the days of packing and preparation behind. The old man had watched and encouraged him as long as he had been able. Together, they had planned Rob’s course when death laid its inevitable claim. Together, they had reviewed the plan, and Rob thought the dying man had gained contentment from the organizing. The wagon was packed, the stories were spread, and together they had waited only for death’s final embrace.

  At sixteen, Rob Shatto stood tall and slender. His bones protruded awkwardly, but oversized hands and feet disclosed the man he would soon become. His teeth showed strong and even when he offered his slow smile, and slightly blunted features beneath a thatch of raven hair boasted a smooth and naturally tanned complexion. Robbie Shatto could become a handsome man, but before time gave him maturity, Rob Shatto would be an orphan. Dying David Shatto was all he had left.

  His grandfather had spoken often of the parents Rob had never known. Both were taken by Black Diphtheria when it plagued Philadelphia in the summer of 1737. From the memories of old David Shatto, Rob pictured the handsome strength of his father as the two men labored together in David’s gunsmithing shop. Somehow, his mother remained a shadowed and remote figure, never fully clear in his mind. David Shatto could understand and describe a man. Women, with their softer ways, remained mysterious.

  Following his son’s death, David Shatto had packed his gun shop into a sturdy wagon, placed his grandson on the seat beside him, and driven away from the sticky humidity that had turned Philadelphia into a pesthole. The gunsmith followed the great road north to the Massachusetts Colony and eased their journey only to rest his team or accept a gunsmithing task.

  The wagon life appealed to young Rob. Rarely settled long enough to make friends, the boy centered his life on gunsmithing and his grandfather’s affection.

  It was David Shatto, using his wooden-covered Bible as a lesson book, who taught young Rob to read. The grandfather brought the youth early to the gun shop where the child pumped manfully at the great forge bellows or sat quietly in the warmth of a chimney corner watching raw iron drawn and hammered into long barrel blanks by the gunsmith’s skilled hands.

  David Shatto urged the boy to work with the tools around him and enthusiastically-admired the improbable results of the child’s creative efforts. But, the years passed, the boy grew, and his skills increased. At sixteen, Rob Shatto could forge and weld a gun barrel, shape a lock, or carve a stock with professional expertise.

  The problem was that despite his abilities with iron and wood, Rob Shatto was still a boy. Orphaned, without protection, Robbie Shatto would become a ward of the commun
ity, his goods confiscated, and himself subject to existence in an almshouse or apprenticeship to whomever the village could persuade to take him.

  So, the old man and the boy had schemed. David Shatto saw his grandson’s growing strength and competence and devoted himself to the planning. Together, they determined how Rob would evade the poorhouse and remain his own man until maturity freed him from meddling.

  David Shatto’s interest in the gunsmiths near Lancaster had begun their journey to the wilderness of William Penn’s Commonwealth. They had spent a full summer and fall in the Lancaster vicinity, traveling now and then, north and east to the small communities of Bethlehem and Reading to meet working gunsmiths and to exchange ideas.

  David had made few guns that fall. His thoughts seemed trapped and stimulated by the frontier and the wild lands that lay beyond. Instead, he talked long with the smiths who created the rifles that hunters and settlers preferred.

  In the damp cold of January, the call of the new lands became too strong and, loading their wagon, David Shatto headed west to the frontier huts of a raw village named Carlisle. There he could be among the long hunters and trappers who ventured to the Indian country, and there his gun making skills could be in the forefront of the great adventure—the exploration of the vast mountain continent lying beyond the Penn’s purchase.

  The new town, a way station for the trail west through the rugged and little known Cumberland Gap, saw the passage of traders, soldiers, and interpreters. Indians of many tribes passed through, and some loitered about the village watching the white men through inscrutable dark eyes. The rough-hewn hamlet centered about a stockaded fort and lay at the very borders of Penn lands. Only a few miles to the north reared the mighty ridge of Kittatinny Mountain which marked the Southern edge of the always simmering Iroquois Nations.

  Often the Shattos walked to a near meadow to look north to the thrust of mountain, to speculate on the tribes living there, and to wonder how the land lay beyond the rugged gaps that offered passage to those few allowed beyond.

  David Shatto could not anticipate the sickness that struck without warning and in a few short weeks destroyed his health and savaged his exhausted body beyond recovery.