The Black Rifle (Perry County Frontier series) Page 11

  It was after dark when Elan left the Shell house to make his camp on the hill. Waiting for his eyes to become accustomed to the dark, Jack automatically ran his hands over his rifle checking priming and hammers. Something on the stock was different, and he moved his fingers over the wood working out what it was. His initials had been carved deep into the stock in bold flowing script. Elan could feel where the curves widened and narrowed.

  Elan had no doubts about who had done the carving. Only Martha had handled the rifle when he was out in the fields with John Shell. Jack thought about going back inside and thanking her, but he got to feeling funny in his head, and the drumming became hard to handle.

  Jack sat on the hill for a time, letting his mind run free. Martha Shell was showing a special caring for him, and Elan could feel his own feelings rising and requiring notice. He had to put down thoughts of living in his own cabin and doing normal things again, and Jack found it hard to do.

  Elan had only been off his place for a day or two, and he needed longer. If he moved wrong, his ribs hurt like fury, but it might be better to rest back in the hills somewhere, maybe at Shatto’s or even James Montour’s. He might not heal as quickly away from Shell’s, but he would be able to keep his mind on the Heart-Eater.

  There was a candle burning in a window of the Shell’s place, and he recognized it as being in Martha’s end of the loft. She had never done that before, and it made him warm inside.

  Elan watched the candle, considering some of what it might mean. Then, favoring his sore ribs, he groaned and swore himself into his pack, got a grip on the balance of his rifle, and eased into the timber.

  He was not swift in turning all of his senses sharp because Martha Shell kept getting in the way. He got settled down after a bit and began passing through the woods as quiet as any of the other night critters sneaking about.

  The Shells left his thoughts, and the Heart-Eater rose in their place. He could hear his teeth grind, and his grip on the rifle got tight. One shot! One clear shot! That was all he asked for. Elan spent most of the night thinking about it.

  Chapter 19

  The Woods

  The fall and damage to his rifle served warning to Jack Elan, and despite relentless urging of the tiny drum, he began including regular breaks from the rigors of his training.

  When he was at Rob’s house, Jack talked about his sense of losing a fine edge of readiness. Becky Shatto had told him of a book she had read about ancient fighters called gladiators, and how they had trained themselves to perfections. The gladiators fought regularly and found that periodic carousing kept their minds calm. Becky could see that Jack was drawn down, and she thought the same reasoning might apply to him.

  Not that he should go carousing; a visit to friends should do just as well.

  Thereafter, when he felt the need, Elan left his old lands and abandoned his routines.

  At first, Jack feared weakening his hunger to kill the Eater. He worried that other interests would creep in and dull the hatred and rage glowing inside him. His fears proved groundless. Elan found temporary solace in being gone from the clearing, but soon the drumming rose, forcing his return, and he could attack his preparations with renewed vigor.

  The rest periods afforded Jack his first real chance to explore the many valleys lying between Kittatinny Mountain and the great Tuscarora. Once, his eye would have seen them as mostly alike, but Jack Elan was no longer the clumsy-footed settler from city streets. His leaned body possessed a wiry grace that spoke of extraordinary endurance, and his new way of life was training him to see and understand a wilderness that a year earlier he would have overlooked.

  Elan had come to think of the broken lands lying between Kittatinny and Tuscarora Mountains as a separate entity. South of Kittatinny lay Carlisle and the flatter ground of secure English and German farmers. Beyond Tuscarora, to the north and west, lay Indian nations and tribes seething with resentment of white intrusion.

  Between the mountains, the valleys twisted in a bewildering maze of narrow valleys, notches, and sharp ridges. A traveler lost within the land was wisest to follow a run until it joined a larger stream and eventually became a creek that might be bordered by a settler’s cabin.

  The forested hills lay mostly at peace. Indians still lived near Cisna Run, but they were a tiny band of misfits and were without influence.

  Only a few whites had as yet dared stand in the path of Indian ferocity. The Robinsons were often harassed because their holdings straddled the still important trail to the north and west. Any hunting or war party using the route encountered Robinsons or saw their cabins and fort. Most, quietly moved on but not all, and Robert Robinson continually prowled his clan’s borders on watch for hostiles.

  Various squatters tried their luck along larger creeks. Each, in turn, discovered that the land did not come free. Some, as had Elan, paid in bloody tragedy. All labored, sweat, and struggled to tear away the forest, the undergrowth, and the deep forest humus to lay bare the good earth and to get enough sun on it to raise a crop.

  To Elan, the wedge of twisted valleys between the mountains and bordered on the east by the Susquehanna River offered all that a man might desire. Game abounded because water and food abounded. A million nut trees provided unlimited squirrels and turkeys. Deer browsed and grazed in the bottoms where beaver had once cleared the land and built their dams. Streams ran thick with fish and eels. Blue Moccasin said that the Iroquois Nations had looked upon these hills as a special hunting ground, and Elan could see why.

  To Jack Elan, Sherman’s Valley seemed the most promising ground for settling. Here the land was less steep, and the valley was broad and long. Sherman’s Creek was wide and never approached drying. Along the creek banks, where natural clearing occurred and tender shoots grew thickest, game was especially abundant.

  Many squatters agreed with Elan, and the creek’s banks were dotted with partial clearings and abandoned cabins where men had tried their luck. Only a few occupied cabins endured.

  Andrew Montour had been employed by the Cumberland sheriff to sweep squatters from the creeks and back south of Kittatinny Mountain, but some had returned, and Montour had not bothered to try again.

  Rob Shatto claimed that Montour was secretly in favor of settling, and of getting it done swiftly. If settlements blossomed, hostiles would stay clear. Montour knew about such things because his family was half Iroquois, and only a few days march to the north two of his sisters ruled Seneca towns named after them. Rob claimed that the closest, Esther’s Town, was larger, cleaner, and more pleasant to visit than Carlisle.

  When in need of change, Elan drifted though the timber along Sherman’s Creek observing the progress of various settlers but rarely being seen. He often detected white hunters within the creek-side woods, but it was a rare occasion that the hunter glimpsed Elan’s leather-clad figure slipping through the forest.

  Warm mineral springs on Sherman’s Creek were always worth a visit. Whites rarely used the springs, and with Indians gone, the water bubbled undisturbed. If thorough scouting showed the area to be empty, Elan found comfort in soaking in the naturally heated water and tried to include a stop there in his travels.

  Other places met Jack’s approval and provided resting spots. Widely scattered, they waited in whatever direction Elan chose to wander.

  At times, Jack enjoyed pausing in the hemlocks on Castle Knob west of Shatto’s. He could look across Rob’s fields, and at night he saw the wink of light at Rob’s house. Elan always left deliberate and clear sign in the hemlocks, for Rob Shatto scouted his land and would wish to know who looked over his place.

  There were natural lookouts that held appeal, and Elan often slept near one. From atop a ridge across from Buffalo Mountain, he could see far up the river, even past the Tuscarora. Elan’s mind could leap the distances, and he could imagine the village on the Shenango and the Heart-Eater pausing there to gird for his journey east. Then Elan’s drumming would thunder.

  When his will to
learn and train became exhausted, Elan slept, but the nights could be long. He allowed no fire after dark, and he sorely missed the comforts of healing warmth and leaping flames.

  Drumming was always with him, sometimes slow and distant, but never failing, and there were ghosts and bitter memories that haunted his sleep leaving him troubled and disturbed.

  Jack’s meals were silent and lonely affairs, but occasionally, he made much of one, enjoying his elaborate preparations as much as the eating. During a day he might gather different berries as well as wild onion and tasty roots. An abandoned Indian or squatter’s field often provided a sample of grain or a stray vegetable. If he could catch a fish and bake it beside a bit of squirrel, venison, or opossum, Elan could offer himself a welcome variation of tastes and textures.

  During the hot and dry days of summer, Jack tried his hand at making pemmican. He cut venison into thin strips and sun-dried it until the meat dehydrated. He pounded the dried meat into a coarse flour and mixed it with bear fat, berries, some nuts and pinches of salt. Pemmican kept indefinitely, and it greatly relieved the tedium of regular woods fare.

  Elan hungered for fat meat and salt, and when he came in, the Robinsons or the Shattos were generous in supplying him with the one essential spice—salt. Without salt, life paled. Elan tried to pay for his salt—all of which had been carried in from Philadelphia—with haunches of deer, sometimes bear, and often turkeys. If he took a large animal, Elan was hard put to eat the animal before it spoiled, so it was not unusual for him to appear with a load of meat even though he desired nothing in return. Rob was never short of meat, but the Robinsons were farmers, and resented every moment from their work. Only Robert hunted regularly, so Elan’s meat was always welcome.

  At the west end of Sherman’s Valley, where the mountains closed together, lay a number of swampy ponds where black bear enjoyed wallowing and rooting hog-like in the shallows. Elan had taken a number of the heavy creatures and packed the meat and hides to Fort Robinson before they could spoil. The bears rendered into much grease, and their fat meat was balm to Elan’s and the Robinson’s hungry pallets. Jack was always welcome at Robinson’s fort.

  Occasonally, Elan contacted a white squatter or a hunter from Sherman’s Creek or perhaps from a Raccoon Creek cabin. He chose such meetings with caution, being careful not to appear too suddenly and startle the man. Despite his attempts at friendliness, Elan sensed immediate wariness in the other.

  For a time, Elan supposed the reserve was due to his unexpected appearance from the forest and perhaps his wild attire. Meeting with settlers remained uncomfortable, however, and they seemed constrained and slightly fearful of him. Jack spoke of his cool receptions to Rob Shatto, and after mulling it over, Rob spoke thoughts that Elan spent much time considering.

  “Well, Jack,” Rob said, “I’ve come onto the same scariness nearly every time I approach a newcomer—except the Robinsons, of course. Gave me pause for quite a spell, but I worked it out, and here’s how I see it.

  “Nearly all of these people are good folks from farms and towns east of the mountains. They’ve lived civilized and are used to settled people about like themselves.

  “The men hunt a little, but they are not woodsmen. If they could, they would rip out all of the trees and plant corn everywhere. Woods are enemies to settlers, and you were like them yourself, say a year ago. Well, you’ve changed a heap, and there lies the problem.

  “Those people take a look at you, me, and Montour, and they see things they do not understand. It’s always been known that no one likes things they can’t figure out and put in a proper place.

  “They see us slipping quiet where they sound like buffalo. We dress in smoky old skins where they wear homespun. We smell like woods and fires, and I don’t need to tell you how most of them smell. Best put would be that their scent is not like ours.

  “Even our ways of looking at situations are different. Where they see just a woods, we see trails, markings, nests, cover, animals, birds, and lanes to shoot through. We can run further than most of them can walk, and we always know where north is. We sleep outdoors when we can because we like it, and we feel safer in the forests than buttoned up in a village inn.” Rob paused to consider.

  “I guess that what I am saying is that we have grown so different that our shadows don’t even lay the same as theirs. We’ve made ourselves sort of fit this country, where most of them are still struggling to fit the country to their old ways.

  “As I see it, we have become so different that we could not change back if we wanted to, which we surely don’t. So, those people feel us to be strangers to them and their ways. And they are right. We ain’t like them, hardly at all.

  “The sad fact is that most of them won’t make it out here. They aren’t hard enough to last, yet, they are too stiff to bend with the mean times and spring back when life turns good.

  “The way I expect it, we will see most of them flee back to Carlisle with the next Indian uprising. Some will be back, no doubt, and there will be others like them. There will be more each time, but no matter how many try, they will not last until the war parties stop coming and things get peaceful in the Endless Hills.

  “When those people look at us, they are reminded that they do not measure up, and it bothers anybody to know that he does not have all that is needed. That makes them resent us, more than a little, Jack.”

  Rob smiled grimly. “There is one other point to think on. The tribes are moving back almost as quick as they can pack and leave. Within a dozen years or so the Indians will be gone, and squatters and settlers will move in like fleas on a dog’s back. We will be looked on as odd and perhaps kind of dangerous to have around. We will remind them of bad times, and they will like us even less.

  “They will be many, and we will be few. We had better think about that a little, too, Jack. If we do not, we may have to follow the Indians and get as far away as we can.”

  It made sense to Elan when Rob said it, and the more he considered Shatto’s reasoning, the more he knew it to be true.

  Jack figured that he liked being more like Rob than the squatters, but he reckoned there would come a time when frontiersmen, like he was fast becoming, would be out of place, and it would all belong to people who wouldn’t know much about the pain that had gone into opening the land for them.

  He had been that way himself only a little way back, so he supposed he should not feel too badly or be surprised at rejection by civilized folks.

  It seemed, though, that once a man learned right ways, he hungered for everybody else to act as he did. Moving along, Jack would hear some settler blundering around, making more cracklings than a cattle herd, and he would want to grab hold of the man and tell him how easy he would be for a prowling hostile to pick off.

  It would be of no use, of course. The settlers could do no better, and Elan used their clumsiness as a reminder to take even more care with his own silent passage.

  When speculating about the land and its future, Elan enjoyed drawing outlines of the rivers and mountains on the forest floor and figuring where the people would settle once the Indians were gone.

  The rivers were the keys to entering and leaving the Endless Hills. The big valleys could be reached by working up the creeks from the Susquehanna or the Juniata. Water travel was considerably easier than bucking wagons over Croghan’s Gap, although Rob Shatto and others had come in that way. A rough road was now opened across Kittatinny, but it was tortuous and more fit for mules and horses than wagons. Unless double teams were used, only small loads were practical. Mountain roads would always be bad. Rivers were the best routes.

  Once settlers got in and developed producing farms, towns would appear, and they would first be on the rivers. It seemed to Elan that there would be a town near where Sherman’s Creek met the Susquehanna, and surely another where the Big and Little Buffalo Creeks joined the Juniata. There was fine land there to support the villagers. Jack could visualize a whole line of communities strung like p
earls along the waterways. Little Juniata Creek would have a town, and there might be a whole city where the rivers joined. The ideas excited Elan’s imagination, and he laid out small market towns along the big creeks with mills and stores and houses for craftsmen like tanners and blacksmiths.

  Then, Jack would look around and see only the dark forests with occasional clearings where the sun struck through like a giant spear, and he would know he was dreaming a long way into the future. Elan would smell the woods and perhaps see a small animal or two and listen to some water running sweet and pure, and he would hope that it would be many a decade before those towns and people came cluttering his valleys.

  Elan usually traveled with only his hunting pouch and a worn cloth blanket that he rolled behind his back or wore across one shoulder. He secreted his heavy hide hunting pack and his meager supplies of corn meal along with extra powder and ball in a tree hollow a mile from his clearing. Jack made it a practice to approach his cache from different directions and as seldom as practical to avoid wearing a trail.

  On a rest trip, Elan moved in daylight. He tended to doddle, finding things to look at and comfortable places to sit. He could feel tension drain from his body as he freed his mind of the strains of training. Although the tapping within his head never rested, it grew smaller and more distant and usually remained so until he again turned toward his cabin’s clearing.

  And then, there was God. Agonizing for his murdered wife and son, Elan sought to find meaning in their terrible deaths.

  Unlettered and unread in religious philosophy, Jack sought answers from his narrow church experience and from the savage world in which he existed. Elan gained no satisfaction or contentment but reached an embittered awareness and acceptance.