Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1953 (2 page)

           
“Speak on,” Sam bade the Indian,
whose finger shifted to the last pattern.

           
“Chief: Some wanted to move from
Twilight
Town
, but it is hard to leave the home of your
fathers. Then the Chickasaws, across the
Big
River
at the west, said that
Twilight
Town
’s stockade was a threat of war. They said
we must pull down the stockade, or they would fight us. They said that our
strong medicine was gone, since Giluhda hated us. They began to raid. Things
are bad for the Twilight people.”

           
“Is this true?”

           
“I tefi no he.”

           
While Sam put this into English,
Otter stowed away the wampum belt and produced another.

           
“Sink us, he has more of his dragon
tale!” groaned Meehaw.

           
“Speak on,” said Sam, and Otter
touched the first pattern of the new belt.

           
“Chief: Woodpecker, chief of
Twilight
Town
, called a council. He asked that the
council vote to send for a white man, with the fire-weapon of which we have
heard, to kill Giluhda.”

           
“Good luck,” said Meehaw, “he’d have
us send him a Saint George to cope with his dragon.”

           
“Let him tell the rest,” Captain
Brooke said, and Sam prompted Otter again.

           
“Chief: Eagle Wing, the medicine
man, said to call on the White Coats, the French. Eagle Wing said that the
White Coats were better friends to Indians than the Red Coats, the English.
Eagle Wing said that the White Coats could beat the Red Coats in war. But
Woodpecker said that our eastern Cherokee brothers trade with the Red Coats. He
said that the Red Coats were closer and easier to find. He said that the East
Wind, where the Red Coats live, blows bravery and success.”

           
Sam’s translation was greeted with
sudden new interest by Captain Brooke.

           
“I like that about Cherokees siding
with the British settlers,” he said. “The French have overmany Indians helping
them as it is. How if this talk is an offer of alliance? Let him finish, Sam.”

           
Again Otter took up his tale.

           
“Chief: A few more of the council
voted for Wood-

           
pecker’s
word than for Eagle Wing’s. The warriors were named over and their wisdom and
strength considered. I, Otter, was chosen for a messenger. I have come to the
first Red Coat town I found, to tell what we need, and to bring back with me a
strong and wise warrior with a fire-weapon, to kill Giluhda and rid my people
of him.”

           
“Is this true?” asked Sam once again.

           
“I tell no he.” Otter tucked away
the second belt and folded his arms again. “I have said what I was told to say.
I am silent.”

           
His face grew as sternly motionless
as a face of brown stone.

           
“Does he expect a serious reply to
this claptrap?” demanded the trader, shaking his fat head from side to side.

           
“Sam,” said Captain Brooke, “bid him
tell us more about his hairy beast. What does it look like?”

           
“Speak of Giluhda,” Sam told Otter.

           
“I have said what I was told to
say,” demurred the Indian.

           
“But we do not know about any such
animal. Tell how he looks.”

           
“He is as large as a hill that
walks. His legs are as thick as trees. Two long, crooked teeth stick out of his
mouth. From his head grows a great arm, to pick up his food or strike his
enemy.”

           
Sam interpreted this, and again
Meehaw shook his head.

           
“He has heard of elephants! Two,
long crooked teeth and an arm on its head—”

           
“Wait, sirs,” put in Carrier. “There’s
been a big critter or two in the western woods. I’ve heard say, by a man who’s
talked to the French, about a salt lick just below the
Ohio River
. They told him there’s bones there bigger’n
anybody can guess. The backbones are like stools, he allowed, and the ribs like
stakes for a pig sty—”

           
“Aye, there you have it,” insisted
Meehaw. “The French told such things to the Indians, who come to say the
animals
live and threaten them. Faith, I don’t like lies
sent from French mouths through Indian ones.”

           
Again Otter’s long, dark eyes fixed
upon the fat trader, as though the Indian understood his words.

           
“I apprehend he doesn’t relish your
manner,” said Carrier. “Indians like to be
took
soberly.”

           
“Send him out while we decide on his
business,” Captain Brooke told Sam.

           
“Warrior,” said Sam to Otter, “my
chief asks that you leave this house and let him and his wise men sit alone to
think about what you have said.”

           
Silently Otter rose, gathered his
robe around him, and stalked out. Captain Brooke looked from Carrier to Meehaw.

           
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I’m inclined
to feel as Mr. Meehaw does. This Indian must seek to deceive us. His tale of an
elephant or other strange beast in his western country is beyond my belief.”

           
“I can’t say the same,” drawled the
smith, crinkling his brick-red brow. “He looked and acted like a truth-teller
to me. The wampum belts showed he was a messenger, right enough, from some
council. He’d be mad to come from afar only to tell lies.” “We’d be madder to
send somebody to that un- chancey land just on his word,” argued Captain
Brooke. “Who’d be such a zany as to go?”

           
“I would, sir,” said Sam Ward, so
quickly and so stoutly that all three stared at him.

           
“You, young Sam?” demanded Captain
Brooke. “Even when we have decided here, two to one, that
your
Indian is romancing?”

           
“I don’t think he’s romancing,”
replied Sam. “That makes it two to two, though I’m not of the council— Mr.
Carrier and me against yourself and Mr. Meehaw. Even up, Captain.”

           
“What?” cried
Meehaw.
“You’d go that journey just to make sure?”

           
Sam cradled his rifle in his arm. It
was a good gun —he’d seen its accurate performance in Dan Boone’s hands.
Perhaps it was the rifle that helped him think with relish of the adventure.

           
“I’d like right well to see and
shoot an animal of the sort he tells about,” said Sam.

           
“Oh, employ yourself with deer and
turkeys,” Meehaw said, pinching more snuff from his silver box. “That’s your
station in life, boy.”

           
“Is it so?” growled Sam, more hotly
than ever before to a man as important among the settlers as Meehaw. “This very
day, I had it in mind that
Fort
Brooke
doesn’t need a meat-hunter any more.
There’s beef and pork for everyone. The country’s getting settled, and I’m
almost out of my hunting business.”

           
“That Indian talk has bewitched
you,” suggested Captain Brooke.

           
“Sir,” Sam addressed the captain,
“you yourself thought that we might do worse than win an alliance with the
Cherokees. I’ll just step outside with Otter, and speak on with him.”

           
“Aye, go,” Meehaw urged him
disdainfully. “Ad- dlebrains might be catching in here.”

           
Sam almost raged out in the brisk
March air. Otter stood at the threshold, tall and graven-faced, his eyes
expectant.

           
“Are you the white warrior who will
come with me?” he asked. “I am glad, because you know our speech and your
manners are good.”

           
“Let’s eat the
noon
meal before we talk,” Sam suggested, and
led the way toward Carrier’s smithy.

           
In the kitchen, Sam found a haunch
of cold roast venison. He sliced off a portion for his guest, and also offered
some ashcakes left from breakfast. Otter sat on the floor and ate silently.
Carrier came in as the two finished.

           
“Sam,” he began, “ye don’t mean
ye’ll go?”

           
That was the moment when Sam made up
his mind. The disappointment at being left out of Brad- dock’s campaign, the
sense of no need for his hunting, the taunts and disbelief of Lycurgus Meehaw—
all these things had been working in his mind and his heart. He glanced toward
the corner where he had leaned the long rifle that Dan Boone had given him.

           
“I’m going,” he said. “Words
shouldn’t be wasted, any more than powder and shot.”

           
“Captain Brooke’s too proud to order
ye to stay,” said Carrier, “but he and Mr. Meehaw are both sure it’s a fool’s
errand. There’s no hairy elephant, or whatever.”

           
“That’s the captain’s word, and Mr.
Meehaw’s,” Sam reminded. “You yourself aren’t sure.”

           
“No, boy, I ain’t sure.” The smith
grinned ruefully. “It’s only that I’ll miss ye sore, worry over ye. Since your
father died, we’ve been two good housemates together.”

           
“I’ll miss you, too,” Sam assured
him honestly, “but I’ll be back. What I said at the blockhouse is true. Folks
have tame meat aplenty. They don’t need me to hunt here.”

           
“I taught
ye
the blacksmith trade,” pleaded Carrier. “It’s an honest, respected one. I’ve
thought, now and again, that when I’m too old to swing a hammer, you’ll have
this forge and work where I’ve worked.”

           
“You’ll never be too old, sir,” Sam
rallied him. “Meanwhile, there’s that other thing the captain said —a chance to
befriend the Cherokees and win their help in this French war. Isn’t that
something to strive for?”

           
“The Indian didn’t promise that. He
just talked about his hairy animal.”

           
“And the more we talk of it,” nodded
Sam, “the better the chance seems that I’ll even find such a wonder.”

           
He spoke to the squatting Cherokee.
“Otter, my mind is made up. I will bring my fire-weapon to your
Twilight
Town
.”

           
“Then let us start. It is a far
journey.”

           
Otter rose, gathering his fox fur
robe over his arm. Sam looked at the stone tomahawk and the knife of ground
deer-horn in Otter’s belt.

           
“Warrior, I will make you a
present,” said Sam. “Here.” From the wall above his bunk he took a tomahawk
with an iron head and a hunting knife of well-whetted steel. “These are yours.”

           
Otter’s shaven head bowed above the
gifts. “They are good,” he said. “Thank you.”

           
Carrier helped Sam make a pack of
what he would take. It was not much. Sam changed into his newest moccasins, his
best leggings and hunting shirt. He donned his coon-skin cap, and to his girdle
hung hunting knife, iron-bladed tomahawk, and a leather bag with whetstone,
awl, and flint and steel. Opening the shot pouch Dan Boone had given him, he
counted thirty bullets for the
Pennsylvania
rifle. He filled his largest powder horn,
then poured more powder into a gourd and stopped its mouth with a wad of tow.
Carrier made up a parcel of bread and meat.

           
“And here,” added the smith,
offering another gourd. “I’ve put salt in it. Ye’ll relish your meat better
with salt.”

           
“Thanks,” said Sam. He rolled the
gourds of salt and powder into the red blanket from his couch, and lashed it
into a pack. “Now, that’s all I want. We’d better travel light if we have to
climb mountains.” Carrier followed them to the doorway. “Mountains,” he echoed
Sam. “Nobody’s ever been all the way across them. Ye’ll be going where no white
man knows the trail, Sam.”

           
“True,” said Sam heartily. “So it’s
high time a white man found it out.”

           
“Why not wait till the morrow?”
ventured Carrier. “No,” said Sam. “If it’s go
it’s
go,
and the sooner the better. Otter says to start now, and I say the same.” He
held out his hand. “Goodbye. Look for me back here, when the thing’s done and
the tale’s to tell.”

           
“Goodbye, lad,” said Carrier, and
closed his great red fingers over Sam’s. “Take care of yourself. I’m no sure
hand at the praying, but I’ll say a prayer for
ye
, now
and again.”

           
“I’ll be obliged if you do.”

           
Sam and Otter walked down the single
narrow street of the little village. Beyond the last cabin they moved away on
the westward trail from Brooke’s Fort, toward the log that spanned the little
creek and the way beyond, toward Indian villages closer beneath the mountains.
Sam permitted himself only one backward glance.

           
Brooke’s Fort had a friendly look to
it at that moment, as though every house and every shed and every yard was
asking him to change his mind and stay. He set his lean young jaw and looked
back no more, but strode along beside Otter.