The Hinterlands (25 page)

I would have let go and run off into the thickets and hid, except for the thought I'd have nothing if I chickened out. I wouldn't have no job, and I wouldn't have no Mary. And I wouldn't have no confidence in myself. A man has got to have confidence, or he is lost. And to have confidence, you've got to have a plan.

The survey was my main plan, my only plan. All the obstacles didn't change that. Obstacles could be crawled over and around and pushed out of the way.

Sue paused long enough to swill a gob of mash lodged against a laurel root. She was beginning to swing her head and step different, like the mash was affecting her. It's hard to say how a hog shows the signs of drunkenness. But you could tell she wasn't herself exactly. Not that she staggered. They was a new looseness in her steps. She turned a little slower, and grunted easier. It was her pace and manner, though you couldn't have pointed to one thing and said, “There, only a drunk hog would have done that.”

“Hey there!” somebody hollered ahead. A man stood by the bank with a rifle in the crook of his arm. They was a fire going
somewhere behind him because I could see smoke swaying out into the trees. I didn't know how long he had been watching us.

“Whoa there,” I said and pulled back on Sue's tail. But that seemed to make her mad and she speeded up, jerking me after her. As we approached the man he raised his rifle, but Sue veered around him, like he was just another tree.

“Whoa there!” I hollered again, trying to show the stranger I meant to cooperate, that it wasn't me wanted to barge into his camp. They was nothing I could do. The man looked in wonder at me as we run past. I reckon he would have shot a man alone already, but a man pulled by a sow so astonished him, he just watched.

As we swung around him I seen a tent strung between two oak trees. It was a ragged, faded tent that blended so well with the shadows you didn't notice it at first. It was held down by stakes and twine. Sue must not have seen the cords for she headed right at them. As she tripped on the strings, the stobs pulled out of the ground. She fell on the tent and I stumbled on top of her. As I rolled off one of the stakes punched me in the side. Sue squealed like her throat was being cut. The tent come wilting down as canvas will when its lines break.

“Hey there, hey there!” the man with the gun hollered. He come running after me, his gun aimed first at Sue, then at me.

As the tent sagged two men jumped out of it. They must have been sleeping, for their hair was wild and their galluses was down. They must have worked all night making liquor and was taking a rest before they worked again. They likely had been sound asleep, for their eyes looked swole up and they blinked in the morning light.

“Where the hell?” one man said. “Where the hell you going?” I never felt so foolish. My side was bleeding where I had hit the tent
stob, and I still gripped the hatchet in my right hand as I scrambled to grab Sue's tail again.

Sue rolled over on the tent and the rest of it come down with a kind of whoosh that sent dust and leaves boiling up. They was a wild look in her eyes as she squealed with confusion. If she hadn't been partly drunk she would have got away. But I lunged for her tail and grabbed it firm just as she got to her feet.

“You stop right there,” the man with the gun called. But I couldn't look back. A bullet whizzed over my shoulder like a mad honey bee.

Sue clambered right through the middle of the fallen tent and I followed, knocking my shins on pots and things under the canvas. She didn't see the shelf loaded with pans and buckets and kittles until she hit it with her shoulder. Pots come banging and ringing down on top of me. I felt like I was being hit from every side. They was such a racket, I couldn't tell what nobody was saying. They might have been another shot fired, for all I know. I held onto her tail, and let everything bang and roll behind me.

When everything's happening at once, it's like you're both aware of it and not. I knowed the men was hollering at me and follering and threatening to kill me, but I knowed I had to hold on to Sue or all would be lost. If I stopped to explain, I'd just get killed and nothing would be accomplished. If I kept going, I might get away.

They was a tub full of mash and a dozen or so jugs near to the fire. Sue skirted the jugs with a delicacy that seemed impossible in the situation and stuck her snout in the tub to gulp some mash. But it must have been hot for she squealed and shook her head, pulp streaming from her jaws, and run on.

I looked back over my shoulder, in that pause. The three men was watching us with a mixture of awe and confusion. They had
never seen anything as crazy as a man holding a sow's tail. The fact that I seemed crazy was my best protection.

“I'm going to build a road,” I hollered back at them. “We're surveying out a right-of-way.”

“This ain't no right-of-way,” the man with the rifle called. “This is the wrong way.”

They had the biggest doubler I had ever seen. It must have been a hundred-gallon still, maybe two-hundred, of shining copper, like it was new made. They had the fire going under it. And even as I run past in all that panic and confusion, I seen the clear liquor dripping from the eye of the worm in shining drops.

Another bullet sung by me as we run out past the woodpile. But I figured if they was going to shoot me, they already would have. I figured they was obliged to do something, so they fired them shots to scare me.

What's that? How could we build a road right through the still? I was pretty sure when we come through again that still would have moved. The blockaders would take their outfit to another holler after they had been found. Since I hadn't been killed and since I had seen their operation, they would just take everything to another branch.

As we passed the fire, the heat almost blistered me. No wonder them fellers was sleepy, after working in that blaze all night. Maybe the fumes had got to me, for the whole place seemed to spin around, the big barrel with its slop of mash, and the copper worm like a big tendril of a grapevine with the jug at the end of it catching lit tears of liquor. And we had passed a pile of wood that seems in memory to be higher than my head. It must have been a month's supply of split oak. And they was a quilt hanging somewhere among the saplings, but I didn't know what it was for. Maybe it wasn't even there; maybe I imagined the quilt.

I expected any second for a bullet to hiss by my ear. I stayed bent over as I run. My best hope was just to keep going. Like, if you seem to know where you're going, people will hesitate to bother you. But over the sound of Sue's grunting and panting, and my own short breath, I could hear the sounds of birds, and dogs barking. But the strangest thing was, it sounded like men making them noises. As we slipped into the laurels, I glanced back just once, and those three fellers was running after us. They follered us baying like dogs, and calling between their hands like birds, and making every kind of sound you could think of.

That was the most unsettling thing that had happened to me. It was like them fellers decided they couldn't shoot me 'cause I was crazy. But they wanted to scare me and make me never come back, and they had found just the right thing to do.

I kept hearing their calls and painter screams after we got deep in the laurels. But with us shaking the bushes and kicking up the leaves, I wasn't sure when I quit hearing their whistles and woofs and just thought I did. They seemed to be halloos and growls in the air, but I couldn't be sure.

Among the rattle of the leaves and the shivering of the bushes, I soon heard another noise. They was a kind of hum ahead. It was like I could place the sound but couldn't name it. It was a buzz like a fire or a swarm of bees, and we was running directly toward it. I knowed what the sound was but couldn't think of it. It was a roar like a fireplace will make when you get a big fire going with hickory and the draft gets stronger and stronger.

I couldn't hear the cries of the whiskey men behind, but ahead was this roar. And then I knowed it must be a waterfall on the creek, for I could smell mist in the air. Sue was staggering a little from all the mash she had eat, and she seemed to be losing her sense of direction. We plunged deeper into the holler, right toward
the sound. If they was a waterfall, it looked like we would be blocked and have to go back toward the still.

I started to feel the mist in the air like a cool breath. It felt good, like I was changing from one to another season in just a few minutes. I was soaked with sweat already, and cobwebs stuck to my clothes. For some reason the spray made me feel the scratches and bits of bark and cobwebs on my skin worse than the heat did. Big drops clung to webs strung between laurels. A drop hit me in the eye like a soft egg busting. The drops running down my neck and back felt like spiders.

Maybe it was the roar of the waterfall that made me itchy and nervous. I was sure we'd have to turn back, yet Sue kept trotting further and further. The sound of falling water got louder. The leaves and rocks dripped with mist. Maybe the hog was so drunk she did not even notice the roar and crashing. At least when we reached the dead end I could catch my breath.

Sue busted out of the laurels, and there was the pool into which the long, white tongue of water was plunging. The water boiled up crazy where it hit, and the pool looked dark and deep. I thought Sue was going to head straight into the water. The cold pool would feel good, but I wanted to stay away from the pounding foot of the falls.

I looked up and seen water coming over the lip and at me like tons spit out of the sky. It must have been fifty feet up to where the creek bent and broke over the rim. Rags and chains of spray tore off and whipped around. Falling water seems to shout at you. It sounds like it's warning you of doom and destruction. It puts a fear in your gut, but you don't know why. I thought we had come to the end of our survey.

But Sue did not slow down. She darted right at the falls, through the fine mist gilded by spots of sun coming through the
trees. She splashed along the rocks at the edge of the pool. The water burned my ankles like dark flames. It took my breath as we stepped in. The freezing water seemed to peel away my skin.

Sue was heading straight toward the shaft of crashing water, and it looked like I'd have to turn her loose if I didn't want to be crushed and drowned. The pounding water could knock a body senseless. The sow seemed bent on suicide. Maybe she was trying to shake me loose, or maybe she wanted to cool off in the falling creek water.

I was ready to turn loose, but suddenly she darted
behind
the curtain of the falls. The heavy power of the water smashed my left hand as I held onto her tail.

It was dark behind the sheet of exploding water, and it took me a few seconds to see the cave of wet overhanging rock. It looked like they was signs on the rock, all kinds of markings on the walls, Indian signs and maybe names and dates cut by hunters and trappers. I squinted to see better. I wondered if the Spaniards had lived there. I knowed the Spaniards had climbed into the mountains looking for gold, and they made the Indians dig like slaves in their mines. But I didn't know where the Spaniards lived, and how long. I wanted to look close at all the signs, in the gloom of the dripping cave, but the hog kept going, her hooves clicking on the rock, right to the other side.

We broke through the far edge of the curtain of water and suddenly come back into bright light. I couldn't wipe the spray out of my eyes because the hatchet was in my hand. I blinked away the drops as Sue swerved to the right and started climbing. I couldn't see well, but it looked like they was nothing but a wall of ferns and moss. Sue leaped right up the slope, and the ground under the ferns was moldy leaves that my feet sunk deep into.

As we started laboring up the mountainside it seemed like I had
imagined the cave behind the waterfall. That dark room of writings on the rock was just something I had dreamed. I tried to remember if they had been anything else in the cave. Had I seen any pots or arrowheads in the gloom? Was they any bones of animals or humans?

They was all kinds of rumors of a lost lead mine of the Cherokee. Some of the early settlers, like the McBains, was supposed to know where it was. The legend was the entrance to the mine was near water. Could the entrance be behind that waterfall? I was beginning to imagine I had seen all kinds of things. That's the way it is when you want to believe something. It just seems to be so. I imagined I'd seen a pile of coins in one corner. Some was gold and some was green corroded copper, and some was silver black as soot. Or maybe I had seen bags and Indian beads, and maybe a skeleton in those few seconds in the cave? If they was enough treasure there, I wouldn't even have to build a road.

The slope was so steep even Sue was beginning to slow down. I had to think on the work at hand. I could return to my fantasies later. As our feet plunged and slid in the soft dirt I saw a road could be dug there. It wasn't rock like I had feared. If the whole ridge was dirt a road could be zigzagged right up its side. Usually around a waterfall the ridge was rock. That's why the waterfall was there. But the slope here had a covering of dirt.

As the mountainside got steeper I stuck the hatchet into the dirt for a grip. I marked the trees best I could as we climbed, but mostly I held on to keep from falling off the ridge. We switched back, and then switched back again, levering right up the soft face of the mountain. With pick and shovel I could level out a road to the top of the ridge above the waterfall. Sue had knowed where she was going after all.

As we sweated up the steepness I thought of all the people in
history that had crossed terrible mountains. In school we had heard about Hannibal that crossed the Alps with an army of elephants to attack Rome. They was a drawing in the teacher's book of elephants slipping and sliding through snow. And some elephants lost their footholds and went sliding over cliffs into the valleys below. And the teacher read us about Caesar crossing the Alps with his army, pulling their supplies in carts and ox wagons. And she read us about Pizarro and his pack mules carrying gold out of the Andes. Moses had to climb up on Mount Pisgah in the Bible to look over into the Promised Land. And when I was little, the newspaper was full of stories about Lewis and Clark crossing the Rockies and finding the Pacific.