The True Account (7 page)

The smith's name was Quick, but he took the better part of a whole afternoon at the job, interrupting his labors every three or four minutes to regale us with stories of the robbers and murderers we were likely to meet on the Natchez Trace. Quick ran the rope ferry across the Cumberland; and at last, about seven in the evening, he carried us and our freshly shod mounts over to the far side. My uncle was exceedingly displeased to discover that the boat was powered by six slaves winding a thick hawser around a turnstile. But when he asked the blacksmith where he had procured those poor people, the man spat a dark jet of tobacco juice into the current and said only, “Harpes.”

T
HE NEXT DAY
was the first fiercely hot day of the year, and as we followed the Natchez Trace southwest from Nashville, we rode from spring into full summer. A dense ceiling of foliage reached out over the narrow trail from the trees on each side, in places roofing it entirely with a living green canopy. Nesting redbirds, mockingbirds, and warblers poured out their songs, and the orange trumpet-flowers were full of black and yellow swallowtails. Here in the Tennessee forest grew many tall trees unfamiliar to me. Some of these my uncle identified as chestnuts, live oaks, pecans, hickories, and tulip trees. But copperheads, cottonmouths, and rattlesnakes were everywhere, sunning themselves on logs, coiled on ledges beside the trail, and lying beside puddles and backwaters, and I was very glad, and my uncle as well, that we had no such long and deadly gentlemen as these at home in Vermont.

That evening we came to an inn known as Grinder's Stand, not far from the Buffalo River. As we rode into the dooryard, we were greeted by Mrs. Grinder herself, attired in a buckskin dress and a flop-brimmed slouch hat such as the backwoodsmen in those parts favored. She showed us where to stable and bait our mounts, then conducted us into a log house consisting of a single large room with a packed dirt floor. On the hearth was a spitted joint of venison. The only other guest was a wooden dressmaker's dummy, seated at the head of a long trestle table, whom Mrs. Grinder introduced as George Washington.

As our landlady laid plates and mugs on the table, a ruffianly-looking pair of mountain men arrived. Sitting directly across from us, they produced a stone jug from which they began to swill, turn and turn about, laying the neck of the jug upon a massive shoulder and gurgling down prodigious quantities of spirits. When these men tipped back to drink, their faces, behind thicketlike black beards, resembled those of boars. For apparel they wore stitched-together pelts of skunks, woodchucks, and possums, with bleached skulls of mice and moles dangling from the fringes of their blouses and trousers. Their sloping hats were fashioned from the skins of bitterns with the feathers still attached; the thumbs of both and the forehead of one were branded with the words
HORSE THIEF.

Mother Grinder bustled about laying two new places in front of them and spitting another haunch of venison on the fire. The cooked meat she placed on a pewter charger, which she set before the larger of the two travelers, who was stuffing chunks of bread into his mouth with both hands. “Perhaps you'll do us the honor of carving, Bigger,” she said. Bigger drew from his belt a glistening blade a foot and a half long; but instead of addressing the roast before him, he hurled this weapon backward over his shoulder without turning to look at his target, burying the knife to its hilt in the bloody haunch of venison on the spit.

Bigger turned to the landlady. “Fotch us that un on the hearth. I and Big takes our meat
just singed.
”

Mrs. Grinder instantly did as directed. Big and Bigger fell upon the oozing bloody joint, hacking off and carrying to their mouths on the points of their knives chunks of meat as large as the half-grown cat on the inglenook bench. They ate with such ravenous lust that the haunch was soon gone, after which they repaired again to the stone jug.

My uncle set about his meal with his usual good appetite, but my own hunger was now gone. Suddenly, the larger of our fellow travelers looked out from behind his vinelike hair and said, “Where did you Yankee-boys say you was a-going?”

“Why, friend,” said my uncle with a pleasant smile, “we didn't.”

Bigger said, “If you're going down the Trace, you'd best look sharp for robbers and killers. Particularly the Harpe brothers. Ain't that right now, Big?”

“It is,” said the other. “They're a desperate pair. I heard they've murdered twenty men.”

“Twenty-six,” Bigger corrected him. “And afterwards drinked a toast to their wictims with mead distilled from their own bees' honey.” He shoved the stone jug across the table and said, “Wet your whistle with our mead, Yankee. You can taste the wild honey in it and it goes down smooth.”

My uncle shook his head and pushed back the jug. “We've heard of these Harpes, gentlemen. I wonder if you might be so good as to describe them for us? That way we'll know them if we encounter them out in the wilds. How many brothers are there? A gang of at least five or six, no doubt, from their desperate reputation.”

“Only two,” Bigger said. “But two such as unsuspecting travelers will remember for the rest of their lives.”

“Which would be about three minutes,” Big said, looking off at George Washington.

Bigger made a rumbling sound that seemed to begin and end far down in his massive chest. “What does these Harpe brothers look like, the Yankee wonders? Would you allow, brother, that one would be big?”

“I would. And the other bigger.”

“Would you venture to say they wears clothing made from skunks and possums?”

“I would so venture.”

“Would you further say that they wears hats of swamp-bird feathers, to shed the rain?”

“Yes, I would further say so. And has you heerd, brother mine, how they disposed of their twenty wictims?”

“Not twenty, brother. Twenty-
six
. Yes, I has. They gut them up the belly, like fishes, and fills up their insides with stones. Then they sinks them in the nearest river or stream. But don't worry, friends. We'll ride with you and protect you from the Harpes. For there is strength in numbers. And if we meet and overcome the Harpes, there is a reward of five hundred dollars apiece on their heads, which we shall split four ways.”

By now, Big, Bigger, and the landlady were all holding their sides with laughter. I was stricken dumb with fright. But my uncle abruptly produced his arquebus from beneath the table. “Gentlemen, I am sure that we're much obliged to you for your good information about the Natchez villains we're apt to meet, particularly the feather-bedecked and skunk-clad Harpes. We appreciate, as well, your kind offer to accompany us. But as you can see from the good companion I hold here in my hands”—raising the arquebus so that it was now pointed straight at Bigger's head—“we already have protection enough.”

With this he rose and rang a dollar down on the table. “Ma'am”—without taking his eyes off the Harpes—“we thank you for the provender. Gentlemen, we thank you for the warning. Rest assured that if we encounter the Harpes, we will be ready.”

Neither of the outlaws said a word as we backed out of the inn. A few minutes later we were riding south on the Trace in the red evening, my uncle cheerily whistling a Scottish ballad and I full of wonder at the scene I had witnessed at the inn. For the soldierly man who had coolly faced down the assassins as if they were schoolboys in his Vermont classroom was a man I had never seen before in the sixteen years that I had known Private True Teague Kinneson, of the First Continental Army of the United States of America, Green Mountain Regiment.

A
ROUND MIDNIGHT
the moon went behind the clouds. Directly it began to rain, so we turned off the path and took shelter under my uncle's big umbrella beneath a spreading pine tree. Advising me to get some sleep, he got out his notebook—for with his large yellow owl-eyes he could see nearly as well in the dark as in daylight—and began jotting down ideas for his ever-evolving
Comical History of Ethan Allen.
Knowing that my uncle was watching over me, I slept as soundly as if I were home in my loft bedchamber above my mother's warm kitchen. The next morning I awoke much refreshed, with the sun already an hour high.

We made a hasty breakfast of several slices of bread we'd slipped into our pockets the night before at dinner, sharing them with Bucephalus and Ethan Allen. Upon returning to the Trace, the white mule paused and tossed his head; for, although he was deaf as a post, he had a very keen sense of scent. Bucephalus flared his nostrils to test the breeze sifting up from the southwest, struck the ground twice with his forehoof, and smelled the wind again.

 

Soon enough we came upon the faint, mostly washed-out tracks of two large dray horses such as those the Harpes had ridden in on the evening before at Grinder's Stand. To my alarm, they were headed in the same direction as we were. But my uncle assured me that by tarrying behind a bit, we would run no very great danger of stumbling upon them unawares before they passed the Buffalo River, where he intended to strike off on the Chickasaw Path to the Mississippi.

We reached the Buffalo about noon. As we approached the Metal Ford on that stream, so called from the ironlike rocks of the river bottom just below the horse ferry, we spotted a pillar of dark smoke rising from the trees across the water. It had a thick, sooty aspect and a most noxious odor. From the far bank of the river we could hear someone weeping.

We urged our animals across the hardpan ford and rode fast into a dooryard whose cabin and barn had both been burned to the ground within the past several hours. Low blue flames still licked over the charred logs. Wailing and rocking back and forth on a nearby stump was an ancient black woman with a bloody rag wrapped around her head. My uncle leaped off his mule and rushed to the woman's aid, unwinding her head-rag and dabbing at her wound with his nightcap. He told me to run to the river with the rag and soak it thoroughly. Then, with many soothing words, he bound her gashed head properly, at the same time urging her to tell what had happened.

At last she managed to convey that she was a free widow who, first with her husband and, since his death, by herself, had operated the horse ferry. To her recently had come her granddaughter, a girl named Cissie-Gal.

“Few hours ago, two men on plow horses come 'long from Nashville way, holla for the ferry,” the old woman told us. “I bring them cross the water. They two giant white men. Soon's they set feet on dry land they say they going to ravish Ciss 'less I tell them where I keep my moneybag. So I go fetch out my little pouch of silver. Then they drive the ferry horses in the barn and shut up the door and set the barn and house afire. I whisper to Cissie-Gal, ‘Quick, run in the woods and hide.' Ciss run. She run like the wind. But they ride after and club she down and throw her over the horse. I grab the ax. They club me down, too. And ride off toward Nat-chez. Worst thing is, I can't do nothing to help my grandgal.”

“How long ago did this terrible thing happen?” my uncle asked.

She stared at him without speaking, then let out another cry. He sat beside her on the stump and held her hand with the greatest distress on his face, as if wishing he could take some of her grief into himself. Finally, she caught her breath. “Old Sol, he just clear the tops of them simmon trees over yonder.”

I gauged that to have been about eight o'clock, giving the Harpes—for I had no doubt that they were the kidnappers—a good four hours' start.

The main road to Natchez ran due south from the clearing. But a faint trail entered the forest to the west. “Where, my dear, does that old run through the woods lead?” my uncle asked.

“That the road through the wilds to Chicksaw Bluffs. Other road, he wind on down by Ten'see River, down old Mr. Colbert ferry, down Buzzard Roost and Nat-chez. That the way them men take Cissie-Gal. They say they carry she down Grace Plantation, sell to Kaintuck rivermen for slave-girl.”

At this prospect the old woman wailed louder than ever.

My uncle looked long and hard at the faint gap through the trees that was the Chickasaw Trail. Then he looked at the road to Natchez.

“Ti,” he said, rubbing the copper plate on his head with his stocking cap, “tell me. What must a man always do when he isn't certain what to do?”

I looked at him.

“Think, nephew. What did I teach you when you were a shaver?
What must a man always do
—
always
—
when he isn't certain what to do?”

“Why—he must always do what's right, sir.”

“There,” cried my uncle, jingling his stocking-cap bell. “You have set me on course again, Ti. A man must always do what's right. And, by the Great Jehovah, we must do that now!”

B
Y MIDAFTERNOON
we had passed three well-armed bands of Kaintuck flatboat men, wending their way afoot back from Natchez to the Cumberland and Ohio rivers. Of the first group we inquired about the Harpes and Cissie. They merely stared at us as if we spoke an entirely different tongue, so we judged it best not to query the next two parties.

Toward evening we had gained on our quarry so much that in wet places on the Trace water was still oozing into their horses' tracks. As the sun touched the rim of the low western hills, we emerged on an eminence all set about with tall pine trees. Riding ahead, my uncle held up his hand. In a narrow valley below, the Harpes, with Cissie tied up and thrown over Big's horse, were just turning off the Trace near a small brook.

They vanished into a thick canebrake alongside the stream. Training my spyglass up the defile, I could see water issuing from a dark opening in the hillside and falling in a white curtain down a rock face. On the hill above the mouth of the cave sat several thatch-roofed, cone-shaped huts, not greatly bigger than bushel baskets.