Thunder in the Valley Page 3

  “Matthan, you can’t saunter over to that there fort an’ plead your innocence, innocent though you be. I couldn’t let them jail you there. Them folks be scart as hound pups in deep water that ain’t learnt to swim, an’ scart folks don’t show good sense. I’ve taught you that, ain’t I? Yep, they’d shoot you or hang you. Nosiree, there be no help nor feelin’s for you in the den of the Van Hoves. Well, what elst be there for you?”

  He continued quickly. “‘You can’t strike for the Ohio by your lonesome from here neither. Too many Injun haters thataway who’ll be huntin’ you once Lansford spreads the word, an’ trust him, he’ll spread it fast and thick.

  “You knows,” he said, dipping his shaggy head at me. “You ponder on it, ponder on it hard. The one man in all of Ohio that might be somewhat joyed at seein’ you is that treacherous, big-nosed Abel Stillwagon. Quite a turnabout that is, ain’t it? He’s really the cause of most of your trouble. But, all in all, he’d likely welcome you since you could tell him what’s happened down thisaway. An’ since you was listenin’ in on me an’ your step-paw from the loft back aways, you know where to rendezvous with him. Ponder on it some! He’ll want to be taken them furs he’ll have outta the country another way instead of down the Muskingum as planned, won’t he now?”

  Jeremiah peered down at me and sucked rapidly on the sea nymph pipe. “You gotta do it my way, Nephew. A backwoodser havin’ a fair piece to traipse with dangers all about can’t be touchy ’bout who he asks for help. Abel ain’t trustworthy, but he be a first-rate fightin’ man, an’ you could lower the strain offen him an’ that clubfooted little ruffian that sides him. You can taken John’s place an’ help ’em haul them furs where they can be sold off. An’ once you’re out on the wide Ohio, you can slip on south. If’n you don’t want a share of the gains for your work ’cause you’d feel queasy ’bout it, that’s your choosin’. You do what suits you.” He paused again, letting me consider what he’d reasoned out.

  “You’re in a bad way, me boy. But, liken the Lord says, He’ll help them that helps themselves. You gotta gain some leeway by tossen the Fort Frye crowd offen your scent. You ponder on that! Appears you could make out fine with what I done that time out along the mighty Mississip when I throw’d those damnable McDowds offen my trail. You remember that yarn I spun you, don’t you? Sure you do. Ponder on it now. You use Cousin Hezekial over on the Muskingum any way you deem fit. Don’t ask him for help in any way, just use him. I grant you, he be of our blood. But he don’t honor allegiance to any, not even his Maker. He was in with your step-paw, but he’ll jump onto the other foot an’ uphold Lansford’s river bunch and save his own neck. Nephew, you gotta get done what’s goin’ a-beggin’ an’ be as far upriver as you can by daybreak. Tomorray will be too late. Git what you need from the cabin an’ my best hidey place, then git on with it. . . .”

  A particle borne by the wind brushed my forehead. I blinked and Uncle Jeremiah vanished. But his disappearance didn’t throw me off course; I followed orders. Without a moment’s delay, I swiped the water from my brow and taken off for home, putting some straight up and down into my chilled frame.

  Lord, how I loved Jeremiah, how I would always love him. All was not lost. His words warmed my soul and poured some grit and spunk into me. And he’d told how I could trick Lansford and his followers just as he’d fooled the McDowds, and with a little luck, make a clean getaway. It was a risky, dangerous scheme, but Uncle’d pulled it off and I’d take his suggestion and have my own stab at it.

  I had no false hopes. By now Lansford had painted a mighty black picture of us Hannars, and the folks at Fort Frye likely judged me a fugitive, a man in rebellion against the lawful authority of the territory. At daybreak they’d come for me, rifles fully cocked and lynching nooses chafing their palms. It counted not I wasn’t guilty of anything. Matthan Hannar either saved himself or perished.

  Lansford planned a quick death at the end of a rope for me. But that wasn’t to be, not if I had any say in things. Jeremiah and Stepfather had sacrificed themselves and spared my life.

  Even if it cost the life they’d saved, their deaths wouldn’t be for naught.

  Chapter 4

  Evening—January 7

  By the time I reached the edge of our clearing and spied the cabin, sighting a spot where a scared lad could get warm and ease the hunger cramping his innards surely bolstered the soul.

  But armed with an empty rifle and not desiring another Ballard fiasco, I didn’t charge headlong for the door. I hunkered down and scouted in all directions with eye and ear.

  The cabin appeared deserted. The unlatched shutter of the window banged with each gust of wind. Through the open door, the interior loomed black as the hold of a ship. No smoke came from the chimney. The hearth fire had burnt itself out.

  While the cabin seemed deserted, still leery of a trap or ambush, I slow-footed around and checked the outbuildings first. What I found—open gates, an empty shed, empty pens—I sat poorly with me. Gone was the horse team. Gone were the brindle cow and the sow pig. A single animal remained, the boar hog, flopped on his side in his pen, rainwater forging runnels through the bristle on his flank, shot dead under the near ear.

  Lansford and the Ballards had probably led off the horse team when carting the wounded colonel and the bodies of Stepfather and Jeremiah to Fort Frye. That I could understand. But loosing the cow and the sow and slaying the boar smacked of spite, and their callousness got my dander up. Driving and ferrying the livestock from Fort Pitt had been a toilsome chore, a task we’d undertaken establishing the farm promised my mother if she came with us to Ohio after marrying my Uncle John. I stood in the mud, madder than a wet hen, furious that everything we’d done for her had amounted to nothing whatsoever in the end.

  I didn’t rant and fuss overly long. The cold rain had me shaking and shivering and a heap of discomfort gets a young man considering himself mighty quick. Much too wet and miserable for prolonged fussing over how things had turned out, I just wanted to be warm and fed and gone from this place, once a happy place, now one reeking of death and shattered dreams.

  I sidled over even with the near end of the cabin and probed along the wall for Jeremiah’s “look-see” block. Back when we’d mortared twixt the logs, Uncle had rigged a hunk of chinking we could remove so as to look inside on the sly. I located the loose block, wriggled it free, and stuck eye to black hole. After a bit I made out the table and chairs, then the hearth on the far side of the room. Nothing there; no one waited in ambush. I trotted round front and ducked in the door.

  The Ballard rifle landed on the table with a thump. I knelt before the hearth. A little digging with a poker fetched up a few embers from the ash pile with enough spark to fire a handful of oak shavings from the wood box. I added layers of cut wood, built a bright dancing flame, and soaked some heat into my bones. Once warmed through, I searched the room. Lansford and his hirelings had confiscated every gun and ounce of powder we Hannars owned, leaving me no means of defense unless I braved a tramp back out into the dreary night.

  Out I tramped.

  At the midpoint of the hill beyond the horse shed, a spring, long run dry, had carved a hole in a solid wall of stone. A towering slab of gray rock obscured the upper half of the hole; the bottom half Jeremiah had cleverly blocked with small boulders, denying passage to nosey snakes and varmints. Roll the boulders aside, scrunch down and worm your way under the slab overhang, and you popped up in a small cave—Uncle Jeremiah’s “hidey place.” On a ledge near the ceiling rested his possible sack, a smallish lead box filled with gunpowder and, wrapped in a buffalo hide, his Pennsylvania long rifle, necessaries secreted in the event the redskins burned the cabin while we were off running our trap line. I squirmed them through the opening one at a time, wedged the lead box under one arm, hefted the sack and bundled rifle, and beelined for the warmth of the hearth fire.

  The possible sack—a military issue haversack—showed stout construction, being triple-stitched and deep
-pouched. The sack contained most all the gear a trailing man needed for a long, bad-weathered journey. I spread the gear out on the table, recalling as I did my favorite of Jeremiah’s many tales, the story Uncle told the evening he’d readied the haversack for storage in the cave.

  “Always be prepared, anywheres, anytime, an’ I say again, anytime,” he’d started. “Why, I knowed a trapper, name of Caleb Pass-water, foolish enough he let himself be bushwhacked answerin’ the morning call of nature. There he be, smack in the open, ringed by green ivy an’ yeller wildflowers, gun at the off hand, breeches bunched down round his anklebones, eyeballs pinched shut with the strain of it all. Can’t you just see him, presentin’ the whitest an’ roundest an’ easiest target in all God’s realm? T’warn’t no way that red devil Injun sneakin’ up on our camp could pass over that pearl of a chance for annoyin’ his most hated enemy. He strung an arrow, let fly . . . an’ his shaft flew true.

  “Believe you me, Caleb’s bellers of pure hurt brung the rest of us on the run an’ we saved his scalp. But I tell you, he was truly mortified at takin’ an arrow in his most tenderest spot. An’ us being an ornery bunch, we didn’t comfort him maybe like we should’ve. You see, whilst we dug into his bare rump after that arrow with a knife by the fire, each of us took a whirl at bestin’ the others in assurin’ Caleb how handsome that arrow shaft stickin’ out of him was.

  “Now Caleb didn’t die from the cuttin’ we done on him. But that arrowhead chewed such a hole in the right ham of his backside he felt a heady pang of pain ever’ time he taken a step for weeks. An’ though we went out together in the mornin’ from then on, with one of us standin’ guard, Caleb wouldn’t perform lessen he was jaw to jaw with his protector. He’d had all the funnin’ he could bear.

  “Thus, me lad, don’t ever deny preparation ain’t the savin’ grace of all of us. A speck of time spent findin’ a more woodsified spot and Caleb would’ve spared himself a bottomful of torment and embarrassment.”

  I laughed aloud. Never would I meet another man like Uncle Jeremiah. He’d never preached. He’d trained with his yarns and his ways. And true as his words, he’d stuffed the haversack with everything from powder horn and whetstone to glass vials of sassafras root, salt, and bear oil. He’d even included his old naval spyglass.

  Jeremiah’s long rifle slid easily from the roll of the buffalo hide. A star and the letters J. H., made of dull metal, decorated the maple stock opposite the patch box. Thimbles secured the ramrod along the bottom of the barrel. The gun was in prime firing condition, lock mechanism well oiled, flint shiny and unused.

  The glossy black grains of powder in the lead box felt tinder-dry at the touch of a finger. I poured the powder horn full, swabbed, loaded, and balled the long rifle, likewise the Ballard gun. That finished, I scaled the wall ladder. Jeremiah’s sea chest was a shadowy lump in a dim corner of the loft. I’d never nibbed in it before, but I had no choice now. A flip of two metal hasps freed the lid. The Ballards hadn’t disturbed its contents and beneath an old greatcoat nestled Uncle’s second hatchet and sheathed skinning knife, both aged, passable if sharpened well. I took both hatchet and knife, and though unaware Jeremiah possessed a fine heavy old greatcoat, particularly one he never wore, I helped myself a second time.

  Fully armed again, I barred the door and stripped, drying hunting frock, shirt, breeches, and moccasins over chairs before the fire. In the meantime the hunger cramping my innards needed tending. Our larder was bare of meat, but mealed corn, water, and poor flour kneaded into dollops of johnnycake and cooked at the hearth in a spider skillet greased with animal fat wasn’t bad fare. The fat bubbled and spit in the iron pan, flattening and turning the doughy globs golden brown, letting off a mouth-watering smell. I gulped the first batch straight from the pan while mixing more batter, and fried and feasted till my gullet couldn’t hold another morsel. Those corn cakes tasted right fine. I fried up some extra for the trail.

  Full of belly and drier than the skin on a snake, I soon found my head nodding. I shook myself awake. I would pay dearly come the morning if I tarried and dozed off. I sacked up the last of the johnnycakes and fair jumped into my clothes.

  Final preparations went smoothly at first. I dumped oak shavings from the wood box into the bottom of the haversack, repacked Jeremiah’s gear, and lashed the emptied buffalo hide to the underside of the heavy pouch. With these finishing touches I was well fed, armed, supplied, and ready for action.

  But danged if long about there I didn’t slide within a whisker of throwing my life away. Strange as it may sound at first, what unleashed my feelings and brought me down on my knees again, more broken-hearted than ever, was the greatcoat from Jeremiah’s sea chest. I failed to recognize the coat till I was putting it on. The recognition, when it came, dropped my jaw open. The coat wasn’t Jeremiah’s, nor was it Stepfather’s.

  It belonged to my father: Luke Hannar.

  Taken aback, stunned at discovering something I’d believed lost forever, faster than a snap of the fingers I remembered my father and how he looked the first time I’d seen him in the greatcoat. Ten years ago to the month, in January of 17 and 82, Luke Hannar had marched home across the Alleghenies after fighting in the ranks against the redcoats and the Hessians. In the doorway that blustery afternoon he looked bigger in the long coat with the wide belt and giant pockets than the mountains he’d crossed on the trip home. And when he swept Mother off her feet and kissed her, I loved him so much I dreamt that very night of growing up just like him—a soldier tall enough to wear the greatcoat, a coat bigger than most other men.

  Oh, how I wanted the greatcoat for my very own. If a boy could wear that awesome garment, he was growed. Like his father, he was a man.

  I nagged and nagged and eventually Father agreed the coat would be mine the year my body matched the size of it. From that date forward, on the anniversary of his homecoming, I donned the coat and we measured my progress in narrowing the huge gap between the garment’s vast bulk and my skinny bones. The annual measuring always meant great hilarity and fun, as anticipated by my family as the observance of birthdays.

  The boyish dream of owning the coat became a part of me, heart and soul, till Father’s death in a boat yard bawl at Fort Pitt shattered it forever. The seeming unfairness of his death enraged me. I cast the greatcoat amongst the ruts of the wagon road outside our cabin, stomped it deep into the rich black mud, and ran off. I hid and bawled all night, ignoring the beseeching calls of Jeremiah and Mother. Finally, hungry and cried out, I sneaked home at dawn and discovered someone had retrieved Father’s coat from the sloppy roadbed. Neither Mother nor Jeremiah offered an explanation, and I’d been bull-stubborn and never asked about the muddied coat. I realized now, this night many years later, ever patient Jeremiah had retrieved the overcoat, saying nothing. He’d stowed it away in his sea chest for a later day.

  The rush of memory blurred my eyes with tears, and shamed by the weakness gripping me, I thrust my arms into the sleeves of the coat. Big no more, the once huge garment fit perfectly. I moaned and the tears began flowing in earnest. At last I matched Father’s greatcoat, and no one who cared was with me. All who’ d loved me—Father, Mother, Stepfather—were dead and gone. A wave of wishful longing for times past and loved ones lost washed over me and I fell on my knees, sobbing, driven down by unbearable loneliness and sorrow.

  The Lord Almighty must save his most precious gifts for when we are truly desperate. Leastways, I have no better explanation for what happened next. I mean I was on my knees, torn apart by personal agonies, unable to get on my feet and do something—anything—while it still mattered. Yet, at the very depths of my anguish, as I contemplated the surrender of all hope, somehow I scavenged up the courage to gather my ravaged feelings together and rekindle the determination not to die at the hands of a Van Hove mob bent on wrongful vengeance.

  Anyone else may think as they like. I know one moment I lacked the courage I so desperately needed, the next I found it deep inside my sou
l. And just one being could have gifted me with such courage. After all, no one else shared the cabin with me that bleak night.

  On the crude planks of the cabin floor, I let off the wailing and sniffling and gave myself a tongue-lashing. I was sick of crying and sick of being afraid. Tired and disheartened I might be, helpless and without hope surely not. I set my jaw and vowed I’d never again be brought to my knees. Never again would boyish dreams, wishful longings, or hurtful sufferings tear me apart. Henceforth, the Lord willing, Matthan Hannar would stand tall like his father and Uncle Jeremiah, strong and courageous, prey for neither weakness nor unmanliness.

  With that sobering vow I rose, thumbed the tears from my eyes, and looped the harness of the haversack over my shoulders. On waist belt I strung knife, shot pouch, powder horn, and hatchet. Into coat pockets went the balance of my gear: fur cap, muffler, mittens, and tying thongs. I crammed a flat brimmed hat of Stepfather’s on my head and filled either hand with Jeremiah’s long rifle and the Ballard gun.

  I challenged my newly wrought courage before dousing the fire, risking a final glance about the cabin. From the mantle of the hearth dangled the smoking tongs Jeremiah used to touch live coals to the tobacco packed in his sea nymph pipe. Mother’s dusty spinning wheel sat nearby. The candle mold she’d treasured lay on the sideboard. On the farthest of the wooden pegs rowing the wall hung her shawl, such a warm reminder of her we’d not dared dispose of it. Catching my eye last was the leather-bound tablet in which I recorded the days and months and remarks on the Hannar family. That I couldn’t part with. I made room for the diary in a coat pocket.