The Trees (9 page)

T
HINGS
were looking poorly in this Northwest Territory, Worth complained early next spring to Sayward; yes, mighty poorly. A man had to be afraid of not making his lead and powder by another year. Only a little while back it was as fine and rich a country as a man could clap eyes on. Game was plenty as pigeons in the woods. Deer shed their horns within gunshot of your cabin. The Indians didn’t trouble much, for most of them lived further north and west. And it had no white hunters nearer than the forks.

Then the government had to go and cut that fool trace through the woods across the big bend of the Ohio.

Worth had taken it for a kind of surveyor’s line at first, for they let the trees lay where they fell. Now, the Delawares told him, white men and
women from the old states were beating along this line, their mud sleds, carts and once in a while a wagon pitching like crazy over the logs, stumps and rocks in the trace. You wouldn’t expect, Worth said bitterly, these same whites had whole counties of new land left back in the old states if they wanted something to break their backs on. No, they had to come out here, first the Cottles last spring and the MacWhirters in the fall. And now the country was at the Deil’s door, for a trader, his bound boy and a kind of runner had come poling up the river with a boatload of goods and plagued if they weren’t fixing to start in the store trade where Indian trace forded the river!

“I’ll thank them none for that,” he said. “They’ll draw more squatters than carrion kin flies.”

Wyitt sat in a dark corner listening to his father. Not a word dare he say, but the news of a trading post right here along the river bobbed up like a float in his blood. His young back, stiff with import, pointed straight up to the roof and gable where his small pelts skinned with Sayward’s cabin knife were. Oh, he had taken to the woods already like a young gadd to wind and water. His hand could make snares and deadfalls shrewd as a man. Already he smelled so heavy of skunk that the girls complained of him sleeping with them up in the loft.

Then tonight of all times didn’t Sulie have to shoot off her mouth about a thing she had been told in secret.

“This here trader got any knives, Pappy?” she piped, innocent as all get out.

Worth lifted his head and threw a look around.

“Who’s a needin’ any knife?”

Wyitt in his dark corner would have liked to get his hands on that blabbing tyke of a sister. He’d tend to her in the loft tonight yet if his father wouldn’t hear.

“I didn’t mean nothin’,” she whined.

“Which of them’s lost your cabin knife?” Worth demanded of Sayward.

“It’s right up ’ar on the shelf,” she said, placid as could be.

His eyes retreated suspiciously into his two weeks’ sprouts of beard while Wyitt’s eyes burned at his youngest sister. Oh, he wasn’t finished with her yet. He would fix her in the brush tomorrow. When he woke up early next morning, she lay so small, warm and helpless beside him, all his hate melted. He cared about nothing now save how soon his father went to the woods again. For three days he sat around still as a stone but inside he had never been on such tenterhooks. If his father didn’t clear out soon, he told himself, he’d have to push him. That trader might change his mind and go somewhere else before he could get there. He
might sell out all he had, for Worth said some Shawanees passing on the trace had already stopped and looked over his stock.

The morning Worth went after fresh meat, Wyitt watched every move he made. His father had hardly crossed the run till the boy was up throwing down his skins in the bushes. In the cabin he pulled on his hunting shirt with the black squirrel trimming and sopped his hair so that sandy corn-shock of his would slick down.

“Where you reckon you’re a goin’?” Sayward put to him.

“I ain’t a goin’ no place much,” he said shortly.

He didn’t fool her for a minute. When he went out, she took her work and sat on the doorsill with one eye on him, and he hung around fooling with Sarge a while like he was in no hurry. The hound had aged fast the past year. Even the gunpowder Worth fed him sometimes wouldn’t liven him any more. All winter he lay in the cabin where he could feel the chimney heat. Now that it was getting to spring he liked to lay outside where he could smell the woods though he was too blind and worn out to chase any more. Oh, that old hound was a gone Josie! There he made his bed under the eaves where the ground was a little dry, his ears sore, his eyes filmed over with white, his coat gray-streaked, scabby and bothered by flies. But he could still lift his head and wrinkle his nose when a fox or some
other game passed between him and the river.

“C’m on, Sarge! C’m on!” Wyitt coaxed him to climb stiffly to his legs and stagger down the path after him. If he took Sarge along a piece, Sayward had no way but to think he wasn’t going far. Once he got the old hound down in the woods, he sneaked back for his skins. The dog was waiting for him when he got to the path again. He struggled up and started to come after.

“Go back, Sarge! Go on back!” Wyitt mouthed at him. “You kain’t go along where I’m a goin’.”

The last he saw of him, the old hound was standing in the path holding up his head high like he did of late, trying to gaze after through his blind spots, the drooped tip of his tail moving just inches between his legs.

It was a good thing he didn’t take Sarge along, Wyitt told himself when he got there. An old hound wouldn’t know how to act here, for he didn’t himself right. He hardly knew the place when he saw it on ahead through the woods. Trees were down. A fattish boy, bigger than he was, and a black-bearded giant had started putting up a pair of cabins. Wyitt watched them a while from safe back in the bushes. Oh, this was a tony place for a young woodsy to visit. Out there in the clearing a brush cabin had been set up first. This was the store. He could tell by the squaws sitting on the
logs outside while their near-naked young ones rolled and raced around. Every once in a while the squaws would yell at one for getting too close to a lunging beast tied to a log. It was a gaunt, live wolf with a slobbered, rawhide muzzle on to keep him from biting his heavy strap through.

The Indian dogs left off worrying the wolf to bark at Wyitt and the squaws smiled broadly at him as he came up. Oh, they could tell the way he hung back he had never done anything like this before, hadn’t ever seen the inside of a store up to now. But he was going to see this one. With his back stiff as a poking stick he went up to the brush door. Through the smoky gloom inside he made out a white man in a leather apron, red and cunning as a fox. That must be the trader, George Roebuck. Then he saw he would have to wait his turn, for a row of Shawanee men were ahead of him to try out this new trader’s prices.

Holding up his small pack of skins so all could see he had business here, the boy slipped inside. The Shawanees turned their heads. They made like they didn’t see him. Down in Pennsylvania the Indian looked up at a white boy like a dog would. Out here the Indian looked down on you like you were the dog. These Shawanees sat big as king’s men on that log, taking long, slow puffs on their gift tobacco. One with bearclaws around his neck and scars all over his chest stood up with the post’s
yardstick. He’d point at something and the trader would tell him the price in skins. If the Indian bought it, he paid for it right off out of his roll of furs before he went on to something else. But first he had to heft and feel of it a long time.

Wyitt wished Sayward, Genny, Achsa and Sulie could see him here. Not that they ever would. Women folks couldn’t walk in a post like a boy and stand with all the riches of the settlements piled up in front of them: bars of bright, new lead laid crosswise on powder kegs; red and green blankets and black ones with a broad white stripe that were the best; bolts of blue strouding and Turkey red goods; new fusils that had hardly been shot off yet; Indian vermilion for the paint bags; wooden buckets of beads, of bells for leggins, of rings for the nose and finger; and a half barrel that kept dripping from its tap in a wooden bowl, making the air sweet with whiskey. But what ran through the boy’s blood like horses were those red tomahawks and shiny scalping knives stuck in a tree corner of the post.

He had plenty time to look at them today. He stood first on one leg and then the other, going out sometimes for a drink in the run or to put a tree between him and the squaws like a man. When old Bearclaws sat down, another stood up, and when the last sat down, the Shawanees started all over again with their best furs they had saved out for whiskey.
Oh, they knew better than to mix their trading and dram-drinking. It was almost dark and the post candles had been lighted when those Indians got done and cleared out.

Wyitt pushed up.

“How much fur one a them knives?” he fetched out.

Maybe he shouldn’t have bothered the trader right now, for wrinkles had to come between George Roebuck’s eyes to hold his mind on the counting of his hairy gold. His lips moved as he laid out skins in piles — bear, beaver, otter, buck, doe, wolf, mink, redcross fox, fisher fox and coon. His quill had to tally these first in his tanned-leather account book. Then he held out a hand for Wyitt’s scanty pack, looked the small skins over, threw them down behind him like they weren’t worth putting in with the others, grunted and reached down a knife. From the trading Wyitt figured he ought to have a couple coon or rat skins left over. But once he got that knife in his fingers, with its round bone handle and blade heavy enough to strike flint with, he wouldn’t hurt the feelings of the trader. Holding tight to that knife, he went out. The squaws had started fires and by their light he saw the trader’s bound boy with two Shawanee boys laying for him outside the door.

“I kin knock you down and drag you out!” the bound boy bragged at him.

Wyitt stiffened.

“You kain’t while I got this knife.”

“Lemme see it!”

Wyitt put it behind him. His young face had turned hard and cruel. His freckles looked like rusty iron. Oh, he wasn’t big as this bound boy but he’d go on his muscle before he’d let him touch his knife. The pair stood almost against each other, one scowling down and one scowling up, neither one giving way any more than two young bucks meeting in the path. The Shawanee boys watched with their black eyes glittering. They would be spited if no hitch between the two white boys came out of this.

The bound boy gave in first, for he was fattish and you could see he would be soft.

“I’ll swap you knives!” he dared, stepping an inch to one side.

Wyitt went on, the victor, without saying anything. He could hear the whiskey taking hold of the Shawanees now. Already they were whooping and carrying on around the fires, dancing and singing some Indian catch that was the same thing all the time. Old Bearclaws was drinking with the big black-bearded white runner, Jake Tench, and hollering over and over the only English he knew. Wyitt had to laugh, for it sounded like, “Dirty no good! Button up your britches!”

Wyitt’s moccasins moved slowly. His eyes took
everything in. Never had he seen post doings before and it might be a good while till he saw them again. He had no need to go home just yet. He’d wait a while. He lay out behind a big felled butt and watched the squaws carry their men’s knives, tomahawks and guns to the woods to hide before harm was done.

Those Shawanees were getting good and wild now. They even took the wolf they had tied to a log. They wanted to skin it and trade its green hide for more whiskey. But that wolf was too quick for tipsy Indians. It twisted half out of its muzzle and bright red blood spat from a dull red arm. The squaws screeched and called down curses on it. They took limbs and wanted to beat and kill it, but the white runner held them back. He took one of their blankets and threw it over the wolf’s head. Then he got some of the men to hold blanket and snarling beast fast while he started on the rear end with his knife.

The squaws and young ones yelled like penny trumpets when they found out what that white man aimed to do. They roared at their tipsy men trying to hold that lunging beast still. When one had to spit on his hands and grab dirt to hold a jerking leg that was smooth of hide or hair as a venison bone, the squaws doubled up with laughter.

Not in any of his born days, Wyitt told himself, had he seen a thing like this. His own Pap wasn’t
quicker or slicker with the knife. Jake Tench’s hairy hand moved sure as death and never cut a hamstring. He peeled off the last of that pelt, shook off the blanket and let the live beast run. The little crowd gave. No such wolf had ever been seen in these woods before, stark naked of skin or fur. It made Wyitt’s hair stand up to see it go. Like some red beast out of one of Sulie’s nightmares, it ran across the clearing with the squaws and young ones screeching after. It staggered a little as if with rum. It jumped over a log, half fell, heaved up in the air and plopped out of sight in the run bush. And that was the last they saw of it. He wouldn’t forget this easy, Wyitt told himself. He reckoned he had enough now. It was about time he went home.

Away from the fires the woods were black as a pit. He couldn’t make out his hand before his face. Once his moccasins got wet, his feet helped keep him to the hard path. Hands and feet felt their way, through cold runs and wet places, through mud and over soft moss, around big butts and logs, through spice-wood and hazel patches, down hollows and uphill again. Far off he heard wolves howl and some cat beast cry like a woman. Closer to him noises came and went in the bushes. He told himself he would be plenty scared if he didn’t have a hunting knife. He could slash around with that knife worse than a panther with its claw. He could even lay a beast open; in case he couldn’t find in the
dark a handy small butt to climb. On no account would he lose his wits and tramp all the way home through the woods like his Aunt Beriah did once with only a tin lantern between her and a yellow panther keeping abreast of her through the bushes.

He had no notion it was this far home. He felt he had walked half the night. He should have got to the cabin and back by this time. The path kept making strange turns this way and that. When he listened, the sounds of river and frolic came from the wrong directions. Where he was now, he had no more idea than a lamper eel in the mud except that he was lost. Once he thought he saw a faint light winking ahead. It was too early for firebugs. When he walked, that light walked too, blinking in and out from behind the butts of the trees. Then he crossed a small run and knew it was his Pap’s oiled-paper window with the firelight shining through for he heard old Sarge whining a welcome from the path.