IMAGINARY ANCESTORS

THE HUNTER: WARD GILLEY (1750 – 1791?)

Viginia, October 1764. The boy made it over the Blue Ridge just after dawn. The ground was frozen and the air was chill. He shivered in his thin coat, then spied, a quarter mile ahead, a group the likes of which he had never seen -- six men on horseback, all with rifles, trailing twelve packhorses.

‘They set off toward th’ west. Paw run along behind, an’ they din’t seem to mind. Paw din’t have ary idea whar they war headed, but so long as it warn’t toward The Plantation, he din’t much care. If’n he din’t ask fer a horse to ride, an’ did all th’ hard work, an’ did it quick with never no backtalk, an’ din’t want no money, him an’ th’ hunters got along good.’

James Broughton’s grandmother, Lilah, lived with him her husband died. She talked as though she had been there and had seen this with her own eyes, but it was in fact a vivid memory of stories her father had told and re-told.

‘He was called Ward Gilley,’ but that warn’t his real name and he warn’t my real daddy.’ Lilah told her tale between puffs on her brown-stained corncob pipe.

*****

The boy spent two years lurking in the shadows, sleeping under bridges and stairs, inhaling fog and stink. It was a life of fear, lived in a nauseous hellhole of drunkenness and prostitution. Gangs of orphans roamed the streets of Liverpool day and night, robbing any that were small, or unobservant. Afraid of being beaten and robbed, the boy fell in with others like him. The gangs could run fast and knew where to hide. He hoped his bunch would protect him.

They spent most of the day begging. The outcome of this was usually hard stares, curses, or sometimes a blow from a crop. As their hunger mounted, they became more desperate. Half the boys would start yelling and fighting each other, raising a loud ruckus. Once attention was diverted, one would quietly sneak up beside a market stall and dart out a hand to hide bread under a shirt. They supplemented this by picking pockets, cutting purse strings, or slitting the money pocket itself. They lived by grabbing what they could, by any means they could.

After months of begging, Charles and two other boys began working with The Rat Catcher. They were slim enough to slide under the foundations of houses. Charles, blue-eyed and so thin his gang called him ‘Bones,’ was the smallest. They set out traps and poisons, then a day later slipped back under to remove dead rats before the rotten stink seeped up through the floorboards. The owners of the houses paid The Rat Catcher a penny for every dead rat. He paid the boys a quarter of that, a farthing. It took several dead rats to get enough money for bread, last week’s bread. This was a job for hungry boys with no choices.

The Rat Catcher turned to Charles. ‘Boy, you kill rats good. But right now I need live rats. Alive! A hunnerd of ‘em. But they got to be alive, able to run. Run fast. I don’t care where ye git ‘em. But if I was you I’d go out well afore morning light. There’s plenty o’ rats on the garbage dumps on the corners . . . but I don’t need to tell ye that! After ye get a bag-full, bring ‘em all back to me, and I will pay ye. I’ll pay ye a farthing for ever’ one. I’ll give ye a farthing forever’ single rat . . . but they got to be lively.

The next morning Charles and a chum brought in two big burlap bags, squirming with rats, caught a few hours earlier. As The Rat Catcher solemnly counted, they transferred the rats to a bigger, empty bag. When he had finished counting, he turned his back, so the boys, pickpockets of notorious reputation, could not see where he kept his purse. He counted out some coins, then turned back to face them. ‘Comes to two shillings exactly.’ He held out the coins.

‘But we give you a hunnerd rats, and that comes to more than two shillings!’

‘Who in God’s creation would pay you scum anything, anything at all, for a bag full of rats? Rats! You’re lucky if I take these stinkin’ rats off’n’ yer hands. Nobody wants rats! Why, ye boys are blessed by God Almighty to get anything at all, a single farthing, off’n me! Two shillings it is, and that’s that!’ And he grabbed up the heavy bag and threw it over his shoulder.

The boys ran behind, cursing, taunting. ‘Ye’re jest a common thief. It takes a might’ low creature to cheat poor boys out o’ a penny, an us ain’t got nothin’ to eat. We need that penny! We can get bread with that penny. Yer mother is a rat whore. Yer father is a rat bastard. You sleep with rats! You eat rat shit! We’ll git ye yet! We’ll call The Law!’

The Rat Catcher swung his stick, but missed. He continued purposefully toward the pits. Now, if the boys had tripped him, or stolen his purse, he might have paid some note. But words! Mere words! Words had no effect whatsoever. He had been cursed by far better than these two.

The pit did double duty, used weekdays for cockfights, weekends for rats. The hole was four feet deep, circular, its sides covered with zinc so animals could not claw their way out. The zinc was stained with the blood of fighting cocks and rats, few of which got out alive. When enough people had paid the admission and assembled around the pit, and when enough bottles of cheap Barbados rum had been sold and consumed, it was time to bring in, to the lusty cheers of the drunken crowd, The Rat Catcher and his boys with their writhing bags.

It was necessary to enumerate the rats, as the betting depended on the number killed and the number still alive in the pit when time ran out. The boys dangled each rat by its tail as The Pit Boss yelled out the count, and a later count, as the boys removed the dead rats. The spectators cheered whenever a rat was dropped in, and cheered as dead rats were removed. Soon the pit was a huge swarm – rats scrambling, crawling desperately over each other, running aimlessly around the pit, rats with no escape.

The drunken cheers grew louder when the dogs were brought in. The crows screamed, Go Killfast!, Go No Fear! The most famous was Black Jack, described by The Pit Boss as ‘a blooded varmint killer,’ his muzzle deeply scarred by numerous bites from previous encounters. When this Champion Dog was carried in, straining muscles to leap into the pit, the roar was deafening. Intermingled amongst the men were a few whores, painted faces and leering smiles, some brazenly grabbing a spectator’s crotch, anything to drum up business. The men reeled drunkenly, cursed, boasted, yelling out side bets. Most bet against The Pit Boss.

The Boss knew his dogs, and he knew what they could do. This was business, and he had no intention of losing money at business.

‘Place your bets, gentlemen: ten bob for five if Jack don’t snap ten in five minutes. A guinea for ten bob if he don’t snap ever’ one in fifteen minutes.’

The boys thought rat catching was a good job, even if they were cheated. Charles had no fear at all of rats, though he was often bitten and his clothing was infested with fleas. But he was terrified of The Rat Catcher. The Rat Catcher slapped his boys and lashed at them with his stick. Fortunately, he was usually reeling, dead-drunk on Dutch genever, and he usually missed. But not always: ‘Good on ye,’ he roared cheerfully when their heads smacked the pavement, or when they fell into the open sewers that ran down the middle of the cobblestones. And if they screamed when he kicked them, he smiled broadly at the sound -- a crazy cackle.

*****

The rat pits were the best entertainment in The City, except for hangings, which were a wonderful diversion. Nothing could beat a good hanging, and the crowds loved all of it. Several thousand people pushed as close to the gallows as they could manage, packed in so tight they could not move. The strongest elbowed their way to the front, so they could see the hanged man’s face (but sometimes it was a woman). The face was the best part.

Charles remembered every detail of his first hanging. That was the one where he vomited. He never vomited again.

Liverpool followed London’s Tyburn protocol in this matter. The condemned, bound hand and foot, was loaded into an open cart. Just as morning bells sounded seven, the cart began a slow procession through the city, its destination a large field used for bearbaiting and bullbaiting, and thus established as a place of entertainment. The parade was a Grand Occasion. People thronged the streets and leaned out windows. They yelled, cursed, laughed, mocked.

‘Got a stiff neck, ye whoreson? Now don’t mess yer britches! What’s the matter, rogue, yer face gone all white?’ Some threw rotten vegetables at the condemned man, others heaved the contents of chamber pots. ‘It’s a grand day for swinging! Oh, you’re sure to like that rope! But ye kin do this jes’ once!’

When the cart reached the scaffold, a heavy beam between two trees, there was a period of speechmaking. The Bailiff, in his fancy judicial uniform, read the sentence. He then bowed, and bellowed, ‘I now present The Hangman.’ The crowd yelled. The entertainment had begun.

The Hangman, a small man with a crutch, climbed with some difficulty into the cart. He bowed to the Reverend, nodded to the Bailiff, to the condemned, and to the crowd, which cheered lustily. He tightened the noose around the prisoner’s neck. His assistant, a boy dressed in black, climbed a short ladder and tied the rope around the beam.

It was then the turn of the Reverend, who delivered a homily in an unctuous monotone, but very loud. His theme was punishment. He invited the condemned man to pray. ‘Beg God to forgive your heinous sins. God’s infinite compassion may spare you the eternal fires of Hell!’

The Hangman, the Bailiff and the Reverend jumped down. The Hangman positioned the condemned man at the end of the cart and placed a white nightcap over his face. The dense crowd surged forward, expectant, all attention transfixed on the rope and the dying man’s last twitch.

Then the moment all waited for. The Hangman whipped the horses. They reared, hooves pawing the air, and darted forward. The prisoner was ‘launched into eternity,’ suspended, slowly strangling.

The body ‘danced in the air’ as the man thrashed and jerked. The Hangman’s assistant pulled on the legs to hasten the end, which the crowd considered an act of Christian mercy. When the white nightcap was removed, the hanged man’s head fell loosely to one side. His face was purple and his tongue had fallen out of his mouth. Charles remembered one occasion when a hanged man was brought down, coughed for five minutes, and painfully struggled to his feet. This prompted loud cheers from the crowd. He was then hanged a second time.

For pickpockets, a hanging was not an entertaining spectacle but a profitable enterprise. Charles’ gang never missed one. There was no better occasion than a good hanging to sneak in a hand and steal. They made good money off hangings. A big crowd was easy pickin’s.

The only hanging when his gang came away with little was when one of their own, Tickum (they thought he was ten), was hanged for stealing bread and for a well-documented history of pickpocketing and other theft. There was much muttering in the crowd. Mothers, and even a few men, wept. The boys were busy cutting purses, slipping deft hands into waistcoat pockets. Even while engaged in his work, Charles heard the wails of the women:

‘What an unfortunate creature! What an innocent sweet face! I might steal myself if’n I was starving! To think! To hang a boy so young! But he WILL go to Heaven, for sure. Won’t he? WON’T he? Ain’t he SURE to go STRAIGHT to Heaven?’

The women cried. Their sentiment was strong and sincere. Still, they were impatient for the entertainment to begin. They understood. They shook their heads solemnly. The Crown intended this public spectacle to be instructive, to impart an indelible Moral Lesson. At Tickum's hanging the Reverend’s message was simple and direct: ‘Stealing is a Mortal Sin. AND THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH!’ The crowd followed his words closely. Many intoned, ‘The Law is The Law’ as if this were a Doxology, or a Response from The Book of Common Prayer.

Charles’ hatred of Laws and Magistrates started when his father was sent to Debtor’s Prison. His fierce anger grew so strong it seemed to consume him. The way he saw it, the world was animated by cruelty. Nobody cared one good Goddamn about him or about anybody but themselves, and he felt precisely the same toward them. But his was a quiet hatred. This fire burned within. He had to be tough to survive, and he was determined to survive. His hatred of both God and law deepened when his chum Tickum was hanged. Tickum had shared his bread, and Charles turned away, simply unable to watch. ‘If the Assize says `Hang ‘im ‘cause he’s hungry an’ stole bread,’ then th’ Judge can kiss my ass.’

Even after he grew to be a man, Charles never changed his opinion.

After two years of pickpocketing and rat-catching, a better job came along. For weeks Charles had hung around a blacksmith’s shed in Chandler’s Yard at the end of the quay. The Smith cursed like a sailor, not surprising since his clients were in fact sailors charged with supplying and fitting-out the boats. This day the Smith’s face was contorted with rage, his oaths more foul than usual.

‘That damn kid is gone! Claims he kin be a farrier on a farm! Pin-head don’t know one God’sbod thing about shoeing horses! I hope to CHRIST the horse kicks his teeth out!’

The cursing abated for a minute, and the smith turned to Charles: ‘I need a bellows-boy. Five-pence a day.’ And for the next eight months, Charles carried in huge bags of charcoal, heavy billets of iron, kept the fires topped up, and pumped the bellows till he thought his arms would drop right off.

The smith had more work than he could handle, and was working long and hard to keep up. Liverpool Captains were in a frenzy to cash in on the slave-rum trade, fitting out any kind of boat they thought might be seaworthy enough to make the voyage. But a smith was essential. The Captains needed hundreds of neck collars, and double that number of ankle clasps. Some specified collars and clasps linked by iron chains, others specified that the shackles be linked by long bars for a coffle. The smith had no opinion on the matter. He would forge iron any way The Captains wanted. Just as long as they paid. Cash.

The smith made good money supplying chains and shackles, but absolutely would NOT board the boats to bolt them in. He had done this once, on a ship just back from Jamaica. The upper deck was fitted with ankle clasps, now bearing traces of the blood of those transported to The New World. The slave trade was brisk and great fortunes were being made. The Captain took note; he concluded that he should double his cargo. He ordered ankle clasps for the lower deck.

The smith looked strong as an ox, and nearly was, and he was not fainthearted. But the odor of the lower deck was overpowering. This airless hole was like the foulest depth of a cesspit. He inhaled the powerful reek of vomit-sweat-shit-piss, the most nauseating stench he had ever experienced. He staggered up on deck, choking, gasping for air.

‘KEEP your two guineas! Your Carpenter can do this rotten job!’

The Captain replied calmly, ‘Have mercy, my good man! Think how hard it is on US! ‘Tis hard indeed! These Africans is nasty by Nature. All of ‘em stink like a ten-day corpse! This ain’t no Trade for them with tender noses!’

Charles watched and learned. After a month, the smith gave him pincers and let him hold bars in place. Charles was starting to think he knew a little something. But he changed his mind in an instant when a lump of red iron leapt off the anvil and landed on his foot. The boy screamed, then bit his tongue. He walked with a slight limp from that moment onWard. But he didn’t quit. Within a few minutes he hobbled back to the bellows-bag, pumping to make the coals as hot as the smith wanted. He was determined to hang on, and learn. A searing burn, an ugly scar, a little limp were nothing, if he could learn a trade.

Then, a sudden change of fortune.

Chandler Yard loomed black in the December night. Charles stumbled out the door as the smith locked up behind him. He groped in the dark toward the stairs under which he slept. As he turned the corner, his arms were pinned, and he was bound tightly with a rope. He knew instantly what had happened; he had heard stories from his gang, and scarier tales from sailors in the Yard.

The kid-nabbers dragged him and nine other boys, all tightly bound with rope, to a boat at the far end of the dock. They told The Captain they wanted ten pounds apiece.

‘Liverpool will be well served, Cap’n, well served indeed, to be quit o’ scum like these here pickpockets. Good riddance to bad rubbish, don’t ye agree?’

But the Captain said the boys were too small. He’d pay forty pounds for the lot, and that was his Final Offer.

*****

It was only after Lilah began to live with James and his wife that The Old Woman began to tell her story. Lilah was not certain of her age or parentage. But her skin, as dark as smoked venison, and her high cheekbones and hooked nose, revealed her half-Indian ancestry.

‘A’ter Paw broke his laig an’ couldn’t hunt much no more, he got to thinkin’ back on his life: “The onliest thang I ever wanted was to be left alone. That war th’ mainest thang -- jist bein’ free to come and go. I fought fer that all my life!” Paw surely din’t want nobody botherin’ him.’

The man she called Paw was born as Charles Netherton in Liverpool ‘in seventeen an’ fifty.’ The family lived at the raw edge of existence. Charles’ father worked at a quarry twelve hours a day, with only the Sabbath as a day of rest. Charles’ mother coughed constantly and grew thinner and weaker every day. Soon she could do no housework or even get to the slop jar. When she died, her bones covered by a sheet spotted red with her blood, the boy could not understand, and his father had no answers.

A year later, a wagon tipped and a load of paving stones smashed his father’s legs. He was never able to walk again. He borrowed money to buy food, hoping to find work a cripple might do. But this didn’t happen, and he soon found himself in court.

‘Your Honor,’ said the moneylender, his voice full of concern and human kindness. ‘I waited months and months, as long as I could, knowing this man had a boy to feed and all. But if I don’t collect, I lose money, and how can I feed my own fambly? And if this here debt is not paid back, maybe pretty soon no debt nowhere will be paid back. And then where will we all be?’

The Judge’s face was clouded by despair. He loved the robes and the wig, and he adored the deference. But he always hated this part. He told the barristers who appeared before him that sentencing made him so dyspeptic and melancholic he had entreated a surgeon to bleed him. But he had sworn to do his duty. ‘There is nothing I can do.’ His voice was deep and full of sorrow. ‘The Law is The Law. I am required to sentence you to Debtor’s Prison until you repay. I sincerely hope you will be able to repay. Could your boy find furniture in the house to sell? Could your family help? Every body has family somewhere! I hope so! Bailiff, remove the prisoner.’

By this time Charles was eleven. On the three occasions he was permitted to visit, Charles tried to be cheerful, but there was little to say. Had his father been fit for fieldwork, The Crown would have sent him, Indentured, to The Virginia Plantations. But as a cripple, he could only make brooms, and wait for death. Charles’ bitterness grew.

*****

‘The kid-nabbers did it proper,’ Gilley told his daughter: ‘They paid a Bailiff fer a paper saying we was orphans, had no guardian, th’ parish was poor, an’ we was being transported to plantations in His Majesty’s Colony of Virginia fer healthful work, where we would be cared for as the Ward of an Overseer. Th’ Captain demanded th’ paper before he’d let us boys on board.’’

Lilah looked straight at her grandson James. ‘Paw hated paper, hated to be FORCED to do things, hated laws, hated trickery most of all. I can hear his words in my ear right now: ‘`That Bailiff’s paper sold me into slavery! I HATE paper. Them words is LIES! Every word on paper is A LIE. I wouldn’t wipe my ass on paper!’’

After a stormy voyage (the boy violently sick), the boat finally tied up at Baltimore. Later that day the human cargo -- thirteen Indentured Voluntaries, ten Orphans, eight Convicts -- were paraded on deck, then auctioned off to the highest bidder. A Soul Driver bought Lilah’s father and nine other boys, paying sixteen pounds each. Not as good as some voyages, The Captain thought. Still, four times what I paid in Liverpool.

As Lilah’s father told it, ‘”Th’ Soul Driver had a whip an’ was mean as a feist dog. He tied us boys together an’ marched us ten days, fed us nothin’ but Injun corn an’ water. He sold us off to any plantation along th’ road th’ minute he could turn a profit off’n us. But me an’ another boy di’n’t look too strong, so he kep’ drivin’ th’ two o’ us along. By an’ by we come to Great Lick in Th’ Big Valley. That was where th’ Soul Driver had good luck and we was shit out o’ luck. Three buck niggers had just died o’ flux an’ fever on a ‘backer plantation, an’ th’ Overseer needed field hands right now if he was a-goin’ to git in a crop. Th’ Soul Driver give ‘him th’ paper an’ got fifty pounds fer th’ two o’ us.”’

‘”I stuck it out fer ‘most a year ‘til I got th’ lay o’ th’ land. Then I run away, even though it was startin’ to frost. I run as fer as I could git.’’’

‘An’ that’s how Paw ended up in Great Lick, and that’s why he always said, “I run away from Virginny.”’

Like thousands of other runaway slaves and indentured servants, the boy fled as far as his legs would carry him. He was off The Plantation, but his worries were far from over. ‘”Suppose th’ Overseer comes after me? Suppose he tells the Crown ‘bout a runaway field hand name o’ Charles Netherton?’’’

‘”But s’pose I warn’t Charles Netherton? My mother’s family was Gilley. That seems good enough. An’ th’ Bailiff’s paper said th’ Overseer would care for me as `a Ward.’”’

‘”SO BE IT,”‘ Paw said. And from that day on, his name was Ward Gilley.’

‘Paw was proud he was free, proud he could choose his own name, might’ proud he could pick a name he liked, any name he wanted. He liked his new name. He thought Ward Gilley suited him proper. He ‘specially liked that there warn’t nobody to tell him what he had to do. There warn’t no paper. An’ he sure as sartin warn’t fixin’ to do no farmin’.

‘He war a happy young’un the day he headed toward th’ back woods.’

*****

‘Paw tole me th’ names of th’ hunters he jined up with,’ said Lilah, ‘The one he talked about the most war Cutshaw. He warn’t tall, but he was quick an’ strong. Some of th’ hunters never stopped talking. Cutshaw was th’ opposite. He warn’t a man of few words, he war a man of no words. But he knew ever’ thang they was to livin’ in th’ Wilderness. Paw said it was him that learned him how to track game an’ pack out hides.’

The hunters usually rode all morning when they were headed toward a new area. After the sun was high and foggy mists had floated off the hills, they began to look for a spot with pasture for their horses, buffalo clover or pea vine. Horses would also eat beechnuts or chestnuts, but the hunters avoided canebrakes, as horses sometimes ate so much they choked and bloated. If the area appeared to have enough game for a week or more of hunting, they assembled a ‘station camp’ with flax canvas lean-tos or Indian wigwams, saplings covered with hides or bark. If it was raining, they’d add poles and puncheon planks, or set up under a rock ledge. If the ground was wet, the hunters put down canvas waterproofed with linseed oil.

‘Paw warnt a hunter jist yet. They started him out as “camp-keeper.” He fleshed an’ scraped hides, an’ put ‘em up on a scaffold or covered ‘em with rocks so th’ wolves an’ b’ars couldn’t get ‘em. He b’iled buffalo fat fer tallow, gutted game an’ got it ready to cook. Th’ hunters mostly cooked they own meat, th’ way they liked it. Paw would jerk th’ rest over a smoke fire, so th’ hunters’s had somethin’ to chew on when they was in th’ woods, and some he salted, with salt from th’ trading post or made by b’iling brine at licks.’

‘Paw learnt as he went along, mending’ with th’ moccasin awl or with a horseshoe nail if’n he couldn’t find th’ awl. He made ropes out o’ sinews. An’ he always had plenty o’ bones to work with. When he din’t have nothin’ else to do, Paw whittled little things fer th’ camp out o’ diffrent kinds o’ wood, or sewed, or made buttons from buffalo horn. If they needed iron work, Paw would do it th’ best he could, recollectin’ what he saw from his time as a bellows-boy.’

‘Paw tole me, “One time th’ hunters was makin’ camp by a canebrake, an’ Cutshaw stepped on a stob. It was sharp an’ went in deep, an’ part of the stob was still inside his foot. In a day or two, his foot swoled up on him. Cutshaw tole Paw to fetch his knife an’ cut. Paw cut as hard as he dared, but it warn’t enough. Cutshaw cussed at him, ‘I said CUT! boy!’ So Paw drove that knife in deep, an’ a load o’ pus came bustin’ out, th’ cane stob right along with it. Cutshaw said nary a word, but his face was broke out in sweat. Th’ other men laughed. “Hell! boy, Cutshaw don’t pay no mind to a little nothin’ like yore puny knife! He’s been tortured by the’ Shawnee. He’s run th’ gauntlet! Yore li’l ol’ knife ain’t gonna hurt Cutshaw none.”’

‘Cutshaw never tole nothin’ about it, but Paw believed th’ part about th’ gauntlet, ‘cause when he had his shirt off, he saw big scars on his back. Th’ hunters tole Paw that th’ Injuns tried to take him into th’ tribe. “Ye see them holes in his ears? An’ them red bones stuck through’ the’ holes? The Injuns tried to make him look just th’ same as them.”’

‘A’ter Paw got the pus out, Cutshaw tole him to hunt in th’ woods for yarbs and bark from a lynn tree. Paw biled it all up an’ made a poultice. In a few days Cutshaw was hobblin’ around,’ an’ was back out huntin’ in a week. Th’ hunters also used Injun yarbs if a horse came up sick. But Paw couldn’t deposit why Rob rode off an’ lef’ his packhorse that was lame and had got too weak to carry anything, an’ warn’t gettin’ no better. Rob took the bridle off, then jes’ rode off and lef’ that horse, sick as it was. A bunch of wolves was nosin’ aroun’ th’ camp, an’ ever’ body knew that creature would not last a day.

‘Paw ast Cushaw if he could go back an’ shoot it. Cutshaw said “It ain’t yer horse.”’

‘Paw said all the’ hunters was on th’ run one way or t’other. Some had been militia soldiers, Pennsylvaney, Carolina, somewheres, or in the French Indian war, or at forts. They was all good shots an’ had killed lots o’ Injuns. But they couldn’t ABIDE officers and mucky-mucks. So if an officer give ‘em any sass, they jes’ lit out. They knowed th’ officers would track ‘em down and hang ‘em if’n they could find ‘em. But they was safe way back in th’ Wilderness. Huntin’ was what they knew how to do, an’ hit war the quickes’ way to git money, new rifles, good horses. An whisky. When they was at th’ traders, some would buy a full keg o’ whisky. An’ drink it, maybe all gone in a week!’

Lilah said ‘Rob owed money on ‘a lan’ deal that turned on him.’ An’ another thing -- after he caught th’ clap from his squaw, he split her head open an’ had to light out fast afore her Cherokee kinfolk found him an’ kilt him. So he started huntin.’ A trader on th’ Long Island o’ th’ Holston contrack-ed with him. Th’ trader would pay off his land an’ pay off his squaw’s relations, if he’d deliver three hunn’erd hides. He made his mark on a piece o’ paper, promisin’ to pay. An’ he had to promise to pay fer his powder an’ lead.’

‘Paw said “Rob looked a sight!” His face war pocked all over an’ he had powder burns all over one cheek, an’ half o’ one of his ears had been bit off in a wrasslin’ match. He was deaf from all th’ bangin,’ an’ was missing two fingers. Paw guessed his fingers was maybe cut off when a trap sprung back. But Cutshaw told him, “He war too drunk to load proper. He poured powder down the barrel straight out o’ th’ horn. It caught on embers down by th’ lock, flashed back to th’ horn, an’ th’ horn blowed off part o’ his hand.”’ Cutshaw intended this confidence as a kindly tip to a youngster, “Don’t fool with powder, boy. Respec’ th’ powder! If ye don’t respec’ th’ powder, it'll bite you! An’ another thing: powder’s not all th’ same. If ye git new powder, don’t matter if it’s ground in England or at th’ powdermill in th’ Big Valley, don’t THINK o’ huntin’ with it till ye test it good. With new powder, ye got to change up yer charge.”’

Lilah looked over the distant hills, many shades of blue and gray. She refilled her pipe.

‘Many that come to Kaintuck later on was skeered. They was skeered o’ laurel thickets, skeered o’ canebrakes. They was big trees everwhar, an’ they was skeered o’ shadders in th’ woods. Maybe a Shawnee was gonna leap out an’ scalp ‘em daid. But Paw was never skeered. He was happy as a pig in slop. No debtor’s prison, no Rat-Catchers, no lying Bailiffs, no Soul Drivers, no Overseers flailin’ skin off’n th’ backs o’ field hands, white or black.’

Wilderness was freedom. Ward Gilley would live off what the forest provided. And since his childhood had taught him to ask for little and expect even less, the backcountry provided all he needed. Lilah said, ‘Fer him, it war Paradise. “When I run away from Virginny I landed smack-dab in Eden!” That war th’ firs’ day Paw was happy, th’ day he headed into th’ Wilderness.’

On their fifth day past The Blue Ridge, the hunters, with the boy tagging along behind, went up an animal trail, a north-south path they said was followed by Cherokee from Carolina and Shawnee from Ohio country. ‘Paw said th’ hunters was more skeered o’ Injuns than o’ any beast. If they saw Injuns comin’, they’d hide an’ hope th’ bunch passed ‘em by, but they kep’ their rifles primed on half-cock, finger on the trigger spring. An’ they always kep’ their gun an’ shot pouch and horn close to hand. An’ if they was skinnin’ they allus had their back to a tree!’

‘Injuns would do anything to get horses an’ rifles. They’d sneak up an’ steal ‘em, or kill the hunters an’ jes' take ‘em. An’ they’d steal hides and peltry to trade fer whisky and powder at th’ post. An’ o’ course the Injuns was big in the tribe if they come back with white scalps. Ever’ once in awhile, if th’ hunters spied jes’ one Injun by hissef’, though that din’t happen much, they would sneak up, shoot him, an take his horse and goods, an’ his hair, too. Paw tole me that one o’ th’ hunters cut an Injun’s scalp, an’ then cut off his pecker an’ stuffed it in his mouth. An’ that ain’t all! He cut th’ skin off’n his back, tanned it, doubled it over, an’ made a razor strop out o’ it! All the hunters hankered real bad fer an Injun-hide razor-strop like that.’

Lilah looked to see if her grandson, James, was shocked, which was what she intended.

‘Hit was dad-blamed rough, that’s all ye can say. ‘O' course th’ Shawnee, an’ th’ Cherokee too, did the same to th’ white man. An’ they raped all th’ women, or carried ‘em off like slaves. Oh, both of them fellers was tough. Neither bunch ast’ fer mercy, an’ they din’t give none.’

‘The hunters dressed purty much like Injuns, ‘cept in th’ summer they wore linen shirts, brown as earth from walnut hulls or red from bloodroot. Some of th’ hunters wore their hair in a pigtail, others tied it with a thong. Paw said all of ‘em had a squaw, Injun or half-breed, back east, an’ some carried an Injun medicine bundle. Th’ squaws an’ youngun’s had to put in th’ corn, an’ pound it, an’ make hominy. Th’ man brought in th’ meat. That was the onliest thing th’ man did, bring in th’ meat. That, an’ build a cabin. An’ th’ women an’ girls sewed.’

‘Mostly th’ Injuns was out huntin’, same as them. Aroun’ the fire, th’ hunters’ might allow as how th’ Injuns had as much right to hunt as they did. But in th’ Wilderness, it was kill or be killed! Paw said one time they sneaked up on a gang o’ six Shawnee, kilt ever’ one an’ stole their hides. Then they scalped ‘em an’ stuck their scalps in their belts jes’ like Injuns did. It was bloody war, tarrible bloody war !’

Lilah spit, then looked to see if James understood how bad, how truly bad, it had been.

‘An’ not that along ago! Right here! Jes’ one day’s ride from where we’re settin’!’

‘One o’ the hunters had traded with Injuns an’ knew some o’ their talk. He was forever goin’ on about ‘em.’ Ye dassn’t turn yer back! Injuns’ll steal yer horse, yer gun, yer hides, then strip ye bare-naked, an’ roast ye in a bonfire!”

‘All of ‘em said th’ same, but I guess Paw din’t listen good, because later on, he traded with a friendly Cherokee, Cap’n Dick. He war called Cap’n ‘cause he wore a officer’s frock, two times too big fer ‘im, an’ a coin with th’ king’s face on it, tied ‘roun his neck, nex’ to his Injun beads. Cap’n Dick war a cripple, but he could walk and ride. He took Paw to his people, an’ Paw went, even though he knew he could’a been kilt! He stayed with ‘em ‘bout a week, an’ learnt some words. They give him a Injun pipe, an’ he smoked hit fer th’ longest time ‘til one night he was drunk, an’ fell an’ broke hit. A’ter that he made a bowl out o’ a cob, but he kep’ th’ Injun stem. That thar stem war mighty purty. I wonder where hit is now?’

Eight days west beyond the Blue Ridge, the hunters began to follow Indian Creek, which climbed high to where the mountain was sliced deep, like a piece of meat -- more saddle than gap. A towering wall of limestone stretched beyond sight toward the northeast, and beyond sight to the southwest. When they had climbed to the crest of the saddle, they found a hole in the mountain with a constant breeze of cool air blowing gently out, and a stream of water flowing from a spring deep inside. Sweetest water anywhere. The hunters called the place Cave Gap. They followed an animal trail down the mountain and kept to the trace as it followed a creek, and continued a few miles north to a big stream the hunters called the Shawnee river.

‘Paw said “Them mountains war’ so full of game it war’ beyon’ belief.” But to get to th’ most game you had to go through a narrer water gap. Th’ Injuns called it Wasioto. Paw didn’t know th’ meaning o’ th’ word, but from there on, a hunter could find more deer an’ elk than anywheres else, especially at th’ licks, which was all muddy wallows, and on th’ bald knobs, mountain tops th’ Injuns had burnt off so grass would grow an’ bring th’ deer. He guessed maybe 'Wasioto' meant good huntin.’

‘Then they come to a little hill at th’ place where you could wade ‘cross th’ river. Th’ hunters told Paw th’ mound was where th’ Injuns buried their people. Then high ridges, steep cliffs, big rivers, creeks an’ hollers all over, so many you could easy lose your way. But th’ hunters was never lost. They had been up all th’ creeks, an’ they had named ‘em. It was Paw that called it Dick’s River, an’ Gilley’s Fork is where his horse was bit by a rattler. Th’ hunters din’t need no map. Th’ map in their haids was better’n any paper. They knowed th’ hills.’

*****

Gilley and the hunters spent months operating from a station camp near a salt lick a day’s ride north of the ford. Deer, elk, and buffalo craved salt and traveled many miles to get it, so a lick was an ideal place to hunt. Indians also went to the licks, so the hunters prudently stayed off the buffalo trace as they got closer to a lick. Hiding was safer, the best way to avoid ambush and death. The hunters wanted to kill animals; they did not want to be killed by Indians.

Two weeks later they rode toward good hunting lands along the Cuttawa River. ‘Paw said “din’t matter where we was, all o’ us hunters hankered to see t’other side o’ th’ ridge.” Paw never forgot his first time. He din’t have much to do in camp right then, so he climbed up th’ hill an’ looked out to th’ west. He could see fer miles. Mountains goin’ on forever, all diff’rent colors. Trees ever’whar, no break ‘ceptin’ where Injuns had burnt, or along th’ river. He couldn’t make out any beasts. But he’d seed lots o’ game by this time, an’ he knew they had to be big herds o’ buffalo, elk, an’ deer down thar. An’ he knew that what ever’body said was true. “This place is jes’ too big to deposit! Free lan’! No mucky-mucks! Ever’ soul gits a chance in th’ New World!”’

They hunted for months until they had accumulated enough tanned hides to make full loads for their packhorses. Then they headed back to the trader to settle up their accounts. Some had contracted to supply salted buffalo beef and venison ‘hams’ to feed British soldiers. Others had agreed to supply deerskin and elk hides for export to Europe. Hunting was their commerce, their livelihood. The men loved the Wilderness and they loved hunting. But hides was A Business. ‘Some hunted to git money fer land, an’ they noted the rivers and hills real good, or made blazes so they could come back an’ claim. Not Paw. “Hell’s bells! Maybe I won’t do nothin’!” Main thing was, he din’t have ary notion o’ farmin’, least-ways till I come along.’

In cold weather, they dressed in elkskin leggings, a long open-front frock also of elkskin, and a cape to shed rain. The frock was tied with a broad leather belt, into which they stuck sheathed tomahawk and skinning-knife. A hunter slung his powder horn and charger tip over his shoulder, as well as his shot pouch. Their garments were usually glossy black with blood, grease and sweat, since the essence of the work was to kill as many animals as possible, strip them of their skins, and, using a dull draw-knife, scrape off hair and every bit of flesh. If the hides were not scraped and tanned properly, they fetched hardly enough for powder and shot. ‘Paw got so good with the draw-knife Cutshaw had him dress all his skins.’ It took years to become skilled at tracking, but Gilley eventually mastered even this.

Cutshaw’s jacket was decorated with dyed porcupine quills, his leggings embellished with fringe. In winter, a few hunters wore caps of possum or bear fur. Cutshaw wore a broad-brimmed hat of black felt, flagged by two feathers, one white, one red, blue wampum beads encircling the crown. They made moccasins from tough elkskin, and Cutshaw helped Gilley make a pair for himself. The weather had turned frosty, so he fashioned them as a shoe-pack, fur on the inside, padded with moss, warm, tied high above the ankle. Cutshaw later gave him a pair with an insole of elk hair that had been felted by his Old Woman.

The hunters took as much care of their feet as of their rifles. Cutshaw said scald feet was serious trouble: hunters HAD to stay mobile. They took off their moccasins, dried their feet, and put them so close to the coals Gilley thought they might bake. Wool shirts, greatcoats lined with blanket wool, and buffalo pelts kept them warm, though the pelts were full of fleas from a pack of dogs acquired at Stalnaker’s. But the dogs were good trackers and barked menacingly at animals nosing ‘round in the dark. One dog was later so badly clawed by a bear, they gave it a merciful death with one shot, and two others were blinded by skunk spray, but recovered.

The hunters had a fierce hatred of wolves, in many ways more dangerous than bears or wildcats. Wolves weren’t like other animals, but fed on carrion, or killed sick and wounded animals. A few times wolves sneaked up and killed a few of their dogs. At night, the eyes of a wolf pack glowed like orange lights around the fire. Rob once found a wolf with its leg caught in a bear trap. It was alive, growling fiercely. Rob cut the skin around the wolf’s neck and pulled it up, covering the wolf’s head. He then opened the trap, and the animal limped off. Rob boasted to the others. ‘Skelped that wolf bastard good! That bitch won’t get far! Cain’t see nary a thang!’

As the weather turned cold, beaver and otter pelts began to grow thicker; winter was the only season when they were worth trapping. For three months the hunters laid up. They tried to stay warm, and kept busy scraping and tanning hides, then began to think about packing out.

It was early spring, dogwood not yet in flower, when they headed back with enormous bundles of hides, pelts of bear and buffalo, and valuable furs. Unlike settlers or Indians, who sought fat animals for food, Long Hunters did not hunt to fill their bellies. Meat they could get anywhere, anytime. They were after hides and furs, salt meat for soldiers, and tallow. The demand for hides and peltry never abated. The hunters brought in thousands of skins every year.

They traded entirely by barter. Stalnaker kept his accounts in pounds and pence, but this was merely a convenient record. He entered a credit, based on what he estimated his Factor in Wolf Hills would pay for the hides and peltry, and he entered a debit for each item the hunters took in exchange. The hunters made their mark or touched the pen. None could read the accounts, but all knew to the half-pence how much they were due or how much they owed. After they had bartered, they dispersed, agreeing to meet and head out again at first frost.

Cutshaw said if Gilley was going to be camp-keeper, he would have to have a kit, and Cutshaw offered to advance him. He bargained for a brindle mare, blind in one eye but otherwise sound. He said only, ‘With another horse, we can pack out more.’ He also traded for an old rifle, scarred but serviceable, which he presented to Gilley. He also bought glossy French gunpowder, four lead bars, two pecks of meal, and thin linen for wadding and patches. He then disappeared.

Stalnaker said, ‘Cutshaw’s gone to see his Old Woman.’ The Trader added nothing more, and the boy didn’t dare ask. Gilley slept in the barn. When Cutshaw came riding back four days later, his clothing was less stained, nor did it smell as strong as when they had ridden in.

An itinerant smith came by Stalnaker’s in May and October and Cutshaw used the occasion to get his horses trimmed and re-shod. This allowed Gilley to learn more blacksmithing. The smith worked with Cutshaw to repair his rifle, and Gilley helped. Cutshaw thought this might make him more useful in camp. The boy spent the summer resting, adjusting his rifle and sights, and learning to shoot. He also learned to smoke and chew tobacco, and to drink whisky. He was fascinated by the Indians who came to trade, many dressed in ragged European clothing. There were also a few runaway slaves, and some ‘nigras’ with mixed Indian or white features. Six Cherokee showed up in July. They said ‘evil medicine’ had killed their families, and only they were left alive. The ‘evil’ appeared to be an epidemic of smallpox, to judge by their pocked faces.

After the squaw-wives had the corn planted, and as days grew shorter and nights colder, the hunters straggled back one by one. They bought powder and shot, tobacco, whisky or bottles of brandy, and other essentials for an indefinite stay in the Wilderness. They had money in their pockets, and a few bought red pepper, chocolate, castile soap, imported and thus expensive, but highly desired. After a few days of half-drunk banter, they packed their horses and rode off -- westward.

The hunters had a craftsman’s concern for their tools. They wanted every item necessary for survival, but refused to carry a single extra ounce, though a few permitted themselves a pewter plate and cup. They were obsessive about their rifles. Almost every day, and always after firing a few shots, they cleaned the heavy octagonal barrel with linen patches greased with bear fat. For shooting, they preferred patches held in their mouth, as saliva was the ideal lubricant for a lead ball. They completely disassembled their guns on a regular schedule, re-setting the angle of the flint and knapping flakes off the stone so it would throw a bigger spark. They adjusted the frizzen plate and the spring; they cleaned the flash pan, and cleaned out the touch-hole with a pin. They greased other parts with tallow, reassembling the rifles good as new, and clean. All were adept at repairs. Most carried hand-vises and bellows, files and screw plate. A few carried two rifles, the second used for parts.

They used their whetstones every day, and tomahawks and skinning knives stayed razor-sharp. Their knives varied in design, but all were impressive, some more than a foot long. Most were re-worked from steel files tempered and annealed, with incised bone handles. Steel files were also used in the head of the tomahawks they all carried, an indispensable hatchet used many times every day. The hawk was a sandwich: file-steel in the middle to make a sharp cutting edge, pig iron on both sides for heft. On one trip, Cutshaw asked the smith to make him an iron tripod with three S-shaped hooks, so he could suspend meat over the fire.

Not every encounter with Indians resulted in an attack. Both Cherokee and Shawnee were eager to trade, though Indians and hunters were both wary, and it took time and some knowledge of Indian words. Indians that had fought alongside English or French troops knew some words in those languages. Signs were essential. Both groups had to understood they came for peaceful trade and not an ambush. Most hunters carried mirrors, glass beads, and coins, coins of any value so long as they were shiny and bore a likeness of the King. They swapped steel knives for bags with beautiful quill work, or an inaccurate trade musket or old Brown Bess, for beaver pelts.

The hunters went out as a group on the ancient principle of safety in numbers. But though they were prepared to fight together, and die together if it came to that, they owned their hides individually. Cutshaw and Gilley occasionally went off alone, but the others considered this so dangerous as to be virtual suicide, as Indians liked nothing better than a lone and therefore defenseless hunter, easy prey to kill and scalp.

‘Paw said “That happened to Rob. One o’ his packhorses got loose, so he rode off lookin’ fer it. He never come back. We waited fer ‘im. Then we talked it over, an’ concluded there warn’t no need to hunt fer ‘im. Rob warn’t lost. He knew this place better’n any o’ us. If he was kilt by an Injun, there was prob’ly more Injuns lurkin’ aroun’. Smartest thing is to jes’ light out o’ there. Well, as we was ridin’ to another lick, we come across his body. Jes’ his body. His haid warn’t there! We knew it was Rob, ‘cause two o’ his fingers bein’ gone. We guessed one Injun got th’ scalp, an’ another one carried off Rob’s haid to stick on a pole. There warn’t much body lef’, cause th’ wolves had been feedin’ on it good, mebbe gettin’ back at Rob fer skelpin’ one o’ their bunch? No more Rob. Horse, kit, clothes, ever’ single thing, gone! Nothin’! Coulda been me!”’

The hunters went out in all seasons, simply ignoring rain, snow or ice. They preferred new territory, as they had shot out most of the game on previous forays. In addition, dead remains polluted the forest with a foul reek that even Cutshaw found repellent. It reminded Gilley of Liverpool and dead rats. The carcasses attracted packs of wolves, feeding on rotting guts and stinking heaps of carrion scattered around the skinning poles.

The hunters regarded Indians as no better than vermin to be exterminated, though a few admired their courage. All acknowledged that Indians were more skillful at woodcraft and had much to teach them about surviving in the Wilderness. But they were unanimous in their contempt of ‘”ghosts and speerets. We kill all the game we kin. An’ so do they! Do they sleep better? Do they eat better, if’n they thank th’ animals. D’ye really think them animals are lettin’ theysef’s be kilt? Shoot ‘em! Skin ‘em! That’s all they is to it!”’

Their hides fetched good money, and when they rode west away from the trading post, their saddlebags bulged with meal, parched corn, a flitch of bacon, black powder -- some regular, some fine to start a fire in the pan -- char-cloth, dry punk, tow, all kept dry in a water-tight iron box -- beeswax for flux to melt lead for shot, and green coffee beans to be roasted in a skillet, then pounded in an elkskin. Some carried oats as a treat for the horses. Many carried kegs of salt and whisky. When empty, the casks were filled with buffalo tallow, to be made into soap and candles.

Gilley still wore the coarse linen shirt, the heavily patched frockcoat, leather breeches and cloth cap that the Overseer had grudgingly provided. But as the hunters packed for their third trip, Cutshaw tossed him a frock and leggings of canvas. ‘These was sewed by my Old Woman.’ Gilley didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. He was proud that he looked like a hunter. Later, he fashioned himself a warm cap of bearskin, one he had shot, skinned, and tanned.

‘When he first took up with the hunters, Paw din’t know hardly nothin’ ‘bout th’ woods. But he war quick. Cutshaw tole him, “Watch what th’ others are doin’. Jes’ listen. Th’ woods is a schoolhouse. I don’t know th’ letters, cain’t read, cain’t write my name. Don’t matter. Th’ woods don’t have no letters. But they is full o’ signs. Ye jes’ got to read ‘em. If a turkey’s gobblin’, if leaves is cracklin’, if’n a deer’s bleatin’, a buffalo gruntin’, is it really th’ wind? Is it a real turkey? Is it a real hoot owl? Or is Injuns tryin’ to fool ye? If yer fooled, they’ll leap out an’ SCALP ye! Purty soon ye’ll gather what th’ signs mean. Watch th’ clouds, ‘n ye kin figger out if a storm is comin’. I turn my face to th’ wind, an’I keep th’ wind in my face if I’m stalkin’, wind comin’ from behind th’ deer. I stop dead still th’ minute th’ beast shakes its tail or rises up its head. I creep up a little closer if’n it puts its head down. If ye want to be a hunter, learn th’ signs. Jis listen an’ look, purty soon ye’ll know what they all mean’

As the months and years went by, Gilley learned the names and qualities of all the trees and plants, which were good to eat, and which to use as medicine, as poultices or brewed like sassafras. For some trees, plants, and animals he learned names in English and, thanks to Cutshaw, names in Cherokee or Shawnee. They gorged on pawpaws, wild strawberries, grapes, or blackberries when they found them. But their diet consisted essentially of one thing, day-in-day-out -- meat and more meat, pounded into pemmican, or roasted till it was black enough to suit. Turkey, elk, deer, buffalo. Some liked buffalo bones blackened in a fire until the bones cracked and they could scoop out the marrow. Sometimes, they’d catch bass or catfish, abundant in all the creeks and rivers.

Gilley watched so intently and copied so minutely, Cutshaw began to let the boy do a little hunting. A second rifle was protection for all, since a gut-shot animal had to be dispatched before it could attack. Even so, there were many close encounters with catamounts, bear, buffalo, or she-wolves defending cubs. Gilley became adept with the priming rod, gauging the amount of powder for the distance, and deftly inserting wadding and shot. Practice made him accurate. After a time, he never wasted a ball. He became quick at gutting and stripping hides with the skinning pole and was soon producing clean cuts. Cutshaw began to entrust him with tanning hides, mainly in creek beds from a brew of acorns and tanbark, though some hunters preferred animal brains.

During his second year, Gilley gradually became accepted by the hunters, though he was still too green to be treated as an equal. He had too much yet to learn about backwoods life. Being young and inexperienced, he was often the butt of jokes. Several made fun of his naivete about women and seriously advised him to trade some hides for a peck of meal the next time they were at the Post. ‘With a peck of meal ye kin git one of them half-breed girls to go back to they cabin with ye. But ye dasn’t give her more’n a peck, or ye’ll spoil it fer th’ rest o’ us!’

Hinkle said ‘Th’ pore boy needs practice. Now, if he wants, I’ll grease up a knot hole with bear fat. But I don’t think I kin find a knot-hole small enough fer his little man, what ain’t no bigger’n half my thumb!’

One time at The Trading Post, Cutshaw brought in a baby, obviously half-Indian. The baby crawled around on the rough puncheon floor for an hour or two, then Cutshaw rode back with it toward his Old Woman. He never told the baby’s name or said whether he had a wife, and Gilley didn’t dare ask. But the baby stirred him. Gilley’s childhood had been hard and mean, and he cursed both God and law. But this baby was not hard or mean. Was this what preachers meant when they spoke of ‘soul,’ or of ‘Merciful God’? He began to ask himself: is this a possibility?

For four years Gilley hunted with the others. He sometimes went out with Cutshaw as a two-man team. The boy got paid when Cutshaw sold hides, but not in money. What would he do with money? His pay was a horn all his own, scraped till it was transparent enough to reveal the black powder, to gauge the quantity left, the plugs made waterproof with beeswax. Dangling from its end was a powder charger, a measure he made from the tip of a deer’s horn. When he had slack time in camp, Gilley carved a scrimshaw design on the horn. On the next trip Gilley was paid with a bullet mold and lead pot, and Gilley made himself an elkskin pouch and lanyard to carry them. He longed for a big knife he had seen, and on their fourth trip, Cutshaw gave it to him. Later, when they sold a particularly valuable load, Cutshaw traded the beat-up old rifle Gilley had been using, replacing it with one made by Jacob Dickert in Lancaster. The rifle stock was rock maple, curly grain with tiger stripes, incised with an elaborate design. The ramrod entry pipe was also of curly maple. There was a hinged brass box in the stock to hold greased patches. Cutshaw tested it: truest ball he’d ever fired.

Gilley had known little love, but he knew he loved that rifle, the weight of it, its balance, the puff of black smoke, the sulfur-saltpeter smell, even the noise. He loved the bang.

Gilley wondered why they bothered with hides at all. The forest supplied their food. For the rest, what did they need, really? A bedroll, a steel striker and pink flint to make a fire, though local flint made a good spark if properly flaked with an elkhorn tip. With money off hides, the hunters could buy whisky, and did. And, if so inclined, money could buy women. But money could not buy more of what they most cherished and had already -- the feeling that they were FREE MEN. None of them could abide doing someone else’s bidding. They’d rather starve than that. But good hunters never starve.

The years had gone by quickly. Gilley wasn’t sure, but he thought he was now about eighteen. He wasn’t afraid; he knew what to do. He could make it in the woods on his own. And on his own, alone, completely alone, dangerous, even foolhardy, as it was, was exactly the way he wanted it.

Cutshaw told Gilley that if he was ‘bound and determined’ to hunt on his own, he had to have a better horse, and packhorses. On their next trip to the Post, Cutshaw inspected a sorrel left for sale. He said it looked ‘likely.’ He examined its teeth, its hooves, its withers, loaded it with saddlebags full of heavy lead bars, and rode it hard for two hours. When he came back, the horse was lathered in foamy sweat. Cutshaw said, ‘I think this’un’ll do.’ He made the boy promise his first load of hides as payment. Gilley was been treated fairly by no one, but he thought this seemed fair indeed. He thought this was the first time he had ever been happy.

The stock of his rifle was so richly decorated there was little blank space left. But Gilley found an area near the cheek piece on which to carve his own mark. He asked Stalnaker to write it, so he would have something to copy:
WG
1768

Ward Gilley struck out. He was now a hunter, gone for months at a time, usually with groups at station camps. He was well aware of the danger, but even so, often preferred to hunt on his own in remote areas of the dark backwoods, a weeks’ ride from the nearest fort, where no trader and no militia man could tell him what to do. Months later he would emerge with horse-loads of deer and elk hides, and bison and bear pelts. The bearskins were used by settlers as winter coats or blankets, but became more valuable after English Grenadiers began to use them as decoration for their headgear. Gilley began to trap beaver pelts as well, in growing demand to make gentlemen’s hats. He sold at several trading posts -- a few times at Boone’s Fort, or Harrod’s, or at Sapling Grove, even Watauga. But he traded mainly where Cutshaw had first taken him, The Dutchman’s. Stalnaker’s cabin, between the Forks of the Holston, was so well known it was indicated on maps. Lilah told James that her father’s pelts fetched the best price ‘`cause he knew th’ Injun’ way o’ tannin’. He used th’ beast’s brains.’

Lilah said her father was determined to hunt alone -- though he said ‘I warn’t never alone, cause I had a pack o’ good huntin’ dogs’-- and she simply could not understand why. ‘He come down with th’ pox an’ it like to kill him, he was bit real bad by a ‘coon an’ by all kinds o’ snakes, he war stung by a swarm o’ yellow jackets, an’ he broke his foot. One winter he broke through the ice on a creek an’ froze his fingers an’ toes. He had to cut off his little toe, but the rest got better, an’ he could walk.’

‘Th’ worst was when Cherokee snuck up on him. Paw said he could understand a little Cherokee, an’ Paw talked some Injun words. He said they was raising their tomahawks, an’ starin’ at him so mean, he was sure they was fixin’ to kill an’ scalp’im. But right then Paw got out his Cherokee pipe, th’ one Cap’n Dick give ‘im, an’ he passed it aroun’. When they all started puffin’, he thought maybe they might let him live. ‘Course, they rode off with his three horses, his hides, his rifle, an’ his kit. But they let him keep th’ clothes on his back, a flint, an’ his skinnin’ knife. That was enough. Paw started walkin’ an’ he din’t quit ‘til he made it to Stalnaker’s.’

‘He come down with fever, fell out bad, an’ had to spend ‘bout a month restin’ up. When he got back on his feet, he dickered with th’ Dutchman to bring in meat to trade fer hominy an’ credit on horses an’ a kit. That went on, and then bye-an’-bye comes three men riding fine horses, followed by two slaves on mules, luggin’ their baggage. The tallest man wore a officer’s coat, an’ his shoulders was loaded down with gold. He said his name was “Colonel Langhorne,” they was “agents of The Fairfield Company” an’ had come west to spy out a grant of land. He ’lowed as how th’ lan’ was a reward for fightin’ with General Braddock at Fort Duquesne in 1755, but they was only now spyin’ out what they had been given back then. Right now all the planters was agin’ the British, an’ figgerin’ to get Virginny free so they could be rich. The Colonel talked with th’ Dutchman a spell, then turned to Paw.“We’ve heared tell of Cave Gap, an’ some people say there’s flat land beyond a place called Wasioto. We need a guide who knows th’ backwoods all the way to the flat land.” Paw ast ‘em,”What d’ye aim to do with th’ lan’? An’ th’ Colonel says, “We will survey it, we will divide it, and we will patent it. Ever’ li’l farmer in Virginny an’ Carolina is dreamin’ about ‘Kentuck.’ They want land. We will sell them land. We will sell them every single acre of land they are able to pay for.” Paw said “I liked to brain ‘im on th’ spot. But th’ Dutchman was there, an’ maybe they’d sic soldiers on me. So I just spit on th’ floor, real close, so it spattered up on th’ Colonel’s fine boots, an’ I said ‘I ain’t innerested”.’

James tried to calculate when all this happened, but since he couldn’t read or write or count much, he wasn’t able to get far. For one thing, he didn’t know when his grandmother Lilah was born. She was wrinkled an’ bent over, her voice like a hen cackle, and didn’t have a single tooth in her head. Did that mean she had been born in ‘seventeen an’ seventy-one?’ An’ did that mean Ward Gilley landed in Baltimore in seventeen an’ sixty-three? Who knew? They didn’t have a Bible, and nobody knew how to read or write had there been a Bible.

When she was a young girl, Lilah was fascinated by her father’s stories. ‘He was always puffin’ on a pipe, sometimes chewin’ ‘backer an’ puffin’ all at oncet. An’ he shore did like his jug. He pulled on th’ jug till he couldn’t stand up, but th’ more he sucked, th’ longer he talked. He’d talk till he jes’ went to sleep. Hit war a sight if he pulled on his jug, but swallowed his chaw instead. We’d like to died a-laughin’. Paw’d stretch out on th’ cabin porch, layin’ on a flax canvas croker sack filled with corn shucks. An’ talk! He’d talk till th’ sun went down!’

*****

‘Th’ hunt he ‘membered most clear, th’ one he’d tell hit over an’ over, was when he was near kilt, but not by a b’ar.’ Gilley had been hunting on his own maybe four years, though he ‘`couldn’t right recollec’.’ On this trip, he’d been in the woods five months and had two horse-loads ready to pack out, when he discovered fresh bison scat. He determined he’d come out with one more pelt.

‘So he piled rocks on his hides an’ stacked rocks all ‘round, so no animal could get at ‘em whilst he was out huntin’ th’ buffalo. He spent all-of-a-day trackin’, till he spied seven of ‘em feedin’ on cane, three cows, three calves, an’ a big ol’ bull, biggest Paw ever seed. He shot it oncet, an’ he knew th’ ball hit.’

‘But th’ bull kep’ on, straight fer ‘im. Paw took off, primin’ his rifle on th’ run. He got off one more shot, which hit th’ beast in his haid. Th’ bull jes’ dropped, plumb daid on th’ spot, right at Paw’s feet. Well, he made a fire an’ feasted right thar on th’ bull’s tongue. Next mornin’ he skinned hit, loaded that heavy ol’ pelt on one o’ his horses so he could git hit to his cache. He figgered to lug it over to Greasy Creek, an’ then tan it proper.’

‘He was ‘bout hailing distance from his rock shelter when he heard a horse. Like a whinny? Well, Paw tied up his two horses, primed his rifle, an’ went quiet as anything through th’ soft ground to where he could see. He spied three horses tied up ‘side his cache, rocks all throwed off. He saw a man with a dirty face an’ a long beard. Paw saw he was a white man, an’ as ugly as th’ Rat-Catcher. He was loadin’ Paw’s hides onto two o’ his horses.’

‘Paw aimed.’

`Stop right there! Them hides is MINE!’’

‘Th’ varmint came at him right off, a tomahawk way up over his head. Paw said he thought he’d be brained fer sartin’. Paw rolled down a long hill, an’ whilst he was a-rollin’, he grabbed out his skinnin’ knife. Th’ varmint lept agin. Paw moved quick so th’ varmint couldn’t brain him, an’ just as he did, Paw put his knife into that varmint’s belly, right up to th’ handle.”

‘He bragged on it. Paw never let up braggin’ on it! `Ain’t nothin’ wrong with killin’ a man what’s stealin’ yer hides!’

‘But jes’ then, he heard twigs a-snappin’. He crawled back up th’ hill, an’ spied an’ Injun makin’ off with th’ horses an’ his hides. They had a good start on him, an’ Paw had to run to catch up. He yelled, an’ fired. Th’ Injun fell an’ never moved. Paw went up to look, but he had his tomahawk out to use if’n he had to.’

‘Well, he near fell down when he seed th’ Injun war’ a woman! Her face was so sooty with black smoke, you couldn’t hardly make out her color. But she had a nose an’ face like an Injun an’ skin like an Injun. He thought she war Cherokee. But not dressed like any Cherokee he’d ever seed before.’

‘An’ she war daid!’’

‘Then Paw fetched their horses, two with his hides, the third one with a saddle an’ with bags behind. An’ there inside one o’ them bags, war an Injun papoose on a cradleboard! It war whimperin’, but it warn’t hurt none. Paw said he din’t have ary idea, no idea a-tall, what to do. He warn’t ‘shamed o’ killin’ them varmints. “Them sum-bitches was stealin’ my hides, an’ one tried to scalp me. ‘Course I kilt ‘em!”’

‘Well, you know that baby was me. Paw said he thought maybe he’d just leave th’ baby there. What could he do with a baby? What good would a baby be? He had no use fer a baby! But he picked hit up an’ looked: hit's skin was not plain Injun. Was th’ dead varmint th’ daddy? He inspected th’ creature, like he might look over a beast he’d never seed before. It ‘peared healthy. A girl.’

‘Then he got skeered. Maybe there’s other Injuns here-abouts? He din’t want nobody followin’ him. So he lugged th’ carcass o’ th’ two varmints into a big cut in th’ rocks, threw ‘em down there, an’ dumped rocks from th’ cache on top of ‘em. Then he got th’ five horses an’ started off fer Stalnaker’s, a four day ride.’

‘Paw said th’ varmints done him some good. He ended up with three extry horses, th’ varmint’s rifle, an English-steel tomahawk o’ a kind he’d never seed before, an’ a skinnin’ knife better than th’ one he was usin’. He warn’t one bit happy with a baby, an’ kept thinkin’ he’d jes’ throw th’ damn thing over a big cliff. Who would know? But he di’n’t. He give me b’ar fat dipped in cooked mash an’ said I sucked on it on it like it war a milk tit. I never cried oncet.’

‘He couldn’t find Stalnaker’s. Not at first. Injuns had kilt th’ ol’ Dutchman’s wife and daughter, stole ever’ thang he had, an’ burned his cabins. He’d moved his place ten miles, and put his new cabins in th’ middle of a pole stockade, like a fort? Th’ ol’ Dutchman said: “I’ll die here afore I let th’ Injuns run me out. Th’ ones that got us came from far away, maybe North Carolina. None of th’ Injuns I deal with woulda done that, nor killed a woman, a child. They knew I was fair. But this place is better anyhow. Th’ packtrains from Wolf Hills don’t have so fer to go.”’

‘Paw hunkered down there an’ waited fer an idea. Two half-breed women with a passel of youngun’s commenced to giving him all kinds o’ advice. Finally, one o’ ‘em brought over a girl, a white girl, not a half-breed. I don’t know how old she was, but Paw said she war `old enough’ an’ I guess I know what he meant by that. She ‘lowed as she would go with him an’ help with th’ baby. Paw said that warn’t enough. She’d have to help with th’ hides, make soap, cook up his squirrel meat. She said she would.’

‘That was it.’

*****

‘Her name was Sally Sizemore. Paw never tole me whar she come from. Sally named me Delilah, but nobody never called me by that. Jes’ Lilah. An’ she’s th’ one me an’ Mason called Mamaw. She was Mason’s Mamaw all right, but SHE warn’t th’ one that born me.’

‘Well, Paw was feeling right pleased. He sold two horses at Stalnaker’s an’ bought two iron kettles, a great big one to make soap an’ salt, an’ a small one fer stew an ever’ thing else, two axe heads an’ a mawl, some copper fer a corn mash still, fish hooks, fardels o’ calico an’ muslin, seeds, needles-an’-thread, blanket wool, an’ pig iron -- enough to fill th’ bags on three horses. An’ that was it. He warn’t ‘bout to hang aroun’ one minute longer. He didn’t mind tradin’ with the Dutchman, but fer him, it was too bunched up, too fer from th’ woods. He wanted to stay back in th’ Wilderness. He just couldn’t wait to bust out o’ there. If he said it oncet, he said it a hunnerd’ times, `I jus’ cain’t STAND livin’ all cooped up, people watchin’ at you, tellin’ on you. A man’s not a man if he’s not free to do whatever th’ goddamn hell he WANTS to do!’ An’ ever’ time he said it, Paw’d spit ‘backer juice ‘bout ten yards down th’ path.’

‘I war a babe an’ don’t ‘member none of it. But Mamaw told me. They set out with four horses, me suckin’ on cooked-up corn mash, or jerky soaked till it was soft. Mamaw warn’t sure where they was or where they war headin’, but th’ trip took six days. They went up a long valley, over a little gap, then up another valley, this one longer than th’ first, then up a long creek, over a hill, then up another. Valleys, creeks, an’ hollers. Finally, Paw spied a place where they was a big rock ledge stickin’ out. ”Hells bells! This place don’t even need a roof!”’

‘An’ that’s where I gowed up. Th’ first year we was just closed up under th’ ledge with poles, mud daubed ‘roun’ to keep out th’ wind. Nex’ year Paw chopped down some poplar trees, and hewed logs fer a cabin. Mamaw an’ Mason an’ me liked th’ cabin. But Paw warn’t hardly ever there, always out huntin’. Fact is, I don’t think he had ary mind o’ livin’ with no Old Woman. He jes’ hankered to sit out in th’ woods, an’ wait for some beast to come along, an’ shoot hit. I think he never would-a settled down a-tall, if it hadn’t been fer me, a baby.’

‘At first we had jes’ a dirt floor, but next year Paw put in some puncheon logs, an’ that was our floor a’ter that. Paw chopped down more trees an’ Mamaw planted corn, ‘backer, cushaw squash, shucky beans, ‘taters, pumpkins, apples, peach pits. We’d go out in th’ woods fer sallet greens an’ diff’rent kind o’ nuts; we liked black walnut th’ best. But them nuts was all good, which is why squirrels and b’ars and hogs went fer ‘em.’

‘Paw could live fer weeks on nothin’ but squirrel. He liked squirrel cooked with hog fat, real slow, in a iron oven. Paw liked deer-meat, an’ he sure loved b’ar-meat, ‘specially in th’ fall, when th’ b’ars was fat an’ tasty as hogs, full up with chestnut mast. If we had it, we’d boil up some hominy, or make hoecake. Later on, he liked fried hog meat, when we had some. We didn’t hardly need nothin’. We liked th’ quiet. Nobody t’ bother us, nobody messin’ with us. It suited us real good. We figgered out how to make a lot o’ stuff ourse’fs. If they was somethin’ we couldn’t make, Paw would set off with a packload o’ hides, an’ come back with some store-bought-cloth, or maybe needles an’ thread. Oncet he come back with four pigs strapped on th’ back o’ two horses. Them pigs went wild in th’ woods, an’ ever’ year a’ter that we got good hog-meat off’n ‘em. An’ th’ year after that, Paw come back with a spinning wheel an’ some baby sheep. We didn’t need no sheep or pigs, cause we was eatin’ good off turkey, deer, an’ b’ar meat. But I guess Paw figgered his Old Woman could spin wool, mebbe make him socks or somethin’.’

‘Paw was still buying jug whisky at th’ trader’s. But a’ter a year or so, he made a blacksmith thing, a fool trapshun with a grit stone so Mamaw could grind corn. Then he started brewin’ up mash hiss’ef. Later on, he made barrel hoops, worked on his rifle, made traps.’

‘By this time I had growed up. I warn’t sure how old I was, but I knowed I was mighty OLD, maybe fourteen. I guess I woulda been married by then, if’n we din’t live so fer back up th’ holler. Nobody never come ‘roun’ – which is why Paw like it.’

‘Then Simon Begley come along. He an’ Paw got along all right cause Simon was a hunter jes’ like him. An’ neither one of ‘em ever farmed a lick. Paw an’ Simon was pullin’ at th’ jug purty hard. An’ after they’d near-emptied th’ jug, Paw got started in on the lan’ agents.’

‘Paw said, “Wal, I jes’ squatted. This is my holler. It’s mine, an’ I ain’t never gonna pay nobody a blessed penny. Nothin’! Jes’ let th’ law try an’ run me out! I’ll blow th’ sum-bitches’ haid off! I kilt many an Injun an’ a white man, too, an’ I’ll do it agin! Long as I kin shoot, they cain’t run me out! An’ I’ll hunt anywheres I Goddam please! Why I should pay some Virginny mucky-muck anything? How’d he come by this lan’? Who give it to him? Does he hunt it? No! Does he farm it? No! He’s a common thief! He stole it from us hunters! We’re th’ ones what opened this lan’!”’

‘Then Paw and Simon started in on me. They went on ‘bout how awful OLD I was. But, they allowed as maybe, jes’ maybe, I might not be too old to git married. Paw an’ Simon finally agreed that was a right smart idea. An’ by then they was so drunk, they jes’ went to sleep.’

‘So I went off with Simon. Paw said he guessed that if Simon was gonna keep an Old Woman, he’d have to build a cabin, an’ Simon ‘lowed as how he might do that. But Paw warned him good. He dad-blamed did NOT want no neighbors. NOBODY! Simon had to move at least three ridges, maybe five ridges, away. Paw said “I just cain’t STAND people crowdin’ up.”’

‘So that’s what he did. He built us a li’l cabin a day’s ride away. An’ li’l Maggie, yore Mama, was born ten months later.’

‘So I recken that makes you part Injun, jes’ like me. I never saw my Cherokee mama. But I guess you might have maybe one part Injun blood, five parts white man’s blood.’

Lilah looked into the distance.

‘I’m half-Injun, an’ I look it, but it don’t bother me none. I never could deposit what people have agin’ Injuns. They’d mainly leave us be if we’d leave them be. They taught us a lot ‘bout how to live in th’ woods.’

‘An’ Paw . . .’ Lilah’s voice trailed off, and she suddenly seemed OLDER.

‘Well, by this time, I’d been with Simon a right spell, ‘cause yore Mama was mos’ growed. Mamaw said Paw had gone out huntin’ jes’ like he always done, though he was weak with th’ dropsy. He’d been gone maybe two weeks, when one morning both his horses come up to Mamaw’s cabin. They knowed th’ way back. Th’ lead horse had Paw’s rifle in its saddle case. Th’ second, tied to it, was loaded with half-dressed fresh hides. But Paw warn’t with ‘em.’

‘Mamaw sent Mason out huntin’ fer ‘im, but Mason had nary a notion o’ where to look, so he come back. Then she sent over fer Simon an’ me. It took Mason two days to find Simon. Then th’ three o’ us, Mason, Simon, an’ me, we all went out lookin’ fer Paw. We hunted fer days. Simon could track good. But he couldn’t find nary a trace NOWHERES. So we come back.’

‘There warn’t hardly nobody ever’ come through way back at th’ head o’ th’ holler where we was. But we ast everbody that did come through. An’ Simon ast ever’ time he went to trade his hides. Nary a soul knew a thang! Paw jes’ disappeared! We didn’t bury him nor nothin’.

Her voice grew soft.

‘I have pondered till my head hurt an’still don’t have ary idea. No idea a-tall. Was he kilt by Injuns? Maybe a rock fell off a cliff an’ hit him in the haid? Maybe he got a fever an’ fell off his horse an’ couldn’t get back on? I wisht I knew.’

‘But that war the end o’ Ward Gilley.’

*****

‘Paw jes’ vanished, in seventeen an’ ninety-one. He rode off after dinner, an’ that was th’ las’ time we seed him. That mornin’ he was layin’ on his croker sack, smokin’ his cob an’ talkin’, talkin’ like he always done, ‘bout th’ olden times.’

‘”Oh, we had it good back then,” he’d say. “Game ever’ whar, not like now. Shoot all day, get any kind o’ animal ye wanted. Some of ‘em warn’t even skeered o’ us. An’ when we come out o’ th’ Wilderness, ever’ last one o’ us had big bundles o’ hides and peltry, sometimes more than four horses could carry. We’d trade fer new rifles, any dad-burned thang we wanted.”’

‘”An’ way back in th’ woods, we was free! No law men, not one blessed soul to bother us. Nobody! That was th’ life! An’ we ate GOOD! Plenty o’ fat meat, all we wanted, all th’ time. We din’t want fer nothin’! Oh, they was a few of ‘em missed th’ women, missed th’ forts. But even th’ ones with wives an’ young‘uns, din’t want to settle down. An’ all o’ us hated farmin’!”’

‘”It’s all changed up now. Clearin’s an’ people ever whar! Cain’t go down th’ path without I see cabin smoke, or somebody’s burnin’ a girdled tree, or burnin’ stumps. Ye hear axes choppin’ over th’ ridge. An’ fights! Ever’body’s fightin’! All the time! It’s law this an’ law that! Lan’ agents, metes-an’-bouns’, plats, warrants, patents! I HATE paper! It’s all lies! Every word on paper is a lie! Hells bells! When we was huntin’ in th’ Wilderness, we din’t have no paper, din’t need no damn paper. We owned all th’ land, go anywhere, hunt anywhere. It was all our’n! It ain’t like it was! An’ it bothers me! It bothers me bad!”’

‘”When I first run away from Virginny, th’ back country was all green. They warn’t hardly no sound a-tall in the woods, ‘cept for our guns. They warn’t no cabins, an’ no lan’ agents. Lots o’ buffalo ever’ whar. Trees, big trees, an’ sweet berries. Th’ Wilderness was Eden! Paradise!”’

‘”Course they was a worm in th’ apple. An’ that was Injuns. Lots of hunters I went out with was kilt, some carried off an’ never heard from again. An’ Injuns stole off ever’ one o’ us, ev’ry single thang, even our clothes! But it was worth it! Worth ever’ bit of it! If’n I was young, an’ th’ game was still there, I’d do it all over again! Mebbe jes’ float down th’ Shawnee River, or th’ Holston, see whar they come out. I’d do it jes’ to be alone in th’ woods, free!”’

Lilah took a long puff on her pipe and looked into space. Her voice was soft, solemn.

‘I want ye to have Paw’s rifle an’ his horn. They’s th’ onliest thangs lef’ that war truly his’n. Keep ‘em SAFE, now!’

Lilah’s husband Simon Begley never once tried to grow anything. No farming for him; he was a hunter. He made his living off hides and pelts, though this was getting much harder to do. Maggie was the oldest of Lilah and Simon’s several children; she married James Broughton. When Lilah’s grandson James started hunting with Simon, he often said, ‘Game’s so thick, you cain’t NEVER hunt it out. Deer in all seasons, squirrel meat fer ever’ meal. Flocks o’ pigeons so thick they break off th’ tree limbs. Jes’ hit ‘em with a stick. Feed th’ baby squabs to th’ hogs.’

But as a new century rolled around, Begley had to trek farther and farther for elk, be out weeks at a time. He was puzzled, confused. ‘Hit is a mystery. I jes’ cain’t deposit’ how th’ woods could empty out so quick. No more buffalo. No wolves, neither. N’ary a one. You kin find a few b’ar or gobblers if yer out a long time, but even they is more skase ever’ season.’

Soon, only a few were alive who had ever heard the hideous HOWLS in the night. As the elders talked, stark terror would sweep over them. Some trembled. One old man, his voice quavering, said: ‘Hit was strange! Spooky! Like a ha’nt! If ye heerd it oncet, ye’d never fergit it. Like th’ howl o’ a ghost, or a dead man, or th’ Devil hisse’f! That beast was jes’ HOWLIN’ at th’ moon! That there howl is th’ mountain painter!’

After James’ son Robert built a mill and started grinding meal and sawing logs, , James said he ‘never agin’ met a single soul who had hisSE’F ever heerd a painter.’


THE SETTLER: HARGIS BROUGHTON (1761-1823)

The boy’s main job was hunting game for food, for the Surveyor, for himself, and for Ezra the camp boy, a slave loaned by Colonel William Preston. Every few days Hargis left at dawn for the woods. He was getting much better with the long rifle, but he still wasted powder and shot. Nonetheless he always brought back, usually well before sundown, sometimes a deer haunch, sometimes a turkey, or, if nothing else, a pouch of rabbits or squirrels, which were killed without a wound if the ball hit the tree bark beside their head. He and Ezra would gut, clean, carve, and cook the meat. They also salted some so he didn’t have to hunt every day. Most meals included parched corn, hominy, and hoecake from meal bought at a factor’s depot in Wolf Hills.

Broughton and Ezra also pitched the tents, a big one for the Surveyor, and a little one he and Ezra shared. The two sometimes talked at night. Ezra said he had been born on Colonel Preston’s Plantation, ‘jus’ like my Mammy an’ Pappy. My Gran’mammy’s Maw was from some other Plantation, don’ know whar. She run away an’ took up with th’ Cherokee in th’ woods. A’ter ‘bout six months, Settlers snuk up on ‘em, an’ ever’ Injun an was kilt. She run away agin, but th’ Settlers caught her. Well, when they brung her back to her plantation, her owner said he warn’t ‘bout to keep no slave that run away. So he took her down to Williamsburg an’ sold her to Colonel Preston. ‘Bout three months later she had a baby, half-Injun. That baby was my Gran’mammy.’

Broughton and Ezra loaded tents, bedding, and surveying gear on the packhorse and the mule, a full load for two animals. The Surveyor rode a fine buckskin stallion, a suitable mount for a man named Cabell Langhorne, who mentioned as often he could,‘my close connections with the descendants of Lord Fairfax and other fine families.’ In morning light or at sunset, the stallion's coat, which the Surveyor insisted Ezra brush twice a day, shone like burnished gold. Hargis and Ezra walked behind the two pack animals. They didn’t travel far because the Surveyor had to stop every so often, to peer at his watch, squint at the sun through his sextant, select distinctive features as landmarks, make calculations, and write everything in his leather bound book. Broughton could not read or write. He understood very little of what the Surveyor did, or why, and not a single iota of the geometry. But he watched, and he slowly acquired a vague notion. Of one thing he was quite certain: there was no chance at all that the survey would be helpful in any way to ordinary persons, such as himself.

His main task, aside from supplying food, was to work with Ezra to move the chain, and the chaining-pins and flags. They did their best to follow The Surveyor’s instructions, but they often could not hear him. This obliged them to run back to make sure they knew what he wanted them to do. Sometimes they understood his arm signals -- left up, right up, both out.

The Surveyor specified that Broughton, and absolutely NOT Ezra, carry and fix the chaining-pins and flags, the Gunter’s chain, twenty-two yards long, one hundred links (more commonly, four rods), and the Jacob’s Staff, which supported the compass. And he absolutely forbade EITHER of them to so much as TOUCH the precious theodolite or compass. He and he alone removed them from their padded cases, carefully mounted them, squinted through them, and then, handling them with great delicacy, stowed them back in their cases. Broughton and Ezra stretched the chain to the spot the Surveyor specified, then, as he had carefully instructed, shouted ‘Tally’ and stuck a tally pin with a flag in the ground. After the Surveyor had peered through his telescope and compass, he would go off by himself, like it was a secret or something, and work with his maps and drafting tools. It was not exactly a secret, but it was certainly magic.

The Surveyor’s marks transformed wilderness into property. By making notations on a map, the Surveyor converted twenty chains by twenty chains of unknown woods into yet another acre owned by Colonel Preston. The Surveyor converted land, totally empty except for game and trees, into a resource that could be bought, sold, rented, and mortgaged. While the Surveyor was busy with his calculations and drawings, Broughton and Ezra could take a little rest.

Hargis, Ezra and the Surveyor were all employed by Colonel Preston to map a section he bought from The Wood River Land Company after Colonel James Patton’s death. Between The Loyal Land Company, whose extensive claims were still vigorously pursued by Dr. Thomas Walker of Charlottesville, and Colonel Patton’s claims, southwest Virginia had by this time been pretty well parceled-out. The land grants made rich Virginia families even richer.

Hargis had a very low opinion of land companies. To him, they were just one more way for the gentry and mucky-mucks to steal and lord it over the poor man. He wished to God! he knew some way he could get IN on the scheme! Owning land meant big houses, plantations, and lots of slaves to do the work. There was NO WAY an ordinary mortal could gain access to this enterprise. The families had it locked up. It was a closed corporation, no outsiders, no riffraff, allowed.

So far as he could tell, the families were all related one way or another, or did business together, or went to the same church, or voted the same way in the Council. In Williamsburg, the families voted each other enormous grants of land in the unknown western backwoods of Virginia, the Wilderness that lay just over the Blue Ridge -- 800,000 acres to The Loyal Land Company, a nearly equal amount to The Ohio Company, equally vast acreage to The Greenbrier Company. Of course the land companies made sure the Governor and the King received proper quitrents. They distributed handbills extolling the supposed fertility of the new lands, hoping to lure settlers, who were allowed to pay over time. Granting backwoods land enriched both colony and mother country. It brought in more people, who grew more tobacco, the export of which brought Virginia more money, and therefore allowed it to buy more manufactured goods from England – which made The Board of Trade in London happy. Some land grants required treaties with Indians, which entailed tedious palaver. Despite this bother, treaties were do-able, quite do-able. The Indians were all dying of the pox anyway.

Broughton did not at first realize the important role of Surveyors in this scheme. But over the months it slowly came to him: Surveyors were often the first Europeans into new frontier areas. They could therefore spot and patent the most valuable land for themselves and their friends. A reliable Surveyor was indispensable if your object was to grab as much western land as you could. And the pursuit of land was the chief aim of all influential Virginians.

Broughton was not sure how his mother and father, and theirs before them, had ended up in Northern Ireland. He only knew they had been driven out of Scotland and, as Presbyterians, were hated equally by Irish Catholics AND by the Church of England. At age ten he began work as slop boy for a Belfast butcher. The work was so long and so hard, and his prospects so grim, he did not see how he could possibly do worse than take a chance on the New World. At fifteen, he paid for his passage by agreeing to four years’ labor.

An agent who represented six Virginia planters required him to make his mark on an Indent. The planters wanted carpenters, bricklayers, and mechanics, but were obliged to settle for what they could get, usually raw labor, no skills at all. The Agent also worked free-lance, and side-deals with ship’s Captains were profitable for both. The Agent was trying, in the three days before sailing, to assemble enough human cargo to negotiate a reduced fare per head. He would of course pocket the savings. Time was running short and the Agent thought he might have to fill the manifest with involuntary indentures -- felons, ragamuffins, debtors, military prisoners, dissenters -- any dregs or rejects The Crown would be pleased to cast out. Either way, Agents and Captains profited nicely.

Hargis thought it was ‘the year seventeen and seventy-five’ when they docked in Philadelphia. He thought that date was on his Indent, but he was unable to read it, had it been shown to him, which it was not. His foot had been on land no more than an hour before a two-mule wagon pulled up to fetch him and six others. They rattled down the Great Wagon Road, a broad natural boulevard of beauty and history, the most heavily traveled highway in all America. There were ferries and fords, and inns and taverns every few miles, people heading north, heading south, Indian traders, missionaries, frontier militias, itinerant peddlers, and pack trains in both directions. Most people were families heading west, seeking land they could settle and own, improve with their labor, and create a better future for themselves and their families.

The wagon passed through Lancaster, York, Gettysburg, and Harper’s Ferry. Hargis and two others were dumped off at Staunton Court House and warned, ‘Don’t move one single foot from this spot.’ The driver said the Wagon Road continued to Lexington. At Big Lick, it forked to Kings Mountain, Cowpens, Guilford Courthouse, Winston-Salem, Salisbury, Charlotte, the Yadkin Valley, and Watauga. Another route linked Wolf Hills to the Wilderness Road in Southwestern Virginia. A new extension of the Road was opening via the Holston, Clinch and Powell valleys to Gaps in the Cumberland and Pine mountains, and via Boone’s Trace or Scagg’s Trace to Kaintuck.

Another wagon soon arrived to take them to a plantation on the James River, half in Albemarle, half in Fluvanna County. Hargis had never been a farmer and knew nothing about farming, with the possible exception of how to bludgeon an ox and carve out its guts. But that didn’t matter. The plantation needed men and there were not enough workers, slave or free. The overseer put him in the fields the same day he arrived, chopping weeds, hoeing corn, and suckering tobacco. He crowded in with three others in a tiny cabin far back of the Great House. Field hands, indented or slave, were given any Great House food that was uneaten and likely to spoil. But their main diet was meal and hominy. Meat was game, or hog-meat -- maw, trotters, chitlin’s and other offal -- and greens such as cushaw blossoms, wild pokeweed, plantain, and speckled jack. He had to beg for clothing. The work was hard, but he had worked harder lugging butcher’s slop. He could take it.

The Plantation encouraged field hands to attend church, one for whites, one for slaves. Despite his low opinion of religion generally, Hargis went a few times his first year. The preacher, The overseer’s cousin, had only one sermon, ‘Sin and the eternal fires of Hell,’ a straightforward message repeated with almost no variation: sin is universal; every person, even a baby, is a sinner, even though one might be totally unaware of this fact. Only a few chosen or elect, known but to God, will be spared the fires of hell. Since Hargis viewed his labor on the plantation as very close to damnation right here on earth, he concluded he did not require further Instruction on this point. His antipathy toward religion was confirmed, and he never went again.

He counted the years, and when his time was up, ‘in seventeen and seventy-nine,’ he had acquired a little familiarity with farming, or at least the hot sun labor of it, though the tobacco-slave barons of Virginia practiced the most wasteful kind of agronomy, preferring to mine topsoil for a few years, then begin a new plantation on virgin land, usually further west.

Hargis asked all the others, white and black, what he ought to do. Few ventured an opinion. Most confessed they didn’t rightly know. Some thought it might be exciting to ‘jine up’ with a militia. They is war all over! Th’ families say they don’t need no King no more, th’ey kin run Virginia theyse’ves.’ Others had heard about good land in ‘Kaintuck,’ free for the taking, though they weren’t quite sure where Kaintuck was or how to get there. In fact, there were so many stories about the place, some possibly true, ministers started warning congregations against ‘the Buzzel.’ There were also stories of Indian capture and hideous torture. Indian terror was the most common subject of gossip everywhere, even in the Great House.

Hargis didn’t have much use for the overseer, who treated whites and blacks equally – that is, with raw contempt. But his opinion of the man improved a bit the day he let him go, as he generously allowed Hargis to keep the clothes he had on his back, the ones he had worked and slept in, a heavily patched shirt of osnaburg linen, leather breeches, and a coat of canvas and blanket wool. He even let him keep an old felt hat with a hole in it, and a butcher knife with no handle. Indian terror or not, Hargis set out walking.

He headed southwest. The prospect of good land, free for the taking, was simply irresistible. He had one shilling, sixpence in his pocket, earned from selling possum skins. He slept in fields and stole any food he could. It took him ten days to reach Wolf Hills. He didn’t know if that was where his luck changed for the better, or where it changed for the worse. But his luck certainly changed.

The trading post at Wolf Hills was rough, as was everything this far West. But the man buying goods was not at all rough -- and was therefore completely out of place. Hargis thought he must be a gentleman, to judge by his fine clothing, not a patch on it, his smooth way of talking, and the fact that he had a slave manservant with him. Hargis tried to make conversation. Indian terror stories seemed like a good way to start.

The Surveyor was curt. ‘Don’t believe everything you hear.’

Hargis said, ‘I don’t.’

He looked the gentleman over sideways, hoping he wouldn’t notice. His boots were caked with mud. And the goods he was buying could only mean he was heading into the woods. But which woods? Where was he heading?

‘I’ve served out my contrack. I’m looking fer work.’

‘Let me see your paper.’ Hargis produced what the overseer had given him, awkwardly tugging his forelock like his ancestors before him.

‘If -- I say if -- I take you on, you must do every single thing I tell you, exactly the way I tell you to do it, and you must do it quick. No back talk. I don’t have time for sass. I pay one pound a month.’

Hargis just stared. He had no idea at all what the Surveyor meant.

‘Well? Are you deaf? What do you say?’

Hargis mumbled something, and the deed was done. The Surveyor said, ‘Ezra will show you what to do. Go help him load the horse and mule.’

He stayed with the Surveyor ten months, traveling over a wide area of southwest Virginia. He learned the names of the trees and plants, and over time became an excellent hunter. He also picked up as much woodcraft as the Surveyor deigned to show him. He even used a strip of deerskin to tie his hair in a pigtail, just like the Surveyor did. When they got as far west as the trading post on the Long Island of the Holston River, he asked for his ten pounds, and quit. Hargis had no idea what he would do, or where he would go.

The Surveyor planned to stay a few days at Long Island. He had to write and post some letters, he needed supplies, and he needed to hire a new flag boy. Most importantly of all, he had to call on settlers that had squatted on Colonel Preston’s land nearby. Preston’s surveys magically converted Wilderness to property. That part was easy. The hard part was converting property into cash. The Colonel needed cash to survey more Wilderness and thus acquire more property, so as to buy more slaves, to grow more tobacco, and get more cash. With more cash, he could buy even more property. There was no secret about any of this. The conversion of Virginia’s western frontier into tobacco-slave plantations was the foundation of wealth of all of Virginia’s families.

The Surveyor regarded his employer was the fairest man in all Virginia. All he asked was that the squatters make their mark on a paper, which none could read, acknowledging that they had cleared and occupied land, per plat of metes and bounds, that belonged to the Colonel, and that this paper was their legally enforceable promise to pay. In the matter of payment, The Surveyor regarded the Colonel as a veritable paragon of generosity. He gave the squatters ten years to pay, one-tenth per year. If they were unable to pay in cash, he would graciously accept their hogs or cattle or horses. What could be more generous, more fair, than that? But of course if they did not pay, he would bring law men with guns, and force them off. This was also an integral part of the system.

A family was at the trading post, buying supplies. They said they intended to follow Boone’s Trace into Kaintuck, but allowed as how they might have to wait a spell for others. Families had to travel together, as it was ‘MADNESS to travel alone.’ That meant ‘CERTAIN capture by Indians, and DEATH BY TORTURE.’

The head of the family said his name was Frazer Tolbert. He was a slight, wiry man, perhaps forty years of age, a bundle of taut energy. He had farmed a little, ‘mostly corn and ‘backer, but huntin’s what I like best.’ He was born in Pennsylvania and had hunted all over that colony. ‘Me and my fambly just come up from Carolina ‘cause game was startin’ to get shot out. An’ it was downright sca’se in Watauga. Your fambly’ll never go hungry if’n you know how to hunt good. But ‘course ye got to have th’ game. We heered ‘bout easy game EVERwheres in Kaintuck. An’ land free fer th’ takin’. So that’s where we’re goin’. We might leave tomorrer if’n another bunch shows up.’

Tolbert had six children, and his wife was heavily pregnant. His four boys looked sullen and mean, his two older girls looked sullen and stupid. If one kept an account, Tolbert’s ‘fambly’ would be entered as a debit, in fact, a total loss. On the asset side, Tolbert possessed two Pennsylvania rifles, three axes, and six iron kettles, three of them cracked. His little caravan was led by a sound bay mare, tied in tandem to three other heavily laden pack horses, these latter so beat-up and splayed it was not clear they would survive the trip. Tolbert said, ‘‘Spect I’ll need ALL my goods over in Kaintuck.’

Hargis and Tolbert talked at length about ‘Injuns.’ The only ones Hargis had seen were three Cherokee men, and their women and children, dressed in an assortment of tattered and ill-fitting English clothing, on their way to trade at Great Lick. But he had heard stories. LOTS of stories.

Tolbert began. ‘I say they’re devils. They don’t come at you face-on like white men, but hide back in th’ forest. Ye never SEE ‘em, never HEAR ‘em. They leap out fast as lightnin’. It don’t matter none to them if it’s a growed man, or a woman, or a baby. All th’ same. They scalp ever’ one. Then they kill all th’ wounded so they can git away quick. An’ they WANT to hurt you as bad as they can. They LIKE it if’n they can make you scream. If they grab you, I say, pray to God! Pray to God fer a quick death! That’s th’ only way out. But us hunters is tough. We know how to fight. We WILL fight back – and we aim to win. I’m a Christian man, but I’d be doin’ God’s work to kill any Injun I could.’

Then it was Hargis’ turn. He repeated a story he heard from a field hand on the plantation. ‘They was a flatboat floating down th’ Ohio, but ever’ person on it was dead. They found an Injun’s fingers chopped off where he had tried to climb in. You hear all kind of stories. I hear tell that some that went to Kaintuck is clearing out cause th’ Shawnee is killin’ ‘em all. Women-folk, an’ th’ men too, is all crazy with fear. None of ‘em cain’t take it no more.’

Tolbert could top this, easy. ‘Well, them little pole stockades they built up thar in Kaintuck don’t slow down th’ Shawnee one bit. Settlers crowded in like pigs, no winders, no air. Shawnees got so bold settlers had to send th’ men out in twos, one bunch to plant, th’ other bunch to patrol aroun’ so they warn’t scalped. An’ if they do get a crop planted, th’ Injuns come back an’ poison it. An’ they steal. They sneak in an’ steal ever’ little thing. They steal horses an’ rifles th’ most. I heered two hunnerd horses was stole in Kaintuck jes’ this year.’

Hargis thought his story was better. ‘Well, I heerd that th’ Injuns burned one man’s boy right in front of his eyes. An’ there was a woman in a cabin, th’ Injuns busted in, kilt her husband an’ all her youngun’s. She slept that night on th’ cabin floor in th’ middle o’ their blood. An’ I heered ‘bout one man an’ his wife. Th’ Injuns caught ‘em, tore off their clothes an’ tied ‘em to saplings. They cut into their bellies, pulled out a piece o’ their guts, an’ tied that piece to th’ sapling. Then they forced ‘em to walk roun’ an’ roun’ th’ sapling, till their guts was all pulled out.’

Tolbert said, ‘An’ those they don’t kill, they carry off an’ sell. Or adopt ‘em, turn ‘em into Injuns, an’ they don’t know their own white people no more.’

Hargis asked a reasonable question.

‘But if it’s so bad, and we are shore as sartin’ to be kilt, why would we aim to go thar?’

Tolbert’s response was so compelling Hargis realized it was pointless to respond.

‘’Cause we are God-fearin’ people! God KNOWS! An’ He will protect us! Th’ Injuns ain’t GOT no God. It’s them that does th’ devil’s work. I ain’t ‘shamed to say I’m skeered o’ th’ devil, an’ skeered o’ Injuns. But God tole Adam to `fill the earth an’ subdue it.' That’s what th’ Bible says. An’ I aim to do it. Anyways, Injuns ain’t like white men. They is savages -- an’ heathens. They got hardly no goods at all, which PROVES how lazy an’ stupid they is. They trek all over th’ land, but all they do is hunt. That’s a plumb waste o’ good farm land! God don’t want land to lay fallow. A christian has a RIGHT to settle that land. God GAVE us that land! God TOLE us to make it multiply. We can build ourse’fs a cabin, grow a crop, raise our fambly. It was GOD! who give us that right. Kaintuck’s the new Promised Land!’

Tolbert knew this was the topper, and that he had won the debate. He puffed up. Then unlimbered a Barlow knife and cut himself a big boot of chaw from a twist of tobacco.

The Surveyor had listened to this exchange, but had not interrupted. ‘You may be right. Or not. I don’t say I am an expert on Indians . . . Shawnee, Cherokee, Wyandot, any of them. But I think they are pretty much like us, at least in some ways. Some of them are good, some are bad. I’ve known a few good ones. I think they mainly just want to be left alone. Fact is, and you know it, we want the land they hunt on, and they have to hunt to feed themselves and their families. We’re pushing them hard, pushing them west, pushing them out. If you think on it, you can see how you might get riled up too.’

And with that, the Surveyor paid the trader, turned sharply, and went out the door. He leashed his packhorse and mule to his handsome stallion, and, with Ezra the slave boy trudging behind, rode back toward the east.

Coming to the New World was a gamble, but Hargis was beginning to think he had lost the bet. In fact, he was pretty sure he had Lost. He indented himself for four years’ labor, hoping he might learn a trade or, somehow, anyhow, better his condition. Everybody called Virginia ‘a glorious country, a land of opportunity.’ Everybody said, ‘It’s a New World, somethin’ better, somethin’ diff’rent. A young man willing to work can make a fortune.’

But this had not happened. Hargis had sweated till he thought he would drop, working hard, very hard. Four years a field hand, and what did he have to show? NOT ONE THING! His bst chance had been with the Surveyor. He wasn’t busted, not with ten pounds in his pocket. But he had lost the bet. ‘I was a FOOL! to let the Surveyor walk out the post!’

Day followed day, but still no ‘famblys’ heading toward Kaintuck.

A few showed up to trade: three Settlers who said their farms were ‘a day down th’ path’, a Hunter buying powder and lead, and six half-breeds, whose skin color and features suggested an amazing admixture of white, Indian and African, trading beaver pelts for English steel tomahawks and knives.

Hargis began to exchange a few words with the two Tolbert girls, Hannah who said she was ‘’bout fourteen,’ and Mayme, who looked perhaps seventeen. With more acquaintance, he began to alter his opinion. Maybe the girls were a tad less sullen, a bit less stupid, than he thought. Mayme was the smarter and prettier of the two, with the freckled ivory skin and red hair of many Scots and Irish. Hargis and Mayme started talking quietly. Later, they went off alone in the woods when her parents were busy cooking.

Tolbert and his family camped and waited. He and Hargis talked for two weeks, half the time imagining the PARADISE in Kaintuck, half the time imagining unspeakable TERROR in Kaintuck.

Tolbert’s every utterance was punctuated with allusions to God and visions of boundless prospects. ‘A fine strong young man like you could make it GOOD in Kaintuck. I’ll be durd if’n I wouldn’t do it, young as you is. There’s rich land all over, cane so thick on it you KNOW it’ll make a fine crop. Plenty o’ game ever’ whar. If we stick together, th’ Injuns won’t dare come at us.’

Then Sturgill arrived. He was short and thick, all muscle, no fat, his face burnt red by long days of clearing fields and plowing. He rode a small mule, leading a bigger mule and two horses, loaded down with what seemed to be every pot and pan he owned. His wife and two girls, faces shielded by bonnets, all barefoot, lurked behind but managed to keep up. Ambrose, his older boy, ran ahead.

Sturgill said he ‘busted out’ trying to farm ‘backer in Carolina. ‘I aim to make a new farm over in Kaintuck, if I kin find th’ right road. I figgered they might be somun here-abouts could point out th’ Kentucky road. Or mebbe Skagg’s Trace?’

Tolbert grew agitated with excitement. ‘We are might proud you-uns showed up! Kin you jine up with us? Name’s Tolbert . . . what’s your’n?’

‘Sturgill.’

‘Is that yer given name?’

‘Hit’s Virgil. But nobody don’t call me by that. Just Sturgill.’ He turned to the trader, hopeful, quizzical. ‘We’re aimin’ to foller th’ Kentucky road. Do you know how to git to it?’ The trader said nothing.

Tolbert jumped right in. ‘Why tarnation, man! There ain’t nairy a thing to it! Th’ road is as plain as anything. Long Hunters showed Judge Henderson the best land, and he sent out axemen. Now that road is blazed all th’ way to Boone’s Fort. Five hundred souls has followed that trace already. I been waitin’ here fer another fambly, so we kin go together. Hit’s safer like that.’

Sturgill and Tolbert talked the rest of the day. Each owned a few head of cattle and some hogs which they had left behind in Watauga, planning to send back for them ‘after we get settled.’ They then unloaded their pack animals, and inventoried every bit of gear they carried. They calculated they needed two more bags of meal apiece, and more powder and shot.

Then both of them started in on Hargis.

‘Now boy, you ain’t got a horse, and you ain’t got no rifle, no axe, no pots, no nothin’! How in THE WORLD do you ‘spect to git to Kaintuck an’ make a crop if you ain’t fitted out right? If you aim to git to Kaintuck, jine up with us. Th’ trader says a farmer here-abouts has a horse fer sale. I got an extry rifle, an’ we may NEED that gun if’n we run into trouble. Kin ye shoot?’

The next two days were spent dickering with the farmer about his horse, testing Hargis to make sure he knew how to handle a rifle, and haggling with the trader about prices: a tomahawk, knife, meal, powder and shot, and supplies Tolbert said Hargis HAD to have. By the time Tolbert was satisfied that Hargis was ‘fitted out,’ his ten pounds were entirely gone. Hargis would set out for Kaintuck without a cent, in fact in debt to Tolbert for an axe and a rifle.

On the Sabbath, Tolbert led the group in prayers, followed by a long harangue, punctuated by banging on a Bible. ‘Kaintuck is the new eden, an’ we will settle it jes’ like th’ first man an’ th’ first woman in th’ garden. God is watching over us an’ He will see us through! Amen! Say `Amen!’ somebody!’ They spent the sabbath afternoon loading their animals for the journey.

Just after dawn on a Monday in April 1779, the party set out, heading north toward the Wilderness Road. All walked, Tolbert first, leading four pack horses, his wife and six children straggling behind. The path was so narrow they went single-file. Sturgill was next, leading four pack animals, two horses and two mules, his wife and three children walking behind. Hargis led his new horse, loaded with provisions Tolbert insisted he bring. Fortunately, the mare was big and strong, the farmer having used it mainly for pulling stumps.

Tolbert had enquired earnestly of every person that might have any inkling. By the time they left Long Island, he was overflowing with enthusiasm and confidence: ‘Ain’t NO WAY we can git lost! The road starts right HERE!’

They headed north toward the blockhouse established by Colonel John Anderson, which they reached the next day. They found good grass for their animals, and a pleasant clearing in which to camp. Hargis, on the basis of his experience with the Surveyor, was chosen chief hunter, and returned after a few hours with a buck deer. The Colonel was not at the blockhouse, having been called back to Fort Chiswell, but ragged militiamen showed them the faint trace of a footpath, which they said was the Kentucky road.

Tolbert was eager, and they set off early the next day, following a rough trail through Moccasin Gap, which they had traversed by sundown. Tolbert was, as always, full of energy and encouragement, especially when they came within sight or hailing distance of others heading West. And, more good luck, the trace was now better marked. The next destination was Glade Spring.

‘Praise God! We’uns are plumb in th’ middle of th’ valley of th’ Powell River. From here on to Martin’s Station is all flat ground. We got to keep a sharp eye for Injuns, but as fer as th’ Trace, why we kin’ jes’ saunter down to Glade Spring. Oh! God has blessed us! We are bound fer Kaintuck, an’ we WILL git thar, praise be to God!’

Axemen had blazed A Trace, but it was still VERY tough going. Heading west from Martin’s Station, the soaring limestone escarpment of Cumberland Mountain began to loom on their right, and they soon spied the famous white cliffs. ‘We’re close! Mighty close!,’ Tolbert cried. Just then his wife sent Hannah running forward to tell him to stop. RIGHT NOW! ‘Maw says her waters has busted, an’ she thinks th’ baby’s comin’.’

Tolbert was not a bit happy about stopping, especially since they were no more than a day from the Gap and Kaintuck. He was torn between his eagerness to reach what he was beginning to think of as the promised land, and his tender feelings toward his wife. The confusion showed on his face.

But he had no choice. The party stopped, unloaded their baggage and made camp. A canvas tent was erected for his wife, and Sturgill’s wife took turns with Tolbert, tending his wife as she moaned in labor. She lay crying with pain, sometimes screaming out, for two full days and nights.

But no baby.

Sturgill’s wife suggested lifting her onto her feet, or moving her into various positions. But she was no midwife, and had no idea of what to do. They tried everything they could think of, even massaging her belly.

Still, no baby.

Tolbert began to be worried, and said so: ‘The other young’uns all come easy.’ All he could do was pray, which he did: ‘God, you brung us this fer, an’ we trust You will keep us safe. Please God, show yer mercy on my wife an’ th’ young’un that’s tryin’ to be born! Amen! SAY AMEN! somebody.’

The baby made its appearance on the third day, a girl. Tolbert’s wife was bleeding heavily, and it never stopped. She made a great effort, but was too weak to hold the baby to her breast. Sturgill’s wife cooked soft food that might keep the baby alive. Tolbert’s wife remained in the tent, moaning softly, a fifth day, a sixth day. By now she had a high fever, her body soaked with sweat, her skin cold and clammy to the touch. She was unable to keep food down. She was deathly pale, and too weak to raise her head.

Tolbert said he would stay by his wife’s side, but asked Sturgill to ride back to Martin’s Station to see if there was ‘a granny woman’ or ‘ANY soul who knows how to help with birthin’.’

Sturgill returned the next morning with an old woman carrying a sack of herbs and tonics, which, judging by effect, seemed to be powerful emetics and purgatives. Tolbert’s wife grew worse. She was delirious, and her weak cries made no sense. The party had now camped for nine days.

All that Tolbert could do was communicate with God. He went off alone into the woods, but his voice carried. ‘God! Lord God almighty! We aim to do Thy will. We trust in you, Lord! You have The Power! You kin save this woman! We just cain’t make it in Kaintuck without her! An’ the youngun’s? How will THEY make it?! Thy Will be done! Thy will be done, Lord! But save her! Almighty God, we beg You to save this woman!’

Tolbert’s wife died late the next evening.

There was little to say, but there was work to do. The next morning, Tolbert, Sturgill and Hargis selected a chestnut nearby and chopped it down, working hard to hew it with mawls and wedges. The labor seemed to comfort Tolbert, who attacked the log as though he were smiting evil itself. The result was crude, more hollow log than coffin, but it was all they had. Then Tolbert called a halt. ‘We all need a rest. We’ve had all we kin take fer now.’

He went alone into the woods.

They buried her the next afternoon. That morning, her two daughters cleared away the bloody rags and washed their mother’s clothing, biting their lips to keep from crying. They dried her clothes in the sun, then put them back on her body. They arranged her hair, and came back from the woods with mountain ivy. It was not yet in bloom, but buds were beginning to show a blush of pink and white. It was the prettiest plant they could find.

Hargis and Sturgill dug the grave. Tolbert looked defeated, slumped in despair, his speech interrupted by heavy gasps. Tolbert asked Sturgill to ‘say some words.’ Hargis and Sturgill lifted the coffin into the grave. Then Sturgill said, ‘I’m not good at talkin’, an’ I’m not much fer church-goin’, an’ I jes’ don’t know what to say. This here was a good woman, an’ her husbin’ is a God-fearin’ man. We are mighty sorry fer her an’ her husbin’ an’ their youngun’s. We here below don’t understand God’s ways. We do th’ best we know how. We ast you, Lord, to look a’ter this woman up in heaven. Let us do God’s will so we kin all meet agin by th’ throne. We will all be united in heaven. AMEN!’

They covered the grave with dirt, and Hargis erected the cross he had made, ‘Esther Tolbert, 1743-1779.’ They stood awkwardly around the grave, not knowing when, or if, to move away. Hargis mumbled a few words, trying to comfort Tolbert, who looked grim, haggard -- and twenty years older.

Tolbert stared blankly at the soil covering the coffin, tears rolling down his face. He caressed his Bible tenderly, shifting it from hand to hand. Then he touched it to his face. ‘I never tole this to nobody, an’ I’m ‘shamed to admit it now. Fact is, I cain’t read. Cain’t read a lick. This here book is th’ word o’ God, an’ I cain’t read hit! Mebbe that’s why God is mad at us! Do you think that’s why He took Esther? We need to learn our letters, learn us how to read th’ word o’ God!’

Tolbert turned to his two daughters. ‘Mayme, you an’ Hannah is gonna hafta be th’ Mama now. Maw is gone an’ we ain’t got nobody else. But we WILL make it in Kaintuck! We don’t KNOW God’s plan! But He WANTS us to make that land grow, make it multiply, build ourse’fs a cabin, make a crop. Maw didn’t make it to Kaintuck -- God’s will be done! AMEN! -- but WE WILL!’

Sturgill’s wife cooked meal, strained it through a cloth, and added a little meat drippings. She had no bottle or nipple, but dipped a corner of a linen cloth into the mixture, and used her finger to push it into the baby’s mouth. By this time, the baby, which Tolbert named Esther in memory of his wife, was too weak to cry. Sturgill’s wife said the baby had ‘colick an’ fever.’

The next day they began the hard climb up to the Gap. It began to rain halfway, and soon a spring storm had soaked them to the skin. Rivulets of muddy water washed back down the mountain. The trace wound around boulders, or edged dangerously toward precipitous cliffs. Some sections of the trace were so steep they had to get behind the animals and push. The caravan rested a bit at the cave, and watered the horses and mules.

The descent would have been dangerous at any time, but rain had turned The trace into a mud hole, every step uncertain and treacherous. Animals and people slipped, stumbled, and fell. People hung on by grabbing saplings. Two horses lost their footing, went down, and could not get back up. They were unpacked completely, lifted back onto their feet, then reloaded.

When they finally reached the flat ground at Yellow Creek, they found good pasture for the animals, but no dry ground anywhere on which to camp. Tolbert and Sturgill conferred, agreeing all had been through so much, they needed some rest. Tolbert got down on one knee. ‘Almighty God has blessed us by allowing us to git this fur. We are in Kaintuck, Praise be to God! Amen.’

They had planned to set out early the next day, but Sturgill’s wife said ‘This here young’un’s got colick real bad. It cain’t take much more.’ They waited another day while she did everything she could to get food down the infant. By the next morning the baby was too weak to suck at all.

The baby died a few hours after nightfall. This death was different. They did not bother with a coffin, but after dawn wrapped the baby in linen and buried it immediately. Hargis fashioned a tiny cross. Tolbert said a brief prayer, his voice doleful, soft, strangled. ‘I am Resigned. I am resigned to th’ will o’ almighty God.’ Sturgill and Hargis wondered if he would ‘bear up.’

Early next morning, after he had prayed by himself, Tolbert packed his animals and urged them to set out. He had met another would-be settler camped nearby whose horse had fallen over a steep cliff in the gap. ‘Broke both forelegs. Warn’t nothin’ to do but shoot it.’ The settler looked as though he had lost his best friend, which he had. ‘Had that horse more’n ten year -- A GOOD horse!’ He had improvised a lean-to. ‘I’m jist a-sittin’ here a-waitin’ fer my son to come back from Martin’s Station with a horse, mule, ox, jackass or any fool beast that kin carry our goods.’ He told Tolbert, ‘I hear they is good grass at Wasioto. You kin make it in a day if ye start early. Ye go over Log Mountain.’ They reached Wasioto as night was falling, and made a rough camp on muddy ground near a creek that ran into the river. Sturgill said it was the Cumberland River.

The loss of his wife and infant daughter had made a great change in Tolbert. His movements were slow, his speech quavery and deliberate, his face etched with despair. He seemed to be laboring under a great weight, his back stooped, as though it was he, and not his animals, that bore his heavy gear. ‘It’s hard. Hit is mighty hard. We will get there, Lord, with yore help. But it is HARD! An’ we ast You to he’p us, he’p us see it through.’

Sturgill and Hargis said they were worried about Tolbert, but agreed that the journey might ‘ease his spirits.’ Sturgill said Tolbert had asked him to ‘take over.’ Sturgill said, ‘Right now, I think he’s makin’ it on spit an’ grit.’

Hargis hesitated, then at last spoke what had long been on his mind. ‘I know he wants to do right, an’ I know he’s a good, God-fearin’ man. I jes’ wish he wouldn’t make all o’ us git down an’ pray WITH him! I know he’d call me a sinner headin’ straight fer Hell, an’ mebbe that’s right. But fact is, an’ to call it out plain, I don’t know if I kin TAKE much more prayin’!’

Sturgill said, ‘Well, I’m ‘bout halfway to your side. He’s been through a lot. But that man has got more religion -- than I can rightly ABIDE!’

The next morning, they waded the creek, swollen and muddy with the recent rain, and within a quarter mile had entered the water gap, a dramatic gorge that the river had sliced through Pine Mountain, an imposing ridge just as long, just as high, and just as rocky, as Cumberland Mountain. They followed the trace, the river on their right hand. Their spirits were lifted when they passed three tiny cabins perched beside the riverbank. Two were unoccupied. But an old woman was sitting in front of the last one, and greeted them.

‘Welcome to Kaintuck! This here is th’ Narrers. Jes’ a mile! JES’ ONE MORE MILE! to th’ ford. But look out fer them rocks on top o’ th’ mountain!’

The Narrows was a perfect name, as the gap WAS exceedingly narrow, perhaps no more than a few hundred feet wide in places. Huge sandstone boulders loomed high above, some situated so precariously it was not unreasonable to imagine they might fall at any moment.

‘Look out fer them rocks! They is TREMENJOUS big. They might likely fall down an’ crush youun’s to DEATH!’ She laughed loudly . . . she even slapped her thigh . . . as though this was absolutely the FUNNIEST story anyone had EVER told. ‘Now you look out fer them rocks, you hear?’

As they exited the water gap, the trace curved round a bend where a creek entered the river. They now saw how river and creek functioned -- river draining the south slope of Pine Mountain, the creek draining the north slope. At the bend of the river was a broad floodplain, dotted with clearings and tents. Nine groups of settlers, some forty people in all, were camped beside the ford, waiting for the water level to subside. The river, swollen by the recent rain, was much too high for people or animals to wade.

‘Hit’s goin’ down . . . goin’ down purty fast. Might be ford-able tomorrer, or day a’ter tomorrer. Fer sartin’, th’ day a’ter that.’ They found a clearing and pitched camp. There was pasture, scant but perhaps enough, for their animals. Sturgill noted that some settlers had brought cattle and hogs, even chickens in baskets, and realized that he and Tolbert had made a mistake in leaving their livestock behind. Mayme and Hannah helped Sturgill’s wife make hoecake, and Hargis cleaned his rifle so he’d be ready to hunt at dawn. Settlers told him, ‘They’s plenty o’ game, but ye got to git away from th’ river. Go up th’ mountain, back up th’ holler.’ He heard a fiddle and clapping, and saw children dancing. Something to do.

The next day, Hargis returned toward sundown with two turkeys, and their group feasted. He made the circuit of the other campfires, picking up information. One man ventured, ‘This ain’t th’ best land in Kaintuck. Valleys an’ hollers is all narrer, but th’ creek bottoms is rich. If yer fixin’ to jes’ farm fer yourse’f, livin’ mainly off game, this might be as good a place as th’ next. I hear nobobody’s entered th’ land up Marrowbone Creek yonder.’

Hargis thought this important information, and was formulating more questions. But just then Mayme tugged at his sleeve and whispered in his ear. Hargis looked startled, and the two of them went off alone into the woods.

The next morning, Mayme was whispering again, this time to Sturgill’s wife. She sat still, looking straight ahead, her face stony. She scarcely moved for ten minutes -- just stirring the pot. Then she whispered to her husband.

After the noon dinner, Sturgill said, ‘Looks like th’ tide is past an’ th’ river’s droppin’ fast. Folks say we kin git ‘cross th’ ford tomorrer.’ Then he pulled Tolbert aside. The two men went off together. When they returned, their expressions were somber.

Tolbert assembled the group, and spoke slowly, gravely. ‘Sturgill says Mayme tole his wife she’s missed her monthly flux -- an’ is sick ever’ mornin’. She says hit is sartin’ -- Mayme is with child.’

Tolbert’s skin was the color of gray flint, and his jaw was locked in grim determination. ‘God hates sin! But God FORGIVES Th’ sinner! Amen! Praise be to God almighty!’ He paused, breathing hard.

‘Mayme! Git out here! Hargis, YOU boy! Git out here! You sneak off -- fornicatin’ -- makin’ a baby? What do ye plan to DO, boy? How ye ‘spect to git right with God? How kin ye wash away yer sin?

‘An’ YOU, Mayme, what would yer Maw say?’ Tolbert shed no tears and made no threats. But his face made clear he had no idea at all what to do next.

Sturgill broke the tension. ‘Frazer, this ain’t what none of us woulda’ wanted. Maybe hit is a sin. But Mayme is a hard worker, an’ she is old enough. Hargis kin hunt bettern’ you an’ me put together. Why not just let ‘em marry right here an’ now? Ain’t that fer th’ best?’

Tolbert had said less and less since his wife died. He now seemed at a total loss, what to say, what to do. He looked as though he might faint. He fell on both knees, bowed his head, and prayed. ‘Lord, You have seen us through to Kaintuck, an’ we’re boun’ now to cross over to th’ good land in new Zion. We thank Ye fer yore blessing. If hit be yore will, bless this woman an’ her baby that’s comin’, an’ her husbin’. We ast it in Jesus’ name. AMEN!’

He rose painfully to his feet. He looked and moved like an old, old man.

‘Sturgill says there ain’t no Preacher here. But GOD is a preacher, th’ best preacher. He kin bless you, if ye aim to git right with Him. Sturgill, ye’ll jist have to do somethin’! I cain’t go on!’

Tolbert stood unsteadily, bewildered. He moved away and pretended to spy something high up on the mountainside, anything to avert his gaze.

Sturgill’s wife went into the tent and brought out Tolbert’s Bible and handed it to her husband. The two of them held the book, its pages open. She and her husband placed Mayme’s hand and Hargis’ hand atop the book. Sturgill’s eyes darted all around. He was earnestly seeking HELP. But he was alone. He would have to say SOMEthing -- but his mind was a total BLANK.

‘Mayme, you an’ Hargis have made a baby. D’ye think maybe that might be God’s way o’ makin’ up fer yer Maw’s death? An’ fer th’ little baby that died? If ye two say you’uns want to be married, an’ ye say it right now, then we’un’s will agree, an’ we’uns will say, that you IS married from now on.’

Tolbert’s four boys laughed and made faces, and Hannah blushed beet red. Mayme started giggling and seemed unable to stop. Hargis mumbled ‘Yes.’

Tolbert watched from a distance, then came back and addressed Sturgill. ‘I’m a-gon’a jine up with this bunch here at th’ ford. We’re headin’ to Boone’s Fort. We has come a good ways, an’ we are in Kaintuck. We are IN GOD’S HANDS. He has a plan. He will decide.’ He went into the woods alone.

By dawn the next day the river had fallen and the rocky bottom could be seen clearly. All agreed the water was now so low the river could be safely waded even by children, and groups started crossing. Tolbert and his four boys stood next to Hargis. Mayme and Hannah held hands and mumbled farewells. Mayme kissed her father on the cheek. Tolbert intended to pray, but found himself speechless. His voice failed, no sound at all. His lips could not form words. Hargis and Mayme heard -- maybe, perhaps -- ‘God Bless’ and ‘Luck.’

Settlers packed quickly. By noon almost all had waded across. The trace turned north to Flat Lick, and the horses were soon out of sight.

Ten minutes later Tolbert’s oldest boy came running back. He was panting hard, completely out of breath.

He held up three fingers:

‘NUMBER ONE: Paw sez `Pray to God and He will bless you’.’
‘NUMBER TWO: Paw sez `Keep th’ rifle’.’
‘NUMBER THREE: ‘He sez, `Keep th’ axe’.’

Sturgill came up to Hargis, with a stranger by his side. ‘This here is John Bledsoe. He sez he’s heered too much bad about Fort Boone to go thar.’

Bledsoe added, ‘An’ I jes’ don’t have no mind to trek with Tolbert. Feller’s got jes’ TOO DAMN MUCH GOD FER ME! I’ll git to heaven my own way. Or, mebbe, I jist won’t GO!’ This prompted Bledsoe to emit a long stream of brown tobacco juice.

‘I rode up Marrowbone Creek yonder.’ He gestured toward a narrow valley shrouded in thick morning mist. ‘Game all over. Good water. Poplar, hickory, oak, chestnut, plenty o’ mast. Bottom land in th’ hollers. I got two growed sons. I think mebbe ye could live good up thar. No mucky-mucks up thar to bother ye. I’ll head up that a-ways with you’uns -- if ye want.’

The three groups chose narrow side valleys five miles apart. That was as much proximity as they could tolerate, even neighbors that might help them. Kaintuck meant freedom. That was why they left the group at the ford. That was why they chose to settle many miles AWAY from The Trace, as far back as possible, at the extreme head of the most remote hollers.

The first year was the hardest, as they had little desire to work together. But necessity forced them. By pooling tools and muscles, each had completed by June a tiny rough cabin. The sight of blue smoke curling up from each other’s chimneys was as close as they wanted. Each then cleared his particular patch, felling every tree for acres around, and burning all the stumps. After rocks were cleared, the women and children planted corn. The men were mostly gone, off in the woods, hunting game for food, and for hides and pelts to trade for seeds, black powder and lead, cloth and thread, copper for a still.

With Sturgill’s Old Woman beside her, Mayme’s baby was born in December 1779. Hargis named him Robert. He had Mayme’s red hair, blue eyes, and pale white complexion. Another good omen: Bledsoe’s stallion and Hargis’ mare produced a strong foal, which, in the spring of 1780, Hargis traded for a heifer and some pigs. People were talking – there was hope that the trace might be improved so wagons could carry goods to and from Kaintuck.

In September 1780, his wife and children busy shucking corn, Sturgill decided this might be a good time to ride back to Watauga for his livestock.

As Sturgill stopped at inns and trading posts along the way, rumor became fact: ‘What has th’ King ever’ done for th’ poor man, ‘cept hang ‘im?! Now th’ British is armin’ Injuns, urgin’ ‘em to scalp ever’ settler, a pound fer ev’ry white scalp. Us mountain men, Watauga, Kaintuck, eve’whar, cain’t jes’ SIT if we aim to stay FREE! Hit’s WAR in Carolina! Tories is fightin’ fer th’ King, patriots is fightin’ fer freedom. Tarleton’s Legion an’ Major Ferguson is killin’ ALL th’ patriots! Wipin’ ‘em out! We’re doomed TOO if’n we don’ he’p ‘em!’

Sturgill joined nine hundred ‘Over Mountain Men’ at Sycamore Shoals, with more joining as the column rode south. Sturgill had known Isaac Shelby, leader of the Watauga militia, and chose to ride with him. Shelby led untamed backwoodsmen with no military discipline whatever, mainly ‘out fer revenge.’ George Rogers Clark’s victory at Vincennes in 1779 prevented the British from driving Americans from the northwestern frontier. And The Battle of King’s Mountain, followed by the brutal mopping-up, turned the tide in the South.

Sturgill was killed October 7, 1780, at King’s Mountain. It was weeks before word reached Marrowbone Creek. In December, Colonel Shelby arrived at The Ford to claim, by authority of Virginia Military Warrant, a four hundred acre section for himself. Sturgill’s widow was awarded, by Warrant, two hundred acres. Sturgill’s son Ambrose, sixteen, took over the hunting -- and his Mother and the younger children hoed the corn patch.

The cabin occupied by Hargis, Mayme and their baby in the winter of 1780-81 was identical to all mountain cabins built in great haste, its stick chimney framed of green saplings, its flue plastered inside with thick mud. Hargis gathered stones and ‘determined’ he would build a better chimney ‘come spring.’ But on a freezing night in February 1781, the chimney caught fire. The blaze spread to the roof, and fire had engulfed the cabin before Hargis and Mayme were roused from sleep. Hargis battled the flames while Mayme gathered up their baby, now a toddler -- but in doing so, her clothing caught fire -- and she was horribly burned.

Mayme died in early March 1781 of ‘fever.’

Sturgill’s Widow cared for Hargis’ son, Robert, now eighteen months old. Hargis did not rebuild the cabin.

Spring breathed life into the stark skeletons of trees, and the woods were infused with a rain-fresh shimmering light. Redbud and dogwood began to show color. Ferns unfurled from tight fiddleheads into trembling green feathers.

Hargis found that hunting did not relieve his sorrow, but he welcomed the isolation. He needed TIME. In May, he began to hunt in an area he had never seen before. As he followed the creek up the mountain, the stream became increasingly narrow, until near the crest, there was no water at all. He urged his horse on. A quarter-mile further, and he began to descend, following another stream, this one flowing to the north. Other branches joined, and after a few miles he was in the bed of a wide creek, his horse’s hooves cooled by a strong flow of clear water, the creek teeming with fish and frogs. Yellow-bellied sapsuckers drilled into the trees, and in the warm May sun pale green leaves emerged from winter buds.

He came to a clearing, every tree felled or burned, and saw smoke from a weathered cabin, a sure sign someone must be near. He greeted the two women sitting in front, the yard bare of grass, swept clean with twig brooms.

‘How do folks call this-here part o’ th’ country?’

Lilah Begley and her daughter Maggie, both smoking stained cob pipes, had the mountaineer’s innate wariness – but hospitality finally won out.

‘Howdy-do? How’s weather up yore way? Kin we give ye some water?’ Hargis accepted, and drank from their long-stemmed gourd.

‘This here is Red Bird. Some say Red Bird Creek, some say Red Bird River. I don’t rightly know where it comes out. My Old Man’s out huntin’, always out huntin’, that’s what he does,’ said Lilah. ‘My boy Mason’s with him. They might be back by dark. We never know fer sure. You’re welcome to set.’

After filling his pipe and sharing some berries picked along the way, Hargis told his story -- all of it -- Ulster, to Plantation, to Wilderness Road. But when he came to the death of his wife Mayme, he was unable to stifle his tears. Lilah and her daughter both reached out, touching his sleeve.

Lilah said, ‘We have it mighty HARD back here! MIGHTY hard! But we-un’s is TOUGH. We kin make it!’ She accented this with puffs on her pipe. ‘You ‘pears to be a fine strong young man. You kin make it. SARTIN!’ Maggie said, ‘I shore am sorry to hear ‘bout yore wife . . . An’ ‘bout yore baby that’s got no maw . . .’

Simon Begley and his son Mason returned at sundown. After comment on the ‘unusual weather,’ the three men got down to the all-important subject -- hunting. ‘Bear an’ elk sure is mighty scase nowadays. An’ jes’ a few gobblers. Folks hereabouts is livin’ mostly off deer an’ squirrel-meat. That, an’ rabbit.’

That point settled, it was time to get out black Betty. By the time all three had enjoyed several long pulls on the jug and had filled their pipes, the sun had gone behind the hill. Lilah brought out a kettle of squirrel-meat that had been stewing since dawn, and they ate by the dim light of the hearth. Hargis accepted their offer to stay, ‘If’n I kin jes’ make a pallet on th’ floor.’

Two months later Hargis announced that Maggie had agreed to be his Old Woman. This was the signal for a two-day celebration, during which Simon got so drunk he fell and broke his nose. But the accident didn’t slow him down, and he continued to fire his rifle into the air all the next day. Lilah said the new configuration of his nose improved his appearance considerably.

Their son James was born in 1783 -- straight black hair and swarthy skin -- not as dark as Maggie’s -- nor half as dark as Lilah’s.

Hargis selected a holler with a clear spring that flowed steadily from beneath a ledge. Simon Begley and his son Mason, and John Bledsoe and his two sons, came to help with a workings. They rode over the watershed and camped for a week on Red Bird River. They felled huge tulip poplars and oaks and dragged them to the clearing by Hargis’ mare. The logs were set on stone piers, ends hewed to a tight half-dovetail notch with axes, wedges, froe, auger and maul. The single-pen cabin had one door leading to the front of the clearing, two leather-hinged windows on each side. Gaps between the logs were tightly chinked with wooden wedges, then daubed wind-tight with clay. Chestnut logs were shaved flat for puncheon floors, and pegs in the walls held clothing. The cabin was roofed with split oak shingles set on skinned poles. There was enough height for a sleeping loft above the room, tiny windows in each gable end. Bedsteads laced with sinew ropes and corn shucks or feather beds would do just fine for children certain to appear. The good-drawing stone chimney was used summer and winter for cooking and heating, firewood consumed in vast quantities. The stones were set in burnt limestone and sand. The men agreed it was solid.

When the cabin was finished, Hargis and Maggie walked over the crest, then down Marrowbone Creek to the clearing of widow Sturgill, returning with Robert, who had Mayme’s Scots-Irish coloration, reddish hair, blue eyes, pale complexion -- in striking contrast to James, who had Maggie’s black hair, black eyes, and a vaguely copper coloration. Hargis and Maggie had six more children, only two of which survived to adulthood. The little stream that ran down their holler was called ‘Maggie’s Branch’ – and for a reason. The river was named for Chief Red Bird. Maggie was part Cherokee. Could she have been Red Bird’s daughter? Who knew? ‘Maggie’s Branch’ it was. A generation later, Hargis joined with others to make a cemetery and build one-room log schoolhouse.

Every year Hargis felled more trees, burnt stumps, removed rocks -- clearing, grubbing, hoeing. He used a bull-tongue plow pulled by his mare, aging but still strong. His main crop was corn. Every so often he and Maggie filled jute poke sacks with shelled corn, loading their animals, more numerous since Hargis’ brood mare had produced two more colts, for the trip to the mill. Hargis split chestnut logs for rail fencing and also made chairs and tables. They raised hay and fodder for their horses, and for a cow and heifer. They had pear, plum and cherry trees, and grew cabbage, potatoes, turnips, onions, a little tobacco. Pawpaws, blackberries, and huckleberries were abundant, as was sassafras for tea. Sheep dotted the pastures, and Maggie used walnut hulls and sumac to dye the wool she spun, some mixed with flax into linsey-woolsey. They obtained honey from bee gums, and sweet syrup from boiling the juice of sorghum cane. Chickens and guinea fowl roosted in the trees, and geese controlled insects in the corn patch, and provided down for bed ticks and pillows. Shoat pigs ran wild in the woods, growing fat on chestnut and oak mast. Late fall and winter was hog-killing time, the meat salted and preserved, the fat rendered into lard or used for soap. They made most everything they needed, a labor that kept them all, even the children, working every hour of daylight, so busy they had no time to notice their isolation. What little they could not make -- shoes, some cloth and thread and needles, salt and coffee, kettles, iron for horseshoes and tools, copper for a whisky coil -- were obtained by trapping and trading game pelts, or trading herbs like ginseng, yellow-root, witch hazel, galax, golden-seal, and bloodroot. They spent much of their day out of doors, grubbing corn, or hunting. Indoors, the cabin hearth was the center of their lives. Drying in the chimney smoke were gourd, dried limber twig and berry red apples, strings of shucky beans grown between corn rows, strips of Cushaw squash, pumpkin, and squirrel and venison.

For hunting, Hargis used the rifle Frazer Tolbert had given him, although he increasingly relied on traps, as they required no powder or lead. He was aided by the enthusiastic baying of four mangy hounds, usually asleep in the dirt under the cabin, fed on rabbit or groundhog scraps. His proudest possession, his only worthy possession, was Ward Gilley’s old rifle, its maple stock polished and gleaming. It hung above the hearth atop a six-point antler-rack -- elk now impossible to find -- the rifle turned so the old mark was visible:
WG
1769


THE MILLER: ROBERT BROUGHTON (1779 - 1845)

It took weeks for word to reach Marrowbone Creek. But when Widow Sturgill learned that Colonel Isaac Shelby had, on June 4, 1792, been sworn in as Kentucky’s first Governor, she knew what to do. She sent word to her son Ambrose, 28. He now lived two hollers over, had cleared fifty acres and burned off fifty more, had built a cabin, smokehouse and corncrib, owned a cow and hogs, and was married with three children, a fourth on the way.

‘Ambrose, you know ‘sgood as me that yore daddy rode with Colonel Shelby at King’s Mountain, an’ it was Shelby that give us this land. Kaintucky is now a STATE and he’s the Governor! Ain’t that SOMETHIN’! I cain’t say pre-zackly why, an’ maybe it’s jes’ a fool thang, but I’d shorely like ye to ride over t’ Danville t’ see ‘im. D’ye think it might take two days over, two days back? I hear tell he’s got a fine big house. Jes’ say we are mighty grateful he ‘membered yore Paw, an’ by givin’ us this land he he’ped us go on a’ter yer Paw was kilt.’

‘Kin ye do that?’ Ambrose’s face made clear he wasn’t happy about this strange mission, but finally nodded agreement.

‘An don’t fergit to tell him,’ his Mother added, ‘How might PLEASED all o’ us in Marrowbone Creek is, that he is our Governor!’

When Ambrose returned, he reported ‘A Big Mob’ at Shelby’s estate, Traveler’s Rest. By dint of strong elbows, he managed to squeeze inside, shake the Governor’s hand, and deliver his Mother’s message.

‘Colonel Shelby is a powerful STOUT man, so big you cain’t hardly get close to him! They was people on all sides, in front o’ him, in back o’ him, hollerin’, all wantin’ jobs, wantin’ this, wantin’ that. An’ ever’ one of ‘em said they was at King’s Mountain with Th’ Colonel. I cain’t deposit how he could have airy idea who I might be. But when I said `I’m th’ son o’ Virgil Sturgill’, ever’body just bust a gut LAUGHIN’! But Th’ Colonel shut ‘em up quick! He said “Sturgill was my fren’, an’ `He was A Patriot who gave his life for this new country. Nobody durst laugh at his boy!” An’ then I thanked him, like you said to do, an’ left.’

In 1797 the Kentucky Legislature appropriated five hundred pounds for repair of the Wilderness Road. To raise money for upkeep, they authorized a tollgate at The Narrows. Ambrose was at a camp meeting near Flat Lick and had just been saved, when he heard the big news: the Kentucky Road would be passable by wagons! All the way from Crab Orchard to the Gap! The preacher, anxious to help A New Soul For Christ, wrote a letter for him, asking Shelby if Ambrose could be considered for the post of Tollgate Keeper. The camp meeting was also where Ambrose acquired a Bible in exchange for two pigs. The preacher spent four days showing him how, slowly, laboriously, to sound out The Word.

A few weeks later Ambrose received news that he had been awarded the job, a position that gave him the best possible vantage point to witness one of the most amazing migrations in American history. Perhaps two hundred thousand settlers had ALREADY followed The Kentucky Road. But the flow was not abating. In fact, numbers seemed to increase. Most days he welcomed, and collected from, a score or more. Most were families lured by stories of ‘The New Eden.’ They knew that years of hard work lay ahead. They knew they were dependent on game until they had cleared and planted and harvested. But almost all were young, animated by a fierce desire to better their lot. The forest would provide timber for cabin, corncrib, smokehouse, stable, and fencing. The forest would become pasture and cropland. The cycle of poverty their fathers had endured would be ended. Land would set them free. Land would allow them to determine their own destiny. They would be independent -- free -- beholden to no one.

Ambrose quickly realized that his job entailed some big problems. The State was to receive all fees collected, according to the following schedule:

ACT FOR A ROAD TO THE GAP
‘The keeper of the turnpike shall be entitled to receive the following toll: each person, except post riders, expresses and women and children under the age of ten years, nine-pence; every horse, mare or mule, nine-pence; every carriage with two wheels, three shillings; every carriage with four wheels, six shillings; every head of meat cattle going east-ward, three pence. Each head of hogs 1/2 cent; each head of sheep 1/5 cent; each vehicle drawn by one horse or mule, 20 cents; by two horses or mules, 25 cents; each wagon drawn by three horses, mules, or oxen, 30 cents; each stage coach with seats inside for six passengers, 35 cents.’

Many travelers could not understand why they should pay ANYTHING at all! Some flatly REFUSED, resulting in long heated discussions, and much abuse hurled at Ambrose. Many of those WILLING to pay, had no money of any kind. So he began to improvise, accepting payment-in-kind rather than coin, things like fat hens, bushels of apples, baskets of vegetables, livestock, whatever travelers thought they could do without. (A few were drovers herding cattle, hogs, and sometimes as many as five hundred turkeys in a flock, driven from Kentucky to Virginia for sale to the great tobacco and cotton plantations.) He began to keep a ledger, soliciting help from those able to write. Ambrose paid the State in cash, but gave himself a little bonus on every in-kind transaction. Each bonus was tiny, but over time he acquired more hens, hogs, cattle and horses than anyone in Marrowbone Creek. He also began to acquire a bad reputation. That did not worry him one bit. He was saved. He was now a Christian man. God would tell him what to do. Under God’s protection, he could do no wrong.

Ambrose had been at The Toll Gate day-in day-out for nine years, except for three furloughs a year for planting, harvesting, and hog butchering. By this time he had accumulated a fair quantity of livestock, and his expanding acreage of grazing land and cropland was neatly enclosed with split-chestnut fencing. His neighbors considered him wealthy. He began to ponder seriously how he might use his good fortune.

At his Mother’s urging, he sent a letter to Shelby asking if The Colonel might want to sell the four hundred acres of bottom land he had acquired in the winter of 1780-81. Shelby had never occupied the land, nor had he farmed it. Would he perhaps like to sell? Shelby replied, but set a VERY steep price, five dollars per acre, but ‘Because you are Sturgis’ Boy, I trust you. Pay me over five years, one-fifth per year.’ Ambrose did not have even a fraction of this much cash, nor any idea how he might get it, though he thought his livestock might be worth half that much. He wrote back accepting the terms.

By now, nineteen cabins were perched along the bank between The Cumberland River and The Wilderness Road, strung out a mile, from the Tollgate at The Narrows all the way to The Ford. The cabins were occupied by people profiting one way or another off travelers: a forge and blacksmith, a stable selling oats and meal, a cabin selling smoked hog-meat and berries in season, and several cabins where one could buy jugs of whiskey, or a loose woman.

Ambrose thought he had seen it all. But on a raw blustery February morning in 1806, he was jolted awake by the strangest caravan that had ever passed his Gate. In the lead was a two-horse phaeton, driven by a black boy dressed in good clothing. Seated beside him was a pale-complected white man of perhaps forty, dressed in black suit-and-vest and a white shirt with gold collar-button, no necktie. Seated behind was a homely matron, dressed also in black, and a girl of uncertain age but certainly younger than twenty. The both wore sunbonnets of good cloth.

Lumbering behind were two ENORMOUS wagons, heavily loaded with plows, hoes, and every other kind of farm implement, and overflowing with wooden crates and trunks. The front wagon was driven by a black man, about thirty, handling the reins of a four-mule team; the second was driven by a somewhat older black man, handling the reins of a four-ox team, large red shorthorn steers, plodding slowly. No settler had EVER passed with this much gear. In addition, the pale-complected man had two adult slaves, one teenage slave, two black women and six black children, walking behind the ox-cart. On top of this, he had two horses, four mules, and four oxen! Ambrose had never before seen such an incredible amount of ROLLING WEALTH.

While he was attempting to calculate the toll (he thought these daily calculations helped him read better), the black-suited man got down from his carriage. He appeared of average size when sitting high up. But when he was on the ground, Ambrose saw he was just over five feet tall, and weighed perhaps a hundred ten pounds wringing wet. He wore a white hat of very fine, tightly woven straw, of a type Ambrose had never seen before. Gold-framed pince-nez glasses were delicately perched on his beak of a nose. A port-wine birthmark ran down the left side of his face, a streak of jagged red lightning.

Ambrose said, ‘We sure is mighty PLEASED to see you here in Kaintuck. You must be a good farmer with such fine animals an’ so much gear.’

‘I am not A Farmer,’ the man said, pausing for effect.

‘I am a planter.’

The planter’s thick Virginia accent, and his manner of accenting words, made him sound like an oral version of a red-letter Bible. He pointed to the black men at the reins of the Wagons: ‘Wash and Jeff are THE FARMERS. The soil over in Floyd County GAVE OUT! Not worth any thing! NOTHING! No planter even made back the SEED! We are looking to spy out some GOOD land over this way.’

The stranger stuck out his hand, ‘I am Carter Jackson. And you ARE?’

‘Ambrose Sturgill. Mighty pleased t’ meet ye. If’n ye kin tell me whar ye-all is a-headin’, I might kin give ye some idea o’ how to git thar, mebbe.’

‘Well, I want GOOD LAND. Everybody in Virginia I talked to said that there is a vast ABUNDANCE of rich, fertile land just about everywhere in Kentucky, all of it FAR better than our worn-out tobacco land in Virginia. I plant burley tobacco for cash, oats for the horses, mules and cattle, corn for the hogs and negras. And fruit trees and vegetables for my wife and daughter.’
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Jackson nodded again toward his slaves. ‘I simply HAVE TO make a good crop! It is my sacred DUTY! The Bible says `God cursed the sons of Ham.’ But I am A CHRISTIAN man, and I have prayed to God. And God answered, “Look after the negras, even though they ARE cursed!” Most people have no idea at all what A HEAVY BURDEN it is to look after negras! You’ve got to feed them, clothe them, give them a cabin, and tell them what to do and when to do it. Even if they are lazy and will NOT work, you are still STUCK with them! It is a heavy, HEAVY burden! But with God’s help, I will go on. I will bear the burden!’

The allusions to God and God’s will prompted Ambrose to reveal that he was saved. While the planter’s slaves fetched buckets of water for the animals, the planter and Ambrose discussed a few points of theology.

‘I’ve got God’s Holy Word right here,’ said Ambrose, pulling out his Bible. ‘An’ I’m doin’ ever’ thang I kin to read hit. But hit’s mighty HARD!’

‘Well, if I had enough time, I might be able to help you. It’s the most important thing in the world, reading the word of God. I read the Bible every single day. I don’t EVER fail, ever! And I pray. Do you pray EVERY DAY?’

‘Oh yes! An’ Th’ word’s a comfort if people cuss at me ‘bout the toll.’

The Planter reached into his black vest and pulled out a heavy gold watch, firmly attached by an equally heavy gold chain. He flipped open the gold lid and squinted through his pince-nez at the dial. ‘Well, I made a promise to God that I would pray at sunrise, at noon, and at sunset. It’s about five minutes to noon, Virginia time. Would you excuse me for moment?’ And with that, the Planter walked a few paces away and bowed his head, mumbling quietly. Then he said an audible ‘Amen!’ and returned.

Ambrose’s brain was racing feverishly. ‘Well, Kaintuck is shorely th’ BESTEST PLACE if yer lookin’ fer real good farm land. ‘Course you want to take yer time, look ever’thing over, make sure hit’s right fer ye.’

Ambrose appraised the Virginia planter, attempting calculations in his head. But his brain was simply unable to count up such a staggering sum. ‘Now, it jes’ so happens I do know ‘bout a might’ fine section o’ bottom land. Soil so rich ye kin eat it with a spoon! Butter! Ye kin grow ANY thang on lan’ like THAT! An’ hit’s jes’ one mile up th’ road. An’ hit’s mighty CHEAP, too! Jes’ ten dollars an acre! Cain’t beat it! Bes’ land! Bes’ price! ANY whar in Kaintuck!’

The Planter said, ‘Well, I have HEARD that the best tobacco land in the FLAT part of the State is already CLAIMED. But no harm in just A LOOK, eh?’

After two weeks of minute inspection of the land Shelby had acquired and sold, and after long palaver, Carter Jackson, Virginia planter and man of property, and Ambrose Sturgill, Kentucky Road Tollgate Keeper, and would-be man of property, shook hands.

Ambrose could not believe it! ALL CASH! He was transformed in a moment from poverty to wealth. He was rich! He realized instantly that this windfall was a seed that could grow into a fortune, and succumbed at once to a severe case of THE VIRGINIA DISEASE. Ambrose resolved then and there to buy more land, more than he could ever possibly plow, buy slaves to farm it for him, rent land to tenants, and buy still MORE! An’ MORE after THAT! ‘Land’s the only thing that lasts. God’s not makin’ any more of it! I might OWN these mountains!’

The Planter and the Tollgate Keeper undertook another transaction in the spring of 1807 when Ambrose’s son, Homer Sturgill, 22, wed the planter’s daughter, Nancy Jackson, 20. The Reverend Zophar Asher, a circuit-riding acolyte of Wesley’s Method, presided. The parson would accept only a tiny fee ‘on condition that the two Families hereby Joined promise to build A Chapel.’ The Reverend, the planter, Ambrose Sturgill, and the two newlyweds, prayed together, and then shook hands. It was a solemn moment.

‘People up Marrowbone Creek,’ thought Robert Broughton, who had moved over the watershed after a quarrel with his brother James, ‘Are plum wore-out.’ Several times a season they had to load wagons with their shelled corn, make the trip to the mill. ‘All of a day to get there, then wait a turn jes’ to get your corn ground’, then try to make it back before dark, possible only during the long days of summer. Most seasons you had to sleep in the mill after sundown. There was good gossip at the mill. ‘But taking everything together, having to trek so far is a plain dad-gum BOTHER, is what it is.’

‘An’ everybody says the miller keeps too much!’

It bothered him, but he saw a solution. Robert Broughton walked all over his holler, sketching in his mind where things might go. His branch had a strong flow in every season, and old-timers said it never went dry. There was a good head, water dropping swiftly down to the creek. He could build the dam upstream here, broad space behind for a large millpond, perhaps even with fish. The headgate and race-channel could run along here, the tailrace could flow back to the branch this way. He would control the flume by boards and a waterbox. If he sited the mill here, water from the flume would be high enough to turn an efficient and powerful overshot wheel. At the head of the holler was the building material, enormous white oaks, pale gray bark mottled with blue-green lichen, branches draped with mistletoe, the litter thick with acorns, mushrooms, fungi, puffballs, galls and oak apples, saw flies buzzing softly as they circled the foxglove.

He had the water. He had the oak.

But he needed cash -- enough, as a minimum, for ironwork and millstones. There was ONE possibility. Carter Jackson’s wagons permitted him to transport his hogsheads of tobacco to market in Virginia. He also rented his wagons, teams, and slaves, which brought in more cash. The planter had also installed a rope ferry across the Ford, since he owned the southern bank anyway. The ferry was not much of a moneymaker, but the income was steady. All this enabled him to build the Jackson-Sturgill Chapel at The Narrows, buy more draft animals and wagons and harness, and furnish his home with luxury items so rare as to seem from another world.

The Planter received him warmly in his two-story house, the largest structure between Cumberland Gap and Flat Lick. It was sited atop the ancient Indian burial mound, thus well above the spring floods, silty tides that enriched his crops with humus from both the northern and southern slopes of Pine Mountain. The house on the mound was built of poplar logs felled on land that Governor Shelby had claimed by Warrant. All the trees on this once thickly timbered acreage had been felled, and it was now entirely cropland and pasture. The exterior logs had been hewed and whitewashed in a most workmanlike manner by his slaves, the cozy interior sheathed with painted clapboard. It was a virtual Virginia plantation in a place known only a few decades before as Wilderness.

The Planter listened intently. ‘I think you are correct about the need for a grist mill. I myself have been TROUBLED by long trips simply to get my oats and corn ground. And having seen my negras SWEAT in a whipsaw pit making clapboards for this house, I think there might be GOOD PROFIT in a sawmill, too. But building a mill is a very serious enterprise. Serious! VERY serious! Takes considerable knowledge, time, energy, MONEY. And EXPERIENCE! Most of all, you need experience! You have to KNOW what you are ABOUT! I have seen mills built by ignorant people. For a while, through TRIAL-AND-ERROR, they sometimes work. For a while.’

‘But more often, they BREAK DOWN!’ His face made exceedingly clear his firm conviction that trial-and-error was STUPID, and that EXPERIENCE had his unqualified approbation.

‘Everybody tells me you are strong, intelligent, ambitious. Talking with you here today, I agree most HEARTILY with that opinion. You seem a fine capable fellow! Outstanding reputation! BUT WITHOUT EXPERIENCE, going it alone, there is NO HOPE OF SUCCESS! Building a mill requires a good knowledge of mathematics. And you can’t BEGIN to plan until you have good burrstones. Everything has to be thought-out in advance, calculated, so it FITS. When everything fits together, a mill works like a well-regulated WATCH!’

This word was, of course, his cue to extract his massive gold timepiece, open its thick lid, and peer through his curious spectacles at the dial.

He was entirely aware that the action emphasized his point.

‘When I was planting tobacco back in Virginia, we were FORTUNATE to have a first-class millwright there in Floyd County, Buford Logan. Logan has built at least A DOZEN mills all over southwest Virginia.’

He gazed distantly at the mountains from his window, a proper window with GLASS, the only glass ‘winders’ within ten miles of The Gap.

‘I will go this far with you: I will DISPATCH my negra, Wash, to Virginia with a wagonload of tobacco. I will also give him A LETTER to post. If Logan can be FOUND, I will INVITE him to come through The Gap, and be my GUEST here at The Ford. This gentleman is An Expert. After he has EXAMINED what you have in mind, and after we have reasoned together, perhaps we can AGREE?’

Buford Logan, millwright, arrived at The Ford in October 1822, and stayed three weeks. With Carter Jackson and Robert Broughton beside him, he rode up and down Marrowbone Creek once a day for five days running. He paced out the length and breadth of various sites. At some, he drew maps with gradient lines. He examined many branches and creeks, and at some he used a folding yard-stick, which when fully extended reached twelve feet, measuring the fall of the water, though he was quick to warn that this was a preliminary estimate. He brought a few surveying instruments that helped suggest where a millpond could be sited, and the quantity of water it could contain. He talked at length with Bill Crabtree, the smith at the forge in The Narrows, and examined his work. He had to be sure Crabtree had the skill to fabricate bearings and gear teeth.

Eight days elapsed before they rode up Marrowbone Creek again. But the millwright had not been idle. He was, rather, laboring mentally in the planter’s office, a small room to the side of his elaborate dining room. Buford Logan was drawing and calculating. Broughton noticed that he seemed to base his arithmetic on tables of numbers at the back of a well-thumbed book. When the planter wasn’t around, Broughton saw its title, The Young Mill-Wright & Miller’s Guide, by Oliver Evans.

Toward the end of the second week, the three rode several times up and down Marrowbone Creek, the millwright making more precise measurements. At Broughton’s Branch, the very site Robert himself thought might be most likely, the millwright wrote down the most numbers.

Broughton could hardly contain himself. He owned that entire holler!

At the end of the third week, Broughton, the millwright, and the planter sat down to, as the planter put it, ‘reason together.’

The millwright did most of the talking. ‘People will tell you that good millstones must be imported from France. Not so! They are making good-cutting burrstones at a quarry on Brush Mountain. I’ve used many of them. Uncle Zack Price owns the rock pits, a section patented a long time ago by Colonel Preston, about halfway between Wolf Hills and Great Lick.’

‘I think I KNOW the place,’ said the Planter. ‘About three days’ ride.’

‘They have been working the pits there for twenty years, and have the rock pretty well figured out now. It is extremely hard sandstone, tiny glass pebbles embedded within it. It is the glass edge of the pebbles that does the cutting. They read each stone, then blast with black powder to crack them on the grain. They dress the stones with wedges, cutting axes, and block hammers, chisels, pitching tools.’

‘Of course those tools must be made from good English steel, not pig iron. They temper their tools by color – not cherry red, but the color of gray straw – and they know when and how to quench. They sharpen every day. The hardest part is holding the bull set at just the right angle so it cuts, doesn’t skid off, and doesn’t take off too much stone. They know how to face the runner and bed stone, make them both flat and level. They know where to put the furrows, how many, and what kind of edge. Oh, it is an extremely specialized trade, quite skilled, and not just anybody can do it. Putting in the eye is the delicate part, round eye for the runner stone, square eye for the bed stone. Stone that hard is brittle, and some times it just falls apart. And you need box-holes in back of the stone, so you can add lead. They put it on a spud, turn it, melt lead, and add weight till it turns nice and level. They make different kinds of stones for shelling oats, hulling buckwheat, grinding middlings, hemp, tanbark, apple pomace. You can even grind snuff – if you have the right stone. But I assume you plan mainly to grind corn and oats. Eh?’

The Planter was fascinated, but from his point of view they had made no progress at all. ‘Now Mr. Broughton, the millwright here says your holler and branch MIGHT DO nicely. Your Branch has a strong FLOW and a high HEAD. But there is the COST of millstones, and the COST of transporting them. We will need a smith and good IRONWORK here at The Ford. Then there is the COST of a sash saw from a forge in Virginia. And we must COMPENSATE our expert millwright.’ The Planter nodded in a courtly Virginia Gentleman way toward Buford Logan. ‘This planning trip now, then he must return and supervise construction. We might OWE HIM three months’ WAGE! We also have to CALCULATE how much timber, of what kind, and how it is to be hewed. We have to CALCULATE how to build the millpond dam and raceways, and arrange everything so it all FITS TOGETHER like a well-regulated watch! It has to work LIKE A WATCH!’

The Planter extracted his watch, and tapped meaningfully on the dial.

Robert Broughton said nothing, because he was not sure what to say. The millwright took the occasion to summarize his conclusions:

‘You begin by calculating the mechanics of motion, levers, belts, pulleys, flywheels, friction, and so on. Then, as to hydraulics, you have to observe the area of the millpond, the impulse of the spouting bodies, the pressure of water relative to the vanes or buckets of the Wheel, and the velocity at the flume. From this you can calculate the size of the mill stones in proportion to the power of the fall, and estimate the amount of corn that can be ground.’

The Planter had had just about enough of this!

‘Fascinating! Most LEARNED! You are entirely EXPERT in THEORY! and a man of PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE! But what we need to know is, is it in fact POSSIBLE to build a mill? Where? HOW LONG will it take to build it? How much will it COST to build? How much INCOME will the mill bring in?’

‘I have prepared a plan of the site of Mr. Broughton’s Branch. With the millpond located here,’ and he tapped a spot well above the creek, ‘I calculate you can impound four acres of water, average depth nine feet. During droughts the area of the millpond will of course diminish, but even if there is only one acre of water remaining, you still have enough flow and head to turn the mill.’

Carter Jackson and Robert Broughton bent over, minutely observing every detail of the millwright’s drawings.

‘There is sufficient head for a wheel eighteen feet in diameter, eight arms -- branched and well-mortised -- fifty-six buckets, a shaft twenty-four inches in diameter. This will drive a runner stone fifty-four inches across. The mill house for a wheel of this size should be three stories high.’ The millwright tapped the papers in front of him. ‘I show here the revolutions of the wheel relative to the revolutions of the stone, with gudgeons, cogwheels, trundles, and gearing. You will need an inclined road so wagons can unload their corn at the top so as to fill the hoppers and feed shafts. You need at least three sets of stones, as they must be re-faced from time to time, as they will inevitably be worn smooth.’

The Millwright’s words were incomprehensible to Robert Broughton. Even the relatively well-educated Carter Jackson seemed flummoxed. He fidgeted in his chair, and twisted his pince-nez, bending down over the plan, as though, with a closer look, the terms and numbers would leap into his head.

‘And THE COST? And THE INCOME?’

Profit, capital, interest -- these were concepts the planter handled every day. If he could somehow, anyhow, bring the conversation back around to MONEY, he would be, at last!, on firmer footing.

‘I am unable,’ said the millwright, ‘To estimate the cost of building a mill of this type here in Kentucky. But I have prepared a bill of scantling, including estimates of masonry. I give dimensions and quantities for sills, joists, posts, girders, plates, rafters, beams, and shingles. As for the water-house, I give dimensions and quantities of sills, spur blocks, head blocks, bray trees and bridge trees. For the wheel, dimensions and quantities for shaft, arms, face boards, shrouds, bucket boards, and so on.’

He paused, and turned expectantly to the planter and to Broughton. He confronted blank incomprehension. This was normal. Technical jargon justified his fee.

‘Allow me to simplify:’

‘Number one. We are in October. If you begin work immediately, you should be able to complete a strong dam before the end of the year,’ he tapped a drawing he had prepared. ‘Winter rains will then fill the millpond.’

‘Number Two. If you wish, you can commission me to order three sets of millstones. I can do this on my way back to Floyd County, as the quarry is only a half-day off my route. You should arrange to have the stones delivered to the site not later than the first day of June. Whoever will be The Miller will also need good stonecutting tools. The most convenient place to obtain the tools is right at the quarry.’

‘Number Three. You will need a sash saw -- which I can order from the forge in Floyd County. And you will need files and whetstones to keep the saw in good cutting condition. I can bring these items with me when I return. The saw must be able to move in an up and down motion at one hundred twenty strokes per minute, with a carriage and ratchets to drive the log into the saw teeth, then pull it back. I know how to TRANSFORM the rotary power of a wheel into reciprocating vertical motion. I know how to arrange the cogs and gearing. Cogs and gears require seasoned hickory, heartwood ONLY.’ He tapped his plan. ‘See dimensions and quantities.’

‘Number Four. I observed a grove of large white oak trees at the head of your holler, Mr. Broughton. We will need every one of those trees. I suggest you begin felling them in January, the minute the dam is completed.’

‘Number Five. I assume you gentlemen normally have your corn entirely planted by the end of May. Therefore, I suggest we begin construction the first of June, and aim to be finished by the end of August. That can be done – IF, but only if -- the oak trees have been felled and snaked down to the site, and hewed to the dimensions given here.’ The Millwright tapped the papers in front of him. ‘And if you have a four-mule team, and six laborers with good sharp tools, broad axes, hewing hatchets, wedges, adzes, froes, draw-knives, mauls, augers, on site at all times.’

‘Number Six. There is considerable blacksmith work at various stages, and I have prepared here a separate paper detailing the bill of iron. The most efficient way to handle this is for the smith to assemble a forge at the site.’

With that, The Millwright paused, and turned to Jackson. ‘My Fee to see the task through to completion and corn milled, is three hundred dollars.’

At this point, the planter re-gained the floor, but instead of replying to the millwright, he turned to Robert. ‘Well, Mr. Broughton, given your outstanding reputation, I would be able to loan you CASH to buy the millstones and sash saw. I can RENT you my mule team and six of my strongest negras. USUAL DAILY RATE. I will loan you MONEY to pay the smith, and MONEY to pay Mr. Buford Logan’s FEE.’

The planter paused. He had to be sure Broughton was following his train.

‘I think, taking everything all together, that you will owe me at the end of construction, SIX HUNDRED DOLLARS. I charge TEN PER CENT per year. However, I will not begin charging INTEREST until the mill is completed. The question for you is -- .’

And here the planter paused for a considerable time, and manipulated his heavy gold watch in every possible manner.

‘Do you think there is enough PROFIT in the enterprise for you to be able to PAY me?’

Robert Broughton turned to the planter, ‘Well, sir, I do NOT have your experience in financial matters. I think The Ford here is growing, people need to grind their corn, and they need sawed timber. Perhaps we can agree on a few points: people hereabouts seek a way to get their corn ground and their timber sawed. ‘There is a need. A grist mill and a saw mill will be used.’

‘I do not have the cash to pay the millwright’s fee, buy the stones, buy the sash saw, pay the smith for iron work, and rent your mules and niggers. That is why I came to you, Mr. Jackson. I thought we could to discuss the proposition, and see if there was a way to see it through.’

‘Call me Carter,’ said the planter, ‘If I may call you Robert . . .?

‘Well, Carter, I own the branch and I own the oak trees. It’s hard to put a price on that, but the water is essential. That and the timber. Don’t you reckon that totals up -- to at least half of it -- just going in?’

‘Robert, you are AMAZING! Keen intelligence! Perspicacious! One-half is PRECISELY the amount I propose!’

‘How would you feel about signing a paper? If you do not repay the LOAN within, say, ten years, then I OWN HALF? That is, the money is a loan SECURED by the MILL ITSELF!’

‘And Robert . . .’

Here the planter employed his Virginia Gentleman charm, which he had in great abundance, and was generous in dispensing, ‘Robert, there is one more thing, and I DO NOT think you will find it A BURDEN. In fact, you might find it a VERY great help! Homer Sturgill and my daughter Nancy have been married fifteen years now. THE GOOD LORD has blessed them with four fine children. The oldest boy, MY GRANDSON, Carter Sturgill, is fourteen. He is a worker, strong, intelligent, and WILLING. I am disappointed to say this -- and I hope that he may some day alter his inclination -- but right now, he says he has no notion to be a planter -- even though he would of course inherit much -- when God CALLS ME.’

‘I think he would make a most WORTHY miller’s apprentice! Would you KINDLY consider that? THIS OLD PLANTER FROM VIRGINIA . . .’ and Jackson fumbled at his pince-nez, and his voice grew wavery, a millpond of sentiment, this old planter would take it as a great KINDNESS and FAVOR!’

And thus they ‘reasoned together.’

Paperwork was signed a few days before Christmas 1822. The mill was completed in August, and was grinding corn and ripping logs well before frost in 1823. Constructing the dam and the mill was the hardest labor Robert had ever undertaken. He felled forty huge white oaks, and as many chestnuts and poplars. It took Carter Jackson’s ox teams and slaves eight days to snake the heavy logs from the head of the holler to the site of the mill, where Broughton’s Branch empties into Marrowbone Creek, and another six days to skid thirty loads of stone down the branch to the site of the dam. And that was just the beginning!

In addition to his water, his timber, and his labor, Robert assumed the biggest financial risk of his life, with absolutely NO clear idea if, or when, or whether, he would EVER be able to repay the debt. The planter held all the cards, and of course took no risk at all! He never did.

Year by year more came -- and squatted. Like hopeful young settlers before them, the newcomers also sought a better life. When there was no more bottomland up Marrowbone Creek or over the north ridge toward Red Bird River, they grubbed corn up the steepest slopes. After the game was shot out, they relied on cows, sheep, and thin razorback hogs feeding in the forest on mast. Corn patches grew larger. By 1840, when Hargis and Maggie’s grandchildren were grown, the land was useless for hunting, as the forest held little game. It was useless for timber, as the giant trees, and many small ones, were gone, hastening the relentless erosion. As rich soil accumulated over eons washed down hillsides to be deposited on floodplains miles away, the land had been gutted and stripped of its hide. Farms were less productive, families reduced to bare subsistence. Cabins went unrepaired. Some fell off their foundations; roofs leaked. Clearings became trash-filled hog-wallows, privies overflowing into springs and creeks. People themselves seemed to erode, children dying of croup, men and women dying young of vague fevers. All were inexorably diminished. Poverty led to bitter fatalism, and listless apathy. No one intended it. Most were simply unaware. New Eden had been milked dry and hollowed out. Barrels of raw whiskey were the main source of money, and the proximate cause of a malady afflicting many.

There was no shortage of land. But clear title was another matter, and land disputes choked frontier courts for decades.


THE LOGGER: H.C. BROUGHTON (1849 – 1935)

James Broughton’s cabin still stands on Red Bird River in Clay County, just over the Bell County line. It is where he raised his family and where, in 1845, he died. He is buried on a hill overlooking the cabin . . . the cabin where his son Gilley ‘Black’ Broughton was born in 1818, the same cabin where Gilley’s son, also named James after his grandfather, was born; and where his grandson, Henry Clay Broughton, was born in 1849.

In 1869, Henry Clay (H.C.) Broughton, dressed in heavy brogan shoes, home-knit wool yarn socks, a hickory shirt, and homespun jeans and coat, rode over the ridge, down Marrowbone Creek, and across The Ford. He felt rich, because in his pocket was $51 earned from ‘coon and possum hides he had trapped and tanned. He was on his way to pay court on a tall lovely girl he had met at a three-day Camp Meeting. He slept in a nearby barn, but spent every day that summer at The Garrett Farm. He was five feet six inches in height, Wanda Garrett, five feet eleven. H.C. had piercing blue eyes, an unkempt mustache which seemed imposingly large on a very YOUNG man, and the beginnings of a small belly. The differences in height stirred doubt, but The Garrett Family finally realized the couple was bound and determined. H.C. Broughton and Wanda Garrett were married . . . a family-only affair . . . in 1870 in The Jackson-Sturgill Chapel near Wasioto.

H.C. never attended school, but by combining his native intelligence with patient coaching from his wife, was, within a year of their marriage, able to read a little, though he never read for pleasure. He kept his accounts in his head, and he never made a mistake on what was owed to him, or what he owed others. For the first five years, Wanda handled all of the paperwork for his business transactions. But by the time he was twenty-five, H.C. was supremely confident of his abilities . . . and with good reason. He never again involved his wife in business matters.

They began married life in a log cabin overlooking The Cumberland River. H.C. cleared land and raised crops to provide for his family, but saw immediately that the real money was in felling and snaking logs. By working from dawn until dark six days a week, he had within a year earned enough to build a proper two-story frame house from timber he himself felled and which was sawed at The Mill, the one started by his Uncle Robert, now operated by Carter Sturgill . . . No ‘kinfolks’ here: Sturgill charged his Standard Fee.

H.C. got the best price for giant black walnut trees, but there was simply no way to get them to market except down the Cumberland river. Unfortunately, walnut logs are sinkers and cannot be floated. H.C. got around this by lashing walnut logs to huge poplars . . . excellent floaters . . . and which also fetched a good price. When the river was in flood, he drifted his log rafts forty miles downstream to a sawmill at Williamsburg. He continued to begin his workday just after dawn. But he now had enough cash to hire gangs of men to work beside him -- including the children of Carter Jackson's slaves, Wash and Jeff . . . and other gangs, led by Foremen he had carefully selected. He also hired ‘water boys’ to cool off the teams, throwing buckets of water on the horses and mules . . . and in summer, on the backs of workmen as well. For eighteen years, H.C. made good money off walnut and poplar trees, felling every big log anywhere that could be snaked down to the river . . . huge logs suitable for Victorian furniture or Grand Rapids veneer. Much hardwood was exported to Europe.

H.C. worked hard, and he had an exceedingly sharp entrepreneurial eye. He was also extremely frugal, a characteristic most often seen in those who are timid and afraid of risk. H.C., however, was confident, many said over-confident, of his judgment, and was willing to take a chance even when others held back in fear . . . He would Take A Chance if he had calculated the risks and benefits in his head. He was a devoted exponent of the ancient proverb, Buy Low, Sell High. He operated his business on what he called ‘H.C.’s Rule of Ten’:

‘I will buy ANYTHING . . . timber, land, wagons and teams . . . and I’m not even concerned about the PRICE! . . . PROVIDED I see a very reasonable chance that what I buy will return TEN TIMES what I pay . . . THIS YEAR!’

In 1888, the Louisville & Nashville extended its rail line from Corbin to Wasioto. Financial insiders, stockholders and friends of The L&N Board, had learned of the railroad’s plans, and saw an opportunity. They invested in a steam-powered sawmill, shipped by barge from Pittsburgh and by rail from Louisville. The mill was sited at Wasioto, upriver from The Narrows, where the L&N crossed The Cumberland toward Middlesborough. The inside boys had a sure-fire investment . . . except for ONE LITTLE THING.

H.C. had been buying standing timber, and options on timber, constantly since 1871. By this time he owned virtually all of the timber for forty miles upstream. He was quite prepared to sell logs to the new sawmill, just as he sold logs to the sawmill in Williamsburg. But he had cornered the market on easily accessible timber. He knew it. And his price went up and up.

He owned the raw material. They owned The Mill. Why not work together?

After two decades of backbreaking labor, H.C. had saved enough to buy controlling interest of the mill. The minute he was in charge, he discarded the old-fashioned circular saw, replacing it with a modern band saw, which increased production by a factor of four. In 1890, age 41, he placed a great boom across the Cumberland to hold floating logs as they awaited their fate in his mill. The L&N had run a spur right into his Mill, and he could now ship sawn timber, greatly increasing his profit. H.C. had become a major lumber supplier, no more need of mills or Timber Agents. HIS MILL brought in more cash than he imagined possible. He continued buying thousands of acres of standing timber . . . and then began buying timber LAND, outright.

Exploring geologists had begun to describe vast beds of bituminous coal the wooded hills . . . and H.C. had heard the reports. Soon, with a view to coal mining, he began buying underground mineral rights as well. Just as he hired gangs of lumberjacks and teams of mules, he similarly hired squads of attorneys. They camped out in County Clerk’s offices, searching out dubious titles, filing lawsuits almost weekly challenging overlapping 'shingled' plats, lawyering and dickering to obtain rights to timber and minerals. They often acquired mineral rights from illiterate farmers for a dollar an acre, sometimes less, even though it was certain that underneath the land lay millions of tons of coal. Kentucky’s infamous Broad Form deed, then and up to 1990, permitted the owner of mineral rights to do anything, anything whatsoever, to extract the mineral wealth, without any further permission or any further payment to the landowner. The ignorance and poverty of subsistence farmers made for easy pickin’s. Poor hillbilly farmers watched helplessly as their land was ripped and gutted. Lawyers and coal operators made great fortunes.

By 1907, H.C. owned outright, or owned the mineral rights, on 34,000 acres of land containing millions of tons of coal. But he needed railroads to transport his coal to the coke furnaces and steel mills of the industrial North and East. Unfortunately, he could not persuade L&N to extend its rail line to his property, mostly in the northern part of The Cumberland Valley. In exasperation, he built The Wasioto & Black Mountain Railroad himself. It was a daunting challenge . . . but it was a carefully calculated gamble, not crazy at all. He owned the land, he owned the sawmill, which provided oak for ties and trestles, and he had gangs of workmen thoroughly familiar with mule teams and dynamite. As the owner of a very successful and prosperous timber business, he also had access to Capital . . . in Louisville and Cincinnati.

The completion of the railroad in 1911 opened the rich coalfields of Harlan County. When L&N bought his line in 1915, H.C. received an enormous new infusion of cash. As the L&N snaked its rail lines up the rivers and creeks of The Cumberland Plateau, H.C. raced ahead, buying more land and more mineral rights. He was now a big time coal operator, opening scores of mining camps in Bell, Harlan and neighboring Counties.

Mining camps sprang to life almost overnight, bearing names like Henry, Wanda, Clay, and Dinah [after dynamite]. He extended his railroad up Marrowbone Creek, and opened the Gilley and Hargis coal mines there.

By 1917 he owned 57,000 acres. Buying coal land and leasing it was more profitable, and much less bother. Real estate became his chief business. He was elected a Bell County Judge, and in old age enjoyed rocking on the porch of his white-columned Victorian Mansion . . . atop The Old Indian Burial Mound at Cumberland Ford . . . with a fine view up Marrowbone Creek toward Red Bird . . . toward the old cabin of his grandfather, James.

In 1931, he gave the State two thousand acres on Pine Mountain, west of The Narrows, which became the nucleus of Pine Mountain State Resort Park; the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps] built roads, trails, and cabins for overnight visitors. Giving the land away was a good business decision, as H.C. thereby escaped taxes.

Blight had killed all the chestnuts, there were no coal deposits on that side of Pine Mountain, and he and his timber crews had already felled the most valuable trees; the virgin forests had been cherry-picked, leaving behind stumps and waste. The timber boom left nothing of lasting benefit for the mountains or for Kentucky: no furniture industry, no tradition of craftsmanship. Forest preservation and management began only AFTER severe damage was done.

Henry Clay Broughton died in 1935, age 87.

H.C. would not recognize parts of Cumberland Valley today. Much of his coal land has been contour mined, and gigantic draglines have removed entire mountaintops, choking creeks and valleys with debris, creating acidic runoff that killed crawdad, fish, and every kind of natural aquatic life [though bass are returning to The Cumberland River]. Some surface-mined land has been ‘restored.’ But even H.on so-called reclaimed land, H.C. would be unable to trap enough animals to make any money at all off hides.

More than two centuries of ruthless exploitation has been particularly hard on the people, most descendents of early settlers. They are strong; they have survived, and they will. But in the process, Kentucky’s human resources, like all other resources of the region, have been largely stripped.

Game animals, at least in areas close to settlements, were quickly shot out in the 18th century [though some game has been re-introduced].

Virgin topsoil was washed down hillsides by logging and bad farming practices [though conservation farming is slowly taking hold].

Irreplaceable forest giants were sold for a pittance, 1880-1930. This denuded the hills; with little vegetation to absorb the rainfall, sheets of water run unchecked down the hills, and gully-washing floods devastated downstream villages and towns [though today some are protected by expensive berms and dikes]. Trees re-grow, but it will take many centuries to recreate even an approximation of the primeval forest encountered by early settlers. Many visitors are entirely unaware that Great Smoky Mountain National Park was, in 1930, the scene of vast environmental devastation. The road to Cades Cove, for example, follows the route of a logging railroad that hauled out millions of board feet of prime timber.

Coal mining has hollowed out mountains and, what is more sad, hollowed out miners and their families. [But coal also provided jobs, but the jobs came at a great cost in injuries and diseases like emphysema and ‘black lung’.]

The issues are complex. But many in southeastern Kentucky, like their kin elsewhere in Appalachia, seem empty, devoid of hope, withered husks of their proud and fiercely independent ancestors. Is it an exaggeration to say that good, brave people were systematically ‘hollowed out’? Young people leave as soon as they realize there is no work and few opportunities; young people have been Kentucky’s principal export for generations. ‘Rip, rape and run,’ and ‘Get it all NOW!’ never asks . . . What Is the CONSEQUENCE? . . . and, Is It Worth It? Even sadder is that much of the devastation was abetted by the mountain people THEMSELVES! They are intensely attached to ‘the hills and hollers of home,’ tied by kinship, sentiment and strong emotion. At the same time, they have been complicit in the destruction of the hills and hollers.

No valuable black walnut trees remain.

W.C. would find . . . few valuable trees at all.


[See Our Southern Highlanders, Horace Kephart, U. of Tenn. Press, 1913, 1922; Tumult on the Mountains, Roy B. Clarkson, McClain Printing Co., Parsons, WV, 1964; Miners, Millhands, and Mountaineers, Ronald D. Eller, U. of Tenn. Press, 1982; Eastern Old-Growth Forests, Mary Byrd Davis, Ed., Island Press, 1996; The Appalachian Forest, Chris Bolgiano, Stackpole, 1998]