第28章 THE NOLLICHUCKY TRACE(1)

Some to endure, and many to quail, Some to conquer, and many to fail, Toiling over the Wilderness Trail.

As long as I live I shall never forget the morning we started on our journey across the Blue Wall.Before the sun chased away the filmy veil of mist from the brooks in the valley, the McChesneys, father, mother, and children, were gathered to see us depart.And as they helped us to tighten the packsaddles Tom himself had made from chosen tree-forks, they did not cease lamenting that we were going to certain death.Our scrawny horses splashed across the stream, and we turned to see a gaunt and lonely figure standing apart against the sun, stern and sorrowful.We waved our hands, and set our faces towards Kaintuckee.

Tom walked ahead, rifle on shoulder, then Polly Ann;and lastly I drove the two shaggy ponies, the instruments of husbandry we had been able to gather awry on their packs,--a scythe, a spade, and a hoe.I triumphantly carried the axe.

It was not long before we were in the wilderness, shut in by mountain crags, and presently Polly Ann forgot her sorrows in the perils of the trace.Choked by briers and grapevines, blocked by sliding stones and earth, it rose and rose through the heat and burden of the day until it lost itself in the open heights.As the sun was wearing down to the western ridges the mischievous sorrel mare turned her pack on a sapling, and one of the precious bags burst.In an instant we were on our knees gathering the golden meal in our hands.Polly Ann baked journeycakes on a hot stone from what we saved under the shiny ivy leaves, and scarce had I spancelled the horses ere Tom returned with a fat turkey he had shot.

``Was there ever sech a wedding journey!'' said Polly Ann, as we sat about the fire, for the mountain air was chill.``And Tom and Davy as grave as parsons.Ye'd guess one of you was Rutherford himself, and the other Mr.Boone.''

No wonder he was grave.I little realized then the task he had set himself, to pilot a woman and a lad into a country haunted by frenzied savages, when single men feared to go this season.But now he smiled, and patted Polly Ann's brown hand.

``It's one of yer own choosing, lass,'' said he.

``Of my own choosing!'' cried she.``Come, Davy, we'll go back to Grandpa.''

Tom grinned.

``I reckon the redskins won't bother us till we git by the Nollichucky and Watauga settlements,'' he said.

``The redskins!'' said Polly Ann, indignant; ``I reckon if one of 'em did git me he'd kiss me once in a while.''

Whereupon Tom, looking more sheepish still, tried to kiss her, and failed ignominiously, for she vanished into the dark woods.

``If a redskin got you here,'' said Tom, when she had slipped back, ``he'd fetch you to Nick-a-jack Cave.''

``What's that?'' she demanded.

``Where all the red and white and yellow scalawags over the mountains is gathered,'' he answered.And he told of a deep gorge between towering mountains where a great river cried angrily, of a black cave out of which a black stream ran, where a man could paddle a dugout for miles into the rock.The river was the Tennessee, and the place the resort of the Chickamauga bandits, pirates of the mountains, outcasts of all nations.And Dragging Canoe was their chief.

It was on the whole a merry journey, the first part of it, if a rough one.Often Polly Ann would draw me to her and whisper: ``We'll hold out, Davy.He'll never now.'' When the truth was that the big fellow was going at half his pace on our account.He told us there was no fear of redskins here, yet, when the scream of a painter or the hoot of an owl stirred me from my exhausted slumber, I caught sight of him with his back to a tree, staring into the forest, his rifle at his side.The day was dawning.

``Turn about's fair,'' I expostulated.

``Ye'll need yere sleep, Davy,'' said he, ``or ye'll never grow any bigger.

``I thought Kaintuckee was to the west,'' I said, ``and you're making north.'' For I had observed him day after day.We had left the trails.Sometimes he climbed tree, and again he sent me to the upper branches, whence I surveyed a sea of tree-tops waving in the wind, and looked onward to where a green velvet hollow lay nestling on the western side of a saddle-backed ridge.

``North!'' said Tom to Polly Ann, laughing.``The little devil will beat me at woodcraft soon.Ay, north, Davy.I'm hunting for the Nollichucky Trace that leads to the Watauga settlement.''

It was wonderful to me how he chose his way through the mountains.Once in a while we caught sight of a yellow blaze in a tree, made by himself scarce a month gone, when he came southward alone to fetch Polly Ann.

Again, the tired roan shied back from the bleached bones of a traveller, picked clean by wolves.At sundown, when we loosed our exhausted horses to graze on the wet grass by the streams, Tom would go off to look for a deer or turkey, and often not come back to us until long after darkness had fallen.

``Davy'll take care of you, Polly Ann,'' he would say as he left us.

And she would smile at him bravely and say, ``I reckon I kin look out for Davy awhile yet.''

But when he was gone, and the crooning stillness set in broken only by the many sounds of the night, we would sit huddled together by the fire.It was dread for him she felt, not for herself.And in both our minds rose red images of hideous foes skulking behind his brave form as he trod the forest floor.Polly Ann was not the woman to whimper.

And yet I have but dim recollections of this journey.

It was no hardship to a lad brought up in woodcraft.Fear of the Indians, like a dog shivering with the cold, was a deadened pain on the border.

Strangely enough it was I who chanced upon the Nollichucky Trace, which follows the meanderings of that river northward through the great Smoky Mountains.