第40章 HARRODSTOWN(1)

The old forts like Harrodstown and Boonesboro and Logan's at St.Asaph's have long since passed away.

It is many, many years since I lived through that summer of siege in Harrodstown, the horrors of it are faded and dim, the discomforts lost to a boy thrilled with a new experience.I have read in my old age the books of travellers in Kentucky, English and French, who wrote much of squalor and strife and sin and little of those qualities that go to the conquest of an empire and the making of a people.Perchance my own pages may be colored by gratitude and love for the pioneers amongst whom I found myself, and thankfulness to God that we had reached them alive.

I know not how many had been cooped up in the little fort since the early spring, awaiting the chance to go back to their weed-choked clearings.The fort at Harrodstown was like an hundred others I have since seen, but sufficiently surprising to me then.Imagine a great parallelogram made of log cabins set end to end, their common outside wall being the wall of the fort, and loopholed.At the four corners of the parallelogram the cabins jutted out, with ports in the angle in order to give a flanking fire in case the savages reached the palisade.And then there were huge log gates with watch-towers on either sides where sentries sat day and night scanning the forest line.

Within the fort was a big common dotted with forest trees, where such cattle as had been saved browsed on the scanty grass.There had been but the one scrawny horse before our arrival.

And the settlers! How shall I describe them as they crowded around us inside the gate? Some stared at us with sallow faces and eyes brightened by the fever, yet others had the red glow of health.Many of the men wore rough beards, unkempt, and yellow, weather-worn hunting shirts, often stained with blood.The barefooted women wore sunbonnets and loose homespun gowns, some of linen made from nettles, while the children swarmed here and there and everywhere in any costume that chance had given them.All seemingly talking at once, they plied us with question after question of the trace, the Watauga settlements, the news in the Carolinys, and how the war went.

``A lad is it, this one,'' said an Irish voice near me, ``and a woman! The dear help us, and who'd 'ave thought to see a woman come over the mountain this year! Where did ye find them, Bill Cowan?''

``Near the Crab Orchard, and the lad killed and sculped a six-foot brave.''

``The Saints save us! And what'll be his name?''

``Davy,'' said my friend.

``Is it Davy? Sure his namesake killed a giant, too.''

``And is he come along, also?'' said another.His shy blue eyes and stiff blond hair gave him a strange appearance in a hunting shirt.

``Hist to him! Who will ye be talkin' about, Poulsson?

Is it King David ye mane?''

There was a roar of laughter, and this was my introduction to Terence McCann and Swein Poulsson.The fort being crowded, we were put into a cabin with Terence and Cowan and Cowan's wife--a tall, gaunt woman with a sharp tongue and a kind heart--and her four brats, ``All hugemsmug together,'' as Cowan said.And that night we supped upon dried buffalo meat and boiled nettle-tops, for of such was the fare in Harrodstown that summer.

``Tom McChesney kept his faith.'' One other man was to keep his faith with the little community--George Rogers Clark.And I soon learned that trustworthiness is held in greater esteem in a border community than anywhere else.Of course, the love of the frontier was in the grain of these men.But what did they come back to?

Day after day would the sun rise over the forest and beat down upon the little enclosure in which we were penned.

The row of cabins leaning against the stockade marked the boundaries of our diminutive world.Beyond them, invisible, lurked a relentless foe.Within, the greater souls alone were calm, and a man's worth was set down to a hair's breadth.Some were always to be found squatting on their door-steps cursing the hour which had seen them depart for this land; some wrestled and fought on the common, for a fist fight with a fair field and no favor was a favorite amusement of the backwoodsmen.My big friend, Cowan, was the champion of these, and often of an evening the whole of the inhabitants would gather near the spring to see him fight those who had the courage to stand up to him.His muscles were like hickory wood, and I have known a man insensible for a quarter of an hour after one of his blows.Strangely enough, he never fought in anger, and was the first to the spring for a gourd of water after the fight was over.But Tom McChesney was the best wrestler of the lot, and could make a wider leap than any other man in Harrodstown.

Tom's reputation did not end there, for he became one of the two breadwinners of the station.I would better have said meatwinners.Woe be to the incautious who, lulled by a week of fancied security, ventured out into the dishevelled field for a little food! In the early days of the siege man after man had gone forth for game, never to return.Until Tom came, one only had been successful,--that lad of seventeen, whose achievements were the envy of my boyish soul, James Ray.He slept in the cabin next to Cowan's, and long before the dawn had revealed the forest line had been wont to steal out of the gates on the one scrawny horse the Indians had left them, gain the Salt River, and make his way thence through the water to some distant place where the listening savages could not hear his shot.And now Tom took his turn.Often did I sit with Polly Ann till midnight in the sentry's tower, straining my ears for the owl's hoot that warned us of his coming.Sometimes he was empty-handed, but sometimes a deer hung limp and black across his saddle, or a pair of turkeys swung from his shoulder.

``Arrah, darlin','' said Terence to Polly Ann, `` 'tis yer husband and James is the jools av the fort.Sure I niver loved me father as I do thim.''