Читать книгу Rebel Siege - Jim Kjelgaard - Страница 4

Table of Contents

Kinross McKenzie heard the pigeons, heard the beating of countless wings like wind rising in the distance, long before he saw them. He stepped from beneath the knobby-branched black walnut tree that shaded his father's forge and squinted up into a cloudless, shadowless blue sky.

The noise of the pigeons' wings grew stronger, as they steadily beat toward the gap in the mountains where Ian McKenzie lived. The vanguard of the feathered horde came in sight. Then the log house and his father's gun shop were suddenly in shadow as unnumbered closely packed pigeons flew over them.

Kin turned to watch them pass, saw them go out of sight behind Burnt-Tree Knob, and swiftly calculated the exact spot where they would come to earth. Just beyond Burnt-Tree was a long stretch of bare rocks. Beyond that was Santaree Creek, and on its borders was a mighty beech grove whose last year's harvest had been disturbed very little. The pigeons would light in the beeches, and they were hardly seven miles across the mountains. Kin looked wistfully at the cabin, and at the shop where his father kept the rifles he made. If only he could have the rest of the day off ....

But he couldn't. It seemed as though every man in the Carolinas wanted a gun nowadays, and his father would never consent to Kin's taking even an hour off. There was the forge to tend, and stocks to shape, and tarred rope to wrap around and burn off wooden stocks so they'd look like curly maple, and ... A sudden blow on the side of his head sent him reeling. Kin looked up to see his bearded father standing beside him.

"Didna I tell ye to keep the forge burnin' while I went to the stream?" Ian McKenzie demanded.

"I did." It was marvelous, the way anyone as big as Ian could come upon a man so unawares.

"Aye?" Ian said dourly. "Look at it."

Kin looked. The forge's fire box contained a mass of black charcoal from which thin wisps of smoke arose. Yet it couldn't have been more than a minute ago, anyway not much more, that he had looked around to see the pigeons. He scratched his head.

"How did it get that way?"

Ian spat. "I dinna know what you young'uns are comin' to. If ye really need an explanation, I can tell ye that the fire went low because ye had yer mind on the pigeons. Ye're fourteen, an' it's high time ye were thinkin' like a man instead o' gawkin' at a flight o' pigeons for a fair half hour. When I was a lad an' my father was teachin' me the gunsmith's trade ... But build the fire up, Kin, an' don't mind that little clout on the knob. Ye know yer old father too well to think that he meant anything by it."

"Sure, I know," Kin grinned.

He grasped the handles of the bellows and diligently began to work them back and forth. The wisps of smoke that drifted up from the charcoal gathered volume, and a little flame broke through. The flame leaped higher, and the black charcoal in the fire pot became a mass of glowing coals.

Kin stole a covert glance at his father, a troubled man these days. Kin knew, without understanding why anyone should be bothered by anything that touched his life so little, that Ian worried deeply over the tales that drifted up here into the Blue Ridge, tales of violence and savagery, of British Dragoons and German Yagers pouring into America to march and battle and kill the colonists who were in revolt against the rule of Mother England. Still, just over the mountains the Cherokees were usually battling and marching, and they would have done a good bit more killing had it not been for the Kentucky rifles that the mountain gunsmiths made and the mountain men shot. Kin knew that even now his father had orders for a score of rifles. He pumped harder.

Ian picked up a half-finished barrel and brought it over to the forge. He thrust the long ribbon of wrought iron into the fire, heated it a glowing red, and pounded it around an iron mandrel. When he had formed another inch of barrel he knocked the mandrel out, cooled the barrel and the mandrel in water, and came back to re-heat the barrel.

"Tell me why I knocked the mandrel out," he ordered.

"So you wouldn't forge it right into the barrel," Kin said correctly.

His father grunted approval. "And now some heat, boy."

Inch by inch the ribbon of wrought iron was shaped around the mandrel and forged into a perfect rifle barrel. Kin picked up the reamer, and began the tedious task of turning it through the forty-two inch wrought-iron tube. He watched the shiny, hard little chips that the reamer cut out falling at his feet, thick as the pigeons gathering food in the forest. He wondered if the pigeons were still ... But there wasn't any hope of going hunting.

When the barrel was properly reamed, Kin carried it over to the rifling bench. None but the sure hand of Ian McKenzie could rifle the barrels he made, and Kin stood idly by while the rifling tool cut into the barrel the grooves that would make the ball fly true. Ian looked up to frown, and Kin instantly concentrated all his attention on the rifling.

But when Ian resumed his work, Kin looked at his father's face and worried. Ian McKenzie was not the carefree, fun-loving man who had moved his gunsmith's shop from Pennsylvania to McKenzie's Gap. Lately he had become more and more morose, more solemn, less inclined to laugh. Kin thought of a dog they had once owned, that had never been able to decide whether it wanted to hunt with Kin or Ian. Torn between two masters, it had grown savage and ugly, and one day it had disappeared in the woods never to be seen alive again. Kin and his father had found its skeleton two months later. The hound had insanely attacked a great black bear, and for its temerity had been beaten into a pulp. Every bone in its body was broken.

Ian looked up suddenly and said, "Kinross, I wish yer mother was alive."

Kin stared, puzzled. His mother had died so long ago that he scarcely remembered her. But he had often thought that it would be nice to have a mother, someone to make milk cakes as Jack Boone's mother did. Once, Kin recalled very clearly, Daniel Boone had stopped at Jack's house and left a quantity of something called sugar. Jack's mother had made candy, and Kin had had some. He guessed that he never would forget how good that had tasted, much better than ordinary maple sugar or molasses.

"I wish she was alive, too," Kin said dutifully.

"Yer mother was wise, boy." His father's voice trembled. "More than once when I would hae done wrong she bade me better. But who is to bid me now? Who knows what is right and what is wrong in all this?"

"Don't you?" Kin asked in astonishment.

His father glanced up, and was silent for a moment.

"Aye," he said slowly. "Aye, laddie. But come on. We're sittin' here like a couple o' woods runners with nothin' to do but sit in the sun when there's rifles to make."

He looked at the rifled barrel on his lap. The back had to be plugged, the touch hole drilled, and the sights, lock, and stock attached. Kin knew that all this would be done with the painstaking care that his father gave everything, and that the finished product would not be just another Kentucky rifle but a McKenzie rifle—something that the over-the-mountain settlers and Indian fighters would walk three hundred miles for. But now the sun was settling behind the western mountains and long shadows were enfolding the cabin.

"It's coming on night," Kin said.

For a moment Ian McKenzie sat without answering.

"It will soon be dark," Kin repeated.

Ian looked up as though the coming of another night was a startling event, one that must be desperately met and coped with.

"Aye!" he roared. "So it is! An' ye just sittin' here lookin' at my gun! On to your work, boy. Ye can sit an' moon for a bit before bed-time."

Kin left the shop eagerly. He was glad to be away from the onerous task of learning the gunsmith's trade and relieved to be parted, if only for a little while, from his troubled, glowering father. The gunsmith's trade was a dull one. A man stood over a forge or rifling bench all day long and gave his heart and soul to the making of a perfect weapon. Then somebody came along to buy it and had all the fun. The over-the-mountain men lived a real life, shooting buffalo, and hunting Indians, and living exactly as they pleased. But there was never any excitement around McKenzie's Gap. True, a party of ten Cherokees had come about a year ago and besieged the cabin. But it had happened that Tom Boone, Joel Creed, and Turkey-Trot Logan had been there to buy rifles. The three and his father had each defended one of the four walls. All Kin had been allowed to do was lie on the floor and reload rifles. When the Cherokees finally departed, he had been forbidden to go out into the woods until the four men had scouted around.

He had wanted to go, had wanted to see if Turkey-Trot would scalp the dead Cherokees. Then the men had come back and told him that they hadn't hit a thing. But Kin knew better. After he had permission to go out, he had made his own scout around the clearing and found blood on the leaves. He was a man now, though. His father had said so just this afternoon, and he'd bet that the next Cherokee raid would find him shooting his own gun instead of reloading someone else's.

He entered the forest, cool hardwoods that rose to a mighty height, and walked on through them. He was a friend of these woods. He knew where the squirrels played, where the buck deer came to grow new horns, and where the black bears wallowed like pigs in their mud holes. Yes, they were his woods, and once his imagination had peopled them with a strange assortment of savage beasts and men. But that was long ago, when he had been just a child playing games. A man couldn't get excited about imaginary Cherokees, when there were real ones not too far away. And it was prudent to be alert even here. There were whispers of men who had to skulk through these woods unseen, and who would bear no interference with their comings and goings. Kin had never seen any of these people who traveled by night. But twice he had found strange tracks in the woods.

A tinkling, silvery sound drifted through the trees and Kin turned in its direction. He found his father's yellow, broken-horned cow switching away the flies in the shade of a huge gum tree, and cut a small switch in case old Bonnie needed any urging to make her go home. But this night she needed none, and the bell on her neck tinkled cheerily as she struck a bee-line toward the clearing.

The yellow cow chose her own placid pace through the forest back to the clearing, and ambled up to the rough-hewn stanchion where she was milked every morning and every night. Kin draped a twisted grass rope over her neck, took the milk pail down from the wooden peg on which it hung, kicked the milking stool up close to Bonnie's left side, and sat down on it with the pail between his legs. With an expertness born of long practice he leaned his head against her soft flank and began stripping the milk from her udder. As it foamed in the pail, Bonnie switched her tail from side to side.

Suddenly she stepped backward. Kin murmured, "So—o, Bonnie," and tried to continue milking. But the cow side-stepped, tossed her head, and blew through her nostrils. Kin arose, set the half-filled pail aside, and watched her. Bonnie's head was raised, her eyes were questing, and her ears were cocked forward. Kin stared in the direction she was looking, and strained his ears. He neither heard nor saw anything. But something was coming up the trail that skirted the edge of his father's clearing. And it was something strange to Bonnie, or she would not have shown alarm.

Kin untied the cow, led her around to the rear of the cabin where she could not be seen from the trail, and went back for the milk. As he picked up the pail, he saw Ian sitting on a block of firewood before the door. His father was entirely relaxed, puffing contentedly on a corncob pipe with a reed stem. Something strange was coming—anything strange was probably hostile—and his father was sitting just as he had sat on every other night. Kin had better warn him.

"Bonnie's scared!" he blurted. "Somethin's comin'!"

"Mind yerself, boy," Ian McKenzie said from the corner of his mouth. "Take the milk in the house."

Kin carried the milk inside, and set it on the table. Four loaded rifles leaned against the door, within reach of his father's hand. The heavy wooden shutters were ready to swing against the cabin's glassless windows and the loopholes were open. Ian McKenzie knew as well as Bonnie that something strange, something possibly to be feared, moved on the Cota Springs trail and he was ready for it. Maybe it was more Cherokees! Kin felt a strange weakness in his stomach and knees, and looked around to select the loophole from which he would probably fire his first shot. He was afraid, but knew that he could fight. Kin walked back outside, marveling that Ian could be so calm, so obviously unafraid.

"'Tis no time to lose yer head, boy," Ian said steadily. "Sit down an' rest easy. If we're fired upon, ye know where the rifles are."

Kin sat down on the cabin's door step and wriggled his bare toes on the packed earth. He jerked erect and almost cried out when a wild turkey dropped from a tree into his father's field and began to feed. But the turkey fed only a few seconds and sat bolt upright. Then it ran swiftly into the forest. Kin strove vainly for some intimation of what the turkey had heard or seen.

Then, at long last, it came. At first an almost indistinguishable muffled throbbing, the sound his ears picked up was quickly translated into the drumming of horses' hoofs. There must be, Kin decided, at least ten of the horses and they were coming fast.

But the tenseness under which he labored gave an unreal quality to the thudding hoofs, made them strangely unlike those of ordinary running horses. They came to him in a measured, hollow cadence. Kin thought of a trapped beaver that he had once seen. The trapper had hit it over the head with a club, but had not killed it outright, and the beaver had lain on its side drawing long, deep breaths.

"The beat o' the death drum," Ian muttered to himself.

Kin glanced at him curiously. He knew vaguely that Ian had once been a soldier, and that a death drum was beaten when another soldier was executed. But now that he thought of it, the timed rhythm of the running horses was like a drum. Kin's hand stole inside the door, and drew comfort from the feel of a loaded rifle there. He clutched the rifle tighter as the first of the mounted men swept into view.

He was a gorgeously uniformed officer mounted on a superb stallion. Kin gaped at his plumed hat, his scarlet coat, the polished leather that adorned his uniform, and the saber that dangled from his side. He must be a mighty man to have such a horse and such a uniform! The twelve men following him were only a little less brilliantly attired and mounted, and all carried rifles slung across their saddles. At a smart trot, looking neither to the right nor to the left, they swept across the clearing, and into the forest on the other side. Kin watched them out of sight, and continued to listen until the beat of the horses' hoofs was only a dying echo.

"What are British soldiers doing here?" he gasped.

Ian McKenzie shook his head, and it seemed to Kin that he had never seen his father look more weary.

"'Tis little they know," Ian said bitterly. "I had hoped that we'd be spared this. They have come to hold the country for the King. But is it the King's country, or does it belong to the men who made it? Mountain men dinna quake at the sight o' a uniform and saber. Nor do dragoons give way before a shaken tomahawk an' an Indian yell. There'll be blood in plenty shed, an' for what? There'll be murder an' pillage, an' for what? For somethin', somethin' I dinna know. But I hae ways to find out."

It was an impassioned, excited outburst, a revealing glimpse of the gnawing canker that Ian carried in his bosom, but it made little sense to Kin. He looked sharply at his father.

"What do you mean?"

"Ye'll find out," Ian McKenzie said. "An' the later ye find out, the longer ye'll be happy. Do ye now put food on the table. There'll be no work tomorrow, boy, for I'm ridin' to Gilbert Town."

Kin built up the fire on the hearth, and set corn cake to baking before it. He broiled venison steaks on the hot coals, and put the simple fare on the table, along with butter and mugs of Bonnie's rich milk. The dragoons had come and gone, and their memory was exciting. But his father had said that he was going to Gilbert Town tomorrow, and that was an all-day's ride. It would give Kin a wonderful opportunity to go see if the pigeons were still beyond the Santaree. He ate heartily, but Ian dawdled over the food on his plate. When the pewter dishes were washed, Kin was more than ready to stretch out on his pallet. When he fell asleep, his father was still moodily hunched before the embers.

He was awakened in the pre-dawn darkness by his father moving about. Ian murmured softly under his breath because there were no live coals on the hearth, and he laid tinder impatiently. His flint and steel sparked, and the tinder caught fire. Kin watched him make fresh corn cake and warm some of the venison that was left over from last night. Kin lay very still, pretending to be asleep, while his father ate. Ian would not awaken him, but he might forbid Kin to leave the clearing if he knew that he was already awake. Ian caught up one of the rifles, picked up his powder horns and bullet pouch, and went out the door. The thudding of his roan saddle horse's hoof beats drifted back through the just-awakening day.

Kin rolled from his pallet and gulped the remnants of food that Ian had left. It was not enough, but he was too impatient to seek out the pigeons to prepare a proper breakfast. He snatched up the pail and ran out to milk Bonnie. Then he untied the old cow, to wander and graze at will in the forest until next milking time, and set the pail of milk in the spring to keep cool. The day, a satisfactorily long one, was all his now.

He took his rifle down from the buck-horn rack where he kept it and carried it over to the dying fire for a final inspection before setting out—a man's gun had better be in good working order. The rifle, a .30 caliber with a forty-two inch barrel, was a beautiful piece, one that Ian McKenzie had labored on for three solid weeks before giving it to his son. The barrel was made of the finest iron that the Mott Iron Works could produce. The stock was genuine curly maple, and the lock had been manufactured by the famous Gulcher. Ian had adjusted and readjusted the sights until Kin could split a hair with the gun at fifty yards.

Finding it in satisfactory working order, Kin took a ball from a buckskin pouch, and laid it in the palm of his hand. He removed the plug from the end of his powder horn, and spilled over the ball enough powder to cover it. The powder was poured down the gun from the muzzle end. Kin produced a coarse cloth patch from the pouch, spit on it, and folded it around the ball so that the patch enclosed the bullet like a little sack. He rammed the patched bullet down on top of the powder, automatically repeating his father's loading instructions.

"A spit patch is better than a grease patch. Grease leaves a dirty ring around your gun muzzle, and covers up the fouling in the bore. Besides, some time you might not have any grease, and you can usually manage to spit. Be sure to get the ball dead center in the patch or it will fly crooked, and learn to load your gun in eighteen seconds flat!"

Finally Kin filled the priming pan, hung his powder horn and bullet pouch on his belt, and set out.

A buck deer, grazing at the edge of his father's field, raised its head and snorted. Catching man scent it wheeled, and with white tail high over its back dashed toward the forest. Kin snapped the rifle to his shoulder and drew a bead on the buck. His finger tightened on the trigger, but relaxed again. Killing the buck would mean that at least two hours would be lost dressing and skinning it, and he did not want to lose two hours out of his first holiday he had enjoyed in nearly a month. Besides, a buck could be had any time, and the pigeons were still beyond the Santaree.

Kin walked slowly and cautiously, keeping among the trees as much as possible and hurrying only when he had to cross an open space. The country here was as safe as any. But there were strangers who traveled only at night in these woods. There might be Cherokees, and now that the dragoons were here nobody knew what was going to happen.

Kin came to the top of Burnt-Tree Knob, and crouched behind one of the huge, fire-killed trunks that kept a skeleton watch over the long stretch of bare rocks sloping to the creek. It was five hundred yards from here to the creek, and Kin would have to detour around the bare rocks if he did not want to be seen. Probably there was no danger. But there might be. Kin ducked back into the forest and made his way south. When he came again to the top of the mountain green forest trees stood between him and the Santaree. Skulking from trunk to trunk, he made his way toward the grove where the pigeons were feeding.

Suddenly he stopped. Through the spaced trunks he caught occasional glimpses of the gently flowing Santaree. A huge tree had fallen on its bank, and on its trunk sat a girl with her arms clasped about her knees. Her long, dark hair fell in two braids down her back. She was dressed in Indian buckskins, and like an Indian, she was tanned a deep brown. Kin knew her, Molly Faris of Gilbert Town, and the scandal of that sedate village because, instead of sitting at home and learning the graces that befitted a lady, she much preferred hunting, fishing, and running through the woods.

Kin's attention was drawn to the lean man beside her. He wore a round, crowned hat with a broad brim, a coarse gray coatee of mixed cotton and wool, dark linsey-woolsey trousers that clung tightly to his muscular legs, hobnailed boots, and a red cotton handkerchief tied loosely around his neck. He was Tanse Willard, who had been a noted Indian fighter before the war started, and who had since then gone off to fight the British. Nobody knew more about the forest than Tanse. He had often taken Kin hunting, and was the one personal connection the boy had with the war. The report had come through that Tanse had been killed at Charleston. But here he was, big as life, mooning at Molly Faris.

Suddenly Kin saw something else, down the Santaree. It was the merest bit of color, a flash of red. He gazed steadily in that direction, and saw the red again. A half-breed Cherokee who had earned the unsavory name of Stink-Hard Joe came into view and turned to beckon to someone behind him. A British officer and a half dozen armed dragoons appeared. Stink-Hard Joe gestured with his hands, and the officer nodded. They knew Tanse and Molly were near, but did not know exactly how near. And Tanse was wholly unaware of his danger. Neither the British nor the two on the log enjoyed the wide sweep of vision that Kin's hill afforded him.

Kin knelt behind a tree and rested his rifle against its trunk. He took careful aim, and squeezed the trigger. The rifle cracked, and Tanse Willard's hat flew from his head. Then Tanse and Molly were gone, disappearing as suddenly and completely as the Indians whose lore both knew so well.

Kin took another ball from his bullet pouch, measured the proper charge of powder by pouring it from the powder horn over the ball, and reloaded the rifle. But Stink-Hard Joe had located the source of the shot, and was coming fast with the British soldiers close behind him. There wasn't time to run for it. Kin raised the rifle, and centered the front sight squarely on Stink-Hard Joe's chest.

"Stay back!" he gritted.

The half-breed hesitated, and fell back. The British officer came up, and the dragoons formed a line behind him. The officer fixed Kin with a half-amused, half-scornful glance.

"Ho, my little firebrand," he said calmly. "What did you shoot at?"

"A squirrel."

"Where is it?"

"I missed."

"Hm-m, missed with a rifle like that?" He took a tentative step forward. "Let me see the gun."

"Keep your hands off!" Kin snapped. "Nobody but me handles my gun!"

"Oh, come now."

The officer took another step forward. Kin whipped the rifle toward him, and pulled the hammer back. Then suddenly he trembled at the thought of the thing that he had been about to do. He couldn't shoot down an unarmed man, even though he had six soldiers at his back. The British officer grasped the rifle's muzzle, turned it, and plucked it away.

"Give me that!" Kin flared.

"I hardly think it's the proper weapon for you. You might be tempted to shoot at more 'squirrels.' By the way, my rebel chip, perhaps you'd better do a little serious thinking. You're young, but not too young to swing from an oak branch. What's your name?"

"None of your business!"

"His name Mick-Kenzie, Lieutenant All-Aire," Stink-Hard Joe said.

"Oh, one of the hard-headed Scots, eh? Well, McKenzie, take my advice and think. We'll see you again."

The British wheeled and started back down the Santaree. Kin watched them go, while tears of rage and frustration rose in his eyes. They had his gun, his beloved rifle, and a man was nothing without a gun. The whipping his father would certainly give him was as nothing compared to the fact that he had lost it. Maybe he should have shot while he had the chance; Turkey-Trot Logan would have. But shooting a man was not the same as shooting a buck or pigeon. Kin gritted his teeth.

"I'll get my gun back!" he vowed. "Somehow and some way I'll get it back!"