The Hinterlands: A Mountain Tale in Three Parts Read online

  ROBERT MORGAN

  THE HINTERLANDS

  A MOUNTAIN TALE IN THREE PARTS

  ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

  1994

  TO THE MEMORY OF MY GRANDPARENTS

  JULIA CAPPS LEVI (1883–1948)

  ROBERT HAMPTON LEVI (1877–1955)

  CONTENTS

  PART I

  The Trace, 1772

  PART II

  The Road, 1816

  PART III

  The Turnpike, 1845

  PREVIEW OF THE ROAD FROM GAP CREEK

  A Note from the Author

  Chapter One

  About the Author

  Also by Robert Olmstead

  I

  THE TRACE 1772

  The first time I seen your Grandpa? Why, it was the year everybody was talking about going to Watauga and the Holsten. Then every young girl dreamed of running off to the West. They thought if they could just get there and start over, everything would be perfect, or near about. That’s the way girls dream. It was the wilderness of the West they was studying on.

  It’s natural for a body to think if you could begin over, your life would be better. You would do it different from any of the people or places where you’d already failed or proved to be just ordinary. Every girl has a dream of being carried off to some better place, by a big handsome feller.

  It’s the appeal of being saved, of being born again, as the preachers say. To start a new life and shed the rags of this old one. Of course, you could change yourself right where you are through hard work and determination. But they ain’t much romance in hard work and determination. It’s over the horizon, in back of beyond, where things will be different, and better.

  That’s why the old don’t like to pick up and move on. Some of them come across the water when they was young, and cleared up a new place, and even learned a new tongue. You could say they don’t have the will anymore, or you could say they know better.

  Children, I’m telling you—the day your Grandpa walked into the Mountain Creek settlement, a wagon train was leaving for the Holsten. Since they had hacked a road across the mountains and through the gaps people had been leaving in little bunches, their things loaded up on carts and wagons, on pack horses. The Shimer Road wasn’t nothing but a track, marked by blazes on trees, but I reckon it was wide enough for a wagon to pass. It run from Mountain Creek all the way to the blue mountains of Watauga.

  They was leaving by twos and tens. And we’d get word back some stopped on the way, but most headed right on through the gaps into the land of Watauga and the Holsten.

  They was lining up in the road, and folks was hugging and kissing their cousins and trading presents. It was a day at the end of winter and the mountains was still bare, though you could see a little green down by the creek. People figured if they left early enough they might get to the West in time to put in a crop.

  The women standing by the wagons had tears of joy, some of them, and others tears of grief. I’ve heard it said men like to up and move on and women want to nest and stay. But I’ve never noticed it was so. I’ve seen just as many women with a hanker to move on, to light out and try a new place. Couldn’t have been so many people settled here if the women didn’t want to come too.

  My Daddy worked as a blacksmith, and he was fitting a tire on one of the wagons. That’s what they was waiting for, for him to slip the hot iron rim on the wheel and let it cool into a fit before they screwed the wheel back on. Your Great-granddaddy could make anything. He had worked with metal since arriving in the mountains from Pennsylvania. He could shoe horses and oxen, and make any kind of tool you wanted. One of the things he hammered most was the big grubbing hoes we used in them days to chop roots and dig out rocks in the new ground. A heavy hoe sharpened like a razor would cut wood.

  Another thing your Great-granddaddy done best was making bells. Mostly cowbells and sheep bells. He had learned it in Philadelphia when he was apprenticed. Though he didn’t have no equipment for casting church bells or dinner bells, he could hammer out little bells with the prettiest tone you ever heard. And every bell he made sounded different. The best bells he made for our own cows. They was one bell he put on our lead milker, Old Bess, that truly had the sweetest tone you ever heard. It was made of some kind of brass or bronze, and its tinkle just seemed to fit the cove where we pastured our cows. Its one note was like something in the branch, or coming out of the sky, and it always told us where the cows was at milking time.

  I thought at first your Grandpa belonged to the wagon train, ’cause I hadn’t seen him before. He was standing by one of the wagons talking to the driver. They’s a look real men have, even as young men. It’s not so much their size, or height, though they’re usually tall, taller than a woman anyway. And their shoulders are broad, it’s true. But you see it most in their chest and waist, and the power in their upper legs showing right through the cloth or buckskin.

  I saw him standing there and I said to myself, it sure is a shame he’s going off to the Holsten and not taking me, ’cause I like the look of that man. And here he’s leaving just as soon as I catch sight of him. Ain’t fair at all.

  Now I had plenty of beaux in my time. I was a popular girl in the valley. And many a boy wanted to walk me home from meeting, I guess. And when there was an infare, somebody always asked me to dance. But your Grandpa was a different sort. You could tell that. He had on this red hunting shirt, the kind you didn’t see much back then. It was bright red wool. He must have bought it off a French trader somewhere over the mountains. The thing about wool is how it will shine in the sun. He was wearing buckskin pants like everybody else. Except it was the kind of softened buckskin that only Indians made. The Indian women do it by chewing the skin for days and days and soaking the hide in water with hickory ashes. I remember thinking when I saw him, does he have an Indian wife somewhere back in the mountains?

  A lot of men did in those times, especially the traders and hunters. They might have a Christian wife in the settlements, to look after the children and grow crops and keep hearth and chicken roost. And back in the woods, in Tennessee or Georgia, they had an Indian woman raising some of their half-breeds and giving them the kinship with the tribe that guaranteed hunting rights and trading rights in the area. Men always did have it figured out.

  Your Grandpa turns around to me as the wagons begun to move off up the road in the early light. He turns to me and says just like that, “Marry me and I’ll take you to the West.”

  I said the first thing that come to mind.

  “I don’t marry no redcoats,” I said. “Unless they have a university education.”

  That took him back a little. That wasn’t what he was used to hearing from the girls he sparked. And I didn’t hardly know what it meant myself. He started to answer and then stopped. He looked at me and rared back his head and laughed. His face got red as his shirt. I always did like a man that colored up. It shows their liveliness and their sensitiveness. A big old feller blushing like a kid always moved my heart.

  “I’m Realus Richards,” he said. “And I’m going back to the Holsten soon as I get me some tools. And this time I’m taking a wife.”

  “I hear brag bigger than brawn,” I said.

  “That’s as maybe,” he said. He tipped his hat and headed toward the shed where my Daddy had his forge and anvil. I watched him walk away thinking what a nervy body he was, all proud of his red shirt and his big wide shoulders. I wondered if he’d ever seen the Holsten, or if he was one of them boys from the Morgan District that come up there to hunt and amuse theirselves. We was the last settlement before you crossed the mountains to Indian la
nd, and sometimes boys would steal horses and bring them up from Charlotte to sell.

  I clutched my shawl and stepped back to the house. Our place was maybe two hundred yards from the road, and my feet was a little wet with dew by the time I got back inside.

  “Who was that boy you talked to?” Mama said soon as I got inside.

  “Just some windbag said he was going to the Holsten,” I said, taking off the shawl and bending to put another stick on the fire. But I couldn’t fool Mama. She could read me like a book, always could.

  “He’s a smart-looking feller,” she said.

  “Not as smart looking as he thinks,” I said. Mama eyed me and grinned. It always irritated me how smug she was, like she could look into my heart whenever she wanted to.

  “Daddy won’t hear of no girl of his riding off to the West,” Mama said.

  “He won’t never have occasion to hear,” I said.

  The day before I’d sprinkled some branch sand on the floor. It had been walked on enough to polish the puncheons and clean off the tobacco juice and grease stains. I took the broom and swept out the house, working hard enough to raise a sweat. I dug with the straws down into the cracks, and when I finished, the puncheons sparkled in the firelight like they had been waxed.

  “You’re going to wear your hands out,” Mama said. “You expecting company?” It was midmorning. That was the time she liked to set in the corner and knit. She liked me to set by her and talk. Or if her friend Florrie Cullen come by, they’d knit, or stitch quilt pieces for an hour and gossip. But that morning I didn’t want to talk to Mama no more. I wanted to keep my thoughts to myself. You could hear the hens outside, cackling the way they do middle of the morning after laying.

  I cleaned the house and carried the ashes out to the hopper in the back. It was almost soap-making time, and Mama had saved a lot of ashes and fat over the winter. But the harder I worked, the less it seemed to accomplish. I had the idea, even then, that we’re always looking for excuses not to do what we’re supposed to. Even hard work can be an excuse for putting off the real work we’re meant to do. Couldn’t have explained it then, but I knowed I’d sweated myself all morning for nothing.

  Along about dinner time, when Mama and me had fixed bread and creesie greens pulled on the branch, along come Daddy home with your Grandpa in his bright red shirt.

  “This here is Mr. Richards,” Daddy said to Mama.

  He didn’t say nothing to me and I busied myself in front of the hearth taking the cobbler off the fire. Last thing I’d done that morning was stew the peaches for the cobbler. We kept our dried peaches in bags up along the roof. You wouldn’t believe the peaches we growed then. And along in August we dried them on cloths on the roof of the house and shed.

  Daddy had already built up a rush in his talking. He liked to talk more than anything, and he didn’t see too many strangers to tell his stories to. Sounded like he had been jawing all morning while he worked.

  “I seen two fellers fight once,” my Daddy was saying as they set down in front of the fire. You could smell the smoke of the forge on him. “We was coming back from the war in Pennsylvania, walking all the way back from Duquesne. Colonel Washington asked the English to give us a few provisions from their stores, and we hoofed it down into Virginia and east Carolina and headed west. Long the way these two got to arguing. Everytime one said one thing the other would dispute him. One was a swarthy little corporal named Ward and the other was a red-headed giant of a feller named Lloyd. Lloyd must have been bigger than you, stouter anyway.”

  While they talked, your Grandpa didn’t hardly notice me. I put the cobbler on the table and some pewter and wooden bowls. I didn’t go to notice him either.

  “Corporal Ward said that the Indians would join the colonies now the French was whipped. He said they had no choice but to be loyal to the Crown. Lloyd took strong exception. He said he hadn’t heard of Indians loyal to anything except stealing. He said he didn’t have no hope for peace with Indians.

  “It was the way Lloyd twisted things that made the corporal so mad. Ward had not meant to say he was certain the Indians would be loyal to the Crown. He was just hopeful. He stopped right there in the road and hollered in Lloyd’s face, ‘Why do you dispute everything I say?’

  “All the men in the band stopped to watch. Lloyd reached over and put his big hand on Ward’s face like he was snuffing a candle. Ward whirled around and kicked Lloyd on the leg, tearing his stocking. Them boys went after each other like wildcats.”

  “Dinner’s ready,” Mama said to Daddy. But Daddy didn’t even stop talking. Him and your Grandpa pulled their chairs to the table and lit into the cornbread and buttermilk and creesie greens. Daddy talked while he chewed, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

  “‘I can tell he’s a traitor by his long red beard,’ Ward screamed, and drove his hand into Lloyd’s face. I don’t know if he meant to, but somehow his finger went right into Lloyd’s eye, and behind the eyeball. Just like you’d root out a tater his hand come up with that eyeball and bloody strings hanging to it.”

  “What a pretty story to tell at dinner time,” Mama said. She always said that when Daddy finished the story.

  “Ever after that they called Lloyd ‘The Polyphemus of the Yadkin Valley,’” Daddy said.

  “Polly what?” your Grandpa said.

  “Polyphemus is back yonder in the Bible,” Daddy said. “A school teacher said he was a giant with just one eye and liked to eat people.”

  “Wonder if he ever got that one eye crossed?” your Grandpa said. And we all laughed, including me and little Henry.

  I poured your Grandpa a second cup of tea when he had about finished his dinner. Him and my Daddy pulled back their chairs from the table to relax. Your Grandpa had not took off his red shirt and his face was flushed a little from the heat and from eating hot bread and greens.

  “How long you been in the West?” my Daddy said.

  “Been there twice,” Realus said. “Went first with some long hunters when I was just a boy. We stayed nigh two years gathering hides and fur and exploring all around the mountains.”

  “I hear it’s limestone country,” Daddy said.

  “It’s more than half mountains,” Realus said.

  Me and Henry was listening. Some people have a genius that can’t be explained. You take a thousand people and they’ll be one of them that plays a fiddle best of all, and one that can survey land, and others that’s mighty good shots and storytellers. Your Grandpa’s talent was for charming people. It come natural to him.

  “They’s meadows in the West blue as the blue of the mountains,” he said.

  “Are they blue as the sky?” Henry said.

  “Not bright blue, but blue like the ridge yonder.” Your Grandpa sipped his tea and ignored me. But I could tell he knowed I was listening.

  “And the game’s plenty?” my Daddy said.

  “I seen glades in the woods with so many deer grazing you had trouble picking out one to kill,” your Grandpa said. “And besides deer there’s buffalo in the open country. I’ve seen valleys full of them. And they’s turkeys in the woods like here. And bear all over the mountains. Now the mountains are not tall as they are here. But they go on and on like tater hills one after another, wooly with trees. That’s why it takes so long to cross over into the Holsten. The little valleys are crazy and go off every which way. You can’t travel long in the same direction till you hit another ridge.

  “But the biggest thing I ever seen in the West, bigger than the bears, and the ugly old hog sturgeon in the river, and the buffaloes in the valleys to the west, was the pigeon swarms. Anybody that’s been there will tell you the pigeons come over twice a year in flocks so long it takes days for them to pass. I’ve seen them break down a whole forest where they lit in the trees for the night. And they paint the ground white with their droppings. They’ll eat anything that happens to be in their way.”

  “How come they don’t starve?” I heard myself saying.


  “’Cause the land is covered with chestnuts and huckleberries and elderberries, and when they eat out one place, they just move on.”

  Your Grandpa turned his chair and looked into the fire. “It’s near planting time in the West,” he said.

  “Can’t plant corn till the oak leaves is big as a squirrel’s ear,” my Daddy said.

  Your Grandpa glanced at me but didn’t say nothing for a minute. Finally he said, “It gets warm sooner over the mountains. The farther inland you go the earlier spring comes. Already it’s budding out there, and the grass is green.”

  “You got some land there already?” my Daddy said.

  “I got a place picked out not too far from the river. It’s got a spring runs right out from under a poplar tree. And a cove that’s covered with pennyroyal along the creek. I’ve done built a cabin there, but come fall I mean to have a house grooved together. It’s the prettiest ground you ever seen. And the soil along the creek is black as the bottom of a skillet.”

  “And you ain’t seen no Indians?” Mama said.

  “I’ve seen Indians pass through in little bands,” your Grandpa said. “But most of the Indians has gone on toward Kentucky, and beyond that into Ohio territory. The Holsten was always a kind of in-between land, claimed partly by Cherokees and partly by others. That’s why they fit so much over it.”

  I went on about the business of cleaning up the table and scrubbing dishes in the tub. But I listened to every word your Grandpa said. He leaned back in his chair like he was at home, and him and my Daddy smoked their pipes.

  “To go off into the West a man needs a good gun and ax,” my Daddy said.

  “And a good heavy grubhoe and seeds,” your Grandpa said.

  “Everything else he can make or raise,” my Daddy said.

  “Except for a woman,” your Grandpa said. “He can’t make or raise no woman. He’s got to take her with him.”