The Border Men

Cameron Judd

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781497622722
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Westerns
• Index: Literature

The author of The Overmountain Men and The Canebrake Men continues his Tennessee Frontier Trilogy as the American Revolution rages in the wilderness. Two years after the colonies declare their independence, the American and British armies fight a seemingly endless series of bloody battles in the east. But on the Tennessee frontier, the war is fought by far fewer rules of engagement. In the wilderness, those who strike silent and swift win the day, every tree or rocky hill might hide an enemy waiting with bullet and blade, and a painless death is a rare gift. It is in this chaotic land that frontiersman Joshua Colter leads the newly formed Patriot Rangers militia against both the hated British and their Cherokee and Chickamauga allies. The war has already cost all sides a great deal in blood and betrayal. But for Joshua, the war is about to bring the pain of his own past into the conflict as old enemies return to exact their revenge...

II
The Voyagers

9

The autumn gave way to the coldest winter the frontier had known for a century.

For years thereafter folks would huddle by their hearths on snowy nights and comfort themselves with the reminder that as hard and harsh as the present winter was, it wasn’t nearly as bad as the “Hard Winter.” The bitter season closed its grip late in the fall of 1779 and refused to loosen it as one year passed into another.

Many months of 1780 would go by before either man or nature recovered from the effects of this terrible season. This was a lethal winter that killed game in the forests, a biting winter that iced the rivers from bank to bank and made water travel impossible. For those who had abandoned their cabins, sold their livestock, and pulled up all other roots in anticipation of traveling by river to the Cumberland country, the frozen rivers posed an unexpected and serious problem.

Hannah Brecht pulled the blanket more closely around her shoulders and scooted a little nearer to the fire. Her mother sat beside her beneath the same blanket. They were in a tiny hut built within sight of the icy Holston River and near the mouth of Reedy Creek. They had been ensconced here for about a month, waiting, shivering, hoping, and waiting some more, living like refugees in a farrago of crude log shelters built by those unfortunate enough, like the Brechts, to have found no harbor as guests of the permanent settlers around them.

The winter days were short, and there was lots of activity going on continually as the voyagers took advantage of the delay to better the fleet of covered pirogues and flatboats. It didn’t matter to Hannah. For her the days were endlessly long and barren. She struggled almost continually to think of anything in the world but Cooper Haverly, and by so doing ensured she would think of nothing else.

Despite what had happened that day outside Callum McSwain’s cabin, she still loved Cooper dearly. It wasn’t loss of love that made her throw him off, but the fact he had forced her to choose between loyalty to him and loyalty to her father. She hadn’t wanted to betray Cooper—but what choice had she? If she had verified the secret forest meeting between her father and uncle, Solomon Brecht might have been whipped and driven from the country in disgrace. Maybe even shot or hanged.

Solomon still denied to all around him that he was a Tory. That Hannah could understand; what she could not understand was his insistence on still denying it to her and her brothers as well. His denials carried no weight with Hannah. Solomon might not have lost his daughter’s love, but he had lost her trust.

He excused the confession he had shouted during the raid against their cabin as a desperate lie contrived to save life and family. What man wouldn’t call himself a Tory if he believed he could avert fatal disaster doing it? Didn’t the Whig leaders themselves sometimes feign loyalty to the crown in correspondence and conversation, if it suited their momentary purpose?

Hannah pretended to accept the explanation; it was easier that way. Her brothers, less mature than she, seemed to still believe their father, and she did not try to dissuade them. What her mother knew and thought Hannah had no idea; Repentance held her silence, as she always had.

Though it grieved Hannah to know her father was a liar, it made no fundamental difference in her sense of duty to him. She was still his daughter, still his favorite child, and she would stand by him out of love and obligation. For his sake she had already cast aside the young man she loved, so why should she quail now at any future sacrifices? Nothing could compare to what she had already given up.

Hannah was well aware that Callum McSwain had managed to obtain her family’s place in the flotilla only by the narrowest margin. Had James Robertson still been about when he and Solomon came asking, they might not have found a place at all, Robertson not being prone to give quarter to Tories. But Robertson wasn’t there to make the decision; he had already departed with a party of Cumberland-bound overland travelers by the time Solomon and McSwain arrived at Fort Patrick Henry, seeking a refuge in the fleet for the beleaguered family.

Unfortunately for Solomon Brecht, those who had raided his cabin had spread whispers abroad. Word of his shouted confession had preceded him to the Long Island country. He and McSwain found Colonel John Donelson, flotilla leader, hesitant to accept a man so many believed to be a Tory and maybe a traitor.

Hannah was not allowed close by while McSwain and her father pleaded Solomon’s case with Donelson, so she had no firsthand knowledge of how they managed to talk the Brechts into the expedition. She had since heard, however, that it was mostly Callum McSwain’s good name and rather inexplicable assurances of confidence in Solomon that finally persuaded Donelson to accept the Brechts.

Callum McSwain . . . there was a mystery. Hannah could not understand why the Scotsman had been so kind. Why he, a firm Whig and even a member of Joshua Colter’s rangers, was risking ostracism by being helpful to perceived Tories. Why had he done it?

Hannah had an unsettling suspicion of the answer. Since the evening Solomon had announced that they were joining the voyage, she had kept her eye on McSwain. She had seen how he looked at her mother when he thought no one else was watching, and detected his tension when Repentance was near him.

McSwain had fled the scene as soon as the Brechts were accepted into the flotilla, going on to catch up with James Robertson’s overland party, which by then was already driving the livestock to the Cumberland country far in advance of the water travelers. McSwain had said his farewells and rushed off like a man on the run.

Having come into the flotilla late, Solomon had initially arranged to distribute his family over several of the already crowded flatboats. Then had come the hard freeze of the river and the temporary delaying of the expedition at Reedy Creek. Though bad for the overall expedition, the delay had proven fortuitous for the Brechts in one regard.

One of the families that had begun the voyage on a relatively small and poorly made flatboat had grown discouraged and withdrawn from the flotilla. Solomon obtained their small flatboat and was using this wait to enlarge and improve it. He had dubbed it the Carolina, and was doing so fine a job of its improvement that some other men in the flotilla were turning to him for advice and help in bettering their own craft. Gradually and unconsciously, some of the animosity toward Solomon Brecht was beginning to fade, ever so slightly. Hannah detected this and was glad for it. Solomon had even managed to obtain two oarsmen to help him navigate the Carolina. One was a widower farmer named Jesse Clinton, the other a former seaboard boatman named Zekle Holly. Hannah liked Clinton, but found Holly’s probing stares disconcerting.

The fire had begun to die, so Hannah rose and refueled it. “We’re nigh out of wood,” she said to Andrew. “Come with me and we’ll fetch some more.”

Andrew grumbled about going into the cold, and Hannah chided him, reminding him that his brother and father, who were out roofing the nearly flat shelter that covered most of the rear of the Carolina, were certainly far colder than he.

Shivering, Hannah and her youngest brother gathered wood and carried it back to their hut, where they found the solemn and somnolent Repentance beginning to mix ground corn with water. The woman had been of grim demeanor since the postponement of the voyage. After placing some of the wood by the fire, the young people again left the hut. All around smoke rose from other huts and shelters of every conceivable type, as well as from several of the flatboats themselves.

“I wish we could either go on or go find a real cabin somewhere else to do our waiting in,” grumbled Andrew as he looked over the crude and makeshift waterside village.

“You know we can’t leave here,” Hannah said. “The weather may warm at any time. We all must be here and ready to go on as soon as the river thaws. Besides, many of the people here have no empty cabins to go back to. They’ve sold their lands.”

Hannah and Andrew descended to the shore, where Solomon and Perrin still labored on the Carolina. Zekle Holly was there, too, smoking but not working. Clinton was nowhere in view.

Other than being small, the Carolina was a typical broadhorn flatboat, its white oak gunnels and six-inch sleepers neatly hewn, fitted together tightly, coated beneath with tar and caulked with fibers of oakum. Its shelter was boxy and rough, but much better than its previous state thanks to the labors of Solomon and Perrin. It would double as a platform upon which Solomon would stand to man the great sweep that served as a rudder for the raftlike craft. Like all the flatboats in the fleet, the Carolina boasted a rough but serviceable stone hearth for cooking.

Flatboats, along with covered pirogues, were the most important watercraft on the border. Flatboats rode high in the water and were capable of becoming temporary floating homesteads for those who traveled the frontier rivers aboard them. Onto the raftlike flatboats went everything the settlers would require to begin new lives at their destinations. Often this included livestock, though not in this instance, Robertson’s group having already taken the cattle and horses with them overland.

Hannah had never traveled by flatboat except for the brief three-mile stint on this expedition’s aborted first attempt back before Christmas, and she was nervously anticipating the actual journey. Her father had some experience in flatboat travel and had warned his family that the voyage would be difficult. Hannah, like Andrew, was so restless that even the prospect of troubles roused little dread. Anything had to be better than this limbo of waiting in the cold.

And for Hannah there was another thing driving her eagerness to proceed. Now that her ties with Cooper were severed, she wanted to be away from this region where he lived. The longer she remained stranded here, the more she feared that Cooper would come and seek to regain her. It would hurt terribly to have to part from him a second time—in fact, she wasn’t sure that she would be able to do it. If Cooper came, she might abandon her family instead, and that would be wrong. It was her duty to remain.

“Hello, Hannah!” Solomon said cheerfully. “What do you think of our roof?”

“It looks very fine, Father,” Hannah said, eyeing the new hand-riven white oak boards atop the shelter.

“Well, she’s not as fine or big as Donelson’s Adventure,” Solomon said, referring to the sail-bearing, swivel-gun-mounted flagship flatboat upon which Colonel Donelson would head the expedition, “but I do believe she’ll carry us as far as we need her to—and not even leak! Perrin is quite the man with a roof board!” He reached out and playfully poked a fist toward his son.

“I’m hungry,” Perrin said grumpily.

“Mother was starting to make corn cakes a minute ago,” Hannah said.

“Ah, excellent! I can eat my weight in good corn cakes, Solomon said brightly. “Come, Perrin, let’s go up and see how they’re coming.”

The interior of the riverbank hut was filled with the scent of the cooking cakes when they entered, bringing the cold in with them. Repentance had made the cakes with cornmeal, salt, water, with pumpkin added for flavoring and extension. The cakes cooked on a griddle placed over the coals. A small bit of salt pork sizzled beside the cakes. If it all made for a simple meal, the family was content with it. Already Solomon had predicted that even such basic fare might be harder to come by once they reached the Cumberland country. The cold winter would make springtime game scarce and freeze the ground so hard they might be delayed in planting the precious gourdfuls of seeds they would carry to their destination.

Hannah ate only a little, leaving more for Solomon and Perrin, whose labors, in her estimation, had earned them the right to extra food. She nibbled her own meal slowly and enjoyed w...