Spake As a Dragon (26 page)

“
We each have a pair of
snowshoes,” Sam replies, never raising his head from his work. He
has been mad at Luke too ever since he found out he was leaving the
farm and going to Alabama.

Luke is startled, snowshoes? He has
never heard of such an item. He begins to question Sam for details.
At first Sam seems withdrawn and is hesitant to speak with Luke.
After further prodding, “Sure we use them all the time, especially
if Father and me go hunting...” Stopping for a second, “I-I-I meant
when we used to go...”

“
Hunting huh, just you and
your father? I wager y’all had a good time.”

Sam stops pitching hay into the horse
stall as he fondly remembers the days he enjoyed with his father
out on the mountainside.

“
Tell me Sam, you have my
curiosity up, what did you hunt?”

Sam leans the pitchfork against the
stall, sits down on a bale of hay and begins to talk.

Since the death of his father and
mother Sam has withdrawn within himself – now speaking of hunting
with Luke, and the fun he had with his father has somehow opened
him up again. He spoke of the mountains, the streams he and his
father had crossed. He told of the game they hunted, especially
deer. Deer he said was the object of most of their hunting
expeditions. He talked on and on about various trips he and his
father had taken into the forests of the Cumberlands. He seems to
relive those happy times as he talked to Luke.

Luke did not interrupt; he sat
attentively listening, venturing an occasional ‘hmm’, ‘I see’ or
‘that sounds great’, finally Sam stops talking. He sits staring out
at nothing, tears begin to form and he begins to sob. It was a good
thing, he was finally letting out the pain of his pent up feelings
of his parent’s deaths. Luke let him sit and get it out of his
system, then asks, “Sam, I know I’m not a very good hunter, but
what about the two of us venturing into the woods on a good hunt?
That is if you’ll teach me how to walk in those snowshoe things of
yours. What do you say?”

This suggestion brought a smile to
Sam’s face. “When? When do we go?”

“
Give me a lesson or two
on those snowshoes this afternoon and we’ll leave out at first
light in the morning. How does that sound? If we could bag us a
couple of deer, we can have enough meat to last us all summer. We
might even make some jerky to carry with us to Alabama.”

“
Sounds great Luke, I’ll
run get the snowshoes right now!”

“
Hold on for just a second
Sam. There is something else I need to talk to you about.” Luke
tells Sam the whole story of Old Bill, how they met at the foot of
the mountain on the western side, came up the trail, spent the
weeks together in a cave and finally how Old Bill was killed with a
stick of dynamite. “Before Old Bill was killed he gave me a
treasure map, saying if anything happened to him the mine was
mine.”

This immediately draws Sam’s
attention, “A treasure map? A treasure map of what?”

“
A gold strike! Old Bill
had found the mother lode of gold here in your mountains. He never
got a chance to put in an official claim for it nor did he ever get
to dig any more gold out, but it’s still there. And by the map, I’m
figuring it is on your land.”

“
Aw Luke, your jest
pullin’ my leg to make me feel better, right?”

Seeing Sam was not convinced Luke
pulled from his pocket the large gold nugget and handed it to Sam.
Sam’s eyes were as big as saucers, “Dadburn, you
are
telling
the truth.”

“
Another thing Sam – I
have the map also,” sliding it out of his hat he handed it to Sam,
“Catherine has already said she hates me for taking her to Alabama,
and you do too. Someday, especially when y’all are really homesick
to come back here, show her the nugget and the map. Tell her when
you both come back you will come back rich! That should liven you
both up. Until then, let’s just keep this between you and me. Nate
already knows that I am giving you the map.”

Sam slipped the nugget into his pocket
and hid the map inside his hat. Luke was leaving the barn to return
to the house when he faintly heard Sam yell, “Hot
diggety!”

It is still dark the next morning.
Luke stands on the front porch sipping a steaming cup of coffee
looking toward the east. He figures the sun will be up in another
hour or so. The hot mug in his hand feels good. The temperature
must be close to 10 degrees.

Stepping back into the warmth inside,
he can hear Catherine rattling pans in the kitchen and he can smell
the bacon frying, she is preparing breakfast, “Catherine, is Sam up
yet?”

“
Up? He’s been up for the
last hour – he’s out at the barn getting all the hunting stuff
together he’s already carried Father’s old Springfield musket out
there. You don’t know how excited that boy is! Thanks, Luke, this
is going to be good for Sam, he needs something to take Father and
Mother’s death off his mind, even if for a day or so. Tell Sam to
take Kentuck, he’s the best of all the Walkers.”

“
Hold on a second
Catherine, that snow is deeper than Kentuck is tall. We can’t carry
him. Sure you can and these vittles I have fixed for you too
also.”

Catherine explains to Luke the snow
melts on sunshine days and at night a thin coating or crust of ice
forms on the surface. The sun has shown for the last couple of days
she says, so the ice is strong enough for a Walker to get over, but
it will not support the weight of a man. She tells Luke he possibly
could get a horse through the snow, but it would be a troublesome
undertaking. That’s where the snowshoes come in. In addition to the
information just provided Catherine offered another bit of caution
– she tells Jake to be especially careful of bears. In the early
spring, they emerge from their winter hibernation and are out
scavenging for anything to eat. She says anything means anything,
small animals such as rabbits, squirrels, ‘possums and high up on
the food scale is a man! She instructs Luke to travel in the
opposite direction from any bear tracks they might find, and stay
downwind to keep the creatures from getting a whiff of them. She
reemphasized the threat bears present and again warns Luke to their
danger. “I’m still mad at you Luke Scarburg, but don’t you go off
and get yourself killed!”

The back door opens quickly, in steps
Sam, stomping the snow from his boots, “Come on Luke, let’s get
going I got all our gear sittin’ in the hall of the barn, and
Kentuck is anxious to get on the trail.”

“
Slowdown Sam, it’s still
an hour from sunup, and Catherine has prepared us a fine breakfast.
Sit down and eat, we’ll need all our strength to trek across your
mountain.”

THE HUNT

Each step Luke takes a crunching sound
comes from the snowshoe against the frozen snow. When he first
heard Sam talk of a method for walking on snow Luke thought this
would be a simple task. It is simple all right if he can walk with
two tubs tied to his feet. No, it is not easy to get used to
walking in such cumbersome footwear, but as the morning drew on it
became manageable, not easy, but manageable.

One thing was sure – Catherine was
right, Kentuck easily manages to walk and even run on the top of
the snow. Only occasionally would one of his paws break through
surface and burrow into the snow below, but obviously this isn’t
Kentuck’s first hunt in the snow. He will merely pull his leg out
and continue on the scent.

It is around mid-afternoon, Kentuck
has gotten onto a couple of warm trails, but nothing comes of them.
Sam stops and waits for Luke to catch up. All day Sam stays at
least a hundred yards ahead of Luke – Luke is getting better
walking, but he has not graduated to any speed in his snowshoes
yet.

Catching up with Sam he asks, “What’s
up? Kentuck strike a new trail?”

“
No, nothing on the hunt,
but there’s something down here I want you to see.”

Sam walks off the slope down into a
slight hollow. The hollow is filled with hardwood trees, the
majority being American beech. Nearing one of the large beech trees
Sam turns to Luke and announces, “Here it is! This is the
one!”

“
One what? Sam all I see
is a tree.”

“
Come here Luke and see
this one beech tree.”

Luke moves down to the tree, sees
nothing and looks at Sam with a questioning stare.

“
Over on this side
Luke.”

Luke moves to the opposite side of the
old tree, “Oh, my goodness,” states Luke. “Is this what I think it
is?”

Sam nods his head, and Luke reads the
message that had been carved onto the tree many years
before:

D. BOON KILLED

A BAR O

THIS TRE

1775

Sam begins to tell the story of Daniel
Boone and how he blazed the Wilderness Trail across the Cumberland
Gap back in the day. He finishes by telling Luke about Mr. John
Preston, who now owns this tract of land and how he found this tree
some years ago.

“
Thank you Sam! Thank you
very much. Seeing this tree was worth every bit of my silly effort
trying to walk on these snowshoes.”

Back upon the slope the sound of
Kentucky Lead’s barking indicates to Sam a fresh trail has been
found. Enough history for now, they need to get back to the task at
hand – hunting.

“
Luke, Kentuck in on a hot
trail, but by the looks of these tracks he’s after a bear. Jiminy,
if that don’t beat all – we finally got ourselves a
bear!”

“
No, Catherine said to
high-tail it in the opposite direction if we ran upon bear tracks.
She said in the early spring they were quite dangerous.”

“
Aw, shucks Luke, don’t
you know wimmen by now. They would be skeered of their own shadows.
Wooee! There’s a bear hereabouts. Me and Father always wanted to
catch us one of them critters, but we never got a chance. By the
direction of them tracks I’d say he is headin’ toward that
corncracker’s cabin over on the other side of this
ridge.”

“
I thought your father
said y’all didn’t have any neighbors? It is only a few miles back
to the farm, I’d say this backwoodsman is close enough to
quality.”

“
Naw, he’s just a driftin’
prospector named Rufus – lives here and there, mostly there. We
ain’t seen him in years, the story goes that about a year after the
War started some of them Manure Spreaders showed up one day, he put
up a really fine fight. They say he killed two of them Union
Calvary boys and, of course, during the shootout they killed him
too. His cabin has been empty ever since. At least that’s what I’ve
been told.”

As Sam talks to Luke, they can hear
Kentuck following the scent of the bear. His unusual bark is
pushing the bear in the direction of the cabin.

“
All right Luke, you take
that lever action of yours and work yourself up and around this
ridge, I’ll take my Springfield and go up the holler then we’ll
have that ole rascal between us. Bear meat can do us for a long
time.”

“
But Sam, what about
Catherine and her danger warning about...” Sam is out of sight by
now and did not hear a word Luke said.

Shouldering his Spencer Luke walks
back up the slope and begins to follow the bear tracks. He looks
like a drunken mule wearing galoshes.

THE CABIN

As Sam slips up the creek toward the
prospector’s cabin, he knows the cabin is just around the next
bend. Off to his left and over the ridge, he can still hear old
Kentuck barking his head off. Sam grins he knows his Walker is on
the trail of that ole bear.

The wind is blowing in his face and he
catches the slightest whiff of smoke. Smoke? He thinks that the
smell is not the woods ablaze, that aroma is more like smoke from a
fireplace.

He slows his gait to a deliberate,
easy step, something isn’t right, that cabin is supposed to be
empty. Approaching the bend he slowly slips among the trees until
he can get a clear view of the old cabin. The first thing he sees
is the chimney; indeed a small ribbon of blue smoke is curling out
the top. Someone is in there! Three horses, all with double
hitched, roping saddles, with lariats hanging at the sides, are
tied at the rail. One is a beautiful pinto, white with tan.
Obviously the owners of these broncos are not playing soldier with
the Yankees.

Surely,
he thinks,
it can’t
be Rufus. Those Union soldiers have done killed him.
He removed
the snowshoes and steps slowly through the snow inching his way to
the side of the shack. Nearing the cabin he notices Rufus’ burro
tied to a tree out back. Slowly he positions himself under a hole
in the planking and lifts his head barely enough to see through
into the shack.

He sees three people in the room. One
fellow is tied to a chair, his head resting on his chest. His face
is beaten almost beyond recognition. Blood is dripping from the
corner of his mouth making a sizable puddle on the floor. His left
eye is swollen shut. Although the temperature inside cannot much
warmer than the temperature outside the man is sweating profusely.
Sam examines the man closely, thinking,
is that Rufus?
He
quickly realizes he doesn’t know what Rufus looks like he has never
seen him. Whoever this fellow is if this beating keeps up he and
his Maker are about to come face to face, and soon. Sam continues
to watch.