The Kentucky Trace: A Novel of the American Revolution

6.

65 6 The sun was halfway to noon, and he was making no better time than yesterday or the day before. This was the beginning of his fifth day out, and he’d come only around a hundred miles, but this trace ought not to be measured in miles. Up and over Clinch Mountain; Clinch River to swim, Powell Mountain, Powell River, up and down over rocky-bottomed, steep-walled creeks, places so steep a man wondered why the horses didn’t fall backwards. The long pull up to Cumberland Gap, down and down into the flat land near the river, mud shank-deep on the mares, then Cumberland River to swim. More creeks, more up-and-down going, until here he was off the main Kentucky Trace, twelve or fifteen miles west of Flat Lick on an Indian trail he had been on before. And as so often during the trip, he was leading Kate above a steeply falling creek with bluffs on either side. Making certain he was on Weaver’s old trail had cost him time. He’d picked up the trail at Weaver’s Place and had followed it easily to the old Hunter’s Trace. Once he’d reached that, Weaver’s trail was lost most of the time in mud and rock, or under the tracks of the many horses, cows, hogs, sheep, and people who’d followed the trace since Weaver’s party had gone over it months before. He knew the tracks of Weaver’s horses and he knew those of his own, 66 but for all his searching he’d never found a track that belonged to one of his horses. This east-west trail crossed Rockcastle River near where it emptied into the Cumberland, then went on to meet a north-southwest trail that led to the Cumberland settlements. He knew he was on the right trace; he’d found a clear print of a shoe belonging to Weaver’s big sorrel. He was stopped now by a track he’d been seeing since first finding it at Weaver’s Place. Here, it was not only headed in the wrong direction, but the toe calk had gone in uncommonly deep as if the horse had been running. Only a fool or a man dead drunk would gallop his horse along this rocky creek bank. Well, a man scared might, or a riderless runaway horse. “Come on, Kate. I’ve wasted enough time,” and he started up the path. The only part of Kate that moved was her head, which she tossed. Another rattlesnake? He looked ahead, down toward the creek, up the hillside to find nothing out of the ordinary. He looked at her. She said a bad smell was coming down the creek. He sniffed; nothing but cool air moving down the creek valley to bring the smell of hemlock and clean white water. He shook his head over Kate, left her, and walked on. He had followed the trace around a jutting ledge of rock when a big-toothed skull smiled up at him. The rib cage and other bones had slid down the hillside. A leg bone, half-hidden by a dirty boot, burst by the swelling rot of flesh, was all that marked the skeleton as having belonged to a man. His skull had been so thoroughly cleaned by buzzards, wolves, and weather there was no telling whether he’d been scalped. He walked on; the creek bank above offered a more gentle slope. He climbed it. The Warriors’ Path was only about fifteen miles to the east; if Indians instead of white men had ambushed Weaver’s party, they would have done it on this, the eastern side of the creek. He had angled several paces up the hillside when a bee whizzed past him, then another. What could bees want here in the deep woods where in late October there were no flowers? He watched and followed other bees as they flew by, until he saw all were lighting on the trunk of a young hickory at a spot about head high from the ground. Careful neither to crush nor alarm them, he put a gloved forefinger through the center of the cluster; he felt a small hole, no bigger than his little finger, if that big, but clean and round as if made with an auger. There 67 was a slant...