A DANGEROUS “GOBBLER”
The adventure of Louis Gist was indeed a singular one. He had set his
pole in the sandy bottom to help push the ark off, and he and Merrick
and Kenton were pushing hard together when a bullet from one of their
Indian assailants ashore broke the setting-pole between his hands, and,
penetrating his deerskin jacket, struck a rib, which it also broke. But
the lead was deflected, and passing half round his body beneath the
skin, lodged there as a little blue lump against a rib on the other
side!
The breaking of the pole and the shock caused him to pitch overboard;
and, as he was but an indifferent swimmer, he would probably have
drowned then and there had it not been for a strong eddy of the current
at the foot of Letart’s Island. This eddy swept him round with it like a
bit of flotsam, and lodged him in shallower water, amid clots of foam
and driftwood.
Here his knees touched bottom and he got his head up. He thought himself
mortally wounded, for the shock of the bullet directly over his heart
had been heavy. Moreover, he was in great pain and bleeding
considerably, and in this predicament he seemed partially or wholly to
have lost consciousness.
When at length he came to himself, he had a confused impression that
there had been a terrible battle, that the ark had been taken, and all
his late companions killed.
By this time it had grown dusk, and he heard, or thought that he heard,
the Indians on the other side of the island. The ark had already passed
down the rapids and was out of sight; but Gist fancied that the redskins
had towed it round to the Virginia side of the island.
After awhile he crawled out to the water on the Ohio side of the island,
and made his way through the brushwood up to the head of it. Here he lay
all night, in great misery; but early the next morning he saw a skiff
with four men coming down the river, and was able to attract their
attention.
They took him with them as far as the settlement at the mouth of the
Scioto, where a pioneer surgeon laid open the little blue lump on his
rib with a hunting-knife, and extracted the Indian bullet.
Three or four weeks later he was able to work his passage back up the
river on a Wheeling flatboat, and told the people at home that the ark
was captured by the Indians, and that to the best of his knowledge and
belief, he, of all her crew, was the sole survivor.
Such endings of the early efforts of commerce and travel on the Ohio
were of too frequent occurrence to render the tale incredible; and,
although some had their doubts, most of the settlers believed that
Gist’s account was but too likely to be true.
Thus far no such overwhelming disaster had befallen the little pioneer
settlement at Fish Creek.
In very truth there were sorrow and mourning at every cabin, and
especially in those of the Royce and Ayer families. To Milly Ayer and
Mary Royce the year 1803 bade fair to be the saddest of their young
lives.
But the stout ark all the while was floating bravely on—past the mouth
of the Kanawha, where, in 1749, the ambitious Céleron buried his leaden
plates, asserting the claim of France to the entire Ohio Valley; past
Point Pleasant, where, in 1774, General Lewis and his rangers fought a
fierce, indecisive battle all day with the famous Shawnee chief,
Cornstalk, and his braves; past the mouth of the Big Sandy, near which a
gigantic railroad bridge now spans the broad river; past the Scioto
mouth, where Portsmouth, Ohio, then showed only a few scattered cabins;
and so onward till, after nine days, they had come to that little town
on the beautiful bluffs now known the world over as Cincinnati.
Cincinnati is said to have been christened Losantiville, in 1788, by the
first schoolmaster of that region, one John Filson, whom the Indians
subsequently scalped. From the depths of his classical erudition Filson
manufactured the name to fit the location, namely: _L_ for Licking
River, _os_ for mouth of the same, _anti_ for opposite, and _ville_ for
town—The-town-opposite-the-mouth-of-the-Licking.
It was customary for arks’ crews to have a “liberty day” at the embryo
metropolis, but on this occasion Marion Royce dissuaded his fellows from
stopping there longer than was necessary to make sure that there was no
trace in the town of Jimmy Claiborne. They tied up for the night to the
Kentucky bank, a little below where Covington now stands, and the next
day floated down to the mouth of Big Bone Creek.
The Ohio was still rising, the current waxing stronger and more rapid
each day. Thus far the ark had tied up only by night, but her young
captain had a particular reason for stopping at this point.
During his previous visits to New Orleans Marion had met many odd
characters along the levees, among others a certain French doctor and
savant, named Buchat, who was vastly interested in the natural history
of the New World, and after an odd fashion of his own was incessantly
questioning the hunters and boatmen who came down the great river. The
latter generally considered him crack-brained; but Marion understood him
better, and liked the vivacious old gentleman.
Dr. Buchat had heard of the huge skeletons of mastodons (then called
mammoths) which had been found by the settlers in the Ohio Valley, and
was very curious concerning the localities where they were discovered.
Marion Royce, who had once ascended Big Bone Creek for game, gave the
old Frenchman such information as he was able concerning the size of the
thighbones, vertebræ and skulls which he had seen in the basin of the
Lick.
Marion’s account so fired the enthusiasm of the collector that he
offered the young man a thousand francs if he would unearth a skeleton
of one of these huge creatures and fetch it down the river on his next
trip.
A thousand francs—about two hundred dollars—was a sum not to be despised
in those days of small means, especially by a young pioneer who was
contemplating a home of his own in the near future. Marion had
determined to win this, if it could be done without jeopardy to the ark
and cargo.
Big Bone Creek is but a very small affluent of the Ohio, little more
than a brook, in fact. It enters from the Kentucky shore through a
fringe of willows, between low, sugar-loaf hills, then densely wooded by
lofty sycamore and walnut. At low water boats could ascend this creek;
but now the rising current set back into the mouth of it for a distance
of fully two miles.
Wood-wise and wary, the young ark’s captain tied up to the Kentucky
shore, two miles above the creek mouth, and sent Kenton round about
through the woods to reconnoiter the lick. For, as it was a place
frequented by deer and elk, it had come also to be a place of ambush for
the stealthy redskins.
Kenton came upon the ashes of a campfire, two or three days old, on one
of the hills overlooking the lick, and concluded that Indians had
recently been watching there. The presence of a large herd of deer about
the springs, however, convinced him that they had gone away.
Very early the next morning, therefore, the ark dropped down to the
creek mouth and was poled up through the slack water for a distance of
nearly two miles. But to guard against surprise, it was moored out in
the stream, instead of being tied to the bank, by driving down three
setting-poles, so as to give forty feet of open water all around it.
Shadwell Lincoln, with seven of the crew, including young Moses Ayer and
Lewis Hoyt, was left in charge. Marion himself, with the others, set off
for the lick, provided with axes and a shovel. From where the ark lay
they had not far from two miles to go, through the forest and over
hills.
Big Bone Creek is peculiar in that it comes almost wholly from five or
six copious sulphur and saline springs, which issue from the earth in
the marshy basin above mentioned.
When the first white hunters came here in 1729 the whole marsh bristled
with enormous white bones—hence the name. Naturalists and collectors
have now carried off everything in sight; but those who have patience to
excavate the marsh are able occasionally to unearth bones of amazing
magnitude.
In 1803, however, it was still possible to find partly buried skeletons
intact, or nearly so. Marion Royce and his arksmen had not long to
search for one, and were soon busy at their strange task.
The Royce and Ayer family traditions have it that the arksmen dug out a
huge mammoth skeleton here, and were occupied until May 3 hauling it
down to the ark on bob-sleds, which they constructed for the purpose.
Many of the great molar teeth and numbers of the small bones were
missing from this and all other skeletons found here; but, by
overhauling several different skeletons, they were able to make up these
deficiencies in part.
Like the deer, elk and buffalo, the mastodon was a constitutionally
salt-hungry herbivore. Great numbers of them, venturing into the soft
marsh about these saline springs, were “mired” and perished miserably,
either from hunger or the attacks of the carnivora.
For centuries the numerous “licks” of this Western wilderness were
veritable death traps for the larger game. Not only were the heavy
buffalo and heavier mastodon bogged in the treacherous salt sloughs, but
the deer and elk were constantly preyed on by panthers, wolves, and
Indian hunters that had learned to ambush these localities.
The mouth of the Big Bone was now near to being a trap for the ark. An
immense raft of driftwood had set into it from the rising current of the
Ohio outside. For a mile below where the ark lay the creek was rilled by
it, and so dense was the pack that it became a question whether the crew
would be able to force a passage through it to the open river.
Otherwise, that part of the crew left aboard were passing dull days,
particularly the two boys, Moses and Lewis; for Captain Royce had left
strict orders with Shadwell Lincoln that while he was absent at the lick
the men must remain closely aboard, and be constantly on guard against a
surprise by Indian war parties, a precaution necessary from the exposed
position of the ark in the narrow creek.
But the weather had now turned warm, and the lagoon, overhung by great
trees, was like a hothouse. A flock of buzzards hung about them, often
alighting among the poultry on the roof of the ark. Hawks and a pair of
eagles also troubled them, and by night a large owl paid them visits.
Moses and Lewis longed to go ashore and hunt, but true to his orders
Lincoln would not allow it. A little sport offered, shooting turkey
gobblers, numbers of which, allured by the plaintive “yeapings” of the
turkeys aboard the ark, appeared on the creek bank. One ambitious young
gobbler flew out to them of his own accord, and began “strutting” on the
roof.
The morning before the captain and his party returned with their
sled-loads of bones a more exciting incident occurred, which well
illustrates the perils that beset the daily life of the pioneers.
A little after daybreak, while still most of the crew were asleep,
another turkey-cock was heard gobbling in the woods a little way back
from the creek bank. First Moses, then Lewis, rifle in hand, sat
watching behind the plank bulwarks. There was rivalry between them as to
which should first catch sight of these wild visitors.
For some time they heard the bird gobbling at intervals of a few
minutes; but this particular turkey-cock appeared to be wary and
disinclined to show himself.
Then, at length, Moses noted an odd circumstance, and drew suddenly down
to cover of the planking.
“Lay up, Lew!” said he. “I believe that’s a redskin!”
Gobbling like a turkey in the woods, to lure the white settlers near
enough for a shot, was a common stratagem with the Indians in those
days—one that cost more than one pioneer his scalp. Some of the savages
were adepts at imitating all the notes of the wild turkey, from the
plaintive “yeap-yeap, yop-yop” of the hens, to the noisy, defiant gobble
of the big, bronze-breasted, red-wattled turkey-cocks.
The human ear could detect nothing wrong with this call; perhaps the ear
of a turkey is keener, for what Moses Ayer had noted was that their own
turkeys were not responding as usual to this early caller.
But Lewis believed it was a turkey, so many had come out in sight there.
The two boys argued it for some time, and meantime the gobbling
continued at intervals, apparently about a gun-shot back from the creek.
Not only Charles Hoyt, but Merrick and Wistar Royce, Marion’s brother,
who had now appeared from their bunks, thought that it was probably a
turkey. Lewis declared that he would go ashore to shoot it, but Lincoln
forbade it, although he, too, believed it to be a bird.
Moses still insisted that it was a skulking Indian trying to pick up a
scalp, and the discussion and banter waxed so hot at length that the boy
determined, privately, to prove himself in the right.
He seemed to retire to his bunk, as if for another nap, but made his way
astern, past the horses. Here he let out the painter line that held the
skiff sufficiently to allow him to reach the bank in it, and then,
watching his chance, while the others were washing up and preparing
breakfast, effected a landing unobserved, but on the bank opposite where
he had heard the turkey gobble.
Concealing himself in the laurel boughs, he carefully reprimed his rifle
and lay quiet till he had heard the turkey again. Thereupon, feeling
tolerably certain that the Indian—if it were one—had not seen him land,
he made a wide detour through the forest and crossed the creek at a
point where the stream was shallow, half a mile above where the ark lay.
From here he worked his way cautiously down the other bank, crawling
from one thicket to another, with a stealth which even an Indian might
have envied.
But now the youthful woodsman was at a disadvantage. The “gobbling” of
the suppositious turkey-cock had ceased. With that to guide him he could
easily have located the “gobbler.” For the first time he felt afraid.
Either the Indian had sighted him, and was waiting for him to come
nearer, or else had grown tired of the effort and gone away.
For half an hour or more the boy lay still in the brush, watching and
listening, not daring to stir a twig. He was already within two hundred
yards of where the ark lay, but young cane, vines and other brush made
thick cover all along the bank.
Fortune favored him at length, otherwise he would not have dared to make
another move. Down the bank, almost opposite the ark, a pair of redbirds
suddenly began making a fuss, as they do when their nests are disturbed;
a catbird also uttered its low, squalling note. Some enemy was
disturbing the birds there, and with a good notion that it might be the
Indian, Moses now crept slowly nearer.
All the while he could hear plainly the voices of the men on the ark and
smell the smoke of their morning pipes. Lewis and Charles Hoyt were
talking and laughing. He heard the latter say that he—Moses—had got the
sulks and gone to his bunk!
The redbirds continued scolding. He could see them flying about over a
laurel clump, and crawling still nearer, he presently detected a slight
movement of the canes near an old heap of driftwood, within a few yards
of the creek water and not more than a hundred feet distant. Keeping his
eyes fixed on the spot, he presently saw a feathered scalp-lock rise
slowly there—for a peep at the ark!
The sight sent a curious thrill along the boy’s nerves, and for some
moments he lay very quiet. Then, plucking up his courage, he looked yet
again to his priming and crawled a little nearer. He could see the
Indian more clearly now, and distinguished his ear, shoulder and tawny
right arm, with its dull brass armlet. Eager, but silent as a crouching
panther, the Indian was watching the ark and listening to the voices of
the men.
Moses, too, could discern as well as hear them, and it made his heart
beat quickly to see Charles Hoyt walk unconcernedly aft, his head and
shoulders fully exposed above the planking of the bulwarks; for he knew
now that the lurking savage, unable to lure any of the arksmen ashore,
had crawled down to the bank with the intention of shooting at least one
of the whites, then making his escape.
“Come, help water the horses!” he heard Hoyt call out; and then Lewis
and Merrick lounged aft, an easy mark for the concealed savage, who was
hardly more than twenty yards away.
This feeling of suspense and apprehension for his companions changed to
something akin to horror when he saw Wistar Royce swing himself up by a
stanchion to the roof of the ark and move about, feeding and watering
the poultry in their cages up there. Surely the Indian could not hope
for a fairer mark!
Apparently the latter thought so himself, for the boy saw him raise the
long barrel of a rifle into view and slide it slowly across a log of the
drift heap.
For some seconds Moses had been holding his own rifle in readiness to
shoot. It was his first experience stalking an Indian, however, and he
felt not a little afraid. If he missed his aim, the redskin would no
doubt return the shot on the instant, or else rush upon him with knife
and tomahawk before he could reload.
But the sight of the savage making ready to fire at Wistar served to
renew his courage, and he cautiously cocked his rifle.
At so little a distance, however, the savage heard the click of the
hammer. He glanced suddenly in Moses’ direction. Their eyes met as the
boy fired. Through the smoke he saw the Indian leap to his feet with a
frightful whoop, and dropping his own empty rifle, he darted back
through the underbrush to escape. But he immediately perceived that the
savage was down, writhing about and making distressful sounds. But even
these movements wholly ceased before Moses had his rifle reloaded, for
his bullet had entered near the Indian’s right armpit and passed
completely through his body.
Meanwhile the shot had produced a considerable commotion on the ark. The
crew seized their guns to repel an attack. Moses’ absence was
immediately discovered, however, and seeing the skiff at the other bank,
the men at once concluded that he had gone ashore to shoot the turkey.
Shadwell Lincoln hailed him by name, and fearing lest the arksmen might
fire on him in the brush, Moses was constrained to answer.
“Come aboard, you young scamp!” shouted Lincoln. Bidding Wistar and
Lewis haul the skiff round, he went ashore after Moses himself, being
minded to give the boy a “wigging” for disobeying orders. “Come aboard,
you scamp!” he shouted again. “Did you not hear me tell you not to go
ashore after that gobbler?”
[Illustration:
“HERE’S YOUR TURKEY GOBBLER!”]
But Moses, who had by this time possessed himself of the Indian’s rifle,
knife and feather-bedecked head-dress, stepped proudly out of the brush
in full view of them all, and holding up his trophies, said, “Here’s
your turkey gobbler!”
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