Part 1

THE PRIOR CLAIM

A Gripping Romance of Indian War and Pioneer Life in Kentucky

By Eleanor Mercein Kelly Illustrations by L. F. Wilford

On the banks of the Elkhorn River, not far from Frankfort, stand what is left of two rough stone chimneys, in a still-thriving cornfield. A century and more ago these were the chimneys of the log cabin which Ezra Todd and his groomsmen built for his bride, Polly.

It was furnished in those days, the one room and lean-to of it, with stout puncheon tables and stools, also the handicraft of his groomsmen; with a bed made in the pioneer fashion, a forked branch supporting a pole whose other end stuck into a chink of the logs, a second pole crossing it transversely, and this framework covered by a straw-filled tick and a fine, thick feather bed--for Polly came to her husband with a fair plenishing. There was a spinning wheel, too; and a hooded cradle stood beside the high-backed settle at the hearth, and the board shelves, laid on pegs stuck into the walls, held good earthenware dishes, and even some plates and cups and candlesticks of shining pewter.

At the back was a batten door, thickly studded in nails, that had peepholes on either side, high and low. There was a musket in a rack behind the door, and a flintlock rifle hung beneath the high, paneless window, whose solid wooden shutter, with two small apertures in it, opened inward. It seemed to Ezra Todd, on a particular afternoon early in the past century, as pleasant and as safe a home as man ever prepared reluctantly to leave for the uncertainties and discomforts of Kentucky travel.

His wife waited upon him in silence; a lithe, graceful girl, almost wild in her movements, and barefoot, although dressed otherwise rather finely for a frontier woman, in a sprigged bedgown or overdress, cambric frills to her sleeves and cap. His eyes followed her lovingly, a little anxiously, as she brought him his belt, tied it behind over his fringed leather hunting shirt, handed him the long knife and tomahawk to place in it, and lastly the red handkerchief to bind about his forehead in place of a cap--it was too warm for caps.

“They do say,” he remarked, “that Master Ames in Harrodsburg has got some new sort of cap in his store, made neither of fur nor hide, but of fine light fabric. We grow foppish! What say, Polly mine--shall I return to you tricked out in fancy headgear with a feather in it, like the fellow in the song folks are singing nowadays?” He smiled at her as he sang gaily: “‘Yankee Doodle, bow-wow-wow, Yankee Doodle Dandy----’”

Granny Estill looked up quickly from her knitting--a gray, bent creature, twisted with rheumatism, older than women are nowadays at her age, yet with the youthful, laughing eyes of a girl.

“What a pretty, gay tune it is,” she said, tapping her foot and humming after him. “I do like to hear a new tune now and then. Be sure you bring me one from the town, Ezra.”

He laughed kindly. “Eh, you’ve the gay heart, and the dancing foot still, I’ll be bound, spite of the rheumatics! I wouldn’t trust you at a wedding or a roof-raising. Thank you, my love,” he added, as Polly, still in silence, handed him his musket. “Now the bullet pouch, though I protest it goes against my nature to have you always waiting on me so, for all the world like one of those savage females----”

Granny interrupted. “Let be! A woman likes to wait on her man, son, especially so fine and proper and upstanding a man as you.”

He chuckled. “’Tis easy to see how _you_ managed to capture four husbands for yourself, Mistress Estill! But I did not marry a wife to be a servant to me. I buy my servants,” he added, proudly, “or at least I shall be buying them as I sell the crops. Here in this rough life you women have your full share of the work, without mollycoddling an able-bodied husband into the bargain. I cannot make of our Polly a fine lady--not yet. But I can keep her from wearing herself to the bone in service of mine. Look how thin she is growing! It shames me, Granny. Can you not make her mind her food? I’ve been watching her the past few days, and I declare she does not eat enough to keep a robin alive.”

“’Tis true she eats too little--but no man can say that of your son, Ezra! Nursing mothers are always thin, be they dog, or cat, or mare, you know that. It may be she is wise to start him on the bottle, though I do not hold with these newfangled notions myself.”

Ezra’s face softened tenderly. “Polly must do as she thinks best there--though a nursing mother should have special reasons for learning to eat.” He waited a moment for Polly to speak, but as she did not do so, he murmured to her in a lower voice, “Barefoot again? Do you not like the pretty shoon I had the cobbler make to your measure? The buckles are of pure silver, lass; I had them from a French trader.”

* * * * *

Polly looked at her feet in embarrassment, trying to hide one with the other, and spoke for the first time.

“I--I forgot!” Her voice was musical, but shy and hesitating, as if she had not the habit of using it.

“Ah, let be!” said Granny again, protectively. “’Tis cruel to try to make a child into a woman all at once. Dearie me! How well I mind that I used to slip away to play with my wooden doll-baby weeks after I wore the cap and shawl myself--till my husband caught me and teased me out of it, because a live one was coming. Polly has had so little childhood, poor lamb! She was but ten when they took her, remember. And for that matter, ’tis a comfort sometimes to feet more broke to shoon than Polly’s to be free of the cramp of sole leather--” She glanced down comically at her own.

“If you spoil her so,” frowned Ezra, “if you encourage her wild ways, how am I ever to make a staid and proper matron of my wife?”

Granny’s eyes twinkled. “Are you so sure you want her to be a staid and proper matron? Isn’t a sweetheart better?”

But the man’s face did not relax. “Look what happened on the day of the christening! When the neighbors came in from near and far, did they find the young mother in her rightful place in the chimney settle, dressed in the quilted paduasoy petticoat my mother brought over the mountains? They did not. They found her paddling the stream, her kirtle tucked up to her bare knees, her hair unbound like a maiden’s, dipping the babe in the water and him as naked as a newborn pig! What a sight for God-fearing folk on the Sabbath day!”

Granny chuckled aloud, and Ezra laughed too, a little reluctantly, as he could not help himself.

“Oh, I dare say it was a pretty enough sight. But what conduct for young Mistress Todd, matron of a year’s standing, mother of a son, wife of one of the coming men of the country--ahem!” He strutted a little, boyishly, his eye on Polly, trying to make her smile; but she did not smile. “Perhaps,” he added, sobering, “it was the Indian form of christening--but we are not savages.”

Granny put a quick, warning finger to her lips, and Ezra added, more gently:

“There, there. I do not wish to be always scolding, only to make my little wife more like other women. People are happier when they are like to those about them--isn’t it so, Granny? And sometimes I have a fear that my Polly is not as happy with us as I had hoped to make her. Eh, child?”

With a hand under her chin, he lifted her face till their eyes met. She returned his look, long and steadily. But she did not speak. He let her go, with a deep sigh.

“I had thought the child would loosen her tongue by this.” He spoke as if she were not present. “But no matter. Too little speech in a wife is better than too much, they say.”

“She is a still woman, Ezra,” said Granny. “Some are born so. It does not mean that they are always sad women.” She added in a low voice to Polly, as the girl passed, “Speak to him, child! You will not let your man go into the wilderness without a word?”

Polly went to her husband obediently, and said with a sudden effort, “Stay!”

* * * * *

He turned and caught her in his arms, his face radiant.

“Why, my pretty; why my own dear! You do not want me to leave you, then? Yet it was you who bade me go. And so I passed my word, and Neighbor Cook is waiting to ride on with me, and I have told others that I would surely be at the meeting of Court in Harrodsburg. To tell the truth, I thought our son might be proud, some day, to know that his father was one of those to bring the law into Kentucky.

“It will not be for long, Polly only a matter of a week or two--but ’tis the longest and farthest we have been separated since I found you; which makes it hard both.”

He kissed her hungrily, kisses which, after a moment of passivity, she returned, almost with violence. Granny knitted obliviously, smiling to herself. He put his wife from him at last with an effort, muttering:

“I _must_ go now, or--I cannot---- Eh, well, black Ben shall sleep in the lean-to each night I am gone, and ’tis many a day since the savages ventured close to a settlement, thank God! You will be safe, at least. You are _not_ afraid?”

Polly shook her head.

“Of course not”--he laughed shortly--“you who have known so much worse than loneliness! Remember there are neighbors within gunshot, and you have Granny for company--Granny and our son. Polly!” He was eying her closely, and asked again, “You are not afraid?”

“Don’t you see,” suggested Granny, “’tis you she fears for, son, you going, out alone into the wilderness? Ah, ’tis the hardest thing a woman has to bear, the waiting!”

* * * * *

“But things are not as they were in your waiting days, Granny,” he said gently. “The wilderness has shrunk away from us, back to beyond the Ohio water. There are cabins and farms and settlements now, all along the road to Harrodsburg; and one or two houses as fine as any in Virginia.”

“You do not pass at all through Indian country?” she questioned.

“There is no Indian country,” he answered, with pride, “not in all Kentucky! ’Tis ours at last, thanks to you and my own parents and others who paid the price.”

“Ay, paid the price for something they never got,” muttered the old woman, bitterly. “No matter, if only their children get it! But ’tis time indeed the law came into Kentucky. Many a stranger lays claim to his acres here who neither earned nor bought them.”

“And that’s why I’m reading law by firelight, me and many others. No smug liar with a warrant in his hand is going to take from me the land that is mine by right of conquest. Ours is the prior claim here, Granny Estill!”

“Ay, ours is the prior claim. Unless,” she murmured, “’twere the red men’s, maybe--do ’e think?”

“Stuff and nonsense! What put that thought into your head? The Cherokees and the Iroquois have no real rights here. They’ve used the land merely, enjoyed it--free of cost. And for long enough. They’ve not earned it as we have, bought it with their blood and their sweat, watered it with their women’s tears, enriched it with the blood of their children, such little precious bodies as this of ours--” He stopped by the cradle, gazing down, his natural orator’s voice sinking to an abrupt pause.

“Eh, have they not?” asked Granny, innocently. “It seems that the red folk may have suffered somewhat, too.”

Ezra glanced at her uncomfortably. “You’re old, and the old get queer notions. The savages have suffered no more than they deserve to suffer; as none should know better, surely, than Mistress Estill!”

The old woman’s head drooped over her knitting. “I have no love for the Indians, God knows! Daily I pray that they may all be damned. But”--her voice altered admiringly--“’tis you will make the grand lawyer, Ezra, and I’m not one to be holding up mere facts to argufy against you. I expect you’ll be making a speech before them all at the Court meeting?”

“Several, if they should ask me,” admitted Ezra, modestly. “But I must be off. There’s bread in the wallet--what, cake, too? Good soul! And tow for cleaning the gun barrels? Yes, yes, you forget nothing a traveler may need--you learned in a good school, eh, Granny? Where’s my Polly gone?”

* * * * *

During this talk the girl had stood quite still, listening with apparent stolidity. But her face was not stolid. At the old woman’s slight plea for the Indians, it lighted up passionately, only to sink again into the lines of settled sadness. Polly’s face at the moment was older than Granny Estill’s. She left the room.

“She’s gone to get you a traveler’s gift,” explained Granny. “Be sure you make over it, son! Women can do with a lot of praising.”

The young man came over to her and spoke low and rapidly.

“Granny! Get her to talk while I’m gone, will you? I’ve been thinking she might open her heart to another woman, easier than to me. That’s why I sent for you to come. Has she spoken at all--of those missing years, I mean?”

“Neither of them nor of aught else, except now and then a sentence, more like a word or two. ’Tis as if, being among the savages so long, she had forgotten the use of her native tongue.”

“She was in the tribe of Gray Eagle, who speaks English well, confound him! Still, Indians are by nature a silent folk; even the squaws do not chatter. But, Granny, ’tis worse than dumbness. Listen! Many a time I’ve come in from the fields at sundown and found her with nothing done, no food prepared, the wheel idle, sitting here on the doorstep, gazing. Just gazing. Other times she was not to be found, high or low, had gone off somewhere into the woods, and would not come to my calling. More than once she’s been away well into the night, and me searching till the hair stood up on my head with fear of what I should find. She’s brooding--or bewitched, I tell you! I’ve been sick with the worry of it, fearing there might be summat wrong here.” He touched his forehead. “Now and then women with child are took that way, I’m told.”

Granny nodded.

“But they get over it when the child comes, don’t they? And she hasn’t--she hasn’t! The past few days, since the christening here, it’s been worse--lying awake at my side half the night, like one listening for something. Ah, my poor lass! Who knows what happened to her there among those vile creatures, the years before we found her! Who knows what terrible, bitter memories she is holding in her young heart, with none to help! Granny, _you_ must help her! She’s got to speak it all out, and so get rid of it.”

The old woman rose and put her hands on his shoulders.

“There, there, boy, don’t fash yourself! Just shut your eyes and love her. Perhaps the child knows better than us. It may be there are things of which it is better not to speak, more especially to the man you’ve married. Two to brood then, instead of one. Give her time, Ezra! She’s but a girl; things pass. The christening was a mistake, perhaps, so soon; too many people watching her, looking to see how she behaved after living among red savages, whispering about her, as neighbors will. That’s why I advised you to take her out of the settlement and win her back to civilized ways alone, with the things she knows best to help--woods and water and the open places. It may be I was wrong there. Perhaps they only remind her. Well, well, she has her baby now, and there’s nothing to tame a girl like her babies. Be patient!”

“But do you help us if you can, out of your wisdom,” he urged.

* * * * *

Granny blushed. “My wisdom, is it? Think shame how you mock an ignorant backwoods woman that’s never had the time nor the chance for a word of it!”

“I’m not talking about learning,” he said, earnestly, “though when it comes to that, you’ve got more real learning out of life than I’ll ever get out of all the books in Richmond town. Ssh! Here she comes.”

Polly re-entered from the lean-to with a pair of white, new moccasins in her hand. She offered them to Ezra, still without speaking.

“What, these for me?” He spoke gruffly, being moved. “Where did you get them? There’ve been no Indian traders around lately. Eh, you didn’t _make_ them?”

Polly nodded shyly, smiling for the first time.

“Why, how fine they are! All the beading and the stitchery and the soft doeskin! I declare, they might have been made by a squaw.”

Again Granny hushed him with a quick gesture, and Ezra bit his lip.

“Well, I _must_ be off. At this rate ’twill be dusk before I leave, and I meant to reach Cook’s before moonrise. We make an early start.” He laid the moccasins on a shelf.

Polly watched him wistfully. “You--you will not take them?”

Ezra laughed. “No, no, they’re too fine for this journey; the old ones are good enough. I’ll save them for special occasions--more christenings, perhaps!” He laughed again, slyly, kissed her close, and went out of the door with a backward wave of the hand.

Granny hobbled to the threshold and watched him over Polly’s shoulder.

“There, he’s turned to wave again. What a foolish, loving, dear lad it is! Answer him, girl, quick! You might never see him more.” She checked herself. “Whatever am I croaking about? Such days are gone.”

Polly waved a listless hand, closed the door, looked a moment at the moccasins on the shelf, and seated herself at the spinning wheel.

“Now you’ve shut the door, and shut out all the light with it,” Granny said rather testily. “’Tis nearly dark, and candles are skeerce. Besides, the sunset’s pretty, I like to watch it. Let the door stay open!”

“Too pretty. It hurts,” said the girl very low, her hand at her breast.

Granny looked at her curiously.

“Humph! You’re over young to be having a sunset hurt you, my dear.”

Polly, at the spinning wheel, was having rather poor success. The thread broke.

“Here, let me show you!” Granny spoke impatiently. “Steady, no jerking--why, have you forgotten _everything_ your poor mother taught you before the savages got her? Poor Annie! A fool woman, but a fine hand at the spinning and weaving. Eh, what’s this--tears? I’ve not seen you cry before.” She gathered the girl’s head against her breast, her voice softening. “There, there, was it because I spoke of your mother, and that terrible time? You were so young, I thought maybe you didn’t remember. Polly! _Do_ you remember?”

Polly shook her head, uncertainly.

“Then, what is wrong? Come, my dearie, tell it out, my lamb! That’s what Grannies are for. ’Tain’t much they haven’t come to understand----”

Polly said, in a very low voice, “The moccasins--”

Granny laughed aloud, relieved but sympathetic.

“Is that all? Because he didn’t wear ’em, you mean, didn’t seem to appreciate them? Lord love you, that’s a man all over. He didn’t realize, pet, he didn’t know you wanted him to show off well before all those men at the Court meeting. But he appreciated the moccasins just the same, appreciated most of all the love you put into ’em. Polly! It _was_ love you put into ’em, wa’n’t it?”

The girl paused a moment before answering, slowly: “I do not know. He is kind, beautiful---- It might be--if--if----”

“If!” repeated Granny. “If? Then in heaven’s name _why ain’t it_?”

The girl gave her a queer, beseeching look, and did not answer.

“Eh, well,” sighed the old woman, “’tis your own business, sure! Reckon I’m getting to be a right meddlesome old fool.”

* * * * *

She resumed her knitting, the spinning wheel whirred again, the room grew darker--would have been quite dark except for a flickering light from the pine knot on the hearth. Granny’s voice came presently out of the shadows, with a dreamy quality unusual to its brisk accents:

“That smell of burning pinewood always makes me think of the forest, and of our first little cabin there in the clearing, mine and Dan’l’s. A happy time----”

The girl at the spinning wheel lifted her head with a sharp movement, as of pain, which was not lost on the old eyes watching her.

“Tell me, dearie--I’ve often wanted to ask: were they so terribly cruel to you, those ugly savages?” Granny asked quietly.

“They were not all cruel,” the girl said. “Nor ugly.”

“No?” repeated the other, encouraged. “Not the women, perhaps? One of them would have mothered you, I dessay? Surely even red savage women would want to protect a poor little motherless thing like you, just coming into womanhood? And--and save her from the wickedness of the men?”

“The men,” said Polly, “were not all wicked.”

Granny winced. But she spoke again, very gently, “Sometimes cruelty from men is--is better than too much kindness. Eh, Polly, my girl?”

There was no answer. The spinning wheel whirred unevenly.

Granny sighed. “Of course you needn’t talk to me unless you’ve a mind to. Only, remember, if you’ve got something to forget, that ain’t the way to do it, keeping it all to yourself; that ain’t the way to do it!”

After a pause she spoke again, haltingly:

“Sometimes I’ve thought--maybe it’s because I’m old, getting into my dotage--but I’ve thought there might be things you _didn’t want to forget_! I know how it takes ahold of men, that wild, free life. It sort of spoils ’em for houses and folks and duties, and such as that. They keep wanderin’ off, further and further off, till some day they don’t never come back. My Dan’l, your own grandfather, was like that. But women are different, Polly. They’ve got to be! They’ve got to mind the house, and see that the fire don’t go out; see that the courage don’t go out in their men folk, either, because it takes more than tinder to light that again. Else there soon wouldn’t be any homes to mind, all of us wanderin’ round loose in herds, like the wild beasts. Sometimes, since we got you back, Polly, I’ve been scared you might have inherited a sort of hankerin’ for the wilderness, from your grandfather, dearie----”

The girl had stopped spinning. She slipped over to the cradle and crouched beside it, whispering in a sort of moan, “_Nenemoosha, Nenemoosha----_”

“Ah, was he stirring in his sleep, and his deaf old Granny never heard? Takes a mother’s ear for that! But you oughtn’t to talk to him in that outlandish tongue, I declare you oughtn’t. ‘_Nenemoosha_’--what a name for a boy that’s just been christened a good, sound Bible ‘John’! Whatever does it mean?”

“It means ‘Beloved,’” answered the girl, very low.

* * * * *

“Oh, just a pet-name,” said the other, mollified, “and a right pretty one, too! Is it hungry, then, poor little starved lamb?” she added, for the baby was whimpering urgently.

The mother ran into the lean-to and returned after a moment, bringing an old-fashioned nursing bottle with a long rubber tube, which Granny eyed with great disfavor.

“Humph! What a contraption to cheat a child out of its natural rights! Don’t see many of ’em in these parts. Cook must ’a’ got it from a French trader! All well enough for his poor wean, whose mother died in the borning; but for a strong, hearty lass like you---- I’m surprised he would ’a’ brought it to you! Don’t seem quite modest, like.”

“I asked him for it,” said Polly.

“Asked him! Whatever for?”

The girl answered, hesitatingly, “If--if I should be taken away, like young Mistress Cook----”