Drapers Forge

By Richard Sims

In "Drapers Forge," Richard A. Sims paints an immersive tapestry of pre-Revolutionary War America. The novel transports readers to Eastern Kentucky, where the tensions of the era are reaching a boiling point. The story follows a settlement facing a daunting challenge as British Regulars, aided by Shawnee Ind

• Language: English
• Publisher: Quipper Prints
• Release date: Dec 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781778390692

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ISBN 978-1-77839-068-5 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-77839-069-2 (eBook)

Copyright © 2023 by Richard Sims

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One: Outnumbered

Chapter Two: Unlikely Companions

Chapter Three: Long Walk to Safety

Chapter Four: Spread the Alarm

Chapter Five: Bring Help or a Burial Party

Chapter Six: Attack!

Chapter Seven: Besieged!

Chapter Eight: One Sided Attrition

Chapter Nine: The Best Laid plans . . .

Chapter Ten: Kill or Be Killed

Chapter Eleven: Deception

Chapter Twelve: Divided Forces

Chapter Thirteen: Dilemma

Chapter Fourteen: Who’s Shootin’ Who

Chapter Fifteen : Standoff

Chapter Sixteen: Healing

Epilogue: December 1775

Prologue

The two girls and one boy slogged numbly behind the two Indians leading them along the narrow trail. The events of the past hour were forever seared into the brains of each of the three blindfolded and bound captives. Now unable to see where they were going, they trod along at the end of a tether occasionally being jerked off balance or stumbling over the uneven ground. In the distance they could still hear the howling and war cries of the Indians as they finished their butchery of the few remaining inhabitants of the settlement they had known as home for only two summers.

The heat was oppressive with hardly a breath of fresh air and the constant movement and frequent stumbling hastened their fatigue. The older girl in the lead of the other two struggled with the rough binding that chafed her wrists as she was being led. The leather loop around her bound wrists was in turn connected to the other two captives the same way. She kept moving as best as she could however, thinking that as soon as she stopped, she’d meet the same end as the others in the settlement: Tomahawked, butchered and scalped and left to rot on the forest floor.

The girl couldn’t communicate with the others either. Two attempts to do so had brought an instant, brutal backhand across the face from one of her unseen captors.

She could feel the tug of unseen branches and briars as they caught on her dress, adding to her discomfort and irritability. Some of these were tenacious enough to scratch her arms and legs beneath the dress material where her salty sweat served only to make the minor wounds worse.

Periodically the Indians would stop briefly and inspect the tethers, blindfolds and bindings and then be off again with no consideration for the captives. These stops were appreciated only for the break in the monotony of the trail. Too soon they would end and the drudgery would resume with the stumbling, jerking movements of the times before.

What would happen when they reached their destination, if in fact there was a destination? The girl couldn’t believe that there was any salvation from this other than death or enslaved by one of the Indians that now led her and her companions to their doom.

Escape? From where to where? Despair raged through the girls’ mind. Even their brief stay at the settlement wasn’t sufficient to allow her time to get familiar with the terrain more than a couple miles in any direction around it. How could she and the others possibly escape? Surely dying alone in the wilderness wouldn’t be much better than the end these savages may have planned. Quietly she spoke a prayer for help and asked for guidance and courage to meet her end, as unknown as it may be, as nobly as possible.

As she slogged on, totally defeated as she was, she lost herself in thought and contemplated what might have been if she had been allowed to live a more normal life back east. Surely, she imagined, that her life was over and her remaining time on earth could be counted in days at best and minutes at worst.

Chapter One

Outnumbered

The heat of the new day was already becoming oppressive just a couple of hours after sunrise. The buckskin leggings that Jacob wore were still a bit damp from yesterdays’ exertions through the rugged Cumberland terrain. The loose-fitting hunting frock that covered his upper torso had acquired a peculiar odor of its own as well owing in no small part to the perspiration generated from typical humid weather common to eastern Fincastle County area of the Virginia Colony. The excitement attendant with his current situation may have been responsible as well. The trail sign he had observed the day before and had been following in the daylight hours since then gave him good reason to be excited. Jacob was as attuned to the situation as any woodsman would be, given the same set of circumstances.

Something was going to happen this day. Jacob could feel it deep down. It had to figure that a party of Indians with captives would move slower than a single tracker following them. It was clear from the sign they left that the woodsmans’ prey wasn’t expecting to be followed. Now, the increasing freshness of the sign they left told him they weren’t very far ahead.

Jacob hadn’t really been expecting to be following what appeared to be a party of four, maybe five, Indians and, judging from the size and cut of the shoeprint, two women. He didn’t know of any female settlers who were willingly keeping company with the Shawnee and Cherokee bands that had occasionally raided and hunted in the area. The footprints themselves had a strange character to them. The smaller pair of prints had lost a heel giving the wearer an awkward gait and the other pair, while showing normal wear, had a frequent uneven stride as though the wearer were stumbling, perhaps due to an injury, or maybe being led or prodded and jerked off balance. The other footprints were of four pairs of moccasins and one pair of bare feet slightly smaller than the moccasin prints. This was a very curious trail.

He’d found and kept the tuft of coarse linsey-woolsey that had been snagged by a trail-side briar, obviously from one of the wearers garments, in hopes of using it as a comparison for any others he might find. It was a fresh tear; he could tell by the torn fibers that it hadn’t been windblown and further frayed or rained on since it was left behind. If it hadn’t been for that briar, he might have missed the trail altogether. The focus of his attention instead, had been the trail he had been following along Russell Fork left by the Weavers’ milk cow after having broken its tether and wandered off.

Jacob always enjoyed these opportunities to get away from the drudgery of tending the little farm he and Annie had started even though the trails he followed were hardly easy ones. It wasn’t so bad looking after the place when Annie was alive, almost enjoyable in fact. Now that she was gone though, all of the myriad little chores at the homestead just reminded him of her and the brief time they had shared together.

Jacob often reflected how perfectly suited to each other they were. Life on the frontier was back breaking work; and unless a man had a good woman to help share the load, it could easily break a man’s spirit. Nearly everything needed for survival either came from the ground as a product of tilling, sowing and reaping or harvesting from the wilderness in the form of wild game, berries, crabapples and herbs. There were only a few staples that couldn’t be grown or hunted; salt, sugar, coffee, tea, seeds, fabric, tools, gunpowder, and lead for shot, and that had to be packed into the isolated settlements. Packing anything in over the rugged Cumberland Mountains into some of the remote settlements beyond was backbreaking labor.

With a good woman to share the load and keep the domestic chores attended to, there was little that any man could find fault with. Annie had been the best. She was smart, possessed a good humor, was strong enough to carry her own weight without a whimper of protest and had a man-pleasing feminine figure. Mercy! How he loved that crooked little smile she gave him when she wanted him to take her to bed.

But now she was gone and he sought every available opportunity to avoid the little chores that only served to remind him of sweet, smart, enticing Annie and the very short time they’d shared together.

Jacob had often served the local communities as kind of a one-man scouting party ever since that summer, maybe a year ago, when he’d tracked and rescued the Robinson boy. It was damned dangerous in these woods if a body wasn’t careful to keep an eye open and pay attention to some common rules of survival.

It was a good thing he’d found the boy when he did, too. If he’d been another minute or two later, the boy would have been ripped limb from limb. As it was, the youngster was already badly mauled by a she-bear after he had wandered too far into the wilderness of the Cumberland foothills.

The boy had been a real mess when Jacob had finally caught up and was still being mauled as he struggled weakly against the bears attack. One arm had been mangled, teeth and claw gouges on the boys’ neck, back and buttocks. Jacobs’ only option available had been to drop the bear and attend to the boy afterward.

He recalled how it had been a difficult shot to set up and not one that many hunters would relish. The bear was intent on tearing the boy to pieces and not feeling obliged to present a clear shot for longer than a wink. Quick as a heartbeat he had made his decision, shouldered his Gonter built flintlock and aimed for the only point on the bear’s fat neck, which would drop her in a heap - if he hit it. If he had missed, he could easily have found himself added onto the bears’ bill of fare. At seven rods distance, he wouldn’t have time to reload. He’d likely have to finish the chore with knife and tomahawk; not an enviable prospect with the bears’ reach probably longer than his own and tipped with a handful of claws that in one swipe could disembowel any three men.

Jacobs’ eye and hand coupled to the rifle were in perfect synchronization that day. When the 32 gauge, half ounce ball roared from the muzzle and found its mark on the bears fat neck, her jaw dropped open, roared in pain and then collapsed in a heap next to the boy. The mortally wounded behemoth rolled slowly like a giant blubbery ball down a slight incline in the path to end up on her side still breathing but unable to move, paralyzed with a severed spinal cord. Jacob approached the animal from the back as far away from the deadly claws as possible and dispatched her with a couple of quick tomahawk chops to the neck severing the bears’ jugular. Satisfied with the copious flow of blood from the combination rifle ball and ‘hawk wounds, he watched for a time to ensure the animal wasn’t going to rise again to renew the attack before he reloaded the rifle and turned his attention to the boy.

Jacob assessed the severity of the wounds on the boys’ body carefully. The boy had a goose egg knot on the side of his head and was only semi-conscious, whether from the loss of blood or the knot, Jacob could only guess. He had set to the task of getting the boy able to travel while he was still by stitching some of the deeper wounds with thorns collected from a locust tree in the vicinity. Other wounds were plugged with tufts of goose down from his own possible bag and bound to the wounds with strands of tender inner bark of a young sapling, a type of first aid he’d heard the Indians used to stop the flow of blood. With a little luck the boy might even live to tell the tale. He’d lost a lot of blood though, and if the putrefaction didn’t set in the boy would probably be a long time recovering from the wounds.

This done, and with the better part of the day spent in attending to him, he had set about making a travois to transport the boy. Without his horse, he didn’t relish being on the towing end of the simple framework, but in this case the boy couldn’t be carried without tearing open the crudely stitched wounds he’d labored so hard to close.

To make the travois, he had selected two small trees about the size of his wrist. He quickly cut them down, stripped their branches, and bound them together at their tops with strips of their own bark. Other saplings were bound in place to hold the trunks separated into a deep V. He deftly tied other branches and boughs to this base to form an efficient carrying structure for the task of supporting the boys’ weight for the trip back home. Without his horse, he’d have to tow the travois himself. It wasn’t smart to undertake such a task that occupied both hands and without a weapon close by, but he had no choice.

By then it was too late in the day to travel, even if the boy could. His final task had been to carry the boy some distance down the trail and away from the bear carcass as protection against any prowling animals drawn by the scent of blood, looking for a free meal. There, he set up a defensible campsite among a grove of trees and fixed a meal of roasted bear heart generously provided by the dead bear and pemmican from a supply in his own pack. Jacob managed to rouse the boy into consciousness to get a little of finely cut up bear heart and broth into him with some more water before he passed out again.

Early the next morning, the boy had come around pretty much and was in considerable pain from the knot on his head, wounds the bear had inflicted and the patch job Jacob had done on him. After a hasty breakfast, he had elected to begin the journey back to the settlement at once to get as many miles as possible behind him before the heat of the day made any movement doubly tiring. The sooner the boy got back to the settlement the sooner he could receive better medical attention in the hands of Vivian Ingles.

The trip had taken nearly all day with Jacob towing the travois as fast as possible – the springiness of the branches provided a fair amount of comfort for the boy. As he approached the settlement, Bennys’ anxious parents met him. Greatly relieved of the load, an exhausted Jacob relinquished the travois. Replaced by other willing hands, the boy was quickly taken to the Ingles cabin where Vivian set about attending to the wounds made somewhat more gruesome by the locust thorn - goose down - sapling twine handiwork of Jacob Horn.

The 11-year-old had mended, if you can call it that, as a living testimony of what could happen to a tenderfoot in the wilderness who didn’t pay attention to his surroundings and insinuated himself between the close relationship of a she-bear and her cub.

Jacobs’ popularity and status in the community continued to escalate from this episode to the point where the care and welfare of his own homestead were frequently neglected. Whenever someone would arrive at his doorstep and begin a conversation with, Hey, Jake, do you think you might...? Jacob would always answer in the affirmative, pack a few things for the trail, grab his Peter Gonter long rifle, and maybe throw a saddle on Big Fella depending on the distance and condition of the terrain to be covered. He could be ready to go at a moments’ notice after paying his respects to the mound of soil with a crudely incised headstone that read Annie 1774. There was, after all, nothing he was doing at the little homestead that would suffer by the delay of a day or two.

It was a question like that coming from Min Weaver that had brought him to his current situation with, as yet no clear solution at hand until he could get a look at who was being taken whereby whom. The milk cow would have to fend for herself for now.

Now, after trying to determine every reasonable and peaceable situation that could develop to bring white women into the company of Indians headed for parts unknown, there was only one conclusion that made sense, and he didn’t like the odds.

The band had finally crossed Russell Fork a short time before as evidenced by the muddy tracks climbing the opposite bank of the rain-swollen river. Jacob scanned the trail on the far side of the stream to ensure that he wasn’t being observed by a rear guard of the party he was following. It was all clear. Jacob quickly cut and stripped a sapling for use as a walking staff, took off his moccasins and wound the carry straps of his possible bag, moccasins, powder horn, knife, tomahawk and haversack around the stock of his rifle and carefully crept into the current. Using the staff in his left hand to grope along the bottom for solid footing and bracing himself against the force of the current, he held the rifle-stiffened bundle over his head with his right to avoid soaking the valuable contents. The loss of any item in this bundle would spell failure to the impending rescue attempt and probably death to a single frontiersman on a rescue mission in the wilderness. Most precious was the powder. The finest weapon in the world was little more than a club if the gunpowder got wet.

The crossing took some time, given the near chest high depth of the water and the cautious nature Jacob adopted carrying his valuable bundle.

Emerging from the stream he quickly checked the rifles’ lock for any moisture that might have gotten to the priming pan. Then he stripped out of his wet clothes, wrung out his leggings and hunting frock and redressed, grateful for the impromptu laundering and the coolness of the wet garments against his skin. The haversack, possible bag / powder horn combination went over each shoulder, and then the belted knife and tomahawk were cinched around his waist giving form to Jacobs’ six-foot frame by gathering the loose folds of the voluminous, mid-thigh length frock. He checked the rifle again; retrieving it from where he’d laid it in the grass as he redressed and insured that nothing had obstructed the bore. The flint clamped tightly with a small patch of leather in the cock on the rifles’ lock was still undamaged and should function reliably for a few more fires. Lastly, he put on the high lace up moccasins and made ready for the trail again

A stream crossing like that would have cost the Indians considerably more time than he had taken, he reasoned, since the women probably would have been in long dresses and possibly unaccustomed to deep water stream crossings. It was nearing midday now and he chose to take advantage of the break afforded by the stream to have a quick lunch of jerky and pemmican from the supply in his haversack and washed down with water served up from the stream in his refilled goatskin canteen. If the Indians weren’t far ahead, perhaps they’d be doing the same thing and if they weren’t expecting trouble and, if they were suitably distracted by eating and if the women didn’t get in the way... If, if, if. A successful ambush against four or five to one odds needed a plan with a lot fewer ifs.

Adelia was miserable. Ever since being handed over unceremoniously by that bastard Colonel Charleton to these savages, she and her sister Jane, along with their nearest neighbors’ boy Isaac Carter, had been bound, blindfolded and herded along this God-forsaken path. For the last several days, she had forgotten how many had passed since this hell had begun; they had stopped briefly during the day and had been untied to take their meager odorous meals. They’d rest for a short time and then push on until sunset put an end to that day’s misery. Jane was in similar condition with her dress torn, sweaty smelling, wet and mud spattered and had numerous cuts, scratches from unseen branches and briars. Numerous bruises on her arms and legs from stumbling and being jerked off balance while being dragged by her bound wrists made her ache all over. Isaac was in the worst condition for, having to travel barefoot; his feet were cut, bruised and bleeding and were in serious need of bandaging.

Adelia recognized the signs now of another impending break from the drudgery of the march. The three hostages were stopped with an unintelligible command from one of their captors, grouped together, pushed to the ground and untied. After being freed, each one removed the sweat-strained blindfold and gazed, blinking in the sunshine, at their surroundings trying to determine where they were and in which direction they were traveling.

Janie, are you okay? She asked as she looked at her sisters’ chafed and bleeding wrists.

"I can hardly move my fingers, ‘Deelie! They tied them too tight,’ Jane whimpered.

Indeed, her wrists were rubbed raw and bleeding slightly where the thongs had chafed and abraded the flesh of the sixteen-year olds’ wrists from the constant and accumulated abuse of the march and her fingers were tinged a pale shade of blue.

Keep wiggling your fingers, Janie. It’ll help. Your fingers might mortify if you don’t! Adelia exaggerated the seriousness of the condition as the latest dig of their sibling rivalry.

The girl’s rivalry had been a constant irritation for their parents, but now, the older Adelia was instantly sorry she’d spoken this way and was genuinely concerned for the safety of her younger sister, although her own condition was little if any better. Her own wrists were nearly as bad as Janie’s, her fingers stiff and swollen from lack of circulation. Her homespun dress was just as torn, sweaty, mud spattered and soaked through from the ordeal of the stream crossing as her sisters’.

She and Jane had both fallen in the swift current when Isaac had slipped and lost his footing pulling them off balance backward into the swirling water. With their wrists bound and unable to regain their footing in the deep water, they had given in to panic. Their captors’ poor planning in crossing the stream with the captives bound, was rectified a bit by their response to the emergency. They had reacted quickly to the situation, and outside of being dunked repeatedly, and a few more scrapes and bruises added to their accumulation of injuries while being dragged ashore, the girls hadn’t been injured.

Adelia had heard Isaacs’ cries of anguish and suspected that perhaps he hadn’t been so lucky. Her attempts to talk with Isaac after the crossing had been thwarted with jabs from the warrior following behind her as an unintelligible, but clearly understood rebuke for her trouble. She guessed the same was happening to Isaac.

Now as she turned her attention to Isaac, she saw the reason for his outcry back at the crossing. His bare feet were cut, bruised, and swollen from the day’s long ordeal but now his right calf had sustained a deep diagonal gash and had bled profusely from the looks of his sodden, bloodstained leggings. He was clearly in great pain and in the last half mile since the stream crossing, he’d undoubtedly lost a considerable amount of blood.

ISAAC! She nearly screamed, You’re bleeding!

Their captors were startled at Adelia’s exclamation, and one had come over to her, scowled fiercely, and backhanded her powerfully across the face causing her to fall roughly to the ground, where she lay dazed for a moment. The warrior gazed at her icily for a moment longer to make sure she didn’t make another alarming noise and moved off a short distance to stand guard over the trio.

Adelia rose on both elbows and slowly began to work her way toward where Isaac lay looking pale. She’d noticed he’d hardly stirred during the brief altercation with the Indian, and as she inched nearer, she observed he was shivering.

Isaac, she called in a lower tone of voice, We need to get that leg bandaged before you lose any more blood.

I don’t feel so good ‘Delia. I feel cold and hot at the same time and I’m dizzy.

Probably from the loss of blood. Let me bandage that leg first, then we can attend to the rest of you, turning to Jane, she said, Come over here and get as close to Isaac as you can, Janie, he needs to get warm, or he’ll catch his death. She realized her exaggeration this time may be closer to the truth than either of them knew.

As Jane had maneuvered closer to the boy, Adelia pulled the slimy legging up Isaacs’ injured leg to get a better look at the wound. Now that Isaac was lying down the bleeding had slowed, but the wound was still very serious. She considered what she might have at her disposal for dressing such an injury. As nearly all their clothes dirty and ragged and totally unsuitable for bandaging anything, she considered an embarrassing option and wondered frightfully at what the warriors’ reaction might be.

Not knowing how much time they had before they would be bound and blindfolded again, there was not a moment to spare. Quickly she opened the cross-laced bodice of her dress to reveal the all-in-one garment that served as night gown and petticoat combined. Deftly she untied the laces that served to make the full-cut garment conform to her well-developed figure.

Deely! What are you doing? Jane whispered, wide eyed.

I need something for a bandage, was all she said. Although her petticoat had been sweat soaked several times during the trek, it was still the cleanest material either of them wore. She hoped the dressing wouldn’t do more damage than good. Quickly she found a frayed hem and ripped an arm length of the coarse material from the bodice of the garment and bit off a length of one of the laces. This done, she retied the front of her dress with the remaining lacing to cover as well as possible her nearly exposed breasts and bent to the task of cleaning the wound with a corner of the bodice material moistened with her saliva.

Isaac winced in pain as she cleaned away the clotted blood to expose the gash, which wasn’t very deep but still serious enough to cause the loss of the leg or even his life through putrefaction if it wasn’t properly cared for. As she completed the cleaning as best as she could, she wrapped the leg several times around with the coarse petticoat material and tied it securely in place with the lacing.

The Indians, besides glancing their way frequently to make sure they weren’t attempting escape, paid scant interest to the proceedings secure in the knowledge that the girls were in unfamiliar wilderness and probably wouldn’t know where to run if they did escape. They were content to let the women take care of the boy as they sat in a group gnawing at lumps of smoked meat that had been the mainstay of their diet along with parched corn, they carried in a deerskin bag.

As Adelia completed the dressing of Isaacs’ leg, the warrior who had been tormenting her all morning approached the trio with lumps of the tough and stringy smoked meat for their midday meal with an animal skin of water. They hadn’t bothered with making a campfire for the entire journey and the monotonous foul-smelling food day after day without being able to clean up short of an unplanned dunking in the stream that morning back down the trail, was wearing on the trio. The Indians by comparison seemed unaffected by the exertion and appeared to be able to maintain this pace indefinitely. Their rest at night, such as it was, allowed the youngsters to huddle together under the single smelly wool trade blanket provided by their guards. The stress of not knowing where they were, where they were headed, when they were going to get there and what was going to happen to them if and when they did, didn’t help either.

As the three sat there Adelia noticed that Isaac wasn’t eating as much or as fast as he had in times past. Better hurry up, Isaac, we’ll be on the move before too much longer, she chided him gently.

I’m not very hungry, he replied, somewhat disoriented.

Well, at least drink as much as you can. You’ll feel a lot worse if you don’t.

He responded by lifting the water bag to his mouth and drank halfheartedly in measured sips.

Adelia and Jane exchanged concerned glances.

Jacob had quickly eaten his midday meal while keeping aware of the sounds of the wilderness, and with the rifle within easy reach he was prepared against any surprise that one man alone in the forest could handle. He’d stopped just a few feet from the edge of the stream where the band he was following had emerged awkwardly. They left sign that any tenderfoot could have followed; broken trailside twigs, a jumble of muddy footprints, pebbles upset from their original setting, a couple of handprints where someone had fallen while climbing the slippery bank, and ... a blood trail.

He couldn’t have noticed that on the other side of Russell Fork. Something had happened in the water and one of them was injured. He hoped it was an Indian, but after examining the trail for a short distance he’d quickly determined it was the owner of the bare feet, which answered another important question. If Barefeet had been an Indian, they would have stopped at least for a moment to treat the wound. Since Barefeet continued to leave a blood trail, he guessed that Barefeet was a hostage, too. If that were true, then the odds just got better being reduced to four to one instead of five.

If they didn’t stop soon and treat the wound shortly Jacob reasoned that he might also have one less hostage to rescue. Now he would have to take special care to guard against approaching them during any unplanned stop they might make to attend to Barefeet.

Jacob picked up the rifle, habitually checked the lock again, and began again the pursuit a bit more refreshed and prepared as well as he could be for whatever danger lay ahead. As he moved almost silently along the rugged forest floor with the stealthy gait born of necessity and almost daily practiced, whether stalking game for the table or hostage taking Indians, Jacob had become a true frontiersman totally in tune with the wilderness.

Although his weapon of choice was his trusted Peter Gonter-built rifle, Jacob had also recognized long ago that there may come a time, when he may be forced to use other weapons. Due to a lack or shortage of the two manufactured products required for the function of the piece - powder and ball - he would be forced to resort to other forms of defense. Jacobs’ hunting