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| Even The Stones Have Tongues by � riddleofsteel Part One Conner McNabb was a big man. He stood a full head taller than most of the crowd on the noisey dock. Between his kilt and his mop of unruley red hair and beard he stood out even more. The hussel and bussel of the busy seaport pressed in on him like a vise. To Conner, even after months at sea on a small sailing ship, the closeness of the crowd still bothered him. Feeling the eyes of the curious, he left the area as soon as he had collected his baggage. Conner felt some better as he made his way into town only to face another crowd in Charles Town's busy streets. The feeling that other people were pressing in on him was not new to Conner. In his native Scotland he had spent most of his time alone in the mountains tending cattle and hunting. A small bag of oats, a knife and his gun were all that he had needed. The mountains, rocks and streams were his home and his larder. Only the bitterest of Scottish winters had driven Conner seek shelter. As soon as he could, Conner took passage on a boat going up the Savannah river. A man in Charles Town had told Conner that beyond the broad Carolina costal plain, beyond the foothills, where mountains. After several transfers from barge to batteau to canoe Conner came to the upper reaches of the river. Water falls and rapids made the river impassable from that point. Traveling in a northwestern direction, Conner followed a wagon road. The futher west he went the fewer people he saw. finally the big Scott began to breathe a little easier. The wagon road stopped at a settlement near the foot of the Appalachian mountains. Wild, unexplored mountains full of game and unreachable by English authorities. Conner was a man with a price on his head. The reason he had left Scotland had more to do with a rope and a English constable than the yern to see the world. If his father, Fergus McNabb, had not provided the money for him to book passage to this new world his head would probably be decorating a pike at Glasgow prision. Still, this land held promise. This settlement seem filled with people more bent on minding thier own business than anything else. Folks after his own heart. Before leaving the settlement Conner used the last of his money to purchase some of the things he knew he would need. Blankets, clothing, powder and lead, an axe. He could not find oats so he laid in a small supply of dry corn after learning from a local Indian woman about how to cook it. Wakih was the first Indian Conner had ever seen. When he told her of his plan to travel into the mountains and make his life there, she wondered if a white man could survive on his own out there. Still he was a big man, probably a fierce fighter. She liked his strange talk and his red hair. Suddenly she pointed off to the northwest and told him of a country her people called Nantahala. The name ment "land of the mid-day sun." She said they called it that because the trees were so big and so many that the sun only reached the ground at midday. Conner spent several days talking with her about the mountains and the Indians that lived there. In the end he concluded he would follow the game and Cherokee Indian trails that ran thru the mountains roughly north-south until he found a place to his liking. The day he planned to leave he went by to see Wakih. She was singing while working in her corn patch. Conner told he was leaving and thanked her for the information. "The lessons you need" she said "are not here." She flipped her hand toward the distant mist shrouded peaks. "You will find what you seek there if you can listen." "I have listened to the wind in the mountains all my life" said Conner. She smiled and reached up to tweak his ear. "It is not these that will hear" she said. "How else is a man to hear then" broughed Conner. Wakih tilted her head and said "When you really hear the mountains even the stone have tongues." Part Two Conner followed the game trails deep into the mountains. All around were the sounds of rushing water and birds. The deep green forest and the perpetual twilight of the laurel and rhododendron thickets made navigation difficult. Quite a bit different than the heather covered moors in Scotland. When he found rocky outcroppings high on a mountainside he would take his bearings. The views from these peaks were vistas of endless mountains shrouded in mist and smokey haze. At times he saw the plume of campfire smoke rising in the distance. Several times he came across abandoned hunting camps. By the look of them they had been built by Indians. Conner was careful to avoid contact with other people, red or white. The country was everything he had hoped for and more. High, wild places, rich in game, berries, and edible plants. Some of the animals and plants seemed strange but food was everywhere. In his wanderings he killed a deer, bird or rabbit every few days. When game was not to be found, no matter, the streams were full of trout. Deer, small game and trout were familiar food items to Conner. Other than slight differences in size and color he had eaten identical game animals all his life in Scotland. Bears were something he was not as used to. However, he found if he gave them a wide berth they were not out to bother him. He did lose some stored meat to bears and there were several hair raising experiences with sow bears with cubs. Then there were those strange little creatures with bushy striped tails and masked faces. They always seemed to be in small groups. Their delicate fingers could undo any latch or knot. Conner watched these little robbers closely and from them he learned which berries were edible and that the streams contained tiny lobsters. These crayfish were a little difficult to catch but a good source of meat when boiled. A little at a time the weight he had lost on the hellish sea voyage returned. Due to his constant wandering none of the weight was fat. Conner was six foot four inches of red hair, muscle and sinew. Wakih had told Conner that Nantahala was a land of many waterfalls. Conner began to realize that there was a waterfall in almost every valley in these mountains. Indeed, trees, rushing water and stones were the predominant features of this wilderness. Not really sure were he was the big Scot kept pushing north learning the ways of the mountains as he went. Weeks turned into months and eventually Conner lost all track of time. The mountains had a schedule of their own and slowly Conner fell into tune with it. As of late there seemed to be a certain briskness in the air. Overhead, flocks of geese honked as they made their way south. The hand of fall painted the southern mountains in brilliant hues of red, yellow and gold. Conner knew he had to find a place to spend the winter. He was not sure how severe the weather would be but memories of bitter winters spent high in the Scottish hills were still clear in his memory. One day he found an isolated valley. At its head was a large waterfall. Below, in the valley floor the creek had been damed by beavers and several ponds with their adjacent wetlands and meadows attracted game. There was a large abundance of downed dry wood, thanks to the beavers. Their labors would provide an easy source of firewood. Beyond the end of the valley was a larger river with cane thickets along its banks and large open sand and gravel bars. Along the ridges to the north and south were vast stands of chestnut, oak and hickory. Some of the trees were the largest conner had ever seen. They seemed to him to be as large as the columns of a Greek or Roman temple. Many of the chestnuts in particular were over 100 feet tall. Best of all, there were no signs of people of any kind. Conner dug into the hill side at the upper end of the valley next to the waterfall. He selected as many logs from the beaver cut timber as possible to save labor. It was difficult work to drag the logs into place by himself. He had to use smaller logs than he would have if there had been a horse or mule pull them. After a few weeks he had constructed a small cabin of logs and stones, set into the hillside and daubed with mud. It was partially covered by laurel and vines. Conner used moss and stones from the hillside to help conceal the cabin. As the leaves began to fall they cover the signs of construction. With a little work the cabin was not even visible from the game trail below. The constant mist from the nearby waterfall served to beat down and conceal the smoke from his cooking fires. This was a trick he learned many years before to hide in the hills of his homeland. Part Three Tasli closely examined the cut branches. He had found them stacked under some leaves and vines near the river. It was the cut ends that drew his attention. Never had he seen so clean a cut on oak branches. They were not chewed like beaver cuts. Plus beavers did not stack and cover their work. This was the work of a tool he had heard of but never seen. His father had told him stories of white men and their weapons. The stories were often a blend of fact and awe of the new technology. One thing was clear. A tool of steel or iron had done this. The blood surged in his ears. Tasli knew his people were no longer alone in this valley. After several miles of packing the straps on the large bundle of wood had begun to cut into Conner's shoulders. He sat the bundle down and scanned the trail behind him. It was not that he had actually heard something. For several weeks he had been fighting the gut level feeling that something was not right. Strange noises in the distance, leather shoed footprints along the riverbank, things that told him Indians were about. Rather than causing him fear the thought of other people interested the big Scott. However, his instincts told him to be careful. He had precious little information about these people. Wakih was the only Indian he had ever seen close up. She had told him much about the Cherokee customs and way of life but all of that had been just information. He had no idea of how the local Indians would react to him. He did not even know if Cherokee or some other tribe left the signs he had observed. He resolved to stick closer to home and limit his trips to the river valley to careful scouting. Once he reached the cabin Conner took extra efforts to conceal his wood supply. It had been a light winter and had not been hard to keep the stack replenished. Compared to winters in the Scottish highlands keeping warm seemed easy here. The constant roar of the waterfall nearby was a soothing sound but with Indians about Conner had begun to see it as a liability. The high volume of noise would make it easier for someone to approach the cabin unheard. On a small rise of land near the junction of the river and a large creek stood the village of Tasli. It was a busy place. Perhaps three-dozen circular shelters woven from river willow branches and hickory poles and covered with mud daub. In the center of the village the council house showed a constant plume of smoke from the sacred fire inside. That plus the smoke from the cooking fires hung in the air like a constant halo. A fence with several openings surrounded the entire village. Outside the fence patches of corn, beans and squash grew among the slowly rotting stumps of former forest giants. Near the north gate Tasli and his father Awi Gadoga sat examining a branch with strange cut markings. "Look." Said Tasli. "No stone axe could have cut a piece of oak that cleanly. "Son a fresh flint axe can be sharper than any white man's tool" "But father there were dozens of these. Would not a stone axe begin to wear at such a job?" "True" said Awi Gadoga "But every strange branch is not cut by a white man with an iron axe either." "There is a white man here. I know it," said Tasli. "Most likely, if there was one, he was just passing thru," said Awi Gadoga. "If you see such a man you hide and come to tell the village. Do you understand?" "Yes, father," said Tasli. But in his heart Tasli knew he would hunt the strange woodcutter. There would be much honor in proving his theory right. |
