Alexander Key
The Night Hunter
    In the Kentucky wilds a starving fort waited grimly for meat

    James Ray crouched upon the lookout platform above the great log gates, thin face wedged into a loophole, his spare young body doubled like a bent reed. A hundred times that night his keen blue eyes had studied the dim slope to the creek and the black edge of the woods beyond. As his ears strained for some signal of Kirby’s return, his lips prayed soundlessly. Men stood by the bars below him ready to slide them instantly open. Farther back, long rifles primed and ready in their hands, stood other men, their faces hard as gray granite in the shadow of the palisade.
    It would soon be dawn. Already cabin doors were creaking, and gaunt, silent figures gathered in the common. Ray could feel their eyes upon him, reproachful and a little cold. It was as if they held him responsible for the man outside, just as they’d done that day when he was out with Bill. They should have let him go with Kirby last evening.
    The sky paled, reddening above the trees beyond the field. Ray gave the woods a last, minute inspection, then turned slowly, dreading this moment of finality. He glanced at the silent group below and shook his head.
    “Hain’t no sign o’ him yet.”
    A woman stared up at him, her face dull white and expressionless. She was the one who had been standing there nearly all night.
    “Iffen he hain’t come by now,” she said in a strange, low voice, “I reckon he hain’t never comin’ – ever.” He could see her hands clenched under her apron as she moved to her cabin.
    No one spoke. Ray heard the click of the latch as her door swung shut. Bunches of muscle knotted in his cheeks and he rubbed his palms upon his grimy buckskins.
    He wouldn’t have thought they’d get Kirby too. Kirby was the stoutest of the Long Knives, and there wasn’t a hunter in Kentuck – excepting Boone, maybe – who had a keener or a swifter hand. But somehow Kirby had failed. Out there in those black woods, now, were four men who’d slipped past the gates at night looking for meat. Four men who’d never see Fort Harrod again. And for another day the cookpots would remain empty.
    A lean, bearded man crawled up beside him. “Better git some rest, lad. I’ll take yo’ place for a spell.”
    Ray nodded, but made no move to go down the ladder. He stared across the field where the stalks of last year’s corn showed above the weeds, and in his mind he saw a spot five miles beyond. He recalled painted, half-naked figures leaping like panthers from the cane, and beside him a boy stumbling with an arrow in his back. He’d had to leave Bill behind that day.
    “Stop thinkin’ o’ Shawnee Run, lad,” said the bearded man.
    Ray brushed a hand through his sandy hair. Lines showed in his thin, pleasant face, and his wide mouth tightened. “There’s things, Mr. Bush, you cain’t forget. H-hit’s been three weeks, now, an’ I’ve had to sit here the whole endurin’ time, thinkin’—”
    “Yo’ brother died like a man,” began Bush. “An’ you runned a great race with the Shawnee that day, e’en though there be some what whisper. Five miles hit was, an’ you outstripped all o’ Blackfish’s devils.”
    “I hyeared Harrod a-sayin’ my heart’s in my heels.”
    “Harrod’s a good man with a load o’ worry on him this spring.” Bush spat and his voice grew harsh. “But enough o’ that, an’ enough o’ the dead. ’Tis the livin’ we must be a-thinkin’ of now. They got to be fed – somehow.” He cursed and his big fist slammed against his knee and he looked ruefully at his leg. “That’s what’s holdin’ me back! I’d a-been out there with Kirby last night iffen hit warn’t for the lead in my leg. But they’d a got me ’fore I could e’en fetch the woods.”
    “Mr. Bush, I’m a-goin’ to sneak out tonight iffen ...” Ray slid down the ladder, a tall gangling youth in his late teens whose taut muscles seemed stretched to the utmost to cover the man’s frame beneath them. Bush squinted after him, eyes hard, speculative.
    A hound bayed hungrily at the moon rising like a thin slice of melon high over the fort. Someone cursed and turned from the group in the center of the common to deal it a kick. The cabins, a score of them lying against the palisade walls, were dark. A big man, half a head taller than the others, spoke:
    “Four dead’s enough. An’ they were the best hunters in Kaintuck. No, not another man goes out.”
    “Harrod, we cain’t be a-holdin’ out much longer without vittles,” Bush said. “Here’s a lad—”
    Harrod glanced quickly from Bush to James Ray standing awkwardly beside him. When he spoke, his voice had lost some of its usual heartiness. “Didn’t know you were a night hunter, too, James Ray. Better trot back an’ do your shift on the wall.”
    There was a rasping laugh. “Why not let the lad go out, Mr. Harrod, iffen he’s so almighty anxious to lose his sculp?”
    “Sho,” a second man said. “An’ I’ve hyeared tell he’s a mite fast on his feet. There was a turkey a-gobblin’ over in the cane – maybe he kin run hit down an’ fetch hit back.”
    “Shet yo’ mouth.” Bush’s voice snapped out angrily. “I notice you hain’t a-rarin’ to do no huntin’.”
    Ray opened his mouth, closed it, then tugged uneasily at Bush’s arm. “Let’s go.”
    In the shadow of the logs they stopped, and the youth put his hand on the other’s shoulder. “You – you watchin’ the little east gate tonight, hain’t you, Mr. Bush?”
    Bush nodded, but said nothing.
    “Well, iffen someone was to slip through, there wouldn’t no one know nothin’ about it except you and me.”
    Bush rubbed his beard, considering. “I’m a-thinkin’ o’ yo’ ma. You’re all she’s got now.”
    “She’s sick, an’ goin’ without vittles hain’t a-goin’ to make her better.”
    Bush was silent for some time, his hand tugging slowly at his beard. At last he straightened and Ray saw his eyes staring hard into his own. “Wait,” Bush spoke in a voice scarcely audible. “Wait till the moon’s an hour higher, then ...” He winked solemnly and turned away.
    The moon was over the peak of the west blockhouse when Ray slipped quietly around the corner of a cabin and approached the narrow east gate that Bush was guarding. No one else was near; he knew that Harrod was on the other side of the common, making the rounds of the sentinels. For a moment he was troubled at the thought of disobeying that bluff, kindly man whom they had followed westward over the mountains. Here in the fort that he had planned and built, Harrod’s word was law, his judgment was respected.
    They couldn’t afford to lose any more men. Blackfish had murdered a lot – but the long winter had taken more. Half of those left were sick. Suppose the devils out there in the woods decided to rush the gates some night? It would take every fighting hand in the place to beat them back. He could see why Harrod thought as he did. The fort needed every man.
    But – the fort also had to have meat.
    “Ready?” Bush was whispering.
    “Uh-huh. All I’m takin’s my rifle an’ knife.”
    Bush surveyed him dubiously. “You mean you’re just countin’ on one shot? Leavin’ yo’ powder an’ stuff here?”
    “Reckon I won’t have time to shoot but once. After that hit’ll be runnin’. A powder horn might catch on something.”
    “Now, lad, don’t go where Kirby went – there’s buffalo in the bottoms, but the place will be watched. Try beyondst the hill. Ought to be a buck there.”
    “That’s what I was figurin’. Iffen I come back easy, I’ll give you the whippoorwill call. Iffen I’m runnin’, I’ll whistle.”
    “I’ll be here waitin’, son, with my hand on the bar.” Bush started to say more but broke off in a rumble. Something wet gleamed in the corner of his eye. He spat and cautiously opened the gate a few inches. Ray crawled through on his hands and knees and flattened himself to the ground.
    The moon was brighter out here beyond the protection of the walls. The dark line of forest marking the ridge to the right was a far place to crawl, when so little cover lay between. Once there in the blackness of the trees he would have to be even more careful. But to gain the trees without being seen was important, for then he might be able to hunt for a while. After the sharp, telltale sound of the rifle he’d have to hurry!
    He found a furrow and began worming along it to the end of the field. Here the weeds grew higher and he was able to turn and start upward. Within thirty yards of the first clump of hawthorns near the ridge, he stopped, listening. A turkey was gobbling in the cane an arrow’s flight to the left. A turkey had gobbled there last night – and the night before.
    A swift conviction came over him and he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it sooner. That turkey was an Indian, waiting for some fool to come close enough to have his hair lifted.
    Ray lay still for a quarter of an hour while he studied every detail of the ground ahead. There would be scouts hidden at varying intervals entirely around the fort. But the hawthorn thicket seemed clear.
    He crept ahead a few inches at a time, smelling the sweet scent of the hawthorn blooms and the dampness of the grass under his fingers. Branches closed over him and he rose to his knees. A few minutes later he stood upright under the tall trees beyond, filling his lungs with a long breath.
    Farther on, now, he should find game. Deer and wood buffalo near the rank meadows, bear and turkey in the thickets. But the best hunting, and the safest, would be somewhere on the edge of the deeper woods where the animals came to drink. At that moment he remembered a small spring he’d once discovered bubbling in a ravine less than two miles from the fort. It lay beyond the rise to his left. There was good cover there for hiding, and the ravine might muffle the sound of a shot.
    He worked slowly down through the black woods, slipping noiselessly from one great tree to another, carefully avoiding the open glades where moonlight streamed through the foliage overhead. It shouldn’t be so hard finding the spring at night. Most of the way, the forest floor was nearly clear of underbrush and he’d have no trouble. It all depended on how shrewdly he could judge the distance. First, he’d have to go about a mile, following the gentle curve of the deeper woods. Then, beyond a low hill, he’d find where the ravine dipped away as if it had been cut with a knife. He remembered the well-worn game trail leading to the spring. He could make it!
    But suddenly he felt the vastness of the woods at night, and he grew afraid. Blackfish’s men hid somewhere in these black shadows, listening and waiting.
    An hour later he stopped abruptly, his skin prickling with the breath of a sound that came from somewhere near. He froze against a tree and untied the leather guard on his gunlock that served to keep the priming dry. Just beyond was an open glade faintly illuminated by the moon. His eyes searched along the huge trunks enclosing it, seeking to distinguish some telltale difference in the deeper shadows.
    The gray shape of a deer glided smoothly across the edge of the glade and stood still. He raised the rifle with infinite caution, sighted down the long barrel. His trigger hand tightened, then relaxed. He wasn’t certain just how far he was from the fort. Half a thousand Shawnees would hear the shot – just as he’d heard Kirby’s shot last night. It might be that before he could lug the carcass across the ridge, they’d have him bottled up like a pig in a pen.
    He stood watching the deer with a curious longing, wondering if there could be some way to hunt without shooting. His father had told him how they did it in Carolina, only it took two men.
    The deer was nervous. The cry of a screech owl came shivering from beyond it. At the sound, the deer leaped, turned in mid-air, and fled past so close that Ray could have touched it with his barrel. Instantly he crouched, his heart hammering violently.
    That cry was unnatural! He was wondering whether to turn and crawl back the way he had come when a second owl call quavered behind him. He sank closer between the roots of the tree and his fingers sought the handle of the long knife fastened at his back. Shawnee signals! But what were scouts doing here so far beyond the ridge? Had he blundered somewhere along the way – had Blackfish’s braves been following him all the time?
    Wondering, he squatted immovable upon his haunches, the rifle across his knees, one hand still clasping the knife. He heard rustlings in the leaves and small furtive movements along the ground. But these were explainable sounds, as natural as the piping of frogs in the bottoms and the rak, rak of a coon somewhere in the distance. There was no sign of danger near him.
    He remained motionless for an hour, every sense strained. His fear changed to a dull rage of bafflement. He couldn’t fail Bush, who had faith in him – and who would be blamed for his absence. He owed it to Harrod to get back. But whether he returned or not, he wouldn’t go back without meat.
    In sudden apprehension he realized that the glade was growing darker. A fresh wind moaned high up in the trees and with it came the low rumble of thunder. For tonight, at least, he’d have to forget the ravine, and the spring. He’d save that spot for later, and maybe – his eyes lightened with a sudden idea – maybe he could figure a way of giving the fort a steady supply of meat. A new plan was forming in his mind, but not for tonight. This night he’d have to take his chances here in the woods while there was still light enough to shoot – and then trust to his speed afterward.
    Belly flat to the ground, he began crawling from the tree, feeling his way ahead with his fingers. The rumblings of thunder drowned out the sound of his moving body. He must have covered thirty yards from the tree when the first flash of lightning came, illuminating a game trail leading toward the glade. He gave a low exclamation.
    Now he knew where he was! Somehow in his erratic journey through the woods, he’d circled too far to the left – the fort was only a fifteen-minute walk away! The ravine lay nearly a mile straight to the right.
    But he knew with a horrible certainty why Kirby and the others had died. Within easy reach of the fort were half a dozen places like the glade behind him, places where game trails forked or crossed – all logical spots for hunters to lie in wait. The Shawnees, shrewd hunters themselves, had searched out every likely point near-by and were keeping guards stationed there at night. No wonder Kirby had failed. The places were traps!
    He thought of the ravine. None of the trails around the fort led to it, nor was it known to any of the hunters. He’d stumbled upon it by accident; it was hardly likely that it would come under the suspicion of Blackfish’s men. The place was ideal for the kind of hunting his father had told him about. Two men could go there with only their knives – and they could return night after night with deer. The Shawnees would hear no shot, never guess....
    He would have to get back, explain the plan to Harrod. But first he must find meat.
    The rain was beginning to patter on the leaves overhead when he decided he was far enough from the glade to walk upright. It would soon be pouring and he’d have to hurry. A dozen paces to the left was the deer path leading in the general direction of the fort and the creek. He placed the leather guard back over the gunlock, picked his route to parallel the path whenever the lightning flashed, then ran quickly from one tree to the next in the darkness.
    He stopped at last when the ground began to slope upward to the ridge again. Beside him was a log commanding a narrow view of the trail ahead. The rain worried him. He’d been wrong to come out without an extra round of powder. What if the priming should become dampened?
    Then the thought left him as he remembered the glade, barely three hundred yards behind him. At the crack of the rifle, grim figures would spring out of the shadows, running. And there would be others beyond the ridge guarding the approach to the field. He’d have to work fast—
    The rain stopped for a moment and the moon shone briefly. For an instant it silhouetted a moving form ahead. A deer. He could almost reach out and touch it.
    He snapped the rifle to his shoulder, snatched the guard away, and prayed for a crash of thunder to drown the shot. But the heavens were silent – the rifle spoke with deadly clearness.
    Ray reached the trail in a bound. He dropped the weapon, sprang upon the form threshing in the underbrush, and whipped out his knife. It was a buck, a big one. Too heavy to carry. He worked furiously, slashing, stabbing, dividing the carcass below the ribs.
    Already he thought he could hear swift movements behind him, in front of him. He seized the hindquarters, gave them a twist, and pulled them free. Abruptly he dropped them and snatched up the rifle by the barrel.
    He ducked instinctively and something scored his breast. Immediately after the roar of the musket, a flicker of lightning outlined the half-naked figure hurtling upon him. He jumped sidewise, swinging the rifle with all the power in him.
    * * *
    Bush watched silently by the gate for an hour, his eye fastened to a peephole between the logs. Harrod had made the rounds once, but thus far Ray’s absence had not been discovered.
    “I shouldn’t a-let the kid go,” he kept repeating over and over. Sure, it was his own weakness that had made him do the thing – that and the fact that he’d have given a hundred prime beavers to be out there himself.
    As the minutes dragged slowly by, his hands began to twitch and he struck absently at the unwilling leg. Finally he took out a corncob pipe and thrust it between his teeth. He chewed upon the stem with methodical viciousness until the reed crunched in two and the pipe fell to the ground.
    The kid had been gone a long time now. Good kid, too. Too good a kid to be wasted. He listened for the high, whiplike note of Ray’s rifle, but the sound didn’t come. At the first roll of thunder he looked up toward the sky and his lips tightened when he saw that the moon was clouding over. He heard Harrod’s light tread behind him.
    “Seen Ray?” Harrod asked.
    Bush didn’t answer for a while. At last he spat out the pulp of the pipe stem. “Naw,” he growled.
    “He’s gone,” said Harrod. “You be the one what let him out?”
    “I did – two hours an’ more hit’s been now.” Bush waited for the other’s outbreak of wrath, but none came. He knew, with so many sick, that the fort was short-handed and that Harrod’s only reason for stopping further hunting was his lack of faith in the remaining hunters. A man might be a wonder in the woods during the day – but a night hunter had to have a different set of instincts. He had to be good.
    “Hit warn’t lack o’ respect fo’ you that made him go,” Bush continued. “I’ll trust yo’ jedgment in most everything – but in Ray’s case you miscalc’lated on human nature. The kid’s got the makin’s o’ somethin’ but hain’t never had the chance to show hit.”
    Harrod shook his head. “In this rain he’ll get lost and blunder into a tommyhawk. They’ll get him anyhow, ten minutes after he pulls the trigger. If Kirby died, what chance—”
    He stopped suddenly. There was the sharp crack of a rifle somewhere in the darkness beyond.
    Instantly Harrod wheeled, shouting orders as he ran. Figures darted across the common to the blockhouses. The big man was back in less than a minute, climbing to the tiny platform above the gate. He thrust his gun through a loophole and quickly primed the pan with fresh powder. For a moment the rain had ceased and the moon shone again. Cabin doors opened and a group collected around the east gate.
    Bush opened his mouth to speak. It snapped shut as a second shot rang with dread finality in his ears.
    “That – that’s a musket!” someone spoke.
    Bush clamped his hand tight upon the bar, feeling a limpness in his knees as if all strength had been drawn from them. “Yeah,” he growled. “An’ the first shot was Ray’s. They both come from the same place.”
    For a second there was a stark silence as the group behind him grasped the full import of this information. Then the word spread, and he could hear it passing down the walls to his right and left, and on to the blockhouses.
    “Hit’s young Ray! Slipped out to hunt – they’ve jumped him!”
    Bush eased back upon the bar a trifle, thrust his face tight against the peephole. The moon had clouded again; the field stretching from the logs faded into an empty blackness a dozen feet away. He tried to visualize what was taking place somewhere a half mile beyond, tried to catch the first faint echo of a whistle that would tell him Ray was approaching. But he heard only the breathing of those around him and the scattered drops of rain promising a cloud-burst.
    Thunder rolled like a regiment of drums. Lightning arched overhead, splitting the field with a white knife.
    The watchers on the walls let out a shout.
    “He’s comin’!” Bush yelled. “Glory be! He’s streakin’ down the slope to the field like a colt gone wild!” He slammed back the bar, threw open the gate with a reckless abandon. Another flash illuminated the field.
    “They’s after him!” Bush screamed. “But look at him run – an’ he’s got meat!”
    The storm was beginning to break; with the rapid flashes, the watchers could see him plainly. Ray was coming like a bullet straight down the center of the field, something bulky under his left arm, his gun hand pumping furiously as if to pull him along. A half-dozen black figures were bounding behind him, but they were not gaining. Guns from the blockhouses rattled a warning. Harrod fired. One of the pursuers spun around, dropped. The others halted.
    Suddenly Bush yelled again, pointing to the right. The next flash illuminated a brave running doggedly across the nearer corner of the field. In a dozen more strides he could intercept Ray, cut him off from the gate. The watchers waited, praying for another tongue of lightning that would give the riflemen a chance. But the night was black now, and the rain came down in full force.
    For a few seconds no one moved, then Bush snatched a gun from the nearest pair of hands and ran out as fast as his awkward leg would permit. A form materialized ahead. He raised the weapon, then lowered it as recognition came.
    “Look!” Bush cried gleefully, as they entered the fort and the gate banged behind them. “He’s got meat – an’ he’s got ha’r!”
    “What eats me,” Ray said dolefully, “is that I had to leave another toler’ble good sculp a-layin’ back yonder in the woods with the other half o’ the deer.”
    Later they sat in Harrod’s cabin, the hunters pressing close as Ray told of his discovery at the glade. “That’s why we failed before,” he explained. “Blackfish had it all figgered where a night hunter would go – and that’s where Kirby an’ the others went. But over at the ravine—”
    “You’re right,” Bush interrupted. “The Shawnees wouldn’t pay no attention to the ravine.” Then he shook his head. “But the minute you start shootin’ in the place, the varmints will catch on – an’ be a-waitin’ the next night.”
    “Not iffen we use poles with knives on the ends o’ .them. They used to do hit in the old days back in Caroliny. They say hit works better where the trees be thick – and the ravine’s the place. One man takes a stand behind a tree where the path is narrow, the other sort o’ scares the deer from behind so they won’t be thinkin’ o’ nothin’ in front. But the first man’s got to be powerful quick.”
    Harrod smiled. “I used to do that twenty years ago, but hit’s the first time I thought about hit since – or hyeard tell o’ a spot where ’twould work. I reckon as how you an’ me could go out every night and come back with enough meat to keep the fort a-rollin’ in fat.”
    And history records that the founder of Harrodsburg and young James Ray, who could outrun the swiftest Shawnee brave, kept the fort supplied with meat all during that long siege of 1777.

    1935
    (The American Boy, August, pp.6-8,28)

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