THE OUTLAW YEARS:
THE HISTORY OF THE LAND PIRATES OF THE NATCHEZ TRACE
by Robert M. Coates

James Calk keeps a diary:

1775 Mon 13th [March?]
“I set out from prince william to travel to caintuck. . . .

“Thursday i6th We started early it rained Chief part of the day. . . .

“Wednesday 22nd We start early and git to foart Chissel whear we git some good loaf bread and good whiskey. . . . On again, from the little military outpost, along Boon’s Trace. It is grinding going. One of the party wanders into the forest and is lost. They wait; theyfire their guns and beat about in the thicket, yelling his name: he is gone, his fate unknown. The wilderness has gulped him in. Next day they move on again:

‘April Saturday ist
“This morning there is ice at our camp half inch thick we start early and travel this dayalong a very Bad hilley way …

“we cross Clinch river and travell till late in the night and camp on Cove creek having two men with us that wair pilates . . .

[Cove Creek is in northeast Tennessee.]

“tuesday 4th Raney we start about 10 oclock and git down to Capt martins in the valey where we overtake Col. Henderson and his Company Bound forCaintuck there they were Broiling and Eating beef without Bread. . . .

“tuesday 11th this is a lowry morning and like for Rain but we all agree to start Early and we cross Cumberland River and travel Down it about 10 through some turrabel cain brakes … it is a very, raney Eavening we take up camp near Richland Creek they kill a beef Mr Drake Bakes Bread without washing his hands we Keep Sentry this night for fear of the indians . . .

Food is gone : they have had hungry days, wearydays; always, day and night, the great forest has been leaning all about them, breathing menace. But they move on, making their way westward.

Wednesday 19th
“smart frost this morning they kill 3 bofelos about 11 oclock we come to where the Indians fired on Boons company. . . .

“thurday 2Oth this morning is clear and cool. Westart early to git Down to caintuck to Boons foart . . . While some follow Boon’s path, others strike off by themselves, trying to find a water route to the great Mississippi.

“Colonel John Donelson buys a flatboat and sets forth, his daughter Rachel with him “a black-eyed, black-haired brunette, as gay,bold and handsome a lass as ever danced on the deckof a flatboat or took the helm while her father tooka shot at the Indians.” They are fighting Indians all the way:

“Wed. 8th. Cast off at 10 o’clock. . . . We had not gone far before we discovered a number of Indians, armed and painted. .

“A man named Stuart has chartered another flatboat and is following behind them. The Indians fall upon him in pitiless massacre. Donelson’s boat, drifting with the current, is powerless to return to their aid: . . . Stuart, his friends and family to the numberof 28 persons . . . was at some distance in the rear. The Indians fell upon him, killed and took prisoner the whole crew : their cries were distinctly heard. . . . Donelson’s boat sweeps on, but the Indians follow, keeping pace along the bank, growing continually in force: occasionally, where the banks narrow, their bullets thwack against the boat’s planking; occasionally, from some sheltered cove, a fleet of war canoes comes dashing to swarm about the clumsy barge. . . . All these skirmishing attacks are repulsed: the men crouch at the boat’s bulwarks, firing, passing down their muskets through the cabin ports for the women to reload.

“But still the main force of theI ndian army marches along the shore abreast ofthem, waiting patiently for the moment when snagged, beached or stranded the boat will be helpless against attack:

“Monday. Got under way before sunrise. . . . We still perceived them, marching down the river in considerable bodies. . . . 6 intended by God’s permission, in the good boat ADVENTURE”; almost every entry records an incident in this strange watery gauntlet he runs with death : . . . Captain Hutchins negro man died, being much frosted in his feet and legs, of which he died. . . . The Indians keeping pace with us. …

“Friday. We landed on the north shore at a level spot, when the Indians appeared immediately over us, and commenced firing down upon us. We immediately moved off. … . . . The Indians lining the bluffs along continued their fire on our boats below, without doing any othe rinjury than wounding four. . . . In the end they outstrip the Indians but now another danger appears: jagged rocks fill the channel,and the current, where it is not boiling over hiddensnags, has accelerated to that silent rush that rivers take as they approach a waterfall. They are nearingt he Muscle Shoals: . . . After running until 10 o’clock, came in sight of the Shoals. When we approached them they had a dreadful appearance. . . . The water being high made a terrible roaring. … Every man takes an oar, the women helping : the clumsy flatboat swings into the current, yaws, and7 Thethen suddenly is gripped by the water’s force andflung rocking and careening down among the rapids.It goes scraping, straining, bumping there arequick cries of command, frenzied heavings at theoars: over all there is the ominous dull thunder ofthe boiling river and then at last with a sighing satisfaction they are safe again: . . . Passed, by the hand of Providence. . . . We are much encouraged. . . . They drift on down the Tennessee River, seeking the Ohio. They reach the juncture of the two rivers, but in what lamentable state their food, strength, courage all exhausted: . . .

“Our situation here is truly disagreeable . . . our provisions exhausted, the crews almost worn down with hunger and fatigues, and know not what distance we have to go, or what time it will take us. … But they go on :

“Sunday, 26 Got under way early. . .

“Monday, 27 Set out again: killed a swan, whichwas very delicious. . . .

“Wednesday, 29 Proceeded. Gathered some herbson the bottoms which some of the company called Shawnee Sallad. . . .

“Friday, 31 Proceeded on. We are now without bread, worn out . . . progress is slow. . . . 8  But they went on Donelson to found, with JamesRobertson, the city of Nashville ; his daughter, eventually, to take her place in history as the wife of Andrew Jackson. And others came after them : Captain Hall, Major Winchester famous Indian fighters both; the mighty Major Harvey: “his arm was as powerful as a trip-hammer an Anak among men” : he couldtake two medium-sized men and hold them up at arm’s length; Colonel Bledsoe and Spencer, Boon’s companion, who lived one winter in a hollow tree, shooting deer that came to a salt-lick at its base. Few of them lived long, or died in any way but violently….men embittered…. seeking Utopia;proud fearless men and men with heavy secrets to conceal “desperadoes flying from justice, suspected or convicted felons escaped from the grasp of the law . . . the horse thief, the counterfeiter and the robber. . . .” By water and by land they came, hammering their way into the wilderness, pushing ontoward the scented River, the dreamed-of Mississippi, that lay like a liquid spine in the wilderness’midst.

“At the close of the Revolution, it is estimated that there were not more than 10,000 settlers in the whole territory. The Federal census table, begun in 1790, reveals the astounding volume of immigration in subsequent years.

“Boon’s Trace was the path that most of them followed : it led up through the Great Smoky Mountains and down along the Wautaga River on the other side to its juncture with the Clinch River ; heret he way forked. One branch led south to Knoxville,and so westward through Tennessee; the other forkturned sharply northward, climbed through the Cumberland Gap and, descending into Kentucky, curved gradually west and south again: this latter trail became known as the “Wilderness Road.”

Nashville

“Both forks met at Nashville, already the metropolis of the middle valley, with a population of about1000 inhabitants, all commodiously housed in cabins”built of cedar logs with stone or mud chimneys,’ 1 with a post-office and a general store run by LardnerClark, Esq., “Merchant and Ordinary Keeper.” Nashville had “more wheeled vehicles than anyother frontier town,” and yet so new it was ona ny sunny day you might see its founder, old TimoteDeMonbreun, 2 the French-Canadian trader, strolliing in the public square, wearing knee-breeches with silver buckles “even to the end he favored the oldtime clothes” and showing off his plump, well shaped leg.

“They came pushing on, along one fork or the other, and the wilderness swallowed them; wherever they went, it touched them ; wherever they settled, it surrounded them. Facing the wilderness its dark loneliness, its strange menace; the bitter privations it imposed, and the sudden bountifulness it sometimes afforded all men changed a little, as if their natures, like their mouths, were fed on the wild fruit it offered.

Pioneer Homes

“They built their cabins of felled logs: twenty by sixteen feet were the usual dimensions. Sometimesnthe floor was the bare earth; sometimes a floor of “puncheons” logs split into planks would be laid. Then, layer by layer, the log walls were rolled up into place, notched and fitted at the corners. Twos tout young trees, cut down entire, were set up atboth end walls with their branches trimmed in acrotch to support the ridge-pole.

“The roof was of bark slabs laid like shingles, and held in place bya log for weight. Windows were rare : such as there were, they made of paper coated with hog’s lard or bear’s grease to let in the light; ordinarily, the clay chinking between the logs was knocked out in summer, for ventilation, and filled in again in winter, to keep out cold.

“The interior comprised but one room, “answering the purpose of the kitchen, dining-room, nursery and dormitory.” The furniture: “a plain home-made bed-stead or two, some split-bottomed chairs andstools, a large puncheon supported on four legs, usedas occasion required, for a bench or a table.”

Pioneer Clothes

“The wardrobe was equally simple: leather hunting shirts, leggins and moccasins for the men, withhomespun jean trousers, butternut dyed; “cotton stripes and linsey-woolsey for the women. If a calicodress was bought it created great excitement, and was ‘norated’ through the neighborhood.” Children wore the “toga,” a long shirt like a nightgown, the boys’ having “two slits in the tail, to distinguish themfrom the girls’.” Victuals were measured by what the wilderness supplied.

Pioneer Food

“Salt was the great lack: “Salt was brought13in  on pack-horses from Augusta and Richmond and readily commanded ten dollars a barrel. The salt gourd, in every cabin, was considered as a treasure.. . . Often a family would not get more than apound of salt a year.”

“So meat was packed in woodashes, then washed in boiling water, and smoked overthe fire: “Cured in this way, it remained fresh as long as if it was salted.”

Coffee was another luxury: “Ten pounds of coffee was a large annual supply for a family, which was used only on Sunday morning, none but the adults being allowed a cup.” The rest of the time various roots, dried and browned in the oven, furnished a substitute.

Sugar was made from the sugar-maple,but even this was rare : “It was only used for the sick, or in the preparation of a ‘sweetened dram’ at a wedding or the arrival of a new comer.”

Pioneer Daily Schedule and Routine

“They rose at three or four o’clock in the morning;they went to bed at eight or nine o’clock at night.Rush-lights, tallow-dip tapers and the glow from the fireside furnished their illumination. Meals, though limited as to variety, were generous as to quantity.

“John Palmer boarded at a frontier tavern: for breakfast, the menu included “beefsteak, bacon, eggs,johnny-cakes, butter, tea and coffee”; for dinner: “2or 3 dishes of fowls, roast meat, kidney beans, peas, new potatoes, preserves, cherry pie, etc.”; for supper: “nearly the same as breakfast.”

Socials – Corn Huskings & Quilting Bees

“After a cornhusking, a quilting bee or some other pioneer frolic, a collation such as the following might be set out: “hot cake and custard, hoe cake, johnny cake, dodger cake, pickled peaches, waffle cake, preserved cucumbers, ham, turkey, hung beef, apple sauce, pickled oysters. . . .” But corn, above all, was the staple of diet withthem as it had been with the Indians.

“At the marriage of Captain Leiper, one of the first settlers at Nashville, “the great delicacy for the ladies was roasting ears”; later, dozens of ways were devised to vary the flavor of the ever-present ingredient, cornmeal: “Boiled in water, it forms the frontier dish called mush, which was eaten with milk, with honey,molasses, butter or gravy. Mixed with cold water,covered with hot ashes, the preparation is called the ash-cake; placed upon a piece of clapboard and set near the coals, it forms the journey-cake; 3 or managed in the same way upon a helveless hoe, the hoecake; put in an oven and covered with a heated lid, a pone or a loaf; if in smaller quantities dodgers.Let paeans be sung all over the mighty West, to Indian corn without it, the West would have been still a wilderness!” 4 

3 Hence, “johnny-cake.” 4 Curiously, its principal present-day use in making corn -whiskeyhad not yet been discovered. The settlers drank Monongahela whiskey, flatboated down the Ohio from the distilleries around Pittsburgh.

So they settled down: “clearing a patch and closing it within a brush or a cane fence, upon whichto raise corn for next summer’s bread; when the day’s toil was over . . . playing a Virginia jig upona gourd fiddle, while a train of tatterly brats kickedup a tremendous dust as they danced over the dirtfloor. . . .”

“The wilderness surrounded them: black danger of the Indian, the marauder imprisoned them withthe forest wall. Like a lens constricted to a narrowfocus, their whole life lay within the circle of the cabin and the corn-patch: they hoed and reaped,rendered lard, ground meal on the hominy block, loved, slept, ate “there, surrounding a skillet of grease, we sat with chunks of bread in our hands, sopping gravy, drinking milk out of a bowl withwooden ladles” every labored gesture, like a loudnoise in a narrow room, booming and reechoing in their minds.

“Gradually, as the settlers came pouring into the region, the danger of the Indians diminished; but now that very tide of immigration brought a new peril to the wilderness: the river pirates who preyed on the traffic of the River, and the land pirates, who infested the forest trails. As travel increased, their numbers mounted ; as trade grew richer, they became more powerful. Everything combined to aid them.

“On the River, the current itself with its snags, its shifting riffles and shoals was a trap for the wary boatmen; since one bank was under Spanisha nd the other under American jurisdiction, either shore offered the bandits a safe refuge from all pursuit on the other.

“On land they were more fortunate still, for here the wilderness fed them, hid them, inspired them:its dense canebrakes aided them in the ambuscade,its thickets, its swamps and its reedy bottoms covered their escape and concealed their hiding places. They were the terror of the great trails the Natchez Trace, where traders came back from the New Orleans market; the Wilderness Road, where immigrants came in from the East: Hare, and thet wo mad Harpes, Mason, and Murrel that erratic Napoleon of the outlaws one by one they rose to power and had their period of dominion over the wilderness country. They were its creatures, the bitter fruit of the same wild seed that bred the pioneers : they reflected, but in more savage fashion, the same ruthless audacityand fierce implacable energy which its loneliness inspired in their more honest fellows. When their reign ended when MurreFs fantastic dream of a robber empire in the West collapsed and the strength of the robber bands was finally broken it was not because their own forces had lessened, but rather because the dark influence of the wilderness itself was at last being cleared. …

Boats from Pittsburgh Down the Ohio

WHILE thousands of immigrants were tramping overthe Cumberlands and down the Wilderness Road,thousands more were coming in by water, down the Ohio. Pittsburgh marked the navigable head of the river and the town was thriving. Almost overnightit had swollen from a mere outpost to the size of a city: Wm. B. Irish, Esq., taking census at the beginning of the century, found 4,640 inhabitants housed in 767 buildings of which eleven, as he proudly specified, were built of stone! Most of its population were either tavern-keepersor shipbuilders. Whiskey cost forty cents a gallon;brandy, eighty cents; beer, five dollars a barrel. In two years the town had launched twelve riggedships, and barges, keelboats, broadhorns, Kentuckyboats innumerable. Flatboats “comfortable family boats well boarded up on the sides, and roofed to within seven or eight feet of the bow” these sold for one dollar per foot of length: thirty to forty feet was the rule. As fast as they could be knocked together the immigrants bought them. Haste made for carelessness; good wood lacking, rotten wood was used. “It behoves every purchaser of a Kentucky-boat to get it narrowly examined,” warned Zadock Cramer butthe immigrants were too anxious to be away: they would load in supplies salt pork, flour, beans, potatoes, tea, sugar, an axe, cooking pots, powder andballs, some cutlery and shove off down the bend. The journey begun, however, many of them had occasion to regret their impetuous departure. The French, almost a century earlier, had called the Ohio”La Belle Riviere” : even the captious Mrs. Trollopeadmired its beauty, remarking only that “were there occasionally a ruined abbey or feudal castle, to mix the romance of real life with that of nature, the Ohio would be perfect.” But to the immigrants its winding course, its twisting channels, as well as the heavy forest wall that hedged each shore, were a source ofconstant menace.

“Boats, snagged, sank and all on board were drowned or, what was worse, were set down unarmedand unprovisioned to wander starving in the wilderness. Indians flouring their faces to look like whitemen, Indians crawling on all-fours wrapped in bearhides tempted the travelers to land: landing, they were massacred. There was another danger evengreater than the uncertain currents, or the bitter evasive Indians : bandits. Thomas Ashe went down the river. “Most of thesettlers on the lower parts of these waters are inals either escaping from, or apprehensive of, public justice,” he wrote. “I was warned that manyofthe small inns on the Kentucky shore were held in solitary situations by persons of infamous character.I demanded how a stranger was to distinguish a goodfrom a vicious house.” He was told to look to his landlord’s ears: if they had been clipped or cut awayentirely he might be sure that their owner had left them nailed to some market cross in the eastern colonies; by this indication, “a tolerable judgment ofthe host’s character might be formed.” The towns, too and especially along the lowerreaches of the river were populated by the samechoice characters. Benjamin Van Cleve, floatingdown-river with a surveyor’s party bound for FortMassac, stopped over a day at the settlement of RedBank. It was a day of drizzling cloudy weather; thescattered cabins dripping dismally, the single street a churned mass of clay and mud : he found the townand its occupants alike disagreeable. “The place is a refuge, not for the oppressed, but for all the horsethieves, rogues and outlaws that have been able to effect their escape from justice in the neighboringstates. Neither law nor gospel has been able to reachhere as yet. A commission of the peace has been sentby Kentucky to one Mason” ten years later Masonhimself had turned bandit: his character had versed completely “and an effort has been madeto introduce law; but the inhabitants drove the personsaway and insisted on doing without. “I inquired how they managed to marry, and wastold that the parties agreed to take each other forhusband and wife before their friends.” Such anagreement was commonly held a sufficient contractin the settlements; sometimes couples so marriedwould get their “Bible-wedding” later, when a circuit-rider appeared; in the wilder areas, naturally,this custom opened the way to many abuses. “I wasshown two cabins with about the width of a street between them, where two men a short time ago hadexchanged wives.” Women were scarce in the early West.

“From Red Bank on down to the town of Smithland, the river traversed its most dangerous section. Shoals abounded ; sand bars lay just below the rippleo f the surface; islands split the channel like a serpentine. Landsmen most of the river travelers were: as they came poling down, their jerry-built barges swinging awkwardly in the changing currents, they were helpless indeed to resist attack. A whole hierarchy of piracy had arisen, to prey on them. The first of these had been a man named Wilson.

Cave-in-Rock

“At the head of the maze of snags and riffles knownas the Hurricane Bars, some sixty miles below Red Bank, he took his stand at a cave in the bluff alongs hore: a cave like many others in those limestone regions, with deep chambers and hidden recesses and strange rock-formations. He posted a sign on the river bank: “Wilson’s Liquor Vault & House forEntertainment.”

“The cave was known as the “Cave Inn” later twisted to “Cave-in-Rock.” It  had a longchapter in the history of river piracy. Boat-wreckers waited along the bank: watching a boat pass, they would offer to pilot it through the channel. If the unskilled steersman chose to run the rip unaided, it was more than likely he would run aground: if he hired a pilot, the chance of his grounding became a certainty. Once beached, the boat and its occupants fell easily before the attackof Wilson’s gang.

“Sometimes the travelers would beach their boats of their own accord, planning to spend the night at the Cave and make the passage of the Bars in the morning. Next day, however, a different crew would man the barge, and a little more blood would have been spilt.

“Wilson had a sense of humor: he used to stand above the Cave, watching the flatboats drifting down to the ambush : “These people are taking their goods to market for me,” he would say.

“Wilson’s sway was not undisputed; he had many rivals. One such was Colonel Fluger, known all through the West as “Colonel Plug,” and renowned for his deviltry and his uproarious escapades.He became, finally, a legend among the boatmen: tales were told of his adventures, almost admiringly,wherever rivermen congregated. How he would “smouch” himself aboard a broadhorn, dig out the calking between the planks, bore through the craft’s bottom; how, as the scuttled boat began to sink, his gang would come tearing in their skiffs to the rescue a rescue that concerned only the goods aboard: the crew were left to drown. How Pluggy’s one obsession was his jealousy: he knew his wife’s charms, and the weakness of his lieutenant, “Nine-Eyes,” all too well. How, suspecting cuckoldry, he challenged Nine-Eyes to Gargantuan combat: armed with rifles, the two men too ktheir positions; midway between them a bottle of prime Monongahela whiskey had been placed the victor’s prize. They fired. Both were hit, but neither was too badly wounded to keep him from making for the whiskey. They met over the bottle. “You air all grit!” said Plug. “You waded in like a real Kentuck!” replied Nine-Eyes. And, share for share, they finished the bottle between them. How, finally, Colonel Plug met the end to which he had committed so many of his victims: hid in the hold of a flatboat, boring away at the planking, he found the rotten material giving way too49 quickly; the boat, far out in midstream, sank too soon. Long before his followers, staging their rescue, could come aboard the vessel it had sunk. Colonel Plug, caught like a rat in his hiding-place, sank with it.

“It happened, then, that when the great drive to clean up the territory and capture the Harpes began, the direction in which the fugitives fled was determined as much by what lay before them as by what menaced them in the rear.

“Behind them, spread out in a great half-circle, the posses were sweeping them westward; ahead of them lay the lawless region of the Cave-in-Rock. When the hunt ended, the Cave was swarming with refugees and the lower Ohio a hive of outlaws. Drives and campaigns, we still have not quite learned, sometimes have paradoxical results: there is no doubt that by thus forcing the outlaws into mass formation the settlers themselves aided in the formation of the large bands of criminals culminatingi n Murrel’s enormous organization which were later to prey on them.

“The Harpes, however, were lone operators to the last. They came, with the other refugees, to the Cave; the three women had already rendezvoused there and were waiting for them. For a time they injected a new spirit, designed to interest the most blase50 Harpes Head among the thugs, into the activities of the river pirates. They embellished the workaday business of boarding flatboats and murdering crews with bizarre and terrible refinements of torture. “They seemed endowed with an inhuman ferocity. Neither avarice, want, nor any of the usual inducements to the commission of crime seemed to govern their conduct” In fact, they were homicidal maniacs, and the eerie quality of their actions, thestrange shallow light their eyes reflected did not fail soon to set the outlaws’ spines shivering queasily too.

“Murder, in those dark regions, was an almost necessary concomitant of robbery. The traveler then broke all the links that bound him to past and future : he went into the wilderness as if into a temporary oblivion, from which no word or other warning of his passing might be expected to issue until he appeared again, at his destination. Such a man, met on the way by bandits and robbed only, might start forth into the settlements, to spread word of the attack. Kill him, and the gap between  thebeginning and the end of his journey remained forever unconnected, no one ever or not for years bothering to inquire what had become of him. So these men had grown used to killing. But the Harpes made as it were an ecstasy of murder. A victim swiftly despatched represented to them a pleasure lost: they were like Indians; they preferred the slow torture, the bloody anguish; they tore at men’sbodies with knives and their bare hands, dismembering them. It was a little more than even the ruffians of the Cave could stomach.

“One night they had robbed a flatboat during theafternoon: two families moving down to settle on the lower waters had been massacred the outlaws had gathered about the camp-fire on the beach, sorting the plunder. The Harpes, characteristically,were absent: greed was not one of their failings;they took what share was given them. Suddenly, as the gang bent there, they heard wild cries, the thud of hoofs, a prodigious crashing from the thicket at the top of the cliff that rose behind them. They looked up, startled: it must have been a strange sight against the black sky and the gray rock the spectacle they beheld. A great horse had plunged through the brush,leaping straight out over the lip of the precipice.Strapped to his back, stark naked and now wildly gesticulating, a man bestrode him. The robbers saw the ungodly apparition hang high above their headsa moment, the horse’s neck outstretched, his legs still moving as if galloping ; they saw the man lean over, his horrified face staring. Then horse and man came crashing down together, smashed in a bloody heap on the rocks along the beach. While the outlaws sat stunned, the two Harpes52 came scrambling down the cliff to join them, roaring with laughter. They had salvaged this victim from the crew of the flatboat; all afternoon they had saved him, to put on this show and surprise the boys. Their idea of fun, however, had made the others a little dizzy.

“Such wit as this the cave-dwellers had never seen before, and they never wanted to see it again. They drove the Harpes women, children, all of them bodily out of camp. From then on the Harpes were outlawed even by the outlaws. All through the valley, every man had set his hand to destroy them. Yet for over a year we see them, appearing and disappearing, like snakes in the underbrush striking and gliding away, murdering and tomahawking in an insatiable frenzy for blood for over a year, before their last great chase begins. We see them drifting down through Kentucky again. They need a rifle; the young son of ChesleyCoffey, whom they meet along the trail, is carrying one. “Young Coffey was riding along a road one evening to get a fiddle. These terrible men smeared a tree with his brains, making out that his horse had run against the tree.” They weave back and forth. They move seemingly with inhuman speed ; they strike with a terrible fe53 rocity. No one can predict their actions. All any onecan do is wait, and lock the doors until news comesthat they are elsewhere. But they may be heading back again. Two days after killing young Coffey, they murder William Ballard, in Tennessee near Knoxville. A week later they have moved north and west again.The women have been set down to wait for them somewhere in the wilderness : the two men are skirmishing alone. They encounter James Brassel and his brother Robert along the way. And now a new stratagem has entered their crazy brains: constantly, henceforward, the Harpes will be asking news of the Harpes, pretending to be hunters on their trail. In the end, they seem actually to believe it: while the whole region is tracking themthe Harpes, too, have joined the chase, hunting theHarpes. So with the Brassel brothers. The four meet amiably, exchange gossip, ride along a little way together. “We’re lookin’ for the Harpes,” Big Harpe remarks, and they talk of the murderers’ wild sorties. But in a little while his manner changes; his eyesnarrow: “Now, I shouldn’t be surprised if you wasthe Harpes yourselves, you two!” The Brassel boysbegin to protest, but the others’ guns are ready. “Ye say ye’ve just come from Barboursville? Well, we’l ljust ride back that with ye and find out. Ye couldn’t want fairer than that.” The elder of the two boys, confident that at the settlement he will be identified and freed, permits himself to be disarmed and trussed across his horse.

“Robert Brassel, moved by some sudden intuition, risks his life and escapes. Stumbling panic-stricken along the trace, he encounters a party of men, all friends of his and all engaged in the eternal hunt for the Harpes, And by now the boy has guessed the identity of the two strangers; he tells his story; at a pounding gallop,the posse starts back up the trail. They find his brother’s body, the throat cut, the head battered, the gun smashed against a rock.Hardly pausing, the whole party rushes on, eagerto capture the murderers. But by now a kind of mystic terror embodies the Harpes. Even brave men quail from them. So with these men: sweeping forward, intent on vengeance,they see the Harpes, coming back!

“Somewhere, in the interim, the women have rejoined them: perhaps they had merely lain hiddenin the thicket by the roadside while the two menwent about their bloody work. At any rate, therethey all are, lowering and sullen-looking: the men,the three women and the children, loaded with arms55 and ammunition, moving forward in close formation, as if in battle array, along the trail. Thus confronted, pursuers and pursued, they eye each other, and all the courage of the hunters ebbs away. “Listen,” some one suggests. “If they don’t make no trouble let’s us not start any.” Silently, doggedly,the Harpes come on; they approach, pass abreast of the shrinking posse “They looked very awful at them” and move on down the trail. Still under theterror of their presence, the others are careful to continue up the trace for some distance, in the oppositedirection, never speaking as they go, “so that nothing might be said that would be taken as athreat. . . .” So through the spring and summer of 1798. Laterthey have killed no one knows how many peoplein the meantime: John Tully, a farmer named Bradbury, the two Triswold brothers, John Graves andhis son: they split their heads with an axe and threwthem out in their own cabin yard, “where they layuntil some one, seeing so many buzzards about, madean investigation and discovered what had takenplace” ; many others undoubtedly, in the lonely forest, were never discovered later a directed purposebecomes apparent in the twisting path they have56 Harpes Head traced through the wilderness. They are looking forColonel Trabue, seeking him to murder him. Trabue, since the murder of his son by their hands,had already made himself their implacable enemy.Now that they are striking back at him, he makeswhat preparation he can, toward the event that he bemurdered in the attack. Being a Justice of the Peace, his preparation takes a legal form. He makes affidavit to their knowncrimes, together with a list of their victims. He prepares his own will. He draws up a description of thetwo Harpes and has printed copies of this distributed among the settlements: “The big man is pale, dark, swarthy, bushy hair, had a reddish gunstock. The little man had a blackish gunstock, with a silver star with four straightpoints. They had short sailor’s coats, very dirty, andgrey greatcoats. . . .” Riders rush everywhere withthe warning, crying, “Look out for the Harpes I” Neighbors gather about Trabue’s cabin. Theywatch the trails, filter cautiously through the forest. The old Indian hunter waits, his rifle ready. But mad men are masters in the art of anti-climax.The settlers watch and wait after how many false starts and sudden surprises and watch again. TheHarpes do not appear. They have forgotten ColonelTrabue and their vowed vengeance. They have struckwest again, toward the Cave and the river country.57 The Outlaw Years They are moving up toward Red Bank again, noone suspecting them. John Slover, coming down theHighland Lick Road from a bear hunt, hears theclick of a rifle’s hammer behind him: he turns, sees the two men peering from the shrubbery, the gunthat had missed fire still aimed at him; he escapes, but even now no one suspects their identity. They pass through several settlements, bound onno one will ever know what terrible errand. Theirwomen are no longer with them. Somewhere the twomen have acquired fresh new suits, new black surtouts and buckskin gaiters. In this disguise, they represent themselves to be Methodist preachers, traveling to a distant congregation. Arriving thus, they are welcomed at the cabin ofJames Tompkins, where the trail from Red Bank to Nashville crossed the Barrens of the TradewaterCreek. Tompkins invites them to share the noon dinner. They accept; Big Harpe, his great face owlishly solemn, says a long and unctuous grace overthe food. Tompkins marvels that two preachers shouldtravel so heavily armed. “With such dreadful menas the Harpes abroad, my friend, it behooves us all to protect ourselves,” Big Harpe replies. At this, thehost remarks that he is in no condition for defense:he has scarcely any powder in the house. Harpe, quite carried away by his sanctimonious