The Seekers
Authors: John Jakes
The Kent Family Chronicles (Book Three)
John Jakes
For my daughter Ellen
Introduction:
The Author as (Bad?) Actor
Chapter III Clouds at Homecoming
Chapter V “Scenes of Life Among the Mighty”
Chapter VIII Ark to the Wilderness
Chapter II Old Ghosts and New Beginnings
Chapter IV Problems of a Modernist
Chapter II A Mackerel by Moonlight
Chapter IV The Devil’s Companion
Chapter V “Her Sides Are Made of Iron!”
Chapter VII Pursuit to St. Louis
Chapter IX “I Will Seek That Which Was Lost”
Epilogue In the Tepee of the Dog Soldier
The Author as (Bad?) Actor
T
OWARD THE END OF
this, the third novel of
The Kent Family Chronicles
, you’ll encounter an amoral character named Elphinstone, attorney for the wicked Hamilton Stovall. When the novel went before the camera as a miniseries at Universal Studios, I visited the set for a few days. The producer, Bob Cinader, knew of my intermittent interest in acting, and one Thursday afternoon he suggested I play Elphinstone in a scene to be shot the following Monday.
One scene—seven short speeches—a chance to appear with two famous actors, George Hamilton, playing Stovall, and the late Ross Martin, playing the shop foreman of the family printing house, Kent and Son—how much persuasion did it require? Just about none.
On Friday, I met with a person in the Universal casting department in the Black Tower. He went over my “deal”—the financial arrangements. I hardly remember what was said; I could only think about the scene, in which I had to fall to the floor after Stovall shot me, for his own nefarious reasons. I didn’t know how to take a dive, at least not gracefully. I spent most of the weekend in a suite at the Beverly Wilshire, practicing that fall while my wife, Rachel, critiqued my efforts. Memorizing the lines was the least of it.
Monday dawned. I reported early for makeup and costume, as the call sheet demanded. I paced up and down on the back lot all day—the scene was delayed until Tuesday morning. When it was finally ready to go, the director, an elegant Englishman named Sidney Hayers, stood back with arms folded, looking more than a little dubious.
Sidney gave me not one word of direction. Consequently I overacted, punching the lines much too hard, as though I were in a stage play in a 1200-seat house with two balconies. The fall didn’t go badly—I eased into it by grasping and sliding down a handy pillar. Hamilton/Stovall discovered I was still alive, smothered me with his handkerchief, and I finally died.
Afterward, both George Hamilton and Ross Martin were generous with their compliments. I particularly remember Ross Martin smiling and saying, “Good job. You stay out of my business, I’ll stay out of yours.”
When I saw my scene in the finished picture, I cringed. I’ve since run the show a few times and graded the performance slightly better. You can judge for yourself if you wish: the Universal home-video version is still available.
It was a giddy experience, growing out of the enormous success the Kent novels were already experiencing. But it convinced me that my place was in front of the typewriter, not in front of the camera, and there I’ve stayed ever since.
I thank all my good friends at Penguin Group (USA) Inc. for sprucing up the Kent Family for public view—and, I hope, your approval—in these new editions. Thank heavens I don’t have to solicit a vote of approval for my acting.
—John Jakes
Hilton Head Island,
South Carolina
“Ask these Pilgrims what they expect when they git to Kentuckey the answer is Land, have you any. No, but I expect I can git it. have you any thing to pay for land, No. did you ever see the Country. No but Every Body says its good land…
“Here is hundreds Travelling hundreds Of Miles, they Know not for what Nor Whither, except its to Kentuckey, passing land almost as good and easy obtained, the Proprietors of which would gladly give on any terms but it will not do…its not the Promised Land its not the goodly inheratence the Land of Milk and Honey.”
1796:
Moses Austin,
founder of Texas,
writing of a journey
from Wythe County, Virginia,
to Louisiana Territory.
“I of course expected to find beaver, which with us hunters is a primary object, but I was also led on by the love of novelty common to all, which is much increased by the pursuit of its gratification…”
1827:
the journal of
Jedediah Smith,
mountain man.
Book One *
Kent and Son
Chapter I
Battle Morning
i
A
BOUT FOUR O’CLOCK ABRAHAM KENT
woke from a fitful sleep and realized he couldn’t rest again until the day’s action was concluded, in the Legion’s favor or otherwise.
His heart beat rapidly as he lay sweating in the tiny tent. He heard muted voices outside, saw a play of flame and shadow on the tent wall. Campfires, burning brightly in the sweltering dark. No attempt had been made to conceal the presence of three thousand men on the north bank of the Maumee River. The Indians already knew that the general who commanded the army of the Fifteen Fires had arrived, and meant to fight. The only question was when.
Abraham had learned the answer to that the preceding evening. Sitting his mare in formation, he’d listened to the reading of the general order that announced a march at daybreak. Men cheered—principally some of the less disciplined Kentucky mounted militia, whose ranks numbered close to fifteen hundred.
On hearing the order, Abraham Kent felt both relief and sharp fear. Relief came from knowing that nearly two years of preparation, marching, fort-building in the wilderness of the Northwest Territory was finally reaching a climax. The general had repeatedly sent messages to the tribes, urging peace and conciliation even as he drove his Legion of the United States deeper into the lands north of the Ohio, constructing stockade after stockade en route. The reply of the tribes to the last message had been equivocal. So the general had let it be known he meant to attack.
Abraham Kent experienced fear on hearing the order because he’d never taken part in an actual engagement; not in all the twenty-four months since he’d arrived in Pittsburgh in response to the recruiting notices in Boston. Those notices declared that the United States was raising a formal army for the first time since the Revolution.
There had been engagements as the American army twisted back and forth across the hostile country, earning the general the name
Blacksnake
from the Indian spies who watched the army’s progress. Earlier in the summer, for example, a Shawnee war party had launched a ferocious attack on newly built Fort Recovery. When it happened Abraham was on duty at the general’s base, Fort Greenville, a day’s ride south. So he had yet to be blooded.
Today, the twentieth of August 1794, that situation was likely to change.
He crawled out of the tent, his linen shirt and trousers already plastered to his body. For a moment he wondered whether he would see the dawn of the twenty-first.
Scouts had brought reports into the camp beside the river that upwards of two thousand Indians had gathered some seven to ten miles northeast, near the rapids of the Maumee where the British had brazenly erected a fort close to McKee’s trading station. Warriors from all the major tribes had come: Blue Jacket’s Shawnee, including the young warrior with the fierce reputation, Tecumseh, who had led the unsuccessful attack on Fort Recovery. Little Turtle’s Miamis were there. The Wyandots under Tarhe the Crane. Captain Pipe’s Delawares. All united to resist the Americans who were bent on taking the Indians’ land—
Not a man in the Legion of the United States considered it anything but American land, of course. The vast expanse west of Pennsylvania, east of the Mississippi, north of the Ohio and south of the Lakes had been ceded to the new nation by Britain as part of the peace treaty of 1783. Yet in the following decade, the British continued to maintain their posts in the surrendered territory; kept urging the Indians to demand that the northern border of American expansion remain the Ohio River.
Small expeditionary forces had marched into the Northwest before, to try to settle matters. One, St. Clair’s, had met death along the bend of the Wabash tributary where Abraham’s commanding general had built Fort Recovery the preceding winter. Yawning and stretching as he walked past the men talking around the campfires, Abraham vividly recalled the stone gray winter’s day he had ridden as one of the eight hundred pressing forward to the site of St. Clair’s defeat—
In the first drifting snowflakes, he had seen skulls and bones protruding from the frozen ground. As the new fort rose on the site during the early months of 1794, men working the earth dug up and counted the human skulls. Over six hundred of them. Six hundred of General Dicky Butler’s soldiers, slaughtered—
Abraham ambled on through the steamy darkness, breathing the acrid wood smoke, listening to the strained, subdued conversations, seeing here and there a surreptitious jug passed, in violation of the general’s edict forbidding use of alcohol in camp or on the march. Nineteen years old, the young soldier had wide shoulders and a stocky build; heavy brows and the dark eyes of his parents. He’d also inherited their dark hair, which he never bothered to dress since dashing about on horseback loosened all the powder. He stood five feet ten inches, taller than his father.