The Seekers (18 page)

Despite his concerns, the unvarying routine of the days and the continual pageant of towering forests and tiny settlements slipping behind them began to lull Abraham into a sense of security he enjoyed. A week passed without a mishap of any kind. He looked forward to one or two more such idyllic weeks before they reached the little frontier settlement of Cincinnati.

On a Friday evening, just at dusk, Abraham came up from below with two mugs of coffee freshly brewed by Mrs. Clapper. Her big, red-bearded husband was seated near the chimney. His legs hung down over the bow wall. Daniel Junior was taking his turn manning the sweep.

The river here ran straight and smooth. Some two or three miles ahead, Abraham glimpsed another ark preceding them. Half a mile behind, a two-way boat was being cordelled upstream against the four-mile-an-hour current. Its crew plodded along a clear stretch on the south bank, the long tow rope strung across their shoulders.

“Thankee,” Clapper said, accepting the coffee. He squinted into the sunlight falling through the cathedrallike trees and burnishing the river. “Be dark soon. Time to drop anchor.” He sipped from the mug. “Your wife seems to be weathering the Ohio mighty fine.”

Abraham sat down, drank some coffee. “Did you think she might not?”

“She’s a lovely lass, but she
is
a mite frail.” Clapper stared at the younger man with disarming directness. “Surely you had doubts of your own.”

“Yes. I did.”

That seemed to conclude the subject. Abraham turned to another that had kept him curious for days. “Have you come to any decision about your final destination?”

“No, sir, I feel the same as I did in Pittsburgh. We agreed to split up the ark an’ sell off her timbers in Cincinnati. I’ll decide where we’re goin’ after that. Told you before—it don’t make a hell of a lot of difference. I know a little about plenty o’ things, but not enough to be a success at any one. In a way, that’s mighty fortunate—”

When he grinned, his teeth literally materialized in the midst of the red hair covering the lower part of his face.

“I can relax some. Don’t have to feel the least bit ambitious.”

Abraham smiled, nodded. Clapper had a way of putting an immutable period at the end of certain conversations. Though he would have liked to question the older man about the origins of his odd attitudes, he didn’t. Instead, he contented himself with savoring the coffee and the sunlight scattering golden sparks on the river.

The sweep creaked in its mounting as Daniel Junior changed course slightly. Ahead, the other ark was coasting out of sight around a bend.

Clapper surprised him by saying, “What do you want out here, Mr. Kent? You don’t exactly fit.”

“Why not?”

“Fer one thing, it’s plain you’re more of an educated man than I’ll ever be.”

“I’m not sure about that, Mr. Clapper. There’s all sorts of education—”

“You know what I mean. Miz Edna, she keeps say-in’, Daniel, that young Mr. Kent’s got all the marks of a real gentleman.”

Abraham chuckled. “I suppose that means I’ll be a bad farmer?”

Clapper sugared the truth with a smile: “Probably won’t make it any easier.”

“To answer your question, I first came out here with the army. I served in the campaign of ’94.”

“Under Mad Anthony?”

“Yes. I liked the look of the country. And when I got home to Boston, I decided I didn’t care to stay in the east. Right now my wants are simple.”

“Frinstance?”

Abraham shrugged. “The obvious things. To see Elizabeth content. To raise a family. To be happy myself—”

“As a dirt farmer?”

“I’m not sure. We’ll find out.”

“Least you’re honest.”

“Mostly I guess you could say I came west because I knew what I didn’t want.”

“Life in a big city—”

“That’s right.”

He thought of Philip, but he let the reply stand without amplification. The river burbled around the ark’s hull. A hawk swooped through the green gloom of the woods to starboard. Abraham took another sip of the potent coffee, said, “I didn’t give you much of an answer, did I, Mr. Clapper? Knowing what you don’t want—having to search for something else you can’t even name—that’s a pretty poor excuse for taking up a new life. The only trouble is, in my case it’s true.”

“You needn’t look so glum about it. You think any of the other young people pilin’ down this river are any smarter ’n you in that respect? No, sir.” Clapper shook his head. “All
they
know is the same thing both of us know—what they don’t want. They hope to heaven there’s somethin’ different out here—”

He waved the mug at the bend where the ark ahead had disappeared.

“—but don’t ask ’em to name it!”

“Puts them on a spot, does it?”

“Right smart! They can’t answer. Not so’s a feller who’s been around can believe ’em, that is. Oh, you’ll hear plenty of gab about how everybody’s free an’ equal in the western lands—free an’ equal, yes; sir! The west is
demo-cratic,
ain’t that what that Mr. Jefferson says? No rich nabobs to crowd a young man, or make him feel second best. Maybe a mite of that’s true—”

He held index finger and thumb close together.

“ ’Bout this much. I’ll tell you something. If a man could be happy in the east, do you imagine he’d up and leave? Lord no! They can be loads o’ reasons
why
he ain’t happy. Money. Women. Mebbe he’s ugly as that bulldog of yours—”

“I wouldn’t wish that on another human being, Mr. Clapper.”

The other man still refused to smile. “Lots of times, a man can’t be happy and just plain don’t know why. He might have a bit of cash put by, even some regular schooling—”

“But he leaves anyway?”

“Yes, sir, ’cause, he’s so blamed unhappy. Mr. Kent, believe me, that’s the whole reason. A man don’t
never
cut the roots if everything’s right with his world—or his head. Folks can turn it other side backwards all they want. They can shout
‘Free an’ equal!’
till they’re blue. But just like your case—it really ain’t a matter of goin’
toward,
it’s a matter of runnin’
from
—”

Clapper encompassed the western horizon with a sweep of the cup. “And once you catch the urge to run away, you never lose it. You just keep movin’—miserable as ever.”

Abraham shivered. “That’s a grim view.”

“True, though.”

“Well, if all you say about people being unhappy is correct—”

“It is!”

“Then we’re fortunate we have room to run, aren’t we? If we had to stay bottled up back east with all the grief you describe, I suspect we’d soon go crazy. So that makes the western country a blessing. And people moving into it—that’s a good, healthy thing when you consider the alternative.”

“Got to think that through a minute,” Clapper informed him, dubious.

“In my case it’s a blessing. I had to have somewhere to escape to, and that’s a fact.”

“Yeah, but you can’t pin down what you’re huntin’—you said so.”

“I know. Still, I’m hoping I’ll find something good—and be smart enough to recognize it for what it is.”

“Something, something,” Clapper parroted. Then, a snort: “You feel that way ’cause you’re young.”

“You don’t feel that way?”

“Not no more. You want to keep hopin’, Mr. Kent, don’t ask questions of folks my age.”

“Why not?”

“ ’Cause you’ll find that a mighty lot of the settlers swarmin’ out here have stopped other places before. Lookin’, always lookin’—for
something.
The ones that got ten or fifteen years on you—they already found out.”

“Found out what?”

“
Something
don’t exist. No place.”

“But surely—”

“No. It don’t.” Without self-pity, Clapper added, “I found out. Now you understand why it don’t make any difference to me where this boat’s headed, or where it stops?”

“Yes, I do.”

Clapper bobbed his head once, and drained his cup.

God in heaven, Abraham hoped Clapper wasn’t right. He prayed he and Elizabeth wouldn’t reach their tract of land only to come face to face with the futility of their flight—

No, surely the big man was in error, embittered by personal failures barely hinted at. To believe what Clapper said was too disillusioning—

The sudden, violent impact shattered his dour reverie. With a great crunch, then a prolonged grinding, the ark wrenched broadside to the current. Clapper almost pitched into the water.

Abraham’s grab saved him. He dragged Clapper back as the bow of the ark came around, then lifted sharply on the larboard side.

Both men were nearly hurled off the roof as the ark rode up on some underwater obstacle, slid off and slammed down.

Below, the terrified horses neighed and kicked against the plank walls. The kicks were loud as gunshots.

“Sweep broke clean off, Pa!” Daniel Junior yelled from the stern. “We musta hit a sawyer—”

“Damn! The log was probably way down when that boat ahead of us went by. Then she bobbed up—go see how bad we’re busted up, Daniel.”

Abraham studied the tilt of the roof. “We’re taking water. She’s listing.”

Daniel Junior vanished below. Clapper began, “We better—”

“Danetta!”

Clapper and Abraham exchanged terrified looks. The cry came from Edna Clapper—and she wasn’t given to excesses of emotion.

All Abraham could think of was the ark’s brief but jolting rise and fall.
Where was Elizabeth when they hit—?

He ran to the roof trap and scrambled down the ladder, hardly aware of Daniel Junior’s urgent cries from the stern. Clapper came down the ladder after him. Chief was yapping. The horses kept kicking the ark walls,
bang, bang
—

Mrs. Clapper screamed for her daughter a second time.

Abraham batted canvas hangings aside, dashed forward through sloshing water and burst into the communal room at the bow.

“Elizabeth!”

Tumbled into an awkward position against the bricks at one side of the hearth, his wife didn’t respond, or see him. Her eyes were nearly closed. One of her white hands constricted on the small mound of her belly.

Mrs. Clapper was kneeling beside her, partially concealing Elizabeth’s legs. Abraham felt sick to his stomach as he watched Edna Clapper withdraw her hands from beneath Elizabeth’s twisted skirt.

The hands were bloody.

“She fell,” Mrs. Clapper said in a faint voice, as though holding great emotion in check. “When we hit, she fell against the fireplace—”

Suddenly her eyes smoldered. “This is no place for men!
Find Danetta.
”

Anguish held Abraham rooted. He realized Clapper had come up behind him—and even the big red-bearded man seemed horrified into helplessness.

Edna Clapper turned her wrath on both of them. “In God’s name, will you hurry? Mrs. Kent is losing the baby!”

“O
NE FOR THE CROW
, two for the cutworm, three to grow. One for the crow, two for the cut—”

Alarmed, young Daniel Clapper suddenly broke off the monotonous chant.

He and Abraham Kent had been marching side by side down the new checkrows plowed with the help of one of Daniel Clapper’s horses. At every transverse row marking the cleared four-acre plot into yard-sized squares, man and boy dropped half a dozen kernels of seed corn. Now Daniel had stopped.

A moment later, Abraham halted too. Looked back. Young Daniel remained motionless, signaling with his eyes. “Yonder, Mr. Kent. Injuns on the ridge.”

Slowly, so as not to show his concern, Abraham Kent slipped the seed bag off his bare shoulder. He wore only buckskin trousers and soft moccasins padded with leaves for comfort. His glance traveled first to the edge, of the plot, where Chief rested next to a smoldering stump. On the ground near the bulldog’s paws lay Abraham’s Kentucky flintlock rifle, his horn and his shot pouch. It would require a good run to reach the weapon. But it was primed and ready to fire, as always.

The wind this gray, thundery afternoon in late May 1799 cooled the sweat on Abraham’s chest in an instant. His gaze moved quickly on toward the cabin.

The windowless, twenty-by-sixteen building was half hidden by the inevitable trees that made clearing and planting even a single acre an exhausting task. Abraham had felled the smaller trees around the cabin. The larger ones showed the cuts where he’d girdled them to kill them. Several other stumps he was burning out fumed like the one at the field’s edge, mingling their smoke with the reassuring column rising from the cabin chimney. The chimney’s surrounding log superstructure jutted from the end of the cabin facing the river. The offset cut down the danger of fire, but not much.

Near the cabin, their once-fat milk cow nibbled at a patch of grass. In one of Elizabeth’s rare moments of good humor, she’d insisted on naming the cow Henrietta Knox.

Pretending to draw several deep breaths, Abraham finally completed the covert inspection. Once again he had cause to regret the location of his property: a good four miles above the settlement at Fort Hamilton.

Finally he turned. He wiped his forehead with his forearm to conceal his interest in the western ridgeline. Just as he spotted the four tiny figures, young Daniel let out a relieved breath.

“They’re movin’ again. They was just standin’ and watchin’ when I seen ’em first.”

Abraham’s heart slowed down. He picked up his seed bag.

“We can finish, then.”

He licked his lips, resumed walking. Young Daniel followed along the adjacent row. But he didn’t continue his sower’s chant.

The Indian danger kept Abraham constantly alert. It terrified his wife. Although raids in the district were infrequent—and were usually limited to cow thefts or cabin burnings—they did happen. Occasionally they were augmented by atrocities. Usually the victims had chosen to live a good distance from a fort or village.

The atrocities were by no means confined to one side, though. Abraham knew several white men in the settlement around Fort Hamilton who would automatically shoot and butcher any Indians they caught on the trails that ran parallel to the river.