The Seekers (60 page)

Sweat slicked Jared’s body under the heavy shirt and trousers the Judge’s wife had appropriated from one of the slaves at the Hermitage. His untrimmed hair was tied at the nape of his neck with a thong. His hands and face had turned a dark brown from exposure to the elements, and the skin was marked with dozens of insect bites that itched ferociously. He looked tall and fit sitting there. But he didn’t feel fit. The insides of his legs were still raw from long hours in the saddle. And during every one of those hours, guilt and the sense of his own inadequacy had been his constant companions.

He dismounted. As he scratched at a puffy bite on the back of his left hand, he gazed at the canvas bag hanging over the sorrel’s flank. The Bible that Rachel Jackson had given him had gone unread across all the miles of forest and prairie. Although he’d sat in the family’s box pew at Christ Church often enough in his boyhood, he’d never been especially religious, nor particularly attuned to the meaning of the Scriptures, the prayers and the preaching. He doubted there was much God could do to help him in the present situation. The outcome had probably been decided way back in Tennessee, when his blundering cost Amanda her freedom. Very likely his long journey had been for nothing—

Or almost for nothing. It absolved him of a little of his guilt. But only a very little.

Caught in the pessimistic mood, he gazed westward to gentle hills blurred by the midsummer haze. For miles on end, long prairie grass whispered in the wind. A lifeless landscape. Lifeless as his own hope, perhaps—

He tethered the mare and clambered down to the bank. He knelt and cupped river water in his mouth. It was warm, cloudy with silt. But it refreshed him.

He poured several handfuls over his head, shook off the excess, then went back up the slope to the mare, still a little surprised at the size of the town less than a mile away.

He’d expected a frontier hamlet. Instead, he saw two-story houses, church steeples and sizable commercial buildings. How large was St. Louis? Several thousand at least, he guessed.

Mounting up, he continued along the riverbank. Insects buzzed loudly and constantly. The mare kept flicking her tail to drive away fat green flies.

Presently horse and rider reached the low limestone flat that provided a natural setting for the buildings overlooking the river. Along the St. Louis waterfront, Jared counted more than forty river craft tied up: long keel-boats, flatboats, broadhorns, some of their muscular crewmen loitering in the blistering sun. Black men in tattered clothing unloaded cargo into wagons and carts. Here and there, elegant gentlemen in frock coats and beaver hats opened snuff boxes or puffed long cigars while overseeing the arrival of goods.

In mid-river, a ferry scow carrying six horsemen and a small wagon floated toward the docks. Over on the Illinois side, another wagon was waiting, this one big and canvas-topped. Near it, half a dozen miniature figures—a man, a woman, four bonneted little girls—watched the ferry’s progress.

Anxious to cross the river,
Jared thought somberly.
Can’t wait to enter the promised land
—
the fools.

On the trip from Nashville, he’d passed other families like the one on the ferry. The people carried their worldly possessions in rickety wagons or packed in bags on a string of horses. They usually greeted him with enthusiasm. He was going in their direction. The best direction—the
only
direction—

West.

Leaning to the left, Jared spat in the dirt.

Then he gave a gentle tug to the mare’s rein and turned up into the town proper, following a procession of three high-wheeled oxcarts.

Coughing in the dust that clouded up behind them, he listened to the French and English curses of the sweating drivers. He smiled at the monotonous profanity. Unlike that family waiting over in Illinois, the cart drivers had been around St. Louis a while. They knew the realities. For them there was no dream here, only a laborious job of coaxing and whipping dumb oxen one more block—

He passed a large limestone warehouse displaying a signboard that said
Manuel Lisa.
The business of the warehouse was apparent from the bales stacked in rows outside. Jared wrinkled his nose at the gamy stench of the furs.

He spent an hour jogging around the frontier town. He had to admit he’d seldom seen a place so sharp in contrasts, or so bursting with rowdy life.

Even the houses contrasted. There were old French residences, identifiable by the logs being set vertically, rather than horizontally, American style. There were newer buildings of Spanish stucco, even a few homes so squarely built and neatly bricked, he would have sworn he was back in Boston.

Many of the people in the busy streets appeared quite well-to-do. Others had the scruffy look of riffraff. And he was surprised to see quite a few Indians in blankets, beaded shirts and quilled trousers of animal skin. Many of them congregated at an open-air market. Bartering for the various items of trade goods on display, they offered birchbark sacks and skins that held commodities unknown to the boy on horseback.

Near the market, he passed a small jeweler’s shop. The proprietor blocked the doorway as if reluctant to permit his three Indian customers to enter. The jeweler held a tray of glass eyes. The Indians were examining them with great interest.

A few moments later, Jared was forced to the side of the street by a half dozen whooping red men on horseback. They thundered by brandishing tomahawks and shooting arrows at a couple of mongrel dogs racing ahead of them. Jared thought it a cruel and disgusting exhibition—until he watched a couple of the arrows bounce off the flank of one of the dogs. He realized the arrows were blunt.

Though scowling, the whites on the street made no move to interfere. Jared suspected the reasons. The Indians came to trade with the local merchants, so they contributed to the town’s economy. They also came armed. He hadn’t seen one savage without a tomahawk.

Having retraced his route to the part of town nearest the river, he rode by a crowded café, a billiard parlor in which someone shot off a pistol, then a ramshackle building. From a second-floor gallery, a young woman in a gaily patterned wrapper beckoned to him. She opened the wrapper to show him her small breasts, smiled and ran her fingers down below her waist. She held up two fingers, questioningly.

Jared shook his head. She closed the wrapper and cursed him—whether in French or Spanish, he couldn’t be certain.

Everywhere he rode, he searched faces. But his pessimism was deepening. What if Blackthorn had only been making idle conversation in Nashville? He could have ridden hundreds of miles for nothing.

He consoled himself with one thought. If Blackthorn had said nothing at all, he’d have been completely balked—with nowhere to search, no way to temper his stinging guilt.

A decent-looking tavern called the Green Tree offered him a room and a stable for the sorrel. A small black boy promised to rub her well and feed her amply. In the crowded taproom, Jared ate a platter of unfamiliar but tasty fried catfish washed down with strong beer.

To pay for everything, he handed the landlord his last dollar. The man placed the coin on a wood block. With expert strokes of a cleaver, he proceeded to chop the dollar into eight wedges. Bits, the westerners called them. He took six and returned two.

Jared ordered a second glass of beer and walked back to-his table. The taproom was jammed with all sorts of people. Near him, several well-dressed gentlemen rose while one introduced two new arrivals: a beak-nosed older man identified as a Mr. Moses Austin. The younger man with him was his son Stephen. The group fell to discussing the current state of lead mining. Jared assumed the mines must be located somewhere in the vicinity.

The olive-skinned tap boy brought his beer. After a careful glance behind him, the boy leaned over and whispered in broken English, “M’sieu Fink is presenting another show at eight tonight, Boston.”

Jared’s blue eyes widened. “How do you know where I’m from?”

“You come across the river, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s plain you’re a Yankee—”

“And my home’s Boston.”

“Oh! Now I see. In St. Louis, the Spanish and my kind of people—”

“French?”

“Yes. To us, any American is a Boston. Until now I never met one who really was from that place. Listen, m’sieu—Fink’s performance is at Lester’s barn. Anyone can tell you how to find it. Cost you two bits for the wildest show you have ever seen.”

“I don’t know this man you’re talking about.”

“You don’ know Mike Fink? Only the meanest damn fellow on the river. And the best shot! He puts on a splendid exhibition—” The boy’s voice dropped. “For the climax, his woman, Mira Hodkins, she takes off every last stitch and places a can between her legs, so—” A quick gesture, a lewd smile. “Then Fink, he shoots it out. Unbelievable—!”

“I’ll pass,” Jared said. “I’ve got business to look after.”

The boy shrugged, “Up to you, Boston. Not my fault if you don’ know what’s good.” He walked off. Jared smiled and shook his head and gulped beer.

On his journey he’d acquired a fondness for strong drink. It helped ease worries about Amanda, not to mention the assorted aches and pains at the end of a day’s riding. Though he wouldn’t be sixteen until the fall, he felt twice that old.

The events of the past year had worked a great change. It showed in the way Jared carried himself, in the strength of his sunburned, insect-bitten hand curled around the beer glass, in the wary alertness of his blue eyes as he surveyed the patrons of the tavern and listened to the polyglot conversations he couldn’t understand.

The beer made him sleepy. He went for a walk, still sweltering. He found a general store that sold newspapers, returned to his steaming room on the second floor of the tavern and latched the shutters to minimize the glare of the sun.

Using rags and the tepid water from an ewer on a stand, he washed. Then he flopped on the bed and scanned the front page of the
Missouri Gazette.

His pressroom training made him critical of the typographical errors he found. He was contemptuous of the generally uneven inking. And much of the paper’s content was local material, not of interest. Only a few items dealt with the war.

One article announced peace negotiations due to open in early August in Ghent, Belgium. Among the American delegates were Clay of Kentucky—Jared could almost hear the ring of the spittoon the night he’d crouched beside the dumbwaiter shaft—and John Quincy Adams, son of the former president. Whether the peace commissioners would be able to come to terms with Castlereagh’s representatives was a moot question, the article said.

With a sigh, Jared folded the paper, laid it on his belly and closed his eyes. The war seemed far away, hardly touching this town on the edge of civilization. And he had other things to think about, all of them tainted by his guilt at having failed Uncle Gilbert in so many ways.

He slept for an hour. Then he tugged on his shirt and checked the powder and ball in his pistol. In the stable he asked the small black boy where he might find the governor. He was given directions to a farm a short way out of town.

“Gubnor Clark, he spend mos’ of his time there in the summer.”

Jared’s brow hooked up. “Clark? What’s his first name?”

“William. You know—the captain what went all the way to the ocean—?”

Surprised, Jared thanked the boy and went to saddle the mare.

Tall and slightly stooped, General William Clark, governor of the Missouri Territory, welcomed Jared in the sitting room of the small but pleasant farmhouse.

Jared’s horse had been taken away by a slave who tied the animal in a walnut grove at the rear of the property. The large open windows of the sitting room brought a banquet of aromas: the warm fragrance of summer grass; the sweet odors of flowers blooming all around the cottage. Sounds drifted in as well: slave children laughing at play; the buzz of bees in a hive near the house; the rustle of catalpa trees in the late afternoon wind.

The sitting room was plainly furnished, yet comfortable. Several things indicated the character of the man who made it his home. A russet-colored hound slept under a window. A rifle and game bag stood in one corner. An Indian calumet hung over the hearth. The windows opened onto the west where hills and sky blended into a hazy line below the disc of the sun.

“I knew a man named Kent many years ago,” William Clark said. His voice still carried gentle Virginia accents. “At Fallen Timbers. He was from the east just as you are—”

“My father served at Fallen Timbers, General. Abraham Kent.”

“You’re Abraham’s son?”

“Yes.”

Clark’s face broke into a grin. “By heaven, this makes an occasion!”

He fetched cups and a whiskey decanter from the mantel.

“How is your father? I’ve not heard of him since we soldiered together—wait, I did see one letter. Addressed to Merry Lewis—”

Clark’s voice grew a little more somber when he mentioned the other man. Preceding Clark as governor at St. Louis, Meriwether Lewis had died on the Natchez Trace under mysterious circumstances some years earlier. There had been rumors of suicide brought on by mental depression.

Clark poured liquor. “As I recall, your father proposed to go with us to the Pacific. Merry and I welcomed the idea. But we heard nothing more.”

Jared fidgeted on the Philadelphia settee, an elegant import perhaps added by Clark’s wife. “My father died unexpectedly,” he lied.

“I’m exceedingly sorry to hear that, Mr. Kent.”

The general passed Jared his whiskey. He had removed his blue officer’s coatee with its horizontal herringbones of braid. He lounged at a window in his shirtsleeves, sipping his drink.

“I must say you don’t resemble Abraham very much.”

“I’m told I take after my mother’s side.”

“Ah.” Clark wiped the back of his hand across his sweating forehead. “You’re a long way from home. Your family’s business was printing and publishing wasn’t it?”

“Correct.”

“You didn’t find that to your taste?”