Under a Wild Sky (21 page)

It seemed a good location.
There was a loop in the Ohio below its confluence with the Green River, and within the bend the land rose.
The bluff on the Kentucky side stood more than seventy feet above the river
and was reputed to be the one place along this section of the Ohio that had never flooded. The clay and rock in the riverbank itself had a reddish tinge that gave it the name Red Banks. As the river turned back on itself here, it widened. At Red Banks it was nearly a half-mile across before it straightened and flowed west again, disappearing over the horizon, a glittering ribbon of reflected light.

The town was well laid out by the Transylvania Company's agents. It sat parallel to the river, occupying about a half-mile of the bluff-top.
There were 264 lots, each an acre large, divided by streets a hundred feet wide. The terms of sale called for residents to construct log houses at least sixteen feet on a side, with a “dirt, stone, or brick chimney, and plank floor.” Twelve acres in the middle of town were reserved for a park. Pretty as it was, Henderson did not thrive.
A general store operated for a while, selling mainly whiskey and, oddly, ladies' hats.
When Henderson's first saloon was licensed in 1799, gambling was prohibited on the premises and the owner was liable for anyone who consumed more liquor than “necessary.”
Concern for law and order was considerable—the sun-whitened skull of an Ohio River pirate supposedly hung on a pole just outside town for years.
Currency was hard to come by, and tobacco was often used instead.
The people spread throughout the surrounding countryside were so scattered that public elections took place over a three-day period in order to make sure everyone could get to the polls. Boxing matches were popular, as was horse racing, which was conducted down the broad, mostly undeveloped avenues in the city proper.
By the time Audubon and Rozier visited in 1810, there were 160 people living in Henderson.
Even at that, Audubon, when he later wrote about his first years there, exaggerated how small Henderson was, claiming there were only “six or eight” houses in town—one of which was an empty, one-room log cabin that became the Audubons' first home of their own.

What Rozier saw in Henderson is impossible to say. What Audubon found appealing was no mystery at all. The country around Henderson was largely untouched forest. A patchwork of wetlands and sloughs attracted massive flocks of waterfowl and wading birds. One place in particular caught Audubon's attention—a narrow, oval-shaped marsh on the western edge of town called Long Pond. It sat in a broad opening of the woods and was connected to the Ohio by a narrow bayou. In the coming years, Audubon would spend many seasons on the shores of Long Pond.
The fabulous fall duck hunting there would, above all, make a lasting impression on him. Poor though the prospects for commerce appeared to be in Henderson, the pull of the wilderness was irresistible, and Audubon agreed to relocate at once.

Lucy could not have been happy with her first view of Henderson when Audubon brought her and Victor down the Ohio a short time later. If she ever doubted the wisdom and resourcefulness of her optimistic young husband, this would have been the time. Louisville, where she had felt bored and culturally deprived, now must have seemed cosmopolitan by comparison.
Audubon, sidestepping the whole truth again, later said their only decent piece of furniture was Victor's cradle, and that aside from some flour and ham they'd brought along, they relied almost entirely on Audubon's gun and fishing equipment for sustenance.
The garden they planted their first year, he said, withered in the “rank” soil and was swallowed by weeds. Actually, things were not so bleak as that. The Audubons were arguably among the town's more affluent residents from the day they climbed up the Red Banks.
Lucy even had with her a set of china and silver.
Audubon and Rozier, meanwhile, invested in four “downtown” lots and put up a log store. They'd brought what they could of their inventory from Louisville, and also their clerk, a young man named Pope.
Pope was a dubious asset, as he was more inclined to be off in the woods with Audubon than behind the counter with Rozier.

Not long after they got to Henderson, the Audubons met a local doctor named Adam Rankin, who lived with his wife Elizabeth and their children on a farm called Meadow Brook three miles from town. Elizabeth came from a prominent family—the Speeds.
Her father, Captain James Speed, had fought with distinction in the Revolutionary War. The Audubons had known some of the Speeds in Louisville. In the isolation of a small frontier community, it was not surprising that Lucy and Elizabeth were soon close friends. The Audubons became frequent house-guests at Meadow Brook.
Though it was no grand estate, the Rankins' wood-frame house was roomy and comfortable and, to Lucy especially, a refuge. When Audubon told Lucy after only a few months in town that he was leaving on an extended business trip, they were thrilled when the Rankins insisted that Lucy and Victor stay with them during Audubon's absence. It was not an entirely charitable offer.
Elizabeth, who was impressed with Lucy's English refinement, asked if she would become a tutor to the Rankin children. Lucy, eager for something constructive
to do, agreed. It was her first taste of work. It was not to be her last.

Audubon's “business trips” until then had usually been pretexts for extended hunting excursions. This time was different. Audubon and Rozier had scarcely set up shop when Rozier decided that Henderson was a mistake.
He wanted to move still farther west, this time, he told Audubon, to the town of St. Genevieve. A French settlement, St. Genevieve was located in Missouri, about halfway up the Mississippi River toward St. Louis from the mouth of the Ohio at Cairo. It was almost three hundred miles away. Rozier, who had never gotten comfortable with English, longed to live again in a place where French dominated the conversation.
Audubon didn't feel a similar impulse, but he was eager to see more of the frontier, and no less a man than Daniel Boone was now living in Missouri.

Lucy thought the whole idea was terrible. She was not fond of the obtuse Rozier to begin with, and Henderson was quite bad enough. The prospect of moving even farther away from her family and civilization just to trade one backwater for another was almost unbearable.
In early December of 1810, with snow falling and the winter already well advanced, Audubon and Rozier abandoned their shop and set off downriver.
They went in a keelboat, two slaves manning the oars, and a cargo of dry goods that included gunpowder and several hundred barrels of “Old Monongahela” whiskey. Lucy saw them off with the hope that it was the trip and not the destination that interested her husband.

And so it was. The passage to St. Genevieve proved difficult.
The travelers were repeatedly delayed by low water and ice in the river. Near the mouth of the Ohio, they were forced to make camp for six weeks, shivering behind walls of snow with more than a dozen other stranded travelers.
Audubon conceded later that this was as “dismal and dreary” an experience as one could imagine. Rozier, out of sorts and half-frozen, became the butt of many jokes. Audubon, predictably, made use of his time in the wild, diverting himself with fishing, shooting game, and getting acquainted with the local Osage Indians, who were friendly. The Indians showed Audubon trails in the woods and marveled at his shooting proficiency.
His bird drawings entertained them enormously, and when they looked at the portrait Audubon made of one Osage, they all fell to the ground laughing.

Audubon was fascinated by flocks of swans, which seemed as confused by the frigid conditions as his campmates. The huge white birds would land and flatten themselves on the ice, as if swimming. They were hungrily watched by packs of wolves that made periodic attacks. This, Audubon thought, was a remarkable spectacle. The wolves would patiently stalk the swans at a distance, unable to comprehend that the sharp-eyed birds sitting so temptingly motionless were watching their every move. At last the pack would charge forward in a headlong snarl, only to watch the birds run off ahead of them, their huge wings pounding the ice so loudly it sounded like thunder until they became airborne.

Audubon was gone five months. Not long after the ice broke up, so did the partnership of Audubon and Rozier that had been agreed to in France with such high hopes for success in the New World.
Audubon accepted some cash and several IOUs from Rozier in exchange for his interest in the inventory and headed home, traveling the last 125 miles on foot.
When he arrived back at Meadow Brook in early April, he told Lucy that he wouldn't dream of taking her and Victor to St. Genevieve, which he said was smaller and more hopeless than Henderson. This wasn't true.
St. Genevieve had more than 1,200 residents. There were at least twenty shops and a large church in town. Adjacent to the main business district was a seven-thousand-acre field that was jointly farmed by the whole population—the largest communal farm in America.
Ferdinand Rozier stayed there, got married, and launched one of Missouri's most successful merchant families.

Of the many accomplishments achieved by anyone traveling the frontier in Audubon's time, staying alive was the most important and, at times, the least certain. Audubon spent years in the wilds of America, on horseback, in small boats, in terrible weather. He crossed the Atlantic Ocean many times. Dangers, both natural and human, abounded.
But he claimed that the only incident in which he feared that his life was at risk from another person happened on his way home from St. Genevieve.

The weather had improved after Audubon left Missouri. Spring was breaking out across the countryside.
He was alone, taking his time. He wore moccasins and carried only his gun and a small knapsack. One of the hunting dogs he owned at different times trotted at his side. After a long day following an Indian trace across a prairie, as the sun set and nighthawks
zoomed overhead, Audubon was searching for a grove that might give him shelter for the night. He heard wolves howling in the distance. To his surprise, he happened upon a small cabin.

The owner turned out to be a tall, “brawny” woman. Audubon found her manner abrupt and was appalled at her slovenly appearance. But she said yes when he asked if he might stay the night, and soon he was warming himself by the fire. As his eyes adjusted, Audubon saw that they were not alone. A handsome young Indian was sitting motionless on the floor, his head in his hands. Audubon spoke to him in French. When the young man looked up, Audubon was taken aback to see that half his face was covered in blood. The Indian said he'd been hunting raccoons that afternoon when one of his arrows split as he drew his bow and shot violently backward, blinding him in one eye.

Unsettled, Audubon checked the time. On seeing the fine watch Audubon pulled from his pocket, the old woman was immediately entranced. She asked to hold the watch and offered Audubon dinner. Audubon ate his fill, fed some venison to his dog, and began considering a pile of animal skins as a possible bed when the young Indian started nervously pacing the room, exchanging odd looks with Audubon. At one point he pinched Audubon roughly on the side. As Audubon stared, the Indian drew a large knife and fingered its edge, again looking strangely at Audubon. Finally, Audubon got the message. Now he studied the old woman, who was still holding his watch. He asked for it back, wound it, and excused himself to go outside and see what the weather was—taking his gun along. Out in the dark, Audubon loaded balls in each barrel and checked his flints. He went back inside, called his dog over, and lay down, cradling his gun.

Presently two strapping young men, the old woman's sons, arrived and commenced drinking whiskey. The mother joined them. Audubon, hoping the trio would drink themselves into a stupor, tapped his dog—who seemed alert to a threat in the stale air of the little cabin. To his horror, Audubon saw the woman at last get up and, looking like an “incarnate fiend,” put a long carving knife to a grindstone. Audubon felt a sweat break out on his body. The woman leapt up from the wheel, turned to her drunken sons and, screaming an obscenity, commanded them to kill Audubon and get his watch. Audubon rolled over to face them, cocking both barrels as he did so. Now the “infernal hag” walked unsteadily toward him. The Indian, evidently trying to help, struggled with the sons. Audubon
was on the verge of standing and firing when the door burst open and two more large men entered the cabin. They turned out to be fellow travelers. Once Audubon explained the situation, the woman and her sons were tied up. The Indian danced merrily around them while Audubon and his new friends spoke long into the night, swapping tales of similar close calls. In the morning, they led the three would-be assailants—now sober and pathetic—into the woods and flogged them. Then Audubon burned the cabin to the ground before going on his way.

This episode—which was to become one of the stories that would help to make Audubon's reputation as a fearless frontiersman—is hard to swallow. The gothic setting, the lurid details, the spine-tingling escalation of danger, and the last-minute rescue are almost certainly embellishments of some event that, while it may have given Audubon a scare, was probably a more pedestrian confrontation. The half-blind Indian—whose presence at the cabin isn't explained—feels like a detail Audubon imported from another yarn. Still, something almost like this may well have happened to him. Audubon did stop at cabins in the wilderness on his travels, and not everyone he encountered would have been an upright citizen. Most likely, he decided to relate some actual close shave in the way any proper Kentucky storyteller would—with a boost to make it more entertaining. But of course it's impossible to say for sure. It always was with Audubon.

After his return from Missouri in the spring of 1811, Audubon made plans to open his own store in Henderson.
He located new space in town and made a trip to Louisville for inventory. After three years on the frontier, things had not worked out the way he had hoped. The woods and the birds were wonderful. Audubon was now as strong and resourceful and knowledgeable in the wilderness as anyone. But his family's financial security steadily eroded, and as a businessman, Audubon had lost a little of his swagger. There was also the beginning of a change in his relationship with Lucy. During his long trip to St. Genevieve, Lucy had become indispensable as a companion to Elizabeth Rankin and a tutor to the Rankin children.
The Audubons were invited to stay on at Meadow Brook, at least until the new store established itself. In a literal sense, it was now Lucy keeping a roof over their heads.