From Sea to Shining Sea (72 page)

“There, I see ’em,” said Manifee. And now William saw them, too: a long, low canoe, a mere sliver on the water, where the Ohio began a gradual bend toward the northwest. The canoe was going downstream along that shore.

“Big canoe,” Manifee mused. “What y’see, Master Clark? Fifteen, twenty people in ’er? My eyes ain’t what they used t’ was.”

“About that,” William said, squinting. He could feel his pulse beating in his neck and temples. Greathouse was clambering up the ladder onto the roof now, with Edmund Clark and Bill Croghan following. Below, Wilkinson was looking at the distant vessel with a brass army telescope. Men were everywhere on deck now with their rifles, scanning both banks of the river and looking into the bare, snow-floored forest as far as their eyes could penetrate. The mouth of the Kentucky was yawning wider as they drifted toward it.

“What sayee, Mister Greathouse?” said Manifee. “Do I put in, or no?”

Greathouse was now looking warily at the river mouth, and he said, as if wondering aloud, “Might there be some up th’ Kentuck? Wait, Manifee.”

“Better say it quick, Mister Greathouse, or I’ll overshoot th’ point. I cain’t back this thang up, y’know.”

“Now, just—”

“Put in, Mister Greathouse,” General Wilkinson’s voice ordered from below. “I’m damned if a pack o’ heathens a mile off makes me miss my landing. Have your man put in.”

Greathouse’s bad teeth showed in a clench-jawed sneer, but he did nod to Manifee, saying, “Aye, then. Bear in. Any other savages in view? Eh? Keep y’r eyes clear, lads! If there’s any lurkin’ up the Kentuck there, stand ready to pole us off into th’ current. All look t’ your powder now, we’re headin’ in.”

William watched the long rectangle of the boat swing ponderously inshore, and he had got the feel of it well enough now that he was sure it was going to swing a few yards too wide, because of Greathouse’s hesitation, and be nudged back out by the current of the Kentucky. But Manifee yelled down to a man who stood among the horses on the foredeck with a rifle resting across a mare’s withers:

“Jaybo! Git on th’ bow an’ be set to flang a noose on that pilin’! Go, man! Git them ’fraidy bones out from ’hind that horse! Ain’t no redskins out there! Ha! He, hee!” The man moved out among the horses, leaned his rifle against a rail, vaulted the rail onto the prow and picked up the end of a coiled rope. It had a slipknot, which he pulled open and held at his side. By now the stern of the keelboat had swung downstream, and the prow was pivoting slowly past the end of the old wharf, a good fifteen feet from it and slipping past. “Rope it, Jaybo!” The man swept his arm out in a curve and the loop settled around the piling. “Yip!” Manifee shouted, and the man smiled, and looped his end of the rope around a cleat-post. The rope straightened,
wood creaked, and they were fast. William looked up the Kentucky, between its formidable bluffs, and saw no one. And on the other side of the Ohio, the big Indian canoe was now out of sight beyond the bend. It was interesting to him how much alarm one canoe could cause.

“Here’s where we must say adieu,” Wilkinson told the Clarks when his baggage had been handed down into a rowboat. “This would have been a dreary voyage for me indeed, but for your company. Pray come and visit me whenever you’re in Lexington.” He shook hands with John and Edmund Clark and kissed the hands of Mrs. Clark, Lucy, Elizabeth, and Fanny. “I’ve left gifts for you all in your cabin,” he said. Then he turned to William. “Young sir, I feel we’ll meet often, as this country grows. Maybe we’ll serve together sometime, in some way. I certainly hope so.”

“Aye, sir. And, ahm, here’s something for you.” William fished in his pouch for the twist of his home-grown tobacco, brushed some lint and pone crumbs off of it, and handed it to Wilkinson. The dandy took it, as if delighted, and let himself down into the rowboat. “Godspeed,” he called as the four oarsmen dug into the water and the rowboat started up the Kentucky. Most of the other vessels followed; they were en route to Lexington, Harrod’s Town, Danville, and Boonesboro, with goods for those Kentucky river towns; the keelboat was the only big vessel going directly on down to Louisville.

The gifts Wilkinson had left were small but elegant. For each of the Clark ladies there was a lace-trimmed handkerchief; for the men he had left a gallon of brandy.

“Well, he is some dilly,” said Ann Rogers Clark, touching the fine cloth to her cheek. “Just a bit of everything, isn’t he?”

“I reckon,” said her husband, “we’ll hear more o’ him. A man like that surely won’t just fade into the countryside.”

T
HE LOG HOUSE ON THE OTHER BANK OF THE
K
ENTUCKY’S
mouth was, Greathouse said, the dwelling of Captain Bob Elliot and his wife and daughter. “It’s Elliot,” Greathouse said, “who’s clearing land here.”

“I should like to go see him,” John Clark said. “I promised him I would do.” This Captain Elliot had used to shelter at the Clark house in Caroline when he was passing through to Richmond during the war. “Row me over,” John Clark said. “It’s not so long till night, and he’s said we’re welcome to his house.”

A skiff was untied from the keelboat’s side, and the man called Jaybo rowed John Clark across the mouth of the Kentucky. Mr.
Clark wore a find woolen cape and tricorn, and his powdered wig, which he had got out of a box because this was a matter of calling. He looked as fine and dignified as a governor, and no one would have guessed he was still crawling with lice acquired from Red Stone Fort, and some more recent ones from the bunk straw of Greathouse’s barge.

Here and there in the clearing around the house lay huge piles of slash and brush and stumps. Some of these had been partially burned. As the skiff came ashore, John Clark saw that the log house was very large and sturdy, almost a fort, with rifle slits instead of windows. Its door was of oaken plank put together with iron straps. This would be a sound house to stay the night in, he thought, his mind turning to that Indian canoe. Elliot’s built himself a real fortress here. No wonder, being as he’s right across the river from Shawnee country. It’s odd, he thought, nobody’s come out of the house, what with all our boats over there. I wonder if anybody’s home. He stepped up onto the hewn-log stoop and rapped on the door. He thought he could hear footsteps inside, and one querying syllable in a child’s voice. A cold swirl of wind from the river brought chimney-smoke to his nostrils. But no one came to the door. He waited. He looked at the gun slits in the walls, feeling that he was being watched through them. He knocked again. “Hallooo, there,” he called. “I’m John Clark, from Caroline County, come for to see Captain Elliot! Are ye there, Bob Elliot?”

A latch clacked on the other side of the door, and the heavy door swung slowly inward a few inches. A woman’s face, of pretty features, was looking at him out of the gloom, with the wary eyes of a cornered animal. John Clark lifted off his hat and bowed. “Good day, Ma’m. Are you Mary Elliot?” She nodded, and the door opened a bit wider. Now he could see that her comely face was dirty, her hair lank and loose. Her gray linsey-woolsey dress was smudged with ashes and grease. A dirty little girl’s face peeped around from behind her hip. “I’m your husband’s friend, John Clark of Caroline County,” he said again. “Is ’e here, please?”

“Gone a-hunting,” she said in a small voice.

“Eh. Well. Say, then. Has the captain ever spoke of me to you? He used to stay with us.” She nodded but said nothing. John Clark continued, now beginning to wonder if Elliot had married some sort of a half-wit: “My family’s in yon barge. My wife, three girls, and two sons.” He paused. At this point, any Virginian would be offering hospitality. But it did not appear that she was going to do so. Instead, she looked more alarmed
and wary than ever, even closing the door by a few inches. “D’you expect your husband yet this evening?” he pursued.

“I don’t know.”

He looked to the left and then right, feeling awkward in the face of this cool and uncouth reception, wondering how Captain Elliot could have bragged as much as he always did about so backward a woman. At last he turned to her again, noting the fright in her eyes, and asked, “Is everything all right here? Is there anything I can do for you?” She put her fingers over her mouth and shook her head, and it looked as if her eyes were going to spurt tears. The little girl still hung back and peered around as if he were an ogre of some sort. Well, by the Eternal, he thought, I can see we’re not welcome here. “So, Mrs. Elliot, I’ll just say good day, and please tell the captain we came to pay respects. Please tell him that, won’t you?” She nodded again. He doffed his hat and bowed once more, trying to keep the annoyance from showing in his face. He thought of offering to pay for lodging, but decided that the poor thing must be so addled that it might not turn out well at all.

He had Jaybo row him back to the keelboat. “Let us be getting on down the river,” he said, scowling now. “There’s still daylight.” And as they moved away from the Kentucky’s mouth, he described the strange encounter to his family. They were disappointed, having expected to spend a night on dry land, in a solid cabin with a blazing fire. The girls’ imaginations were running wild. “Suppose there was a savage in her house, holding her a hostage?” Fanny asked. “And she was just afraid to speak or let you in?”

“No,” John Clark replied, “I asked her if she was all right.”

“Tell ye what I think,” said Elizabeth, with a sort of smirk. “I think there was a man in there, all right, but her paramour, more likely.”

“Shame, Betty, to presume so about a poor strange woman,” said Mrs. Clark. “Do those novels make you think thataway?”

The keelboat drifted on down the river in deepening twilight. At one point William thought he saw the Indian canoe along the north bank, but by the time he’d fetched a spyglass there was no sign of it. A few miles farther down, Greathouse pointed out a sandbar at a distance off the south bank where the boat might be anchored offshore for safety.

That night, as the Clarks were getting ready to get into their bunks, John and Edmund and William having a glass of the fine spirits Wilkinson had given them, they looked up suddenly at the sound of feet on the roof above their heads. They could hear
Greathouse up there, exclaiming about something. They threw open their door and climbed the ladder to the roof.

Far up the river, above the trees and bluffs, a dull red light glowed, as if some large fire were reflecting off the underside of the clouds.

“I would reckon it’s a bonfire o’ those redskins we seen,” Greathouse was saying. “Looks to me as it’s ’bout a mile up, and on the north bank. ’Bout where we last saw th’ canoe.”

“T’me,” Manifee said, “it looks farther. I gauge it’s nigh th’ Kentucky’s mouth.”

Then the man called Jaybo said, “Heck, I know what it is. Ha, ha!” His voice was full of relief. “It’s at Cap’n Elliot’s place, where he’s doin’ all that clearing. He’s just bumin’ slash! You saw it there, Mister Clark.”

It seemed a reasonable explanation, but William was not satisfied with it. “We ought to go back and see,” he suggested. “And then if that’s all ’tis, why, Cap’n Elliot would be home and we’d see ’im after all.”

“We can’t go back up,” Greathouse said. “This barge don’t go upriver.”

“We could take a few men in the skiff,” William said. “Be there inside of an hour.”

“Oh, yes, lad? Come now. That boat won’t carry but three—four men, and if they got there and found Indians, what could they do but get themselves kilt, I ask? Nay. I’m not riskin’ my crew to go look at bonfires in th’ night.”

“Then Edmund and I and Pa could go up, and Bill Croghan.”

Greathouse was silent for a minute, looking at the glow in the distant sky. “I’m the captain o’ this here scow, lad, and I’m the owner o’ that skiff. Now, aside from that, I am not aimin’ to float into Louisville t’morry and meet Gen’l George Clark there and have to tell him, ‘Sorry, Gen’l, but I lost your Pa and brothers by puttin’ them on a night river in a skiff out amongst redskins.’ No, lad. Ye don’t have permission t’ touch that skiff, d’y’ hear me?”

That was that, and it did make sense. But John Clark did not sleep much that night. He kept seeing that frightened, lonely young woman’s face in the doorway and the little girl behind her skirt. And while William was atop the cabin taking his turn at guard after midnight, he kept thinking about that glow in the sky, although it was gone by then. Maybe it
was
just bumin’ brushpiles, he thought. That does sound likely. And I suppose if there’s been Indian trouble, we’d ha’ heard a shot or two. But still, I’d like to have gone up and made sure.

“Look at it thisaway,” Edmund muttered to him when he relieved the post at two in the morning. “If there was a raid there, we were lucky that woman
didn’t
invite us. Would ye want Ma and the girls to been in such a thing?”

William thought on that. Somewhere on the south bank a barred owl was calling.
Who-who, who-who! Who-who, who-who-aw!

“No,” William agreed. “Sure not, forbid it Heaven!”

“Well, then. If y’d been in the war you’d accept that some lamentable things you can do nothin’ about. Go bunk down. And don’t bump around. Family’s not slept well t’night.”

Who-who, who-who! Who-who, who-who-aw!
Another owl called farther upstream.

“All right. Say, Eddie. Listen hard at those owls. Do they sound real to you?”

“I’ll listen at ’em. You go on down and bunk. ’Night, brother.”

About an hour later, Edmund decided the owls weren’t real when he heard one of them sneeze and another strike something metallic. They sounded as if they were on the bank opposite the sand bar. The horses on the foredeck were getting nervous, stamping and blowing. Quickly and silently Edmund went down and roused Greathouse from his bunk and whispered to him in the darkness. Greathouse flung off his blankets.

In minutes the whole crew had been silently awakened, and were on deck with their rifles ready, listening to the night, while Jaybo was reaching out like a cat to untie the mooring lines.

And when the rest of the Clark family arose at daybreak they found themselves already ten miles down the Ohio drifting in midstream through a snow flurry with blanket-wrapped riflemen at every corner of the boat and old Jonas Manifee up on the roof manning his steering sweep, breath vapor coming out of his pigsnout. “Mornin’, Master Clark,” said he. “Reckon we’ll be at Louisville ’fore day’s end. Will you be glad t’ git there as I will? Been a long haul, ain’t it? Started last fall. ‘Member that shivaree we had in the cave by th’ Monongahela, where your Ma and Pa pranced? Gonna miss you folks.”