Dance on the Wind (30 page)

“Push us free,” Zane ordered.

Root and Kingsbury took up fourteen-foot hardwood shafts, each of them going to the gunnels, where they planted the ends of their poles against the wharf and heaved with the thrust in their legs. Foot by foot, grunt by grunt, the two lunged against the poles, easing the laden flatboat out from the tangle of other craft moored at the wharf. Slow it was, the gray water slogging beneath them little by little. Back and forth Zane worked his rudder, shouting an order from time to time to Ovatt on the gouger as they edged on out into the middle of the harbor. Then, just beyond the last finger of land surrounding that cove on three sides, Titus felt the perceptible nudge of the Ohio against the hull beneath him. Now the water seemed to pick up speed, and the boat with it as they rounded that last glimpse of Louisville and Zane piloted them into the current.

“Sing out—you see anything a’floating!” Ebenezer called to the others. “We done this many a time, so ever’ one of you knows what we’re needing to draw for water!”

“What’s he talking about?” Bass inquired as he leaned on the short gouger pole across from Ovatt.

“This ain’t a high-water time to be floating down the
Ohio,” Heman explained. “Come autumn and winter, water gets low so we might just see us a lot of planters and sawyers from here on out downriver. ’Specially when we get yonder to the Falls, where the water gets all boiled up.”

“What’s he mean by drawing water?”

“We’re heavy,” the boatman explained. “Sitting down in the water some, instead of riding on top. So we’re gonna need deeper water to run the chute.”

“Chute?”

“There’s three of ’em at the Falls. One of ’em’s better’n the others sometime during the year. Depending on how deep the river is, how fast she’s moving. It’s up to me to sing out to Ebenezer soon as I can tell which chute is the one he ought’n take us through the Falls.”

As the boat picked up speed, with the wind whipping the icy sleet into them out of the west, Titus felt his insides drawing up like someone had dashed them with pickling spice. Water was one thing. Swimming in it—hell, even floating on it was one thing. But this bobbing within an onrushing current, totally at the mercy of the Ohio as it suddenly narrowed itself southwest of Louisville, rushing them onward to the Great Falls, was quite another.

He quickly looked about at the other three boatmen. Root had one hand gripping the gunnel as the icy water began to slap against that side of the flatboat. Time and again he swiped his face clear of spray and sleet as he squinted downriver.

Then Titus heard the sound that made his blood go cold.

Turning with a jerk, he peered into the sleeting mist ahead of them. Not only was it that low rumble which seemed to pull them perceptibly closer still, but also his inability to make out the source of the nearing thunder which caused his belly to churn and flop. In all that gray he could find nothing ahead of them that gave him the slightest clue—nothing but the gradual narrowing of the river’s channel between its timbered, rocky banks.

“You hear it, don’t you?”

Without tearing his eyes from the far bend in the river, he nodded to Ovatt.

“That’s the Falls,” Heman went on. “You allays hear ’em afore you see ’em.”

“Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat!”

With a start Titus turned from downstream to look at Kingsbury, finding the boatman intent on watching the river channel as he clung to a rope with one hand, the other clamped on an oar he held just above the frothing water. Beyond Hames Kingsbury he watched Ebenezer at the stern, yanking downward on the soggy brim of his wool-felt hat, pulling up the woven muffler over the lower part of his face before he leaned against the rudder to urge the flatboat a little closer to the northern shore.

“Keep ’er coming some more, Ebenezer!” Ovatt bellowed into the growing noise of their plunge.

Zane asked, “It look to be the Indian chute?”

Ovatt nodded, shouting, “Not as bad as one time we rode through here!”

“Keep your eye peeled on that rock at the bend like I teached you!” Zane instructed. “You tell me when we reach that.”

“See the rock yonder coming at us,” Ovatt explained now, his voice quieter against the swelling of sound around them. “By the time we reach that rock on the north bank—Ebenezer’s gotta have to choose which’t chute he’s gonna put us through the Falls.”

“If he don’t do it then?”

“There ain’t much time left if he ain’t ready,” Heman replied. “See how he’s doing now? Lookee, see how he’s moved us into the middle channel of the river. That way he can go to the Kentucky chute. Or he can stay here in the river chute. Or the likeliest way at low-water time like it is now gonna be for him to jump us over into the Indian chute. Off the starboard side here,” he said, pointing off to the right shore.

“How come they call it Indian chute?”

“Hell, Titus. ’Cause that’s Indiana Territory there you’re floating by. That’s how come.”

Despite the rising growl of the water, the Great Falls of the Ohio weren’t actually falls at all. More precisely, they were a long series of terrible rapids that churned up the river to a froth between the banks, narrowing as the
river passed Louisville. Anyone on the Ohio could plainly hear the water pounding on the rocks for as much as a mile upriver. A trip through the chutes was much, much easier at high-water time, anywhere from late spring to late summer, but as Heman Ovatt had explained, the rapids became all the more troublesome during the autumn and winter due to low water and many more exposed rocks. While a pilot always had his choice of which one of the three chutes he would select to negotiate the Falls—such a decision became critical to the lives of his crew and the safety of their cargo during low-water time. In earlier days of canoe travel on the Ohio, many of the more faint of heart even chose to put over to the Indiana side, unload, and portage their cargo past the rapids.

“Some cap’ns hire on a pilot back there at Louisville what knows the Falls,” Ovatt explained. “For two dollars there’s a few guides what make a good living just getting flatboats through the Falls.”

“But Ebenezer knows what he’s doing?” Titus asked, wanting an answer to dispel his uncertainty.

“He’s the sort would never let another man pilot his boat anyways. Sure enough—the Ohio might toss us around some this time o’ year—but Ebenezer gonna get us through.”

The growling belly of that thunder of water colliding with rocks grew until it seemed to drown out all other sound but the nerve-grating creak of the flatboat timbers. Looking at the icy, wet boards beneath his moccasins, Titus watched them shift and twist. He gulped, as if to swallow down the panic he felt for fear the boat would break apart as the river flung it toward the point where Ebenezer Zane would have to make his decision.

The closer they raced down the middle channel of the Ohio, the lower the clouds and sleeting mist sank down both slopes on either side of the river, clinging among the sycamores and birch, ash and poplar, then spilled onto the surface of the river itself. Swallowing the rock Zane used as his landmark.

Ovatt called out, “You see, Ebenezer?”

“Hell, no, I cain’t see it!”

“Can’t see the rock up there—what you want me to do?”

“We’ll just count to twenty. Should be there by then. Count ’long with me.”

Heman Ovatt tore his eyes away from Zane and stared off downriver just as the craft took a noticeable lunge to starboard, nearly loosening Titus’s grip on the gouger. Ovatt had begun to count, loudly, over the increasing noise of the water pounding on the sides of the flatboat, against the rocks around the far bend, and the increasing hammer of icy sleet beating against canvas and wood and flesh.

Every now and then during those next few seconds Bass caught snatches of Ebenezer’s voice counting along with Ovatt. The gouger’s voice rose in anticipation with each successive number as the entire crew struggled to catch a glimpse of something telltale along the starboard bank while the mist continued to swallow upon them.

“How’s he gonna see where to go?” Bass asked anxiously.

“He ain’t.”

“Heman!” Zane called out. “Less’n you got a better idee—I’m gonna set her in the Indian chute!”

“Fine by me!” the gouger called back, his voice sodden, flooded out in some spray as Ebenezer suddenly heaved his bulk against the rudder and set the flatboat creaking as it hurtled across the racing current.

Titus clung to the short gouger beside Ovatt and worked up nerve enough to ask, “We gonna put over and wait till we can see what’s ahead?”

Ovatt tongued his tobacco quid to the other side of his cheek, bent his head over the gunnel, and spit, the brown streamer smacking into the bow of the boat directly beneath him. “Ain’t nowhere in the Falls a boat can put over. We gotta ride it through.”

“R-ride it through,” he repeated without conviction.

“Ain’t nothing we can do now but ride, Titus. Just hold on and ride through the Falls—no matter if there’s hell on the other side.”

By the time Ovatt finished his words, they were all but swallowed up by the roar of irresistible liquid fury pitted
against immovable granite. As the shifting winds nudged the sleeting mist this way and that, Titus captured a glimpse here and there of the shore on one side of the river or the other beneath the roiling fog. Closer and closer Zane moved them to the northern bank, the boat’s timbers complaining audibly, protesting the strain as the Ohio flung the five men and their flimsy craft ever toward the upstream opening of the Indian chute.

“We in it now!” Ovatt sang out at the top of his lungs.

Barely able to hear the man right beside him, Titus turned to glance at the other three boatmen. Able to accomplish nothing with their oars in the rapids, Root and Kingsbury had laid their oars aside and crawled to the stern of the boat, clinging to the gunnel close by Zane in the event the pilot needed their muscle on the main rudder.

“This the start of the Falls?” Titus asked.

Ovatt nodded, then pressed his lips against Bass’s ear, to yell, “It be just a matter of Ebenezer and the river now! Him alone agin it!”

Zane laid his weight against the rudder again and again. Moving the boat this way and that, feeling his way through the rocks and water and great gray slabs of icy granite, throwing his flatboat and its cargo toward one shore, then the other, as the other four men clung to the slippery gunnels, unable to assist, knowing only that the next few moments of their lives were most precious, for above them hovered the specter of an icy death.

For Titus this staring into death’s face had a cold, metallic taste to it. Almost like sucking on an iron fork.

Time and again the pilot steadied himself, bracing his great, powerful legs within that square yard of icy deck, holding his own against the cargo lashed on three sides about him, holding his own against the frothing river that sought to snatch the rudder from his grip. Over and over the boat seemed to exercise a mind of its own, the great force of the Ohio flinging the flatboat out of the current only to plop down with a crash, its unyielding sides of strong yellow poplar groaning against the unmitigated forces of nature at her rawest.

Bass wasn’t sure if he was shaking because of the cold—how wet he was, standing like the rest, soaked to the
marrow with sleet, wind, and river spray. Or if he was trembling down to the very core of him out of undeniable fear. Either way, his teeth chattered like bone dice in a horn cup. Loud enough he was sure the others could hear them.

Then it struck him. He started to smile, looking at Ovatt. The gouger smiled back, both of them realizing that no more did the flatboat creak and groan. No longer did the river thunder about their ears. No more were they caught in the merciless grip of a watery hell.

There was only heaven. A quiet that slowly grew just the way the noise of the Falls had swelled and pounded at him. But now that pounding terror was behind them, and the persistent hammer of the sleeting rain was about all Titus could make out above the occasional dull slap of river against the flatboat’s sides as Ebenezer Zane worked the rudder into the current, moving them closer and closer to the Kentucky shore once again.

“Yonder’s Indiana,” Ovatt said, his voice strangely muted now in the absence of that thunder. “Place called Clarksville over there right about so. It sits at the bottom of the Falls—just about the last village of any size ’tween Louisville and St. Louie. Wish you could see it, but for the clouds.”

Titus could see very little of the Indiana shore, upstream or down. “Clarksville.”

“Named for George Rogers Clark. You hear of him?”

Wagging his head, Titus said, “No, I ain’t.”

“Hero of Vincennes. He kept the Northwest out of enemy hands many a year ago,” Ovatt explained in a reverent voice. “I see’d him once. Sure of it.”

“You seen Clark?”

“He was a old man then. Thin as a broom handle, all wored down with age. But every day he come to the river, folks said. An’ he’d wave to us what was going down. Clark’s the one opened this country—held back the enemy, and pushed back the Injuns across the Wabash.”

“What’s that?”

“Wabash? A river comes into the Ohio from the north. We’ll reach it soon enough. But for now, looks to be
Ebenezer is about to put over to the Kentucky side and let you off.”

With a start Titus whirled about, finding the pilot indeed easing the flatboat ever closer to the south bank. His heart pounding, his mouth gone dry, and his throat feeling like he had daubed with tannic acid, Titus started to scramble over the crates and kegs and great coils of oiled hemp smelling fragrant in the moist, icy air. Root and Kingsbury were at the port gunnel, both with loops of rope over their shoulders by the time Titus clambered his way to midship. As Zane eased the stern of his cumbersome craft crosswise to the current, slipping them toward a muddy section of land, Reuben and Hames freed the ropes securing the small two-man skiff at the side of the flatboat and let it drop into the icy river with a splash. Leaping on board with their heavy coils of hawser rope, the pair quickly paddled toward shore. Beaching the skiff among the leafless brush, they slogged about in the frozen mud up to their ankles to knot their mooring ropes around a couple of trees with roots exposed by the relentless Ohio.