From Sea to Shining Sea (28 page)

George laughed voicelessly, breath steaming in the cold air. Then he craned his neck to look ahead downriver, put the helm
over to his right to avoid an ice floe as big as a bowling green, and told the rowers, “Pull, boys, you’re flaggin’.”

Someone groaned, but they dug in harder.

“By th’ Eternal,” Joe Rogers gasped. Being a relative, he felt more free to complain or question than did the others. “What’s th’ hurry, anyways?”

George swept both banks with piercing eyes. “Mister Assemblyman,” he called forward, “how’s it look?”

John Gabriel Jones had been studying the river and the bluffs with the aid of a spyglass. He had a wool scarf tied over his three-cornered hat and under his chin to keep the hat on and his ears warm. Looking back, he said, “Clear.”

Now George nodded and looked back to Joseph. “Y’ recollect those Shawnees that were tradin’ at Pitt? Well, they shoved off day before we did.”

“Well, what of that?”

“Well, I’m chasin’ ’em,” George said, grinning.

“Say what? Y’re joshin’ me, George.”

Everybody in the boat laughed.

“I am,” George said. “Actually, they’re chasin’ us.”

“Come on now.”

“I mean it. I think we slipped by their camp at the Scioto last night, but I’m about nine-tenths sure they’re tailing us now. Does that inspire you to lay on those oar-sticks, Cousin?”

Joseph strained his weary muscles to add speed. His eyes were bulging. “It do,” he said.

The river gurgled around the hull. Oars dipped and swashed monotonously. George watched the river course all around as if his head were on a swivel, and now and then would look astern with a spyglass. “Make sure those kegs are chocked up,” he said once. Snow was melting in the bilges and the rowers’ feet were in icy water.

After another wordless, benumbing, breath-wracking hour, George studied the river astern and then turned around, lowering his spyglass. The intensity in his expression sent a bolt of dread down Joe’s spine. “Mhm,” George said. “Listen now, all. They’re back there. Five canoes. We’ve got a two-mile lead, but I’d like to open that up by a mile or two. Here,” he said to Joseph. “Swap ye seats. Mister Assemblyman, relieve Larkin up there if y’ would.”

Young Joseph crawled like a lizard to the stern seat, gripping both gunwales so hard his red-chapped hands were white-knuckled. He took the tiller, and it was obvious that he did not like sitting with his back to Indians.

With George and Jones now applying their rested muscles to the oars, the boat surged forward like a trout.

George rowed like a demon, looking past young Joe toward the dots that were the Shawnee canoes. He knew that five strong oarsmen might outrun Indian canoes for a while, but this boat was heavy and the rowers had been exerting themselves for a week. He thought of the river course. Ahead in the bends of the Ohio lay three long islands that divided the river into narrow channels, and beyond stood a set of limestone bluffs on the south side of the river.

“Mister Jones,” he said. “What we’d best do is bury these kegs at Limestone Cliff, then set the boat adrift a little way on down, and light out afoot for Harrod’s Town. There we’ll get horses and help, and come back for the powder. How does that sound?”

That sounded all right to a boatload of men who hadn’t a notion of what else to do. All they could do was try to wring a few hundred more oar-strokes out of their pain-wracked muscles and blistered hands.

T
HEY LANDED AT THE BLUFFS AND CACHED THE FIVE ONE-HUNDRED-POUND
powder kegs at intervals along the limestone cliff base, covering them with stones and driftwood. It was frantic, strenuous work in the twilight. The men were exhausted and their cold-stiffened hands were painfully torn and stove by the work. They grunted and swore and panted in the half-dark, stumbling among snow-slick stones, always peering upriver for sight of the Shawnee canoes.

When the kegs were hidden, he hurried the panting men back into the boat. “Don’t a one of you forget where these lay,” he warned, “in case we get scattered.” With that ominous warning, he shoved the lightened boat off from shore, hopping in and commanding them to work like the Devil. They rowed silently for several miles until George steered to the mouth of a creek he had been watching for. Here they piled ashore, slung their guns and provisions onto their aching shoulders, launched the empty boat back into the current, and set off on foot into the Kentuck interior toward Harrod’s Town, a file of seven dark shapes lurching along through leafless woods, wading in an icy creek to leave no tracks on the snowy hillsides. Joseph Rogers winced and gasped and anticipated arrows in his back, and thought that perhaps he should have listened to those of his family who had implored him to stay home for Christmas.

*     *     *

L
UCY
C
LARK AWOKE LONG BEFORE DAYLIGHT IN NEED OF
her chamberpot, but as usual it would require fifteen minutes of struggling willpower before she could get up out of bed in the cold, dark room to use it. She squeezed her thighs together, snuggled closer to the body-warmth of her sister Elizabeth, and thought about two exciting things that for days had been inseparably linked in her mind: Bill Croghan and Christmas Day.

Bill Croghan had been on furlough here since October and now it was Christmas morning, and he had been the first thought in her mind, the moment she awakened, on every single morning. Oh, what a prince he was, and how desperately she adored him.

She squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated. Sometimes when she did this, remembering particular things he had said, she could hear the exact sound of his voice in her head: the depth of it, the tone, the lilt, just the way it had sounded in her ear. But it was hard to do. Any little sound in the dark bedroom could throw it off and she would have to start again: like that little snot-whistle noise in Elizabeth’s nostril just now. Lordy, I could put a pillow on ’er face, Lucy thought with a flare of impatience. Or like little Sister Fanny over there on the far side of the bed: just at the moment when Lucy would have Bill’s voice all ready to speak in her head, Fanny would snort in her sleep, or say “um” or “mum” or “giffle” or some child-sound like that, and Lucy would hiss an exasperated sigh and have to start all over again.

And sometimes even when there were no sounds at all in the room, Lucy still couldn’t create Bill’s voice in her head, because she would distract herself in some way. Like now, needing to get up for the chamberpot and having a shivering twinge at the mere thought of it. Mercy, she thought, I might as well get it over with.

And then back in bed a minute later, the warm pee-smell rankling in the cold air, her icy feet making Elizabeth’s bedwarm legs jerk, Lucy would try again to create Bill Croghan’s beloved voice. It was best if he had said something just the day before that she could remember word for word, because then it would be fresh in her mind just the way it had sounded. Yesterday he had said a very memorable thing to her in a very memorable way, and she concentrated on it now: “Lucy-luce, you silly goose, I’ll give you a kissmus on Christmas!”

A kiss! Today!

She could remember and hear the voice exactly now.

Bill Croghan had kissed her once before. It had been on Thanksgiving Day, she remembered: He had come to the table
just as she was sitting down, and he had pushed her chair in under her as a true gentleman prince would do, and, as no one else had ever done that for her before, it had surprised her knees and she had plopped back onto the chair seat. Her mouth had dropped open and the family had laughed at her, and at that moment Bill had laughed behind her and said, “Ho, silly goose, your knees are loose!” and had kissed her right on top of her dust-bonnet. Then he had gone around to his side of the table, and while her father was saying the Thanksgiving Grace, she had sneaked a look across the table at Bill, and he had caught her looking at him and had wrinkled up his nose and made rabbit-nibble faces at her until she had almost laughed out loud—which would have been a serious crime during one of her father’s prayers.

It was such things as these that Bill Croghan did that made Lucy feel sure that he loved her as she loved him; they were like codes. Of course he couldn’t just come right forth and say he loved her, right here and now. He was twice her age now. But she had figured ahead by arithmetic and knew he wouldn’t always be. She would probably have to wait until she was fifteen to get married, as her mother had. By then the war probably would be over and Bill Croghan would come back to Virginia to stay.

Oh, Dear Lord
, she thought now with such a heart-clench that tears squeezed out of her eye corners,
may he be safe in the war
!

But it was Christmas morning now and everyone was safe at home here at the Clark house—except George, who was almost always gone—and Lucy lay now spooned against Elizabeth’s back and thought about the present she had made for Bill. She wished it would hurry and be daylight so she could give Bill Croghan his gift. He would like it so much, that’s when he would give her the kiss, she knew, and not on the top of her bonnet this time, either, she was sure, but instead probably right on her cheek.

Lordylord, I’m too excited, she thought; I’ll never get back to sleep.

That was what she was thinking when she slipped off to sleep under the thick comforter in her sisters’ body-heat, and she slept so deeply she was the last one up on Christmas morning.

J
OHN C
LARK WAS ESPECIALLY PROUD THIS
C
HRISTMAS BECAUSE
Parson Donald Robertson, the teacher of his sons, was here as guest for the holidays, and thus there would be a very proper and profound invocation before the giving of gifts.

Lucy Clark understood well enough what an honor this was,
as she had been told so often—half of the Revolutionary leaders of Virginia, it was said, had been pupils of his—but on any Christmas, and especially this one, she would have dispensed with the honor gladly because Parson Robertson’s invocations were perhaps even longer than they were deep. His wife, Auntie Rachel, lately had developed the scandalous habit of dozing in the middle of them.

But today the parson’s invocation was somewhat more interesting than usual, being, in effect, a lopsided history of the Revolutionary War to date, dwelling on the victories and ignoring the defeats, with about equal portions of credit for the victories being given to the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, and General Washington. He thanked them for having forced General Howe to evacuate Boston, for the deliverance of Charles Town, and for the wisdom and principles that had resulted in the Declaration of Independence—not forgetting to hint that some of his former pupils had had a hand in its adoption. In his invocation, the parson chose to omit the bad news of the autumn: Washington’s loss of Long Island and his long, grim retreat, the losses of Fort Washington and Fort Lee, Arnold’s defeat on Lake Champlain. After all, it was Christmas time, and Reverend Robertson would not want to depress spirits by admitting that the American Revolution was almost a lost cause, that the Grand Army of the United Colonies had dwindled to a couple of thousand men, through captures, desertions, casualties, diseases, and expired enlistments. No, this was a time of joyous and noble beginnings, the time of the Saviour’s birth.

All through this, Lucy Clark stayed on her suffering knees and stole glances at Bill Croghan. And finally, when it was over, she scarcely noticed who was giving what to whom in the gift exchange, until Bill Croghan came over and gave her what he had made for her—a new leathern slingshot—and she gave him what she had made for him—a new leathern slingshot. They laughed at each other, and the rest of the family laughed at them. And Bill Croghan, wiping tears of hilarity from his cheeks, said, “Now, here’s your Christmas kissmus,” and gave her a peck on the forehead before she even had time to blush. “And,” he laughed, “a happy Christmas to you, Little Brother!”

She leaped up.

“Oh, but you’re an awful man!” she cried, fleeing the room in tears before the astonished family and guests. She stopped in the doorway and shouted back at him through sobs of mortification: “Here I am who’s going to marry you, and y’ still call me Little Brother!”

G
EORGE WAS SLOGGING THROUGH MELTING SNOW IN A
warming sunshine, two of his men panting at his heels. At this moment he had just remembered that this was Christmas Day, and was turning to say a greeting to them about it, when he was jolted to a halt by the crack of a gunshot nearby. It rolled in echoes through the hills. His scalp prickled and he was ready to drop behind cover, but then he saw the large brown form of a buck deer careen out of a thicket and fall in the snow in a clearing a hundred yards ahead. It had been a hunter’s gun; whether white man’s or Indians he was not sure, though it had sounded like a long rifle. With a motion of his hand he bade his companions take cover. He stood behind a large beech tree and cocked his rifle and watched the place where the deer lay twitching, watched for the hunter to come claim his prey. He watched for a long time, searching in vain among the bare trees for the figure of a man. Whoever this hunter was, he was cautious and apparently knew how to hunt in Indian country without becoming sudden prey himself.

The man who eventually stepped out of the woods into the edge of the clearing and advanced on the deer was a huge man. His shoulders looked a yard wide; his rifle was aslant across his chest, carried at ready. For all his great size he moved lightly and silently as a wood spirit. There was no mistaking him. Grinning, George eased down the flintlock on his rifle, and called out:

“Butler!”

George stepped out from behind the beech and waved his hat. The big man’s gun was on him at once. “Don’t shoot, it’s me, Clark!”

Simon Butler uttered a whoop and came sprinting across the snowy clearing. They met each other halfway and they hugged and lifted each other off the ground, pounding each other’s backs with thumps that sounded as if they were beating oaken barrels, both laughing Christmas greetings into each other’s ears. George’s two men came out from cover and walked up hesitantly to see this scout who at twenty-three was already a legend.