Dorothy Garlock - [Wabash River] (10 page)

“We’ll take it, Mr. Washington. You’ll have the clabber by sunset.” Farr came to lift Amy from the horse, then reached for Daniel. The child went to him willingly.

“What was that all about?” Liberty asked when she was on the ground.

Farr grinned. “It’s Mr. Washington’s ferry. He likes ceremony and he likes to dicker.”

“I ain’t paying no black bastard a shilling to carry me fifty yards across a river. That’s robbery!” Elija growled. “Who’s he belong to, anyhow?”

“He belongs to himself. He’s as free as you are.” There was no mistaking the chill in Farr’s voice. “If you couldn’t pay, he’d take you for nothing. If you can pay and don’t wish to, then swim across.”

“We’ll pay the shilling, but what about the clabber milk?” Liberty flung the sack containing her valuables over her shoulder and took Daniel’s hand.

“That’ll come from my place.” Farr began hacking at the long grass with his knife and stacking it. “This will give the horses something to eat while they’re on the raft and they’ll be too busy to be scared.”

“I ain’t alikin’ it,” Elija grumbled and then snorted. “I ain’t never called no nigger
mister,
and I ain’t never heard of nobody else adoin’ it, neither. It ain’t decent, is what it ain’t. I’ll be dad-blamed if’n this ain’t the gawdawfullest, hell-bent-to-Betsy land I ever heared of.”

Farr carried an armful of grass to the raft and dumped it. On his way back he paused beside Elija.

“I advise you to watch your mouth, Mr. Carroll.
Mr.
Washington can be a valued friend or he can be a powerful enemy. He’ll take your measure; and if he finds you lacking, you’ll not cross on this ferry again. He don’t take kindly to those who feel they’re superior because their skin is white.” He stalked away without giving Elija a chance to answer.

“Well, I’ll be blamed if’n I can understand it,” Elija muttered to his back. “It don’t make no sense a’tall how things is done out here in this heathen land. They’s things a man can stomach ’n things he cain’t. This’n I cain’t. I ain’t makin’ no talk or shakin’ no hands with a nigger—”

“Libby, Papa’s going to make a show of himself,” Amy said anxiously. “What’s Mr. Quill going to say? I wish Papa’d hush up just for once.” She set Mercy on her hip to keep her small bare feet out of the sandburrs growing along the riverbank.

“He can’t hush up. It isn’t in him to hush up. And it’s better that Mr. Quill knows how Papa is right off, because there’s nothing we can do to change him. Papa brings trouble on himself, and it has nothing to do with us. Just hold your head up and be nice and polite to Mr. Washington.” Liberty suppressed a giggle. “It is kind of funny.”

Farr and Mr. Washington led the horses onto the raft and tied them. Farr came back for the children. He held one in each arm, jumped lightly to the bobbing craft, and handed them over to the huge black man. Liberty held her breath for fear they would scream. To her utter astonishment, they accepted him readily. He smiled broadly when Mercy’s small hand reached up to touch the rings in his ears.

Leaving Elija to get aboard on his own, Farr assisted Amy and Liberty down the slanting ramp and led them to the pole handrail where they could hold on until they could sit down on the floor of the raft. He brought the children to them, sat them down, and went to throw off the rope that held the raft to the shore.

For Liberty it was a scary, but fascinating ride. Amy seemed to have no fear at all. Her eyes were bright with excitement, and to Liberty’s surprise neither Daniel nor Mercy showed the slightest fear. They sat close together, and after Farr helped to push the raft out into deeper water with a stout pole, he came to stand protectively over them. Daniel looped an arm about Farr’s leg and watched the moving water. Mercy clapped her hands happily. Her childish laughter floated out over the water like the song of a bird. Hearing it, Mr. Washington laughed. It was a soft, rolling chuckle as he strained to turn the windlass.

Elija stood with his back to the others, his hands gripping the rails. Liberty wanted to call to him, share the excitement with him, but from the set of his shoulders she knew he had little inclination to join them.

Farr’s narrowed gaze sought Liberty’s face time and again. The damp river air had turned all the loose hair floating around her face into tight curls. Her steady blue eyes watched everything with interest, and, as usual, she was hiding any apprehension she might be feeling from the children. Farr thought he had never seen a prettier, more lively woman in all his twenty-six years. There was a lot he liked about this slip of a girl; not the least being how she looked him straight in the eye, honestly, steadily. She even faced the unpleasant task they shared at the massacre site without a trace of feminine nonsense; not screaming, not fainting, retaining, even in that moment, the spirit to talk back, to tell him her views.

His association with white women had been limited to Cherish Carroll, who had been like a mother to him, and Orah Delle, the Carrolls’ daughter, who lived in Virginia. He also knew the wives of the farmers who lived near his station and the Thompsons’ spoiled brat of a daughter, Harriet. Their indentured girl, Willa, was so shy she ran at the sight of him. Of course, there had been a few loose women in New Orleans who had been accommodating. After he lost Fawnella he had died inside. He had vowed to never again expose himself to such gut-crushing pain. He still wanted a son to carry his name into the next generation, and he would need a wife for that. When the time came, he would choose her much as he would a horse. He would get a good, strong, serviceable woman of childbearing age, one who wouldn’t nag him or interfere with his business or try to stop his wanderings. He’d get one who was willing to move on west when his work here was done. He wanted a quiet companion for the long winter evenings, one who would not question or—

Liberty looked up and his thoughts left him. He was so intent on looking at her that he scarcely realized, at first, that she was speaking to him.

“I had expected the raft to bob up and down like a cork and that we’d get all wet. It’s much smaller than the one that brought us down the Ohio.”

“This is a good time to cross. The snow melt has already run down and there hasn’t been much rain lately. Mr. Washington has crossed hundreds of times and knows the current. He wouldn’t take the children unless he thought it was perfectly safe.”

“Is . . . is he a runaway?”

“No. He has his freedom papers. He’s been out here almost as long as I have. He built this raft, patterned it after one in Virginia. Many men live the lives they want, but not many get to choose their own names.” His eyes twinkled as they danced over her face, studying every contour. Liberty felt her body grow tense under his gaze. She lost herself in luminous green eyes and forgot to breathe until rebellious lungs jerked her back to reality.

“I wondered about that,” she said breathlessly, then turned away from him and stroked the hair back from her temples with a quick, nervous motion.

The raft bumped against the log mooring as Mr. Washington brought it to the shore. He threw out the rope loop to secure it, raised his arms wide and announced, “Folks, you is now in the Illinois.”

T
he air was fresh and invigorating, the sky a cloudless blue. A road ran parallel with, but back from the river. They had gone only a short distance when they came to four identical houses, set several rods apart, all fronting the road. Behind them was a carefully tended communal garden, a barn as large as the four houses combined, and a plowed field. While the place was clean and neat, there wasn’t a bush, flower, fence, or anything at all to lend warmth or humanity to the settlement.

As they passed, a man with a dark beard along his lower jaws, wearing a loose white shirt and black hat, came from the barn and called a greeting to Farr. Women with small children clinging to their skirts came out and stood with their hands wrapped in the white aprons tied around their waists. Small white caps completely covered their heads. They stared at Liberty riding astride the horse with her sunbonnet hanging from the strings about her neck. Liberty waved, but only one of the women acknowledged her greeting with a slight lift of her hand.

Around a bend they saw another cluster of buildings. They were set about a hundred yards back in the timber above the river where it turned to form a deep bend. There in the cradle of the horseshoe bend was Quill’s Station. The main building was hewn timber set upright in the ground and chinked with stone and mortar. Attached to the side was the long narrow room Farr had said was a storage shed for his salt and supplies not only for this station but for other settlers farther downriver. Both the building and the addition had steeply pitched roofs, starting at the gables and ending flat at the porch eaves. There was a barn with large double doors and an open shed. Beside the shed was a small cobble-stone structure that looked to be a smokehouse. Liberty could see two cows, each staked on a long tether, several white geese and a few speckled chickens.

“I hope this is where Mr. Quill lives, Libby. My hindside is tired,” Amy said.

“It must be his place.”

“Is this all there is to his town?”

“He never said he had a
town.
He said there were nearly a hundred people that lived within five miles of his station.”

“The ones back there looked like those Sufferites we saw in Louisville. If that’s all that’s here, let’s go on. I didn’t like them—they looked so sour.”

“We have to wait for our wagon. I don’t know what we’ll do if it’s gone when Farr goes back for it.”

Farr strode on ahead, and when a man came out of the long, narrow building to stand on the porch, his hand shading his eyes, Farr shouted a greeting.

“Hello!”

The man let out a ringing whoop, came down off the porch and stood waiting. He was big, built like a barrel, and his gray hair hung to his shoulders. His white whiskers were braided in four strands, dangling in front of his buckskin shirt. When Farr approached, the man let loose a warlike yell, made two jumps and they were locked together, straining, their hands pounding each other’s backs. They shouted, stomped and rocked back and forth as if they were in a death struggle. Finally, Farr broke free and stepped back.

“Well . . . I see you aren’t dead yet, you old goat!” he said buoyantly.

“I reckon I ain’t, ya blasted clabberhead!” The man’s huge, gnarled hand gripped Farr’s shoulder with affection and Farr lifted a hand to grip his. They stood at arm’s length, smiling at each other. “Glad yo’re back, boy.” There was a huskiness in the old man’s voice.

“I’m glad to be back, Juicy. Things all right here?”

“Fair to middlin’ a late. Not much movin’ on the river ’cept fer a Shawnee canoe ever’ once in a while.”

“I’ve brought some folks who’ve had a mite of trouble. This is Mrs. Perry and her sister, Amy Carroll.”

“How do, ma’am? Little missy? Now then, ain’t you all jist a sight to these old eyes!”

“This is their pa, Mr. Carroll.”

“Carroll, ya say? Carroll? Any kin to Sloan Carroll up at Carrolltown?”

“I already asked them that, Juicy.”

“Could be shirttail relation,” Elija said, stepping out of the saddle. “My folks is a branch of the Virginia Carrolls.”

Farr set Mercy on her feet and lifted Amy from the horse. He took Daniel, and Liberty slid to the ground trying to keep as much leg as possible from showing.

“There’s a water bucket and a wash trough over there by the cabin, if you want to wash up,” Farr said before he turned to the old man. “Where are Colby and Rain?”

“They be up at the salt lick. Had a mite of trouble that. They be bringin’ in the kettles ’n sich.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Injun women ain’t makin’ salt no more. Jist packed up ’n cleared out. Left the kettles ’n salt piled neat like, tho’. That Frenchie ya helped out last fall come by ta tell it, ’n Colby ’n Rain beat it up there.”

“Do you think Tecumseh called them in?”

“Them womenfolk don’t do nothin’ on their own. Ya know that.”

“When will Colby and Rain be back?”

“Ort a be back anytime.”

Farr watched the group about the water bucket. Elija had drunk his fill, then leaned up against the cabin.

“You can water the horses down at the creek out back, Mr. Carroll,” he called.

Elija wearily pushed himself away from the wall, picked up the reins, and with slow, dragging steps went around the house. Farr saw Liberty turn her back as if ashamed her father had to be told to take care of the animals.

Liberty and Amy, he noted, had taken care to see the children had water before they themselves drank, and now they were wiping the dust from their faces and hands with a wet cloth. He felt a swift, mysterious jab of apprehension that Liberty would move on to Vincennes to find Hammond Perry. With great suddenness he was struck by an ache of emptiness. At that instant she looked at him; and although thirty feet or more separated them, it was as if they were held together by an invisible thread.

“Is anyone on Shellenberger’s place, Juicy?” He spoke with his eyes still on Liberty’s face.

“No. Ain’t been nobody through here alookin’ fer somewheres to light.”

“These folks are looking for a place. We had to leave their wagon and two oxen back near the Shawneetown road.”

“Injuns?”

“River scum. Seen anything of Hull Dexter?”

“He in on it?”

“Either that or he ran out on a party of eleven and left them to be massacred.”

“Gawddamned bastid! I always knowed he warn’t no good.”

“These folks might want to take over Shellenberger’s place. It’s hard for a woman to start from scratch even with a man to help. Her pa isn’t much of a worker. She’d be better off to go on to Saint Louis.”

“Shellenberger put up a stout cabin. Thar’s flat land thar fer plantin’. Ain’t she got no man?”

“Buried him a couple of days ago.”

“Too bad. But I be thinkin’ she ain’t agoin’ to have no trouble gettin’ another one, sightly as she be. Ain’t no woman—”

“I’m going back for her wagon,” Farr said abruptly. “I’d take her pa, but if there’s trouble, he’d be about as much good as a leaf in a whirlwind.”