From Sea to Shining Sea (56 page)

“Johnny,” said Mrs. Clark, in that rich, plangent voice of hers, “tell us how he is. Is he well?” She was thinking of how much he must have suffered in those three weeks. One day of that sort of exposure had put men in their deathbeds with pneumonia, she knew that all too well, and this was her son they were speaking of. “How does he look?”

The question caught Johnny off guard, and his eyes met hers, then fell away, then came back.

“Why, why, yes … Yes, he’s well. He’s th’ happiest man I ever saw in all my days. He’s …” He saw George’s face in his mind’s eye now, and saw it in the light of her question, and realized only now that George had looked more like a man of fifty than of twenty-six. But he did not say that. He said, as cheerfully as he could, “Well, it’s no wonder, Auntie, he and all his boys were lookin’ some’at scrawny last I saw of ’em.” And hollow-eyed and stooped and trembly and coughing their lungs up, he did not tell her, adding instead: “It’s nothing a few weeks o’ that good English salt beef and brandy and chocolates they captured won’t cure. Ha, ha! And th’ summer sunshine, yea, by Heaven! I bet he looks as good as ever by now. When he gets back ’round to St. Louis and sees that sweetheart o’—”

He stopped himself. George had told him not to mention Teresa de Leyba to them, that he would do that himself someday, that they would likely take it wrong that he was betrothed to a Spanish Catholic. Damn, Johnny Rogers thought. It’s what comes o’ talking too fast.

“What?” Elizabeth exclaimed first. “Georgie found him a sweetheart out in the
prairie?
What is it, another squaw?”

“Betty,” her mother said sharply. “Now what’s this, Nephew?”

He looked around, half-smiling, waving his hands casually as if to dismiss it all. “Just a lady from one o’ those towns. Ah … I’ve got letters from ’im for you all. Maybe he mentions ’er, I don’t know. Say,” he asked, to change the subject, “where’s Dick?”

“Oh,” said John Clark, “why, he’s probably out there by now. He joined wi’ John Montgomery and a company to go join George. I’m surprised if you didn’t pass ’em on th’ river, or
someplace.” His voice trailed off. He wondered why they
hadn’t
passed somewhere along the way.

“Well,” George Rogers said now, with a sigh. “Ann. John. That’s what your son has done, and I suppose I’m as proud as you are. I’m proud o’ my son Johnny here, too, I’ll declare before God!” He crumpled his mouth in a teary smile, gazing at Johnny.

“Oh, Lordy,” Johnny exclaimed. “Proud o’ me? I thought when I showed up so late that George’d hate me out o’ the family for failin’ him! But y’ know what he said to me? He said, ‘Cousin, don’t bother your head a minute about that. I floundered round in that bedamned river myself and I know it’s a miracle ye got here at all. Only a Rogers could ha’ done,’ he said to me. And I reckon he meant it, for ’e made me a captain and put me in charge o’ his Royal Excellency th’ Scalp Buyer.”

They were all still for a few moments, both families wrapped in their thoughts, all aware of a wide, deep oneness encompassing their two families, in which cousins became brothers by what they had undertaken together, by the trust they had invested in each other.

Billy sniffled. His eyes were overflowing and the tears ran down his nose and his nose was running onto his lip. Almost strangling, he said:

“I jus’ love George.”

Johnny Rogers made a little groaning sound in his throat. “Aye, Billy. I do too.”

They all breathed hard for a while, then Fanny said, “He lives in a palace, doesn’t he, Cousin Johnny?”

“A palace?”

“Yes, and the Conquered wait upon him hand and foot, don’t they?”

Johnny looked at her for a moment and then smiled at her. “Well, Fanny, last time I saw him, he’d been living mostly out o’ doors. But I … He just might be in a palace by now. Or a mansion, at least. If I had my say, he surely would. And, as for the Conquered—Well, they be right out yonder in the slave sheds, and they’re bound hand and foot as they deserved to be. They’re not very happy. A lot o’ folk out beyond the mountains took the liberty o’ spittin’ on ’em as we passed through. Would you all care to go have a look at ’em, and maybe a spit?”

John Clark swallowed. “Well, I’ve never once spit on a man, though I’ve felt my mouth fill up a time or two. But I would like to have a look at this Hair-Buyer, yes, I would. A hair-buyer,” he murmured as he rose from his chair, his hands braced on his
thighs to help himself up. He was shaking his head sadly. “God pity a world where an Englishman would do that!”

T
HE GUARD CAPTAIN THREW OPEN THE DOOR.
“O
N YOUR
feet, Gov’nor,” he yelled in. “Your betters are here!”

There was a rattle of chains and a voice growled, “God damn you, yokel bastard Williams! I’ll have your head if you speak once more like—”

The officer was chained to the bedpost. He began to rise, confused, at the sight of this well-dressed family, of the regal woman and pretty girls. He had a pencil in his grimy hand, and some white cards fell to the floor as he moved. His face was dirty and haggard, long jaw dark with stubble, his red coat and white breeches were dark with filth, and his sandy hair was dishevelled and specked with bits of chaff.

Williams commented as they entered, “He still won’t eat humble pie, Mr. Clark. He’s as squawkin’ arrogant as a gander.”

The Englishman was standing now, looking hard at the family. The room was bright and bare. Its walls were whitewashed brick and its floor was packed dirt. The only piece of furniture in the room was the cot. “I beg your pardon, ladies,” he said, bowing slightly, “for my language. I didn’t expect…” Then he fastened his eyes on John Clark’s face. “Your name is Clark?”

To John Clark it was so much like that moment last year at Fredericksburg. “Clark it is. And you’re the Englishman who buys scalps? Good God, man!”

The prisoner flinched, but kept his head up and stared at John Clark’s dark eyes. His own cold blue eyes were terrible, lined with pain and sunken with fatigue, and blazing with intensity. He was already quite certain who these people were before him. “I, I must presume you’re Colonel Clark’s family.”

“I’m his father. This is his mother, Ann. And what children as aren’t yet off to war.”

Hamilton bowed slightly to Mrs. Clark, not wanting to meet her eyes. He let out a long, slow sigh. “Well, I don’t know what to say to you. If it pleases you to stand there and look at me, the spectacle your son has made of me …”

“Believe me, sir, it’s no pleasure,” said John Clark.

“Colonel Clark brought the world down around my head. I could despise him. And you. But as I thought when I first laid eyes on him, I only wish he’d grown up a Loyalist instead of a Rebel.”

“He did grow up a Loyalist,” John Clark interrupted. “It was the likes o’ you, sir, that changed him to a rebel.”

Hamilton took a short, sharp breath. It was apparent that he was not going to get sympathy here. He said:

“If you have any influence in this Commonwealth, Mister Clark, I pray you will convey to your government my protest about the ill use I’ve had as a prisoner of war.” He raised his arms to show his chains.

“Sir,” said Mrs. Clark, “one of my sons is a prisoner of war on one of your prison ships these two years past. I wonder me how he’s been used.”

Billy had pressed between his parents and now stood with his head cocked, looking at Hamilton. In the silence he said:

“My brother George catchered you.”

Hamilton compressed his lips and looked down at the gawky, freckled boy. He nodded, his eyes seeming to look a thousand miles.

“He told me he would,” Billy said. “And ’e did, sure enough.”

“That is correct, Master Clark. But the war is not done with yet. We shall see what becomes of your brother.”

Billy set his own lips, then looked up at his father.

“May I spit on ’im, Papa?”

“No, you mayn’t. Clarks don’t spit. No matter who at.”

“D’
YOU SUPPOSE
,” J
OHN
C
LARK SAID TO
J
OHNNY
R
OGERS
later, “that if he was back at Detroit, he’d still pay scalp bounties? I mean, he doesn’t seem a man repentant of his sins.”

“I don’t know, Uncle John. He was humble, oh, really humble, when he was with George. Stayed in his shadow every minute, I guess afraid he’d get killed by chance. But th’ moment we put chains on ’im and started back, he’s been a snot like this.”

“Ah. I see. Then methinks ’e’s acting his pride, and maybe he
has
learned something. What were those, those cards he had?”

“Why, those are his sketches. He’s drawn scores of ’em in his still hours, comin’ over. It’s like he takes a refuge in drawing. Y’d be amazed how good they are. It’d been a better life for us all had ’e been an artist.”

“What are they of?”

“Anything ’e sees. Trees. Countryside. People. He’s got a whole gallery of his old Indian chiefs, all in pencil. If y’d like to see, I’ll have Williams fetch ’em.”

“No. No, don’t take ’em from ’im.” John Clark had a certain vague antipathy toward artists, stemming from what the Scriptures said about graven images. He had never allowed portraits to be done of his family. Billy had shown some budding talent as a
draughtsman which his father did not actually forbid, but did not encourage either. But this had provoked his thoughts, this of a captured killer retreating into the solitary concentration of drawing.

“Wait,” Johnny was saying. “He drew sketches of most of us. Mine’s over here.” He went to a bureau and lifted a paperwrapped packet out of a scuffed leather ditty bag. “He was kinder to my image than to Williams’,” Johnny chuckled. “Made him look like a proper blood-suckin’ devil. Ha, ha!” He showed the little cardboard sketch around to them. It was a true representation of the young officer, hatless, gazing off to the artist’s right. “I guess that’s how I looked at the tiller comin’ up the Ohio. Watchin’ the north shore for Shawnee. Hm, hm. They tried to raid us one evening, but we drove ’em off. Protected His Lordship from ’em. I was tempted to throw ’im to ’em. Wouldn’t that ha’ been ironic, him scalped by them? Ha!” Then his face darkened. “They got Myers, did y’ know?”

“Myers?”

“George’s courier, the one we’d snatched from the Indians hardly two weeks before. George sent him and another man ahead by canoe with messages to Virginia and Congress about the victory at Vincennes. They got just a way past the Falls. There they were found scalped and all the papers scattered and gone. Otherwise you’d have heard of all this some time before. Poor Myers.” Johnny shook his head. “Sometimes a man will look lucky. But ’e’s just marked for later.”

“Then it’s not wholly safe out there even after all.”

“Nay, and never will be, I reckon. The Shawnee never came and talked with George, and they’re the strongest ones out there in th’ Middle Ground. But it’s a damn sight safer than it was. George holds sway out there now. You can’t conceive o’ how reputation works out yonder. Yon Hair-Buyer General was reputed the Great Father and protector of all the Algonquian tribes, but the Long Knife snared ’im and tied ’im up, without a man lost. Ye can’t imagine what an impression that makes in the bosom of a savage. Such force and foxiness are the stuff their dreams are made on. I saw how they gazed on ’im at Cahokia last summer, and that was even
before
he’d caught Hamilton himself. Listen, Uncle John: out beyond the mountains now, there’s no name’s got a half the power o’ his.”

“Power in a name,” John Clark mused. He shook his head.

“What’ll he do now?” Ann Clark asked. “When will he come home?”

“Auntie, if I was you, I wouldn’t look for ’im till after he’s
occupied Detroit itself. That’s his heart’s desire, and when Montgomery gets there with a fresh regiment, why, I’d say Detroit’s going t’ have Virginia’s flag over it inside a month.”

“But
Detroit
!” John Clark exclaimed. “Whole armies of Regulars have failed even to
get
there!”

“I know. But they didn’t do things the way George does things. And they had no reputation like his to blow ’em a clear path. Believe me, Uncle John. Give him Montgomery’s troops—with Cousin Dickie amongst ’em, too!—and I say Detroit might as well not raise the Union Jack some morning, for they’ll have to pull it right back down before noon!”

J
OHN
M
ONTGOMERY’S BOATS SWUNG TOWARD THE EAST
bank of the Mississippi and started up the mouth of the Kaskaskia River. The water changed from muddy yellow to clear green as they rowed into the smaller stream. And then there on their left were the roofs of the town, and beyond and above the roofs stood the vanes of the old windmill. A cannon shot boomed in the town, and smoke rolled away from atop a long, low stone wall. Captain Montgomery, gaunt and sunbrowned, half-smiled, the first trace of a smile Dickie Clark had seen on him for two weeks, and pointed. “That’s the fort,” he said. “Rocheblave’s old house is inside that wall, and that’s where your brother is, if he’s here.”

A crowd had gathered on the shore, men, women, and children chattering in French, and a few hallooing Americans, rangy, ragged figures with rolled-up shirt sleeves, leather pants, and pistols and knives in their belts. “There’s some of the oldtimers,” Montgomery said. “Hey! Davy! Hey, Abe! Herman! Aha! And look up the street there, Dick Clark, here comes down the ol’ Long Knife ’isself! GEORGE! YA, HA! HERE WE BE AT LAST! WHAT THERE IS OF US!” A twinge of distress passed over Montgomery’s face, and he said, “You watch ’im. He’s goin’ to be disappointed, but he won’t show it.”

George was on the little plank wharf when the first boat bumped up against it and Montgomery sprang off. Dickie watched as George and Montgomery hugged each other and whomped each other on the back. George was leaner now; his shirt hung looser on his wide shoulders, and all the muscles and sinews and veins in his brown forearms were defined as if his skin were thin as silk. But it was the change in the face that gave Dickie such a pang: Every bone was visible, his eyes were hollow and somehow wilder and more intense, his nose looked ever more like a hawk’s beak, and his jaw muscles were as distinct as
if drawn on the skin by some anatomist. There were many fine wrinkles and pain-lines around his eyes and mouth; they were visible from ten feet away in the afternoon sunlight. “John, John,” he was saying. “I’m glad you’re here and sorry ye missed the big event last winter. There’s Dickie! Brother, stop gapin’ and get out o’ that boat and gi’ me a hug! God damn, but I’m glad t’ see family! Hey, ye look a bit underfed. Hasn’t Monty been a-feedin’ you right?”