The Holy Warrior (15 page)

Adam smiled and put his hand, still thick and calloused, on top of Charles’s thin one. “God has been good to us, Charles.” He looked across the bed at the trim figure of Paul and nodded, “Your son’s the rising star of the United States Navy—and that grandson of yours is a fine young fellow!”

Charles looked fondly at Paul, then nodded. “You’re right—God has been good to me.” He gave Adam a long look. “And if you hadn’t looked out for us, Adam, we’d have been lost.” Adam tried to interrupt, but Charles raised his voice over the man’s protests. “No—it’s true. You saved us when all the other Tories were thrown out of America penniless—and you—you did more, Adam.” He hesitated, and his voice lowered into an almost confidential tone. “You helped me find God.”

Adam felt a lump rise in his throat. He squeezed the thin hand. “I’m glad, Charles. Very glad!”

“Now—” Charles impatiently swiped at the tears in his eyes that threatened to spill over. “Tell me all about the family.”

He listened while Adam and Paul gave him the news—the latest births, marriages, and deaths in the family. When he asked about the business, Adam said, “Better—much better than we’d ever hoped. It can’t last, of course. Sooner or later the furs will be gone—or else the fops in England will stop wearing beaver hats and start wearing pot lids or some other such foolishness. But the last few years have been very profitable.”

“Thanks to that grandson of yours,” Paul said.

“Whitfield is the man who makes it go.” At twenty-three, Paul’s son had proven himself to be a genius at figures. Under his management the Winslow Fur Company had expanded into an empire second only to that of the massive Hudson’s Bay Company.

“Whitfield could not have managed the company if there had been no furs. It’s been Christmas who’s done that.”

“Is Christmas here, Adam?” Charles asked. “I’d like to see him.”

“You know Christmas, Charles,” Adam shrugged. “He comes and goes like the wind. Never know when he’ll come in—and then you never know when he’ll decide to leave.”

Charles saw the pain etched on Adam’s face. “The boy’s taken his loss harder than any man I ever saw, Adam. How long has it been now since his wife and son were killed?”

“Five years in July.” Adam had been there the day Christmas had come back, his eyes empty, to tell them of Knox’s death. He looked at Charles and said, “He’s a driven man, Charles. He blames himself for his brother’s death—that’s why he’s worked so hard for the company. He doesn’t give a pin for money; he’s trying to make it up to his parents for the loss of their son.”

Adam paused, thinking of how Christmas had wandered restlessly since the death of White Dove and Sky. For a few weeks after his return, he had forced himself to take part in the business—mostly, Adam realized even then, to please Nathan and Julie. But it was no good. At last he had said to Adam and Nathan, “I’ll get the furs; it’s the one thing I can do.”

Year after year, Christmas had gone into upper Missouri country, penetrating the deepest recesses of the Yellowstone and even into Canada, coming home once a year to bring the furs. He always became restless and unhappy on those visits, and he usually cut them short to get back to the mountains.

Paul interrupted, “Will he ever get over it, Adam?”

“I don’t think he will, Paul—unless he finds the Lord.”
Adam bit his lip. “That’s the miracle I’ve been praying for. Right now he’s running—like a man possessed.”

“ ’Course, the business isn’t suffering any by it; he knows the West better than any man in this country,” Paul said, a sad smile on his face. “But it’s as you say—he’s running from God. Charity and I have often spoken of it.”

Charles dozed off, and once again his breathing became ragged and uneven. The two men stepped outside. “He looks worse, Adam,” Paul said with a worried frown. “I’ll get Dr. Rawlings to come by this afternoon.” The older man nodded agreement.

The two men descended the stairs, making their way to the outside arbor where they found Dan Greene and Nathan sitting and sipping lemonade. “Trust a Methodist preacher to sit around sipping lemonade whenever there’s work to be done,” Paul grinned. Pouring himself a glass, he sat down and asked, “You two still fighting about theology?”

Nathan stood and stretched, his tall frame still youthful and strong. He looked at Adam and half-jokingly suggested, “I wish you’d try to talk some sense into Dan, Father. About the revivals.”

“He can’t do that, Nathan, because he agrees with me,” teased Greene. His hair was grizzled, but thick and curly as it had been at twenty-five, when he and Nathan had fought over which of them would marry Julie. Years of riding the long circuit in all kinds of weather had toughened him—but it had worn on him as well. His strong features were lined in the June sunlight, and his shoulders stooped.

“Well, Father, I don’t see how you can give aid and comfort to the enemy. Every man of sense knows that these revivals are all based on emotion.”

It was an argument of long standing, and although Nathan and Dan joked about it, the question of the validity of the religious movement that swept the southern states in 1800 was to both of them a serious matter.

Men of faith alluded to the Great Awakening that had
shaken the nation, led by men like George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards. When Asahel Nettleton graduated from Yale and began his work as an evangelist, it seemed that a new move of God was afoot.

Adam considered his son’s remark, and it disturbed him. He knew Nathan to be a devout man, though he was unable to accept the camp meetings that had swept across the country like a wave. In August of 1801, Adam and Nathan had gone to Cane Ridge, Kentucky, to see for themselves what the excitement was about. They had been astonished how big it was; settlers came by the thousands with tents and wagonloads of supplies, prepared to camp out on the grounds until the meetings ended. No one had an exact count of the attendance, but Peter Cartwright, a Methodist clergyman, estimated between twelve to twenty-five thousand—remarkable indeed, considering the largest city in the state had less than eighteen hundred people.

Adam had been moved by the experience—but then, he had been converted under the preaching of George Whitefield. Even now, years later, he could remember every detail plainly, how he had “fallen under the power,” as the phenomena came to be known. He had seen men and women cut down like ripe grain under the powerful preaching of Jonathan Edwards, so at the Cane Ridge meeting, he had not been shocked—but Nathan had.

Adam groped for words to make his son understand. “Nathan, tell me the name of the most powerful intellect that ever stood in an American pulpit.”

“Why, Jonathan Edwards!”

“You are right—so think about this, son: His was the greatest mind in the church, and yet many times—many times!—when I was in his church at Northhampton, I saw almost every element that you fault the modern revivals for. I saw men and women shouting and shaking like a giant had hold of them; I saw them lying on the floor so thick a man couldn’t
walk between them. Edwards always said that—with a few exceptions—these things were of God.”

Nathan replied, “I can’t answer you, Father. If there are two men in this world I trust, it’s you and Dan. Still, the Bible says that we must act decently and in order.”

The argument had come full circle, so Adam changed the subject. “I hope Christmas gets here soon. He was supposed to be here two days ago. I still fret about him among those Indians.”

“Maybe he’ll come this afternoon,” Nathan reassured him as they all got up to leave the arbor.

The afternoon passed, and the family gathered inside the spacious dining room. Adam sat at one end, with Paul and his wife Charity at his right. Their son, Whitfield, and his wife Alice were on Adam’s left. Nathan’s family took up a large section. The boys, Alex and George—aged twenty-five and twenty-six—sat on one side of Nathan; their twenty-three-year-old daughter Judith, a regal beauty, was seated beside Julie. Across from them Dan Greene and his wife Anne sat, their three children lined up beside them.

The Greenes’ second daughter, Missy, was a tall girl, and at age sixteen was awkwardly trapped between girlhood and womanhood. Her blond hair was usually in need of combing; her brown eyes large and watchful.
She looks like a young colt—all arms and legs!
Adam thought, but he saw that the fine lines were there, and when she got past the leggy stage, she would have the graceful bearing that some tall women have.

At fourteen, Asa was a carbon copy of his father: thick black hair, dark eyes, strongly built. He was a stubborn boy, Adam knew, but not wild.

He gave their eldest, Caroline, a careful glance—she had always puzzled him. She was twenty-six years old, and one of the quietest girls he had ever met. She had built some sort of wall around herself, and Adam had never been able to get close to her.

There were others there, and Adam could name about
half of the distant cousins—women who had changed the Winslow name for another. He looked down the table and was snapped out of his reverie when he heard Paul ask him to say the blessing.

Getting to his feet, he bowed his head. “Lord, how grateful we are for this food! Thank you. And we thank you for our family—earth’s only wealth. We are thankful that we are not alone in this world, for you have given us to one another. Now we ask that every member of the House of Winslow will be a child of God—faithful to you, O Lord of all the earth!”

The hushed “amens” floated around the table. The lull was broken as they fell to eating, and the room was filled with laughter and talk. Adam said to Paul, “I’m glad you did this, Paul. It’s right for families to be together again.”

After supper the men retired to the large parlor and the women all pitched in to help with the dishes. Paul and Charity kept two servants, but the sudden influx of relatives necessitated extra hands. Charity moved through the crowded kitchen, giving orders cheerfully and often stopping to show someone how to do something better. Coming up behind Missy, she looked down at the blue china dishes the girl was washing in a pan of hot soapy water. “Why, Missy Greene!” she exclaimed, “look at the food you left on this dish!” She shook her head, adding, “You must have your mind on something else, because you’re surely not thinking of the dishes.”

“She’s mooning because Chris didn’t come,” Asa said with a grin.

No one expected the outburst the boy’s teasing would incur. Missy’s face went white—then red—and she turned and shouted, “You shut your mouth, Asa!”

The boy’s eyes flashed, and a stubborn thrust of his chin accompanied his retort. “I don’t have to shut up! Everybody knows you’re plum silly over—ow!”

A ringing slap on the cheek cut him off, and for one instant he stood there, stunned, with the clear imprint of Missy’s hand on his left cheek. He gave a howl and threw himself at
her, and the two of them fell to the floor in a kicking ball of fury, yelling at the top of their lungs.

Caroline gave a cry of distress and tried to separate them, to no avail; she could only stand there, looking helpless. The sudden eruption of violence had frozen everyone else in place except Charity. Her years on ship had given her a great deal of experience with such things, for sailors are simple men, often childish and fights were not uncommon.

Her green eyes blazing with a mixture of humor and impatience, Charity grabbed the large pan of soapy dishwater and without hesitation dumped it over the pair, then stood back.

The sudden deluge caught both of them with their mouths open. Asa rolled around on the floor gagging and Missy managed to sit up, sputtering. Their fight was forgotten, but the water had flattened Missy’s blond hair and it hung in her face in soapy braids. She stared up at Charity Winslow in bewilderment.

“Now, if you’re through with your fits, clean up this mess, then go change your clothes.” Though her aunt was only five feet five, Charity seemed to tower over Missy as the girl got to her feet. Drawing herself up, Charity berated the two children with iron in her voice. “I’m ashamed of you! If you were mine, I’d cane you both until you learned a few manners! Now get busy!”

Missy’s fair complexion was pale as ivory as she knelt without a word to mop the floor. Asa, at her side, was also too cowed to speak. When the floor was clean, she turned and left the room, determined not to cry in front of the family.

She ran blindly to the room she shared with several younger relatives, and fell across the bed sobbing. Scalding tears rolled down her cheeks, and her whole body shook with the force of her crying. When she was calmer she got up and paced the floor, dreading the moment when she would have to go down and face those who’d seen her make such a fool of herself.

Missy is as sensitive as a girl without a skin!
She’d heard her father say that once, and it was true. Her height made
her feel ugly—she would gladly have given all her quick intelligence to be six inches shorter. She often compared herself—always unfavorably—with small, petite girls, and had driven her mother wild by habitually stooping to make herself seem shorter.

“I hate Asa! I wish he’d die!” she muttered, immediately feeling a wave of guilt wash over her. Unable to tolerate it any longer, she ran out of the room and found her way out a side door that opened into the arbor, taking a path that led into the woods. The day before, she and Asa had wandered here, where the banks of a small brook wound around the edge of the fields and into the deeper woods. She picked her way along the path to a natural dam that had created a pond about fifteen feet across, and seated herself on a large moss-covered rock. The silence seeped into her spirit, and soon she felt better.

An hour went by, then another. She watched a water snake slither down the far bank in a movement graceful and deadly, snatching a small frog in one swift strike. The snake swallowed his prey and wriggled out of the water not three feet from her foot, its body swollen with the dead frog.

The moon edged across the sky unnoticed, and still she sat there, as if she were a part of the rock. She saw an owl cruise over, and she watched a nervous doe hover over her spotted fawn that staggered on absurdly long legs. The mother drank, coaxing her fawn to do the same before they melted into the dark wood.