“I wanted to deal with the opening of the West in such a way as to make it vivid, real, dramatic and so authentic it could be taught as history.”
Around Our House
“PA SAYS there’s not room for e’er other thing. I don’t know if we can get your feather bolster loaded on.”
“The feather bolster will not take such a heap of room, James. Make a place for it.”
Rebecca Boone knew it was not Daniel who had objected to the feather bolster. James had been strung as tight as a fiddle string since the day his father had named his intention of taking them to Kentucky, and now that the time had come to leave he couldn’t hide his pleasure to be going at last, or his impatience at the tedium of loading the pack animals. Give James his way and he would have ridden off with nothing but a horse and a gun, no bothering with womenfolks and young ones and house furnishings.
Like father, like son, she reckoned, remembering the times without end Daniel had so ridden off. In a way it was a pity that James had been too little to go along on most of Daniel’s great specks, and that this, his own first great speck, had to be cluttered with women and children. A man liked an unhampered speculation. It was a pity for James, but it had been a great comfort to her. It was bad enough to have Daniel away in the woods for months on end without one of the boys being gone with him.
She went about quietly, packing a slat basket with food left from their last home-cooked meal. It wouldn’t last long, but it would be a waste not to take it and she had never had rations enough to waste anything.
From the corner of her eye she watched James struggling with the feather bolster. She knew what he was thinking by the way he tugged and jerked at it. Feather bolster! Feather bolsters in Kentucky, where a man would have all he could do to stand off the Shawnees with one hand and clear him a piece of ground with the other! It went the foolishest, the things women had to have. He laid the bolster on the floor and folded it over three times, but before he could tie it into a neat, compact bundle it escaped him into fat, puffy sausages of air and feathers. He grunted and sweated and laid it out again. He pushed and pulled and mumbled down in his throat and grumbled. More so than need be, Rebecca thought, and she paid him no mind.
It was not seemly for a woman to look with favorance on any one of her young ones over the rest, but she misdoubted there was a mother living but had a special tenderness for her oldest son, her first-born. Time and again as the lad was growing up he had twisted her heart until it was hard to be stern with him. He had been so clever and quick, and so given to lightheartedness. Daniel’s sandy hair and her own black, combined, had turned out a sort of goldy-red in James. It had always pleasured her to look on that bright head. But she knew well enough that did she ever allow him to take an inch he would take a mile, so risky were all young ones, so she had oftentimes steeled herself against him. And he need not think, sixteen though he was now, that she could be talked out of taking her feather bolster to Kentucky, either.
Daniel’s shadow darkened the door. “You about ready?”
She folded a linen square over the basket and slung it on her arm. “Soon as James gets my feather bolster tied on. Seems it would of been a heap easier to tie it on back somewhere so’s one of the least ones could ride on it.”
“You want it should get tore into bits by the briars and thorns?” His frustration made James speak scornfully of her woman’s lack of knowledge.
Undisturbed either by his scorn or by her lack of knowledge, she followed Daniel out into the early sun, speaking softly to her son in passing. “No, I shouldn’t want it to get tore into bits by briars or thorns, or e’er thing else. See it’s packed good so’s it won’t be, if there is aught to be uneasy of.”
James would learn in good time that while women might lack the kind of knowledge men had, they had a kind of knowledge of their own, which men, for the most part, made a poor shift of doing without. She knew what would be required of her in the wilderness, and she knew to what uses the feather bolster might be put to ease those requirements. But no need to say. The young had to do their own learning.
The train of pack horses strung out along the trail, each animal loaded heavily. It was a good train, well disposed and well loaded. Daniel had seen to that. There was a place on a good, steady horse for each of the least ones to ride, and a place for her handy to them. The men, Daniel and James, would walk and lead the train. The oldest of the younger ones would drive the milch cows and the three hogs. Daniel pulled her horse around for her and helped her to mount. She arranged her skirts and steadied the basket in her lap.
She was taller than common, Rebecca Boone. She could look Daniel straight in the eye, and though Daniel wasn’t extra-heighted, it made of her a tall woman. She was not a woman often given to laughter or to gaiety of spirit, but she had the name among the settlements on the Holston of being steady and sure in her ways, quiet in her speech and high-hearted in bad times. She was stout and skilled in all the ways a woman in the western country had need of being skilled.
She could shoot, though not as well as Daniel, for once when she was aiming at a deer she had misfired and killed her own riding mare. They had laughed at her over that, down on the Yadkin, but they did not forget either that the same winter, because of Daniel’s being gone on a long hunt for skins, she had killed and dressed out enough meat to feed her family well and have some left over to serve Daniel when he came home in the spring.
She had always made out better than most women when her man was away. She asked no help in tending her crops, but set to and tended them herself, plowing and planting and gathering, all. Whatever she turned her hand to, man’s work or woman’s, she did well. That is what people on the Yadkin said of Rebecca Boone.
James came out of the cabin with the feather bolster tied into a roll and, peering around it, made his way clumsily down the slope of the yard.
“Go back and pull the door to,” Rebecca called to him.
In disgust James flung the bolster on the ground and turned back.
Daniel chuckled mildly. “What difference, Rebecca? You are leaving of this place for good and all. What difference whether the door is shut or not?”
“I wouldn’t like to think of the weather blowing in and making a ruin of the house,” she replied quietly.
She looked down the string of pack horses. Eight of them, there were. Daniel had done well in his trading for the animals. They were smaller than most men would have wanted, but Daniel said you needed small, fast, sure-footed animals on the trail going into the Kentucky country, and he had reason to know, the times he had been there. She wished, though, there had been a way to take more of the house-plunder. Not that she questioned Daniel was right. The trace was no more than a path, and steep and ledgy in places. No wagon could go over the trace, he had said. Still and all, it was a wrench to leave her beds and her tables, her chairs and the dish dresser Daniel had made for her. It came hard to leave them, but the worst was having to leave her loom. How she was going to manage without it, she had no notion. Likely Daniel would get around to building her another one but, knowing Daniel, she knew it would be a time and a time before he got to it. She sighed, but not in real distress. It was mostly a sigh of habit. In twenty years of being married to Daniel Boone she had sighed and given up many things, but mostly without too much regret.
It was what a woman had to expect if she married up with a restless, wandering man. And most men in this western country were what you would call wandering. Wasn’t much to be done about it. You married your man, had his children for him, fed him, made his clothes and oftentimes his crops, tended his home when he had one, worried over him when he was gone, which he mostly was, never knowing whether he would come home dead or alive, or even if he’d come home at all. You made out, one way or another. And when he got restless and began looking past the corn rows toward the woods and mountains, you sold out and crawled on the back of a pack horse and went toward the west with him, for it was always the west that pulled him. To the east were people, and comforts and an easy way of life. All the women in the western country thought with longing of the east. But they never looked in that direction, for they knew better. No man who ever got as far west as the undermountain country turned his eyes east again.
“Well, it’s shut, for all the good it’ll do,” James told her, coming up the near horse and laying the feather bolster across its back. “It’s closed and bolted. I took the trouble, seeing you wanted it shut.”
“Yes,” Rebecca said. “You done good.”
The lad took thongs and cinched the bolster down tight, making certain, for all his impatience with his mother for taking it, that it would be safe on the trail. She watched him, thinking how well Daniel had taught him. It pleasured Daniel for James to be so near grown now. He had been, you might say, waiting for it a long time. So they could be menfolks together. A man set such a heap of store by his sons.
Daniel took his place at the head of the train of animals. He looked back. “All set?”
James sent a proprietary glance down the line. “All set!” he called; then he stepped up and took his place by his father, topping him by a good inch. They turned their faces up the trail, and the horses fell into line behind them.
Rebecca did not mean to look back. It did no good, she had found. In spite of her intentions, however, she found herself twisting her body around to take one more long look at this last home she was leaving. Men, she thought, hadn’t the feeling for places a woman had. A man wouldn’t likely know what she meant when she said she left a little piece of herself behind each time she moved away from a house that had sheltered her and her brood, but there wasn’t ever a woman who had left a place that wouldn’t know. Whatever of yourself you had put into a place, you generally left behind you with it, so that no matter how puny a place it was, there was a sadness when it came time to turn your back on it. Likely it was but natural for a woman to want to stay put, to build fences and set out an apple tree and a rose bush . . . to know that the sun of an evening was going to set over the same place it had risen of a morning. A woman was so natured she liked a sameness. She felt better when she knew she could gather the corn in the fall she had planted in the spring. With a man it was different. Men were poured from a different mold. Ever moving, they were, like water seeking the sea.
She had known this time was coming almost from the day she had married Daniel Boone, for even then, as long ago as twenty years, he had talked of little but the land over the mountains, the Kentucky land. It was during Braddock’s War, in 1755, before ever they were wed, that he had met up with John Finley who had been a trader among the Indians on the Ohio. When Daniel was home from the war and they were wed, he had remembered all the things John Finley had said, and he had told her, it was untelling the times, “It must be a fine country, Rebecca. John says there is an abundance of game of every kind. He told of seeing buffalo in such herds as to be uncounted, coming down to the salt licks. And deer and elk and bear. Pigeons and turkeys so thick they make a cloud over the sun. And the land. He told how the land was richer than any he’d ever seen, good land, well watered and prime. I have a great desire to see that land, Rebecca.”
Mile by slow mile he had moved them toward it, each new shift and change taking them ever westward. He had seen the country, too, for he had gone hunting there, and when he had come home in the spring of 1776, after two eternally long years spent hunting out skins for his stake, when she had not known from one good day to the next but what he was scalped and his bones left bleaching in the elements — when he had come home, she had known the time had come. “I’ve got my stake,” he told her, “and there’s forts there now, Rebecca. There is other folks.”
He had begun gathering together the families to go with him to make a stand in Kentucky. Forty head of folks all told. In a way, she thought, easing the leg thrown over the saddle horn, it was a relief to have it over and done with, to be shut of it, all the talk and the speculation, and to be leaving out.
They made slow time to the Powell Valley, but if it fashed Daniel she couldn’t tell. Driving milch cows and hogs on the trail was a tedious thing, although the children did as well as could be expected of them. They just naturally dallied and had to be put up with. It seemed like the horses were always rubbing the packs loose against things, too — rocks, or limbs or stumps, and time was lost having to stop and straighten them. Making camp of an evening took time, too, with the young ones to see to and the cooking to do. Even so, they reached the meeting place where they were all to come together in plenty of time.
It was a good thing to see the other womenfolk and to hear woman-talk again. Some took it in good part, this moving to Kentucky with their men, but some took it ill. “We’ll never see our homes again,” mourned old Mrs. Donohue, watching the sun set that evening behind the craggy cliffs that marked the gap to Kentucky. “We’ll all be killed by them heathen varmints. I misdoubt we’ll ever see the land itself. They’ll be laying in wait for us ere we step foot on it. You mark my words!”
“The way I see it,” a younger woman said, shielding her face from the heat of the fire with her arm crooked over her eyes, “Indian trouble is Indian trouble where’er it is. We’ve had it in good measure on the Holston. Don’t see as it could be much different in Kentucky.”
“My John says,” another spoke up, “the land is worth the trouble. He says if enough of us go and stick together we can stand off the Indians.” She was a bride and she blushed as she spoke of her John.
“What do you say, Rebecca?” they asked, turning to the wife of their leader.
She turned the browned hoecakes out onto a flat shingle of bark. “Why, what’s there to say? If your man has got to see what’s on the other side of the mountain, he’s got to see, is all.”
“And you think it’s right for them to go dragging us women and young ones out there so far from home?”
Rebecca Boone’s dark eyes were steady on the woman who asked. “Where is home,” she said, “except where your man is.”
They took a few days to get the cumbersome and now fully assembled train repacked and loaded, places and duties assigned, livestock rounded up and belled, last-minute preparations done and last-minute ructions and misgivings settled. Daniel checked and rechecked their own provisions. “I wish I’d brung along that least anvil I left at Billy Russell’s,” he grumbled. “And I’d like it a heap better if we had more flour and salt. Be a time till we get more out there.”
Colonel Russell’s station was the last place one could buy such necessaries. They had passed it two days before. “Well, it’s too late now, Dan’l,” Rebecca said, sensibly.
“Yes. We’d best be moving. The season’s getting late.”
It was September and the nights were already chill. They had to get where they were going and make some sort of provision for the winter before cold weather set in. They had taken what care they could, and there was nothing for it now but to move on out beyond, break the last ties that bound them to the settlements and go it on their own hook. They left at sun-up the next morning, well ordered and well organized, guarded front, flank, and rear by Daniel’s own picked riflemen, as safe as caution and experience could make them.
The first day was bound to be slow, Daniel told them when they camped that night a bare twelve miles from where they had started. They would get the hang of it in a day or two, he said. “Make camp and get your rest tonight whilst it’s still safe.”
He couldn’t get to sleep himself, however. Rebecca felt him turning and twisting beside her. “You wearied, Dan’l?”
“No. But I’m going to send James back to Billy Russell’s for that anvil tomorrow. I know in reason there’ll be need of it and I can’t rest for thinking of it. I’ll have Billy send some more flour and salt, too.”
“You aiming on waiting here?”
“No, we’ll move on. He can catch us up easy, him alone that way and us moving slow.”
His mind made up, he slept. It was Rebecca who was restless now. She wished Daniel would wait for the boy, but doubtless it wouldn’t be fair to the others. And James was good at taking care. She had to stop thinking of him as a little fellow. He could do his part the same as the rest. It would pleasure him to be sent on the errand . . . make him feel big to be so trusted. She composed her thoughts and finally slept.
The next morning she saw to it that the boy had a good breakfast while Daniel explained what it was he wanted him to do. “Take the little sorrel mare,” he concluded. “She’s fast. And don’t tarry. Don’t lose no time. You’d ought to catch us up the day after tomorrow.”
After he was mounted Rebecca walked toward the boy. Impatiently he pulled up the mare and waited. She had it on the tip of her tongue to tell him to mind out and take care, but she bit the words off. It would shame him in front of the others to be so cautioned. “Best get me another little awl,” she said instead. He nodded and gave the mare her head. Rebecca watched him until he was out of sight back down the trail, the mare traveling swiftly, James’s goldy-red hair bent over her neck.
The party moved slowly on westward, ever nearer the overhanging cliffs and the dark breastwork of the mountains. On the evening of the third day Rebecca caught herself listening and looking back. He ought to be turning up any time now, she thought.
When he had not come by the time they camped she felt a deep uneasiness, which she tried to hide, going about her cooking quietly as usual. The stock tethered and guards set, Daniel came up to eat his meal. “Doubtless,” he told Rebecca as he ate, “Billy Russell has furnished him a heavier load than I thought, and he’s made slower time. He’ll be up with us in the morning.”
“Yes,” she said. No need dwelling on it, but Daniel had not dispelled the uneasiness.
Camp had been broken the next morning and the animals loaded when Billy Russell himself rode up, his horse lathered and breathing hard, and Billy as distraught as a man can be and still talk sense. Throwing himself off his horse he yelled for Daniel. “Daniel! Daniel Boone!”
Daniel came running.
“Daniel, a terrible thing has happened! Your boy, and mine . . . ambushed last night! They’re killed. Indians! Shawnees! A big party of them!”
“Your boy?”
“I sent him along with James, and two workmen. One of the workmen had just got back from Williamsburg with a load of powder and I thought you’d welcome some extra. I came on behind and just overtook them . . . what’s left of ’em. I made sure they would catch up your party yesterday, or I would never have . . .”
“Where?”
“Back down the trail. Not more than five miles. They must of camped there last night.” Colonel Russell groaned. “Dan’l, they tortured ’em. Pulled out their fingernails. Stuck splinters in ’em and burned ’em and slashed ’em. Skulped ’em. They’re burnt and cut till a body . . .” He broke off, his face twisted and white.
It was too late. Rebecca had come up and heard. A slow shudder, beginning in her stomach, ran over her body and ended in a weakening of her knees till she could barely stand. She felt as if her breath was being choked off in her throat. Last night, while they slept unawares, James was being hurt so . . . Her hand reached up and pushed at the knot lumping in her throat. But her voice came clearly. “They are dead now?”
The colonel swept off his hat. “Yes, ma’am.” His mouth trembled and his voice shook. “I am sorry, Miz Boone.”
Daniel turned quickly, his jaw tight. “There are these to think of!”
Indians! Indians! The word swept like a flame over the people and set them shaking. Daniel gave hurried orders and the party scattered down the narrow ravine in which they were camped. The women and children were herded under an overhanging bank where the roots of giant trees had hollowed out a shelter. “Stay here,” they were told. “Don’t move, no matter what.”
They were barely hidden when shots back down the trail told that the attack had begun. Daniel gathered his men and posted them at the mouth of the ravine. “Wait till they come nigh,” he warned them, “and make sure you’ve got a good shot. Make ever’ one count.”
There was no time to see to the cattle and the horses and they were immediately stampeded, crashing off into the woods in all directions. Soon the ravine was filled with the hideous yells of the Indians and the clatter and crash of gunfire. It was made more awful by the crying and moaning of the women and children. Rebecca went about among them. “Hush, now,” she soothed. “Hush. It does no good to cry. Feed the least ones these hoecakes, and you girls — that gravelly bank looks like there was a spring underneath. Dig there and see. We’ll all be thirsty ere long.”
She went about among them fearlessly because there was nothing in her to feel fear. There was only a deadness that hung like a heavy weight about her neck. Nothing was real to her, not the gunfire, nor the savage yells, nor the babies crying. All that was real to her now was the thought of James, lying yonder stiffened and still, his bright head shorn, his hands gashed and cut and his tormented body mutilated. She soothed the babies and encouraged the frightened women and there was no break nor tremor in her voice, because she did not know what she was doing or saying. Habit was serving her, for inside her heart was squeezed and bleeding, crying over and over, “My son . . . my son.”
The day, in all its fear and awfulness, wore on. The Shawnees did not keep up a sustained attack. After the first great, almost overpowering, surge they fell back; then slowly they vanished into the woods, taking cover behind the trees and bushes and logs, firing from hidden places that were hard for Daniel’s men to discover.
Fearing to be surrounded and besieged in the narrow cove, Daniel fanned out his men, thinning them along the front but covering the sides and rear. The men hid as best they could, behind rocks, a bank of earth, a felled tree, and they fired at the smoke of the Indians’ guns. That a shot told now and then was evident when a painted Shawnee fell, twisting, from behind a tree, his last scream drawn harshly and quaveringly from his throat.
There would be periods of silence, lasting sometimes an hour or more, silence so complete as to make the men wonder if the Shawnees had crept off. But if a man grew careless, or restless, a shot rang out, echoing down the ravine, bouncing off the rocky ledges and dying out in a fading rumble. There would be other times when it seemed as if every Indian fired on signal, and the woods rang with the noise and filled the ravine heavily with sound and smoke. From one moment to the next, it was impossible to know what to expect.
When she had done what she could for the women and children, Rebecca went to stand where she could see. So it happened she was watching when a bullet glanced Daniel’s skull and sent him reeling. She was beside him in a moment, her hands feeling, his blood staining her arms and the front of her dress. “It’s but a scratch, Dan’l,” she told him then, tearing at the hem of her dress. “I’ll bind it so’s the blood won’t blind you.”
“Knocked me down,” Daniel said, “but it don’t hurt much.”
“No. Did you see where the shot came from?”
He shook his head. “I was loading.”
Rebecca’s hands finished with the bandage. “He’s up there behind that biggest beech tree. Near the rim of the hollow.”
“I’ll get him.”
But when he reached for his gun he staggered. Rebecca, took it from him. “You set here a minute. I’ll shoot for you till you feel able again.”
He allowed her to take the gun. “I come over dizzy all at once.”
“Yes.”
Slowly she lifted the gun and rested it, readied it for firing. Daniel coached her. “Wait till he shows hisself. He’ll not be able to keep from looking out to see. He’ll edge hisself out a mite. Wait till there’s enough of him to kill, then fire.”
Rebecca nodded, laid her cheek along the walnut stock and waited patiently.
First she saw the smallest movement along the tree trunk, no more than a shadow darkening the far side. Then she saw a shoulder bulge a little larger. Her finger tightened. Boldly, then, the Indian peered out and as he did something swung loose from his chest and hung, swaying, glinting goldy-red in a shaft of bright sunlight. Rebecca’s thighs quivered. She made the new scalp her target and squeezed the trigger. She saw the Indian spin and stagger, heard him yell, watched him fall heavily to the ground. She handed the gun to Daniel, and vomited sickly at his feet.
Daniel watched her, puzzled. When she lifted her head he said, “You got him.”
She nodded. “He had James’s scalp on him.”
She walked slowly back to the cavelike shelter of the women and children and sat down on a rock. Little by little the nausea, the oily bile of her sickness, passed. She kept seeing the goldy-red scalp, swaying with the movement of the Indian, and an ague took her, shaking her achingly for a moment. That, too, passed, and when one of the least ones came up whimpering for comfort she took it on her lap, cradling it gently. “There, now. It’s all right. Hush, now, there’s nothing to harm you.”
Toward the middle of the afternoon the firing became desultory and then it stopped entirely. The men waited. An hour passed. The men grew restless, and then one deliberately poked his hat on a long stick-up above a log. It drew no fire. “They’ve left out,” Daniel said. “They’ve headed for the Ohio.”
Cautiously the men reconnoitred, but there was not an Indian to be found. As suddenly as they had come, they had gone, stealthily taking their wounded and dead with them. Slowly the people gathered in the mouth of the ravine and the women and children, freed, formed knots about their menfolk.
The party was not without its casualties. Isaac Cooper was bad hurt, a shot through his stomach. He would die within a matter of hours. James Goodwin was also badly hurt, his leg being broken, but he had a chance to live. Robert Whitney had a flesh wound in his shoulder, and Daniel had his skull creased. Only one man had been killed outright. They had been lucky, they felt. It could have been so much worse.
As the tension of the fighting eased and the talk grew louder, however, there were hysterical overtones in the women’s voices. “Lord have mercy,” they wept, “but it was terrible.”
“We’ll have to turn back now. We can’t go on. We’re too bad hurt.”
“This is just the beginning — this near the settlements, too. We’d best turn back while we can.”
And higher and more hysterical than all the others was old Mrs. Donohue’s voice. “I said it! I warned you! I said they’d lay for us. It’s going against the will of the Lord to go on, I tell you! I’m crossing no mountains! I’m going back to my home!”
Apart from them sat the young bride, a widow now, the dazed tears making pools on her round young face, John Steever’s head pillowed in her lap. “You’d best tell her,” Daniel said to Rebecca, “that we’ve got to bury him now.”
Rebecca went to her, spoke gently, lifted her up and held her while the men carried off the man who had said so surely the land was worth fighting for. Someone else would get the worth of it, for John Steever would never see it now.
When the men returned Rebecca went up to Daniel. “Can we have a fire, Dan’l? These need something hot to eat and drink. They will calm down quicker with hot vittles inside of them.”
He nodded. “No harm. There’s ne’er an Indian within miles of us, nor won’t be again.”
While the women cooked, the men rounded up what was left of the livestock and tethered the animals. More than half of them were gone. Many of the pack horses, including four of Daniel’s, were missing. The provisions and packs were scattered and burst and no one could yet tell how much was lost. The people were bewildered by the attack. It was not to be expected so near the settlements. They were frightened and their courage had drained away. As they ate they muttered among themselves. They wanted to start back at once. No use waiting till another day. “We want to turn back now, Daniel. This is the Lord’s hand pointing the way.”
“Yes, God knows, it was not meant to be.”
“We want to go home, and we aim to leave out ere night falls.”
Daniel raised his hand and they quieted. “We knew,” he said, “when we left the settlements there would be Indians to contend with. It wasn’t likely they’d start pestering so soon and it was bad luck that a war party of Shawnees should be crossing just now. But they have cleared out. They’ve took what they wanted of the stock and have made tracks for the Ohio. Likely we can finish the journey without more trouble. We are a strong party. We can send back for more provisions and we can go on.”
“No!”
“Don’t listen to him!”
“I’m turning back, now!”
“It’s not you,” a woman’s voice cried, “that lost your man today . . .” Then, remembering, John Steever’s widow put her hand over her mouth and shrank back into the crowd.
“We’ll decide in order,” Daniel said. “We’ll take a vote.” He pointed to a tall man up front. “How do you vote, Jonathan Derwent?”
“I say go back!”
“Benjamin Graham?”
“Go back!”
“Abraham Lyne?”
“I’m turning back.”
The voting went on. Not a voice was lifted in favor of going on. Rebecca sat by the fire and waited, her least ones about her knees. Maybe Daniel would go back, too. Maybe now that he knew no one would go on, he would turn back his own head. Maybe now that his whole party favored turning back, he would forget that other land and take her home again and they would live peaceably in the settlements and raise up these least ones decent and God-fearing as young ones were meant to be raised up. It was too late for James, but these others . . .
She looked about her strange surroundings. Back home the late sun would be shining softly on the shingleboards of the cabin roof. The rail fence would be warm from its heat, and the apple tree at the corner of the house would be throwing a long shadow across the steppingstones. Back home it was almost time to cut the corn and gather the pumpkins and pick off the gourds from the vine on the woodshed. Back home these least ones would be safe.
She lifted her eyes and looked at the craggy mountains that barred the road to the west. The rock cliffs were already shadowed and they looked broody and dark and forbidding. That way lay the wilderness road — a weary and blood-stained road. She shivered slightly and wished she might not have to travel it.
At last the voting ended and the question she had been waiting for was put. “What do you aim to do, Daniel? What are your intentions?”
She saw the sandy head go up, saw the thin mouth firm, saw the faded, squint-wrinkled eyes turn toward the mountains. Before he spoke she knew what he was going to say. His face had been turned westward too long. “I aim to go on. My intentions are just what they was in the beginning. They’ve not changed.”
There was a clamor of voices. “Alone? You’ll never make it!”
“By yourself?”
“On your own hook? Man, you’re crazy!”
Stubbornly, he insisted. “The danger is over, I tell you. There will not be another Indian betwixt here and the forts.”
They shook their heads, not willing to believe, and then they crowded around Rebecca. “Come back with us, Rebecca.”
“You can stay with us till Dan’l makes a place for you.”
“Bring your least ones and go with us.”
“He can come for you next year.”
She looked at Daniel and saw that he was watching her. Her hand touched the soft hair of the child leaning against her knees. Daniel nodded at her. “I can come for you next season, Rebecca.”
Quietly she stroked the child’s hair. James’s had been just as soft. Then she looked slowly around at the people clustered about. “I thank you,” she said, relinquishing the home, the Yadkin, the peace, the safety, “but I reckon I’d best go with Daniel.”
In goodness of heart the people shared with them, then. “Take my big bay, Dan’l. He’ll carry a right smart load.”
“Take this flour. We can get more in the settlements.”
“You can have this bar of lead, Dan’l. I’ll not be needing it now.”
“Here, Rebecca, is my Rose of Sharon quilt.”
They accepted the things offered, setting them quietly aside; then they helped the people make up their dwindled packs. At the last there were a few tears, a few shamed looks among the men and then they were gone, back down the trail over which, only yesterday, they had come.
Daniel slid wearily to a log. Rebecca handed him a bowl of food and he looked up at her, his eyes unseeing what it was she was handing him. They had a burned look, as if they had been turned in on themselves and glazed by what they had seen. Her heart lunged and tightened within her. A man set such a heap of store by his sons. In all their days together she had never seen Daniel look like this. He was hurting fearfully inside. He had been hurting like this all the time, but now he could let it show. “Here,” she told him, “eat now.”
Methodically, he obeyed her, eating all that was in the bowl. When he had finished he put the bowl down beside the log and went to catch up one of the horses. “Before it’s dark,” he said, “I’m going back to bury him.”
“Yes,” she said. “Wait.”
She went to one of the packs. Her roughened hands fumbled with the knots. He had tied them so good . . . James. For all his scorn of her woman’s ways he had made sure that nothing would happen to it. Patiently she raveled each knot to its end and pulled loose the feather bolster. She carried it to Daniel. “Here. I’d like him to lay easy, Dan’l.”
His tormented eyes met hers. “Rebecca, they . . . Rebecca!”
She did not fail him. Never in her life had she failed him and she did not now. She would have time to grieve later. She would have all her life to grieve. Now she must comfort this man who had lost his son, who was tormented because it was through him he had been lost, but who even yet could not give up the dream that had driven him to the loss. “There, Dan’l. There. It’s all over for him and he is at peace.”
“Yes. I’ll be back.”
He settled the feather bolster in front of the saddle and rode off down the trail. Rebecca watched him out of sight. Then she turned and laid down the Rose of Sharon quilt for a bed for her least ones.