Traces, page 25
During their time at Boonesborough, particularly during Daniel’s long convalescence, all the things that had attracted her to him in the first place—his humor, his gentleness, his almost childish willingness to believe the best of his fellow human beings—had become apparent to her again. Despite their hardships, she felt closer to him now than she had since they were newlyweds.
“How’s your ankle?” she asked, turning to look at him. He’d left his crutch behind this morning, which was a good sign.
“Stiff, but not hurting too badly.” He flexed his foot, then grinned at her. “I had a good doctor.”
She took a deep breath. “I won’t ask you to abandon these folks right now—I know you believe they’re your responsibility—but keeping our children safe is even more important. If things don’t change for the better . . .”
“We’ve survived the worst the Indians can throw at us, Becca, and I think the British will forget about us if the fighting heats up back east. If we can hold out a bit longer, our children and grandchildren will have an easier life than we’ve had.”
His eyes were shining, as if he saw a bright future shimmering above the water. She prayed he was right.
Any lingering hopes she had of convincing Daniel to leave Kentucky were dashed on the day a contingent of militia rode into the fort, sent to reinforce Virginia’s tenuous hold on the backcountry. Men threw their hats in the air and women cried with relief as a hundred soldiers rode single file through the gate.
Rebecca was standing alongside Flanders and Jemima, watching the riders file past, when a lanky fellow wearing a wide grin pulled his gelding out of line and stopped in front of them.
“Cage,” Flanders said, his voice full of wonder, “what are you doing here?”
“Hello, big brother. We heard the Indians were more than you could handle, so James and I thought we’d come out here and help set things right.”
A second rider reined in alongside. “I’m guessing this pretty lady is our new sister-in-law that you wrote home about.”
Flanders grinned and put his arm around Jemima’s shoulders. “James, Micajah—my wife, Jemima.”
In spite of her workday short gown and lack of shoes, Jemima must have passed muster because James said: “Damn, Flanders. Has she got a sister?”
Flanders laughed. “Maybe by the time you’ve whipped the Indians for us, Jemima’s little sisters will have grown enough to give you a second look.”
“They better grow fast,” Cage said. “We aim to have the British and their Shawnee friends pushed back across the Ohio before the spring thaw.”
Despite everyone’s initial relief at the arrival of reinforcements, as fall faded into winter, the reality of a hundred extra mouths to feed became almost as daunting a challenge as the Shawnee themselves. The militia had packed in a supply of cornmeal, but those bulging bags were now empty. Rebecca, along with some of the other women, began following the cows in the morning when they went to pasture, watching to see what they ate and then cutting the wild greens to bring home and cook. After the first hard frost, even that source of sustenance was lost.
“With the cornfields burnt, the Indians know we didn’t have a harvest,” Daniel said. “It’s likely they figure we’ll be starved out by spring. Our only hope is to preserve enough game meat to get us through the winter, and to do that we’ve got to have salt.”
After much discussion, it was agreed that thirty men would accompany Daniel to the salt springs at Blue Licks about fifty miles north to boil up a supply of salt. The Indians rarely undertook full-scale campaigns during the winter months, and the men would be well armed and ready to cope with small scouting parties.
When Daniel and Flanders rode north with the salt boilers, Jemima went about her chores with such a dejected expression that Susannah began to tease her.
“I hope Flanders is better at hiding his feelings than you are,” Suzy said. “If he mopes around like this in front of the men, they’ll torment him right out of camp.”
“I miss him,” Jemima said. “And you can’t talk, your husband stayed here—how often have you had to be away from Will?”
“Not nearly enough,” Suzy replied.
Something in her tone made Rebecca turn and search her daughter’s face, but before she could question her, they were interrupted by excited voices just outside. Grabbing their cloaks, the women opened the cabin door to a blast of cold air; they stepped outside into ankle-deep snow.
Thomas Brooks, one of the salt boilers who’d been acting as a courier between the salt springs and the fort, sat his horse amidst a crowd, gesturing broadly. Even from a distance Rebecca could see that his mount was lathered with sweat despite the frigid February wind. She pulled the wool cloak around her neck as she and the girls hurried to see what the commotion was about.
“The camp was ransacked,” Brooks was saying. “There were kettles and cordwood scattered all over the snow. Judging from the footprints, there were a hundred Indians at least.”
Rebecca’s pulse quickened.
“Any bodies?” called a voice from the rear of the crowd.
Brooks shook his head. “No one’s left at all—alive or dead. It’s the damnedest thing. There’s no sign of a fight; they’re just gone, like they packed up and headed north with the Indians.”
The sounds around Rebecca grew muffled, as if her cloak had wrapped itself around her ears. She shook her head, trying to clear it.
Jemima stood rigidly beside her, and Susannah clasped her sister’s hand. “No bodies, Jemima,” she said. “So they’re still alive, and Daddy will look out for Flanders.”
But that wasn’t what happened.
29
Susannah
Several days after Thomas Brooks brought news of the salt boilers’ disappearance, the fort’s dogs announced the arrival of a solitary figure who rode into the fort, shoulders slumped and reins hanging slackly as if instinct alone had carried him there.
Susannah was drawing water from the well while Jemima, having just filled her own bucket, waited alongside. When Jemima spotted the rider, she let out a muffled cry, and her bucket hit the ground, splattering water across the hard-packed snow. By the time Susannah realized the rider was Flanders, Jemima had already reached his side. He swung wearily down from his horse, and Jemima pressed her cheek into the curve of her husband’s neck. Flanders rested his chin on top of Jemima’s head and closed his eyes with a sigh, as if he’d arrived at the only destination that mattered.
A door creaked open behind Susannah, and she turned to see her mother, her cloak gathered around her against the bitter wind that swirled along the row of cabins.
“Bring Flanders inside,” she called to Jemima.
Flanders was soon settled into a chair on her mother’s hearth. Jemima’s hands fluttered over him—touching his hair, his shoulder, his chest—as if her fingers were anxious butterflies unsure where to land. Ice clung to Flanders’s snow-dampened hair, and his face was chapped red from the wind. Shortly after he sat down, he was overcome by a violent fit of shivering, which continued even after Jemima tucked warm blankets around him. Susannah helped her mother edge his chair closer to the fire, and soon the snow that was crusted up and down his woolen leggings dripped steadily onto the floor.
Flanders sat with his eyes closed during their ministrations, but after a while his lids fluttered open, and when he looked up, the despair in his eyes hit Susannah like a fist.
“They’re all gone,” he said, his voice raspy as a rusty hinge.
“We know,” Susannah said hurriedly, wanting to spare him the retelling of news they’d already heard. “Thomas Brooks made it back to the fort and told us the company had been captured.”
“We thought you’d been taken, too,” Jemima said, her voice cracking.
“Captain Boone and I were out hunting. . . . We weren’t in camp . . .”
Flanders’s voice trailed off, and his eyes searched the faces around him. Susannah followed his gaze and saw that her mother’s face had flamed with hope.
“Daniel?” she said.
Flanders shook his head, and her mother closed her eyes, trapping her pain before it could spill across the room.
“The first I knew something was wrong was when I found tracks in the snow where the Indians had ambushed Captain Boone while he was hunting. They chased him a ways—he didn’t have a prayer of outrunning them with that ankle. . .”
The door banged open and Colonel Callaway strode in. “Flanders, what about Micajah and James?”
Susannah realized guiltily that Flanders’s brothers were among the missing, and she hadn’t given them a single thought.
“The Indians took them all north.” Flanders’s voice was hollow. “Their tracks were plain in the snow, but there was nothing I could do . . .”
The Colonel’s eyes blazed. “The men were well armed, yet Brooks says there was no sign of a fight. Evidently Captain Boone lacked the backbone to resist.”
“Colonel,” her mother said sharply, “say another word against my husband and I’ll remove you from this house myself.”
There was a movement in the corner, and Susannah saw that Israel, who’d been silently observing the scene, had risen to his feet. The Colonel’s eyes cut in his direction, then back to her mother.
“Your pardon, Miz Boone. It was thoughtless of me to speak ill of your husband under your roof.” He turned to his nephew. “I’ll need to draft a letter to your parents, Flanders. The commander of the militia will be sending an express rider to the Clinch settlements with the news. Come see me in the morning. Your parents will want to hear anything you can tell them about your brothers’ disappearance.”
Flanders’s face turned ashen at the prospect.
Her mother said very little as the weeks slipped past and winter gave way to spring, but Susannah noticed she often stared northward across the Kentucky River.
“Your father will make his way home to us,” she told the children.
Jemima nodded in agreement. “Daddy’s probably waiting for the weather to warm before he makes his escape.”
Susannah and Israel exchanged glances. Though their father no longer needed a crutch, his ankle still bothered him, and even if he had the opportunity to escape, it was doubtful he would elude his pursuers for long. Susannah recalled that when Jemima was kidnapped, her father had said it was critical to find the girls before the Indians crossed the Ohio. “White folks who cross that river rarely return,” he’d said.
Now, those words echoed in her ears.
Of all the salt boilers, Andy Johnson was the last man Susannah would have expected to slip from the Indians’ clutches and make his way home. Thin and undersized, from a distance he looked no more than twelve, an illusion that saved his life when he showed up at Harrod’s fort in early May, clad in Indian garb. “We were hesitant to shoot an unarmed boy, even if he looked like an Indian,” one of the sentries said. “Luckily we heard Andy hollering that he was a white man.”
Word of Johnson’s return swept through Boonesborough. Mrs. Callaway stuck her head in Susannah’s door to tell them the news, her eyes bright with excitement.
“As soon as Mister Johnson has rested a bit, they say he’s coming to Boonesborough. He’s got word of our men—claims he saw some of them less than a week ago.”
The moment Andy Johnson arrived, every soul in the fort swarmed around him, giving him barely enough room to dismount. Momentarily swallowed by the crush of people, the little man stepped onto an overturned cattle trough to address the crowd, reappearing like a swimmer bobbing to the surface. He was an odd sight, dressed in a hunting shirt and breeches like a white man, but with his hair in Shawnee fashion, plucked bare on either side of a bushy scalp lock.
When the jostling subsided, Johnson cleared his throat and began.
“After our capture, we were marched to a village called Chillicothe. Some of us were chosen for adoption into the tribe, but others were marched away to Detroit to be handed over to the British. Anyone labeled a troublemaker was sent north.”
“So how’d they overlook you, Andy?” someone hollered.
There was a ripple of male laughter, which the women shushed immediately.
“I got adopted because I pretended to be a half-wit.” Johnson glared at the crowd as if daring anyone to make a joke. “I once heard an Indian trader say the Shawnee honor such folks, and I figured anything was better than rotting in a British prison.”
“William Hancock,” cried a woman, unable to wait any longer. “Is there word of him?”
Immediately other voices were raised.
“What do you know of Bartlett Searcy?”
“Samuel Brooks,” called another.
Colonel Callaway’s voice rang out, rising above the others. “Mister Johnson assures me that to the best of his knowledge, all the men are still alive. He’s agreed to speak privately with the families of the missing. But right now, what everyone needs to hear is why the men were captured in the first place.”
The crowd subsided into scattered murmurs while the woman standing next to Susannah twisted the tail of her apron as though she might wring answers from it.
“We were captured because of Captain Boone,” Johnson said, his high, thin voice carrying across the crowd. “He ordered us to surrender. He led the Indians to our camp, then told us to stack our arms or we’d be massacred.”
The murmurs turned angry. Susannah looked around for her mother and was relieved to see Simon push his way through the crowd to stand alongside her. Someone grasped her arm, and she jerked backward, then realized it was Israel.
“Stay close,” he whispered.
Johnson raised his voice and continued. “The British are offering twenty pounds for each prisoner. When they sorted out the men they intended to take to Detroit, Captain Boone was among them.” Johnson paused and surveyed the crowd with stormy eyes. “Boone was the only one who returned. He rode back to the village on a horse given to him by Governor Hamilton himself.”
There was a gasp from the crowd. Susannah heard several voices say, “Hamilton—the Hair Buyer.” And then someone shouted, “Traitor!” The word rumbled through the crowd like a roll of thunder, passing from tongue to tongue. “Traitor!”
“That’s a lie!” The crowd turned in unison to see her mother, eyes blazing. “Daniel would never betray the men in his command.”
Johnson’s thin face twisted with anger. “We were prepared to fight until Captain Boone ordered us not to.”
“And if you’d fought, most likely you’d be dead!” Her mother’s face was chalk white with anger. “My husband’s not a traitor!”
But judging from the angry words swirling through the crowd, most of their neighbors disagreed.
For the rest of that afternoon, Mister Johnson went from cabin to cabin, offering families whatever scraps of information he possessed about their missing men. Susannah waited at her mother’s with the rest of the family, but it was after dark when Simon finally escorted Johnson inside. The children had fallen asleep by this time, piled on her mother’s corner bed like an exhausted litter of kittens.
Her mother stood and offered Johnson a chair, but he shook his head, stopping just inside the doorway and planting his feet on the puncheon floor as if he were astride the deck of a ship and expected foul weather.
“First of all, Mister Johnson,” her mother said, “my family and I obviously disagree with your belief that Daniel betrayed you. We aren’t Loyalists, despite rumors to the contrary. My husband has never taken sides.”
“He damn sure took sides at the Licks,” Johnson snapped.
Her mother’s eyes flashed, but her voice remained low. “I understand you’re angry, but I’m sure Daniel had his reasons. Right now, I’m asking you to put aside your feelings and tell me whatever you can about my husband.”
Johnson hesitated as if he might refuse, then said grudgingly: “He was adopted by Chief Blackfish. He’s settled into Indian life just fine—treats those savages like family. When the Shawnee adopt you, the women take you down to the creek and scrub you within an inch of your life. They believe they can wash the white blood out of you, and in Daniel’s case, I think it worked.” Johnson absently ran a hand over the stubble on his head. “Your husband ain’t Daniel no more—they call him Sheltowee.”
Her mother’s face was pale. “Did Daniel ever speak to you about escaping?”
Johnson shook his head. “We didn’t talk much—I was playing the village idiot, remember? But I’ll tell you this—if he’d wanted to escape, he could have because Blackfish lets him go hunting alone. Seems he’s taken an Indian wife, and . . .”
Her mother flinched as if Johnson had struck her.
Simon slammed his fist on the table and growled, “That’s enough, sir!”
Johnson cast an anxious glance at the big man, then shrugged. “All I’m saying is—if I was you, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for him to come back.” He settled his hat on his head and turned to go, then paused at the door. “Truth is, given the way most of us feel about him, your husband’s safer with the Indians.”
Susannah wasn’t surprised when her mother announced she was leaving Boonesborough and taking the younger children back to her parents’ farm at the Forks. “There’s a group of militiamen heading to the Gap in a few days,” she said, surveying the solemn faces around the table: Susannah, Israel, Jemima, Flanders, Simon, and Will. “With me and the children gone, you’ll have five fewer mouths to feed.”
Jemima looked stricken. “Is it because of what Andy Johnson said about Daddy choosing to stay with the Indians?”
Her mother squared her shoulders. “Whatever the reason, your father’s not here, and I’m no longer welcome. My presence makes it awkward for all of you. It’s best I leave.”
Even before her mother finished speaking, Susannah had made up her mind to go east, too. She wanted her little girl out of this place, away from the filth and the hunger and the endless gnawing fear that afflicted them all and that surely even a toddler could sense. Susannah rested a hand on her belly. Just days earlier, she’d felt the first faint stirrings of new life, but she hadn’t yet told Will that a second child was on the way, uncertain how he’d take the news. Though Israel’s vigilance had ended the worst of Will’s abuse, she still moved warily around him, like a deer sniffing the wind to make sure the next step was safe to take.
