The Seekers

by John Jakes

  “I’m aware of that, sir.”

  So was virtually every man in the Legion. The Northwest Ordinance, passed by the Congress in 1787, had wisely promised the creation of new states—no less than three, no more than five—once the territory was pacified and settled. Each new state would be fully equal with those fifteen already established under the country’s federal Constitution, which had become law when the ninth of the thirteen original states, New Hampshire, ratified it in 1788. Abraham knew that thousands of settlers were waiting along the eastern seaboard for the chance to start new lives in the western territory. But they were held back by fear of the Indian menace.

  Just as important, President Washington had recently sent Chief Justice John Jay to England to attempt to negotiate a new treaty with the King’s ministers. The status of the Northwest was one of the points at issue.

  Under the peace settlement, the territory unquestionably belonged to America. But if Britain could in effect hold it illegally—hold it by means of Crown agents inciting the tribes in order to prevent an inrush of settlers—Jay could never hope to gain a reconfirmation on paper of America’s claim to the land.

  Picking up the conversation, Wayne said, “I’m sorry to hear the military will eventually lose your services, Cornet. Still, I’m not entirely surprised. Ever since you enlisted, I have frankly wondered why a young man of your background—your prospects for the future—would risk himself in an enterprise of this sort.”

  Caught off guard, Abraham replied haltingly, “Someone must if the territory’s to be secured—”

  “Oh, I’m not questioning your patriotism. But I’ve found that in the Legion, most of the men have at least one other motive for joining our hazardous venture. Wives they regret marrying, for example—”

  “I’m single, General.”

  “Debts, then.”

  “No, I haven’t that problem.”

  “I should imagine not.” Bleak, tired eyes ranged the murmuring river where a heat mist was beginning to form. “Sometimes the motive for a man staying in the army is simply an inability to endure other, comparatively tame endeavors once the man has tasted battle—” That, Wayne’s officers well knew, was the general’s own spur.

  Wayne turned slightly, his eyes reflecting the distant fires. Those glowing eyes prodded Abraham to another honest reply. “Well, sir, in my case that doesn’t apply either. I left home because my father and I were having our differences.”

  “Over what, may I ask?”

  “My future. Specifically, my future with the family printing house. My father wanted me to study at Harvard a year or so, then join him in the business. I honestly couldn’t decide whether I wanted that. With so much happening in the country—all this new land opening—it seemed, to use your word, a tame alternative.”

  “So you chose a period in the army to think things over?”

  “Exactly, sir. I’m afraid my father and I had quite a few loud and lengthy arguments on the subject. On many other subjects, too. We don’t see eye to eye on politics, for instance.”

  Wayne nodded. “I’m familiar with Kent and Son publishing tracts in support of Mr. Hamilton’s Federalist views.”

  “Quite right, sir. And if you’ll forgive my saying so, it’s always struck me as damned odd that men who were so violently anti-British twenty years ago are now anxious to establish strong commercial and political ties with that country.”

  “A matter of economics.” Wayne shrugged. “Think of the market in England for ships’ timbers, for instance. Good northeastern oak and pine to build men-o’-war for the most powerful navy in the world—who wants to lose trade like that? No wonder nearly all of New England’s gone Federalist—”

  “I’m a New Englander and I haven’t, sir. I personally see nothing wrong with Mr. Jefferson’s support of the revolution in France.”

  “You’ll have to agree it’s fallen into bloody excess.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “And still Mr. Jefferson and many of the others in the Virginia junto continue to champion its democratic principles. If they exist any longer, which I doubt. Ah, but let’s not debate that. We have a more immediate enemy—”

  Abraham wasn’t quite ready to drop the subject, though. “Part of the trouble at home comes from the fact that my father’s grown wealthy. Achieved a status that encourages him to think like an aristocrat—”

  “The father’s a Federalist, the son isn’t—and under those circumstances, a term of service in the army seemed prudent in order to maintain the domestic peace?” Wayne’s voice had a wry sound.

  But Abraham’s answer was straightforward. “Exactly.”

  And that one word concealed much: the turmoil, the rancor that had shaken the Kent household until Philip had finally given grudging permission for his son to enlist under Wayne’s command. Something compelled Abraham to add, “The solution’s only temporary anyway. I’m sure that when I go home, the arguments will start all over again.”

  Wayne didn’t comment immediately. With a touch of chagrin, Abraham realized he had already poured out a good deal of what ought to be considered private information. But as long as the general was willing to listen, Abraham supposed the talk didn’t hurt. In a way the confession relieved him. He seldom had a chance to air the problem that continually nagged at his mind. As he’d intimated, it was a problem for which a permanent solution would have to be found eventually.

  Wayne brushed a hand absently over one cheek, squashing an insect. He smiled that weary smile again. “Fathers and sons at loggerheads—that was the central issue of the war for independence, you know. The right of the new blood to run its own course—freely. Well, Cornet, if the army doesn’t suit you as a career, and if you’ve no heart to spend your days in a prosperous Federalist printing firm—”

  “I just haven’t decided, sir,” Abraham broke in. “My father wished for me to do so immediately. That’s why I had to strike out on my own for a time.”

  Once more the relatively glib explanation hid other meanings. Abraham felt a momentary sense of his own shameful, innate weakness—

  No, no, that was the wrong term. Unbearably demeaning. Call it not weakness but indecision born of family loyalty. He loved his father even though he resented Philip’s strong opinions. And, deep down, Abraham supposed he’d eventually succumb to his father’s wish that he join Kent and Son. But at his young age, he didn’t want that decision forced on him by fiat—

  So he’d run away. No other description would do. Again he was face to face with a suspected failure of character that troubled him often; a failure he struggled to rationalize away by convoluted explanations involving family love and devotion—

  Listening to the night insects, he recalled abruptly where he was, and why. A coldness filled his belly. The question of his future might soon become entirely academic. There was a battle to be fought. Men died in battle.

  As if hunting for stars behind the sky’s haze, Wayne tilted his graying head back. “I can suggest an alternative to commerce or the army, Cornet. You could settle out here.”

  Mildly astonished, Abraham replied, “Why, yes, sir, I suppose I could. Truthfully, that’s never occurred to me before.”

  “When we raised the stockade at the confluence of this river and the Aux Glaize”—the general was referring to the fort he’d christened Defiance—“I was struck by the remarkable beauty and fertility of the land. Nature’s dealt bountifully with it. A man could hew his house from these forests. Fill his table from the trails and streams”—a boot scraped a furrow in the loam of the bank—“raise enough crops in this soil to provide for his household and have ample corn meal or flour left to transship across the Great Lakes, or back up the Ohio in exchange for the manufactured goods he needs. You know what they call me these days. One of the old Revolutionary warhorses. I suppose I’ll never shed the label—nor lose the urge to lead men. But I’ve found that life on the land can be very good. Very good. I own a rice plantation in the south—Hazzard
’s Cowpen, it’s called. A gift of the people of the state of Georgia for my services during the rebellion—” His voice had grown dreamy, remote. “Yes, a man could do far worse than to stay here when the battle’s done—”

  Abraham had to admit the idea was intriguing. Escape to a homestead in the Northwest Territory would solve his problem with his father. As Wayne said, a man could live well. If the Indian threat were gone—

  Abraham’s brief enthusiasm faded as footsteps approached. Northward along the Maumee, his whole life could be decided in an instant. It could end in an instant. The recollection of that set his palms itching and started rivulets of sweat trickling down his neck to his linen collar.

  He’d been foolishly carried away by Wayne’s remarks. Even if he survived his first test in battle, the chance of pulling away from his father was a slim one. Philip Kent would not easily loose his hold on his son—

  Abraham put the whole vexing question out of mind, turning along with Wayne as a wiry young officer approached. The officer carried his cockaded bicorn hat under his arm. Despite the semidarkness, Abraham recognized one of the general’s aides, William Henry Harrison.

  Harrison saluted. Wayne returned it smartly. “What is it, Lieutenant?”

  “The barber has arrived at the headquarters tent, sir.”

  “Ah, yes—” Wayne smiled again. “I don’t want to lead the Legion with my hair unpowdered and disarrayed.” The general’s vanity, like his courage, was familiar to the men he commanded. But on the wilderness march, he’d had few chances to indulge his penchant for elegance. Care of his hair was one of the rare exceptions.

  Stifling a groan and clamping a hand around his bandaged left leg, Wayne started to hobble off. The mist hanging over the Maumee had begun to turn a pearly color. A few drooping willow branches were discernible in the murk now. Dawn—

  Wayne stopped, glanced back.

  “Whenever I’ve had the opportunity to speak privately with one or more of my officers, I have acquainted them with a letter I recently received from the secretary of war—”

  “General Knox is a friend of my father’s, sir.”

  “Then your father is fortunate. Henry Knox is a sagacious man. He wrote to say that the nation has waited two years for this morning. So have the hundreds of thousands seeking to leave the seacoast. And those six hundred brave men whose remains will stay forever along the Wabash—they’re waiting too. I trust each officer will carry that thought in his heart today.”

  Abraham could only give a quick nod as Mad Anthony leaned on William Henry Harrison’s offered arm and labored back toward the camp where men were rousing around the fires. In the gray light Abraham heard the first drums beating.

  iii

  On the way back to his tent for his sword and pistols, Abraham Kent was hailed from an officer’s tent belonging to the Third sublegion. He angled through the noisy press of men turning out with their muskets and approached a handsome twenty-year-old. The officer held his spontoon in one hand while he crooked the index finger of the other.

  On his blond head the young man wore one of the shaggy fur caps designed at Wayne’s request by the tailors at Legionville. The cap in this case was decorated with a plume of the Third sublegion’s particular color—yellow.

  The lieutenant kept beckoning with his finger. “Come here, dragoon. We’ve a present for you.”

  “Not now, Meriwether—they’re beating assembly.”

  But Lieutenant Meriwether Lewis, whom Abraham had frequently engaged at cards in winter quarters back at Greenville, set his spontoon aside and practically dragged the junior officer to the tent entrance.

  “I hear. But you’re outranked, Cornet. You’re not permitted to reject a gift from a couple of Virginians who’ve taken so much of your pay.”

  “Stolen would be a better word,” Abraham said with a grin not completely genuine.

  Lewis spoke to someone inside the tent. “This horse soldier’s questioning our integrity, William. Suggesting we deal with sharp’s cards—”

  “Didn’t know New Englanders were that astute,” came the laconic reply of another lieutenant, a tall, red-haired fellow some four or five years older than the other two. Abraham was pushed bodily into the tent.

  “Shut the damn flap before we’re all cashiered!” the red-haired officer whispered. As he rummaged through the folds of his blankets, he added, “Don’t tell me you’re going to refuse a tot of prime Kaintuck whiskey.” Abraham’s grin looked less forced. “I didn’t realize that was the gift you had in mind, William.”

  Lieutenant William Clark, youngest brother of the famous frontiersman George Rogers Clark, displayed his jug. “Most carefully smuggled in—at a cost of five new dollars per gallon.”

  Clark walked toward Abraham, stepping over the pile of sketch pads he was using to develop his natural aptitude for drawing and map-making. Clark’s intelligence reports, illustrated with small charcoal scenes, were well known in the Legion—and reputedly brought General Wayne diversion while increasing his regard for the junior officer.

  Clark propped a boot on one of two brass-latched wooden cases in which his friend Lewis, almost his match in height, collected mineral and botanical samples. Clark waggled the jug at Abraham again, his eyes losing a little of their mirth.

  “If you can’t use a couple of swallows on a morning like this,” he said, “I’ll be happy to down your share.”

  “Or I,” Meriwether Lewis said.

  Touched by the gesture of friendship on the eve of battle, Abraham looked at the two officers from Virginia—men with whom he’d spent many an enjoyable, if unprofitable, hour over the past twelve months. A shiver chased down his backbone as he thought of the massed might of the tribes awaiting the Legion to the northeast. He grabbed the jug.

  “Yes, I can use it—on a morning like this,” he said.

  Somber-eyed, he drank while the Legionary drums beat steadily louder in the dawn heat.

  Chapter II

  The Charge

  i

  SHORTLY AFTER SEVEN, WITH the sun spearing oblique shafts of light through the mist on the Maumee, the Legion of the United States assembled for the attack.

  The Legion itself, four sublegions of foot preceded by a small mounted patrol, formed in columns of fours on the right flank, close by the shore of the river. Scott’s Kentucky mounted militia would advance along a parallel route on the left flank, through the cornfields that stretched northeast between the river on one side and thick woods on the other.

  Mounted on Sprite, whose restlessness seemed to match his own, Abraham gathered with the rest of MisCampbell’s dragoon officers at the rear of the Legion columns. The commanding officer explained their orders in a few words.

  “We’ll be held in reserve, behind the fines, and ordered forward if they need us.”

  On hearing that, Abraham gave voice to the annoyance most of the officers expressed with scowls and grumbles. “Sir, if the Indians are really waiting for us upriver—”

  MisCampbell swiped at his perspiring cheek. “We believe so, Kent. But we’re not positive. They were seen there on the eighteenth. They may have pulled back to the British fort.”

  “Even so, shouldn’t the horse be going in first? If the terrain’s as rough as I hear it is, columns of foot can hardly maneuver there.”

  “To the contrary, Cornet. Only columns of foot can maneuver well on such ground. A head-on cavalry charge with all those fallen trees lying every which way would be impossible. Perhaps General Wayne will utilize us for an assault on the flank—”

  The captain’s stern eyes softened, cynically amused. “Don’t be so anxious to shed blood. I’ve done it, and it’s far from pleasant.”

  Abraham saw some of his fellow officers grinning and turned red. He was the greenest of the lot, and he’d unwittingly demonstrated it. Fortunately discussion was cut short.

  MisCampbell shouted: “Prepare your troops to advance and await the command!”

  Tugging Sprite’s r
ein, Abraham turned the mare back toward his men. All were dressed much as he was: shirt, trousers, boots. Sabers hung from leather belts. Pairs of primed and loaded pistols were snugged in saddle holsters. At least the Americans had learned something from the agonizing years of the Revolution. Wayne suited the army’s clothing and equipment to the country and the temperature; there was no laboring under monstrously heavy packs and blanket-rolls, as Abraham’s father said the British infantry had always done during the Rebellion.

  The foot too were lightly dressed this morning, carrying only canteens and weapons. The trappings of rank—waistcoats, epauletted outer coats—had been left in heaps behind Captain Pike’s earthwork.

  The Indians fought with even less equipment, Abraham knew. They wore only hide trousers or waist clouts, and moccasins.

  And paint.

  He’d listened to descriptions of those ugly slashes of color with which the braves decorated their faces, arms and torsos. This morning, he’d probably see war paint with his own eyes—

  Head aching from the heat and the whiskey he’d drunk with Lieutenants Lewis and Clark, he swung Sprite into line behind his troop’s senior officer, Lieutenant Stovall. Abraham didn’t care much for the chubby Marylander, reputed to be a sodomite. Stovall had made one advance, months ago, but Abraham’s gruff reply and clenched fists quickly persuaded the young officer from Baltimore to seek his pleasure elsewhere.

  Stovall occasionally bragged that his parents had hustled him out of his home city and into the army because of a scandal whose enormity remained a source of amusement to him. Abraham never learned the full nature of the scandal, but an incident a few weeks prior to the abortive seduction gave him a clue.

  One of Stovall’s treasured possessions was an expensive, rather large oval locket on a chain. A woman’s locket; a curiously effeminate souvenir for a man in the army. In a rare hour of drunken camaraderie, Stovall had opened the locket and shown Abraham a miniature which even the young Bostonian, no prude, found shocking because it represented something he had never seen before: a full-figure miniature of a dark-haired young woman reclining on a drapery, nude.