The Seekers

by John Jakes

  The boy was gazing up at his father. He didn’t understand the reason for the harsh command. The snake coiled out of the shadows, rattling—

  The snake was sixteen or seventeen inches long. Its brown ground color was blotched with black. Its puffy head darted a few inches to the right, then a few inches to the left—

  Abraham stepped around his son, jammed the rifle against his shoulder and fired.

  Chief barked, struggled to stand up as Abraham’s ball missed the head of the pygmy rattler, blasting up a shower of leaves and dirt. The rattler’s fangs glistened as its head shot forward. Chief yelped when the rattler bit.

  By then Abraham had lunged forward. He drove the rifle’s brass butt plate toward the front part of the snake’s body. The snake whipped its head back a moment before the rifle struck. The blow cracked the snake’s skull.

  Using the rifle stock as a kind of shovel, Abraham hoisted the snake and hurled it away. On his belly, Chief tried to turn his head far enough to lick at his wound. The old dog was too stiff; his tongue wouldn’t reach.

  Jared clutched his father’s leg. “What—what was it?”

  “A snake.”

  “What?”

  “Snake, Jared. Dangerous. Hurt you.”

  “Didn’t see it—”

  “I know you didn’t. That’s the reason you should never play out here alone. That’s why Mama should never leave you here alone!”

  The boy pointed to the floundering bulldog. “Chief’s hurt.”

  Abraham doubted he could do anything for the animal. The bite of a pygmy rattler was seldom fatal to a grown man. But the venom might affect a dog—or a child—differently. He seized Jared’s hand, pulled him away.

  “If we leave him alone he’ll be all right. Come with me and we’ll look for your mother.”

  The wrath in Abraham’s weary eyes made Jared obey without complaint.

  ii

  “Baby? Baby, where are you—?”

  Elizabeth’s voice!

  Running, he broke from the trees twenty feet from the riverbank. When he saw her, a lump thickened in his throat.

  He halted. Surveyed the area to be sure it was safe. He saw nothing to threaten the boy. He leaned his rifle against a maple, said, “You wait here while I speak to your mother, understand? Wait here.”

  Fidgeting, the boy nodded. Abraham turned around, grief-stricken at the sight of his wife wandering aimlessly through the reeds along the shore. The wind blew her dirty hair around her cheeks. Her plain, patched dress was soaked and mud-spattered from the knees downward.

  Abraham deliberately made noise as he approached. She didn’t seem to hear. Her fatigue-ringed blue eyes darted back and forth across the shallows.

  “Baby? Baby, I know you’re here. Don’t hide from me.”

  “Elizabeth!”

  The loudness penetrated her daze. She faced him, a peculiar half-smile curling her mouth. She hardly resembled the bright, fiery-spirited girl he’d taken into his bed in Boston. Barely into her twenties, she had become a pale, sagging old woman—

  But she recognized him. “Oh. Abraham dear. You’ve come back from the settlement.”

  He splashed toward her, his moccasins soaked in an instant. On the far bank of the Miami, the autumn-colored trees shimmered and flamed in the wind.

  He gripped her arm. “Why did you leave Jared by himself? It isn’t safe!”

  “Please let go.” She pried at his fingers with a cracked and reddened hand. “Please, Abraham. I only left him. for a short time—”

  “I shot a pygmy rattler up there. Right where the boy was playing!”

  “Shot?” She shook her head. “I didn’t hear any shot.” Again that pleading smile. “But I’ve been busy searching for the baby.”

  His spine crawled. “What baby?”

  “Ours, Abraham. Our baby—the first one. I don’t remember the baby’s name, but all at once, up in the cabin, I remembered the baby was lost on the river.”

  “You lost the baby on the Oh—” Sick and stunned, he couldn’t continue.

  “Please help me look, Abraham. I know the baby’s here somewhere. Help me look before it’s too dark—”

  Tears started in the corners of his eyes. He fought to hold a rein on his emotions—the self-hate, the sadness. How had this happened?

  He knew Elizabeth had been growing weaker and more distant month by month. But what had pushed her into this delusion? This retreat into a world of phantoms where the miscarried infant somehow cried out to her? Her mother’s death? The hardships of the land? Both—?

  Empty of anger, he curved his arm around her and tried to speak gently. “It’s growing dark. We should go back to the cabin.”

  “The baby’s lost, Abraham!”

  “I’m sure we’ll find the baby tomorrow, when the sun’s up. I’ll help you search then if you’ll come with me now.”

  She eyed the reeds and gleaming river. Then, with a sigh, she leaned against him. “All right. I am tired. I would like to rest. I’ve been searching an hour or more.”

  In utter despair, he comforted her against his shoulder as they worked their way out of the shallows to solid ground. They walked up the shale slope to the tree where little Jared watched, white and wide-eyed.

  The man, the woman and the boy plodded toward the cabin. Elizabeth’s voice grew fainter in the shadows lengthening among the trees. She murmured sadly, absently, about the lost child that needed finding—

  iii

  Abraham lighted one of the wall candles and tucked Elizabeth into bed. He got the fire going in the hearth, and then he and Jared left the cabin.

  They hunted for Chief. They found him dead where he’d fallen. Abraham dug a shallow trench in the loamy soil. They laid the bulldog’s body in it. Crying, Jared helped cover the grave with handfuls of earth.

  They finished the work in almost total darkness. Abraham sheltered the weeping boy against his side on the way back to the cabin. He could feel little sorrow about the dog. Chief was old. Elizabeth was young. And she was dying too.

  He knew some of the reasons: grueling work for which she wasn’t suited; loneliness; the absence of amenities with which she’d grown up. Women grew old too soon on the frontier. Abraham saw such women every time he visited the settlement. Women of twenty-five or thirty with lusterless eyes, leathery hands, browned, foul-smelling teeth. A few, like Edna Clapper, were hardy enough to thrive. Those who weren’t hardy, the land destroyed.

  And I brought her here so she could be killed, Abraham thought as he approached the cabin. That was the moment he first admitted the land had beaten them.

  He would not—could not—permit them to go on living as they were living now.

  The unseen trees hissed in the wind, almost like laughter. He made up his mind that he’d find them a means of escape as soon as possible. He hated being defeated almost as much as he hated the land—

  But accepting defeat was better than seeing his wife destroyed.

  iv

  The next day was the Sabbath. Abraham opened the cabin door as soon as he got up. Elizabeth woke a few minutes later. The sight of the sunshine spilling onto the cabin floor seemed to put her in good spirits immediately.

  She had been restless during the night. But she greeted him normally enough, making no reference to the incident on the river.

  As they ate their morning meal, Abraham read a few verses from their Bible. Elizabeth listened with a cheerful expression. Yet he remained tense. At any moment he expected her to recall his pledge to search for the lost baby.

  Nearly an hour went by with no mention of it. The nervousness persisted. He went for a stroll in the sunshine, kneading his knuckles against his chin as he walked.

  God, what he’d give to be able to share the excitement and optimism reflected in the Saturday talk at Clapper’s store. A few months before, a whole new century had opened. The successful settlers in the district discussed it with high hopes. President Washington’s death the preceding year at age
sixty-seven seemed to bring one era to an end and set a new and better one in motion.

  A new president would be elected before this year was out. Many around Fort Hamilton predicted that Federalist John Adams was finished; would be replaced at last by a less aristocratic candidate—one who recognized the growing importance of the west and acted accordingly. The ideal man, of course, would be Mr. Jefferson.

  Already there were sixteen states in the union. More would certainly be organized and admitted as the tide of migration swept on west beyond the Ohio country. The future looked splendid indeed—

  Until you brought it down to a personal level, Abraham thought as he walked back into the cabin.

  Elizabeth welcomed him with a smile. She was busy tending a skillet over the coals. Preparing the johnny-cake they’d eat for Sunday dinner even though they’d already eaten the same thing for breakfast. Jared sat silently in a corner, building bits of stick into a cabin. Abraham bent down to watch. The boy accepted his father’s presence silently, without a smile.

  Soon almost two hours had passed, with no reference to yesterday. Abraham relaxed a little. Apparently she’d forgotten—or, more correctly, the memory had somehow been locked away again in the recesses of her mind.

  Still, he had been thoroughly shaken last night. He didn’t intend to forget his silent vow to change their situation.

  How he’d do it, he didn’t know. As a first step, he’d ask advice from his friend Daniel Clapper. During next Saturday’s visit to the settlement.

  Having decided just that much buoyed him a little; it was a positive step. Out of it would come an eventual answer.

  Not too late, he hoped.

  v

  “It’s your business how much you slosh down,” Daniel Clapper said the following Saturday night. “But Daniel Junior’s off at the camp meetin’ with the girl he’s courtin’, an’ I’m damned if I want to carry you home.”

  Abraham tilted the jug and poured more whiskey into a small earthenware cup.

  “I’ll make it fine on my own, Daniel.”

  Clapper looked skeptical.

  Abraham had already consumed two cups of whiskey while waiting for the other man to close up the store for the night and join him behind the curtain that separated business from daily living.

  In addition to the family’s everyday furniture and utensils, and curtained areas for sleeping, the rear half of the large cabin was crowded with goods for which Clapper had no room up front: boxes of slates and slate pencils, small kegs of gunpowder, cartons of foolscap paper—even a fresh shipment of books. Waiting for Clapper, Abraham browsed through them. He discovered three copies of a Kent and Son edition of Pilgrim’s Progress. The moralistic work was popular among the settlers who could read.

  He held the book a few moments, staring at it, then replaced it in its box, wishing he could put memories of Boston aside as easily.

  Having built his cabin within sight of the others that formed the settlement around the palisaded walls of Fort Hamilton, Daniel Clapper had allowed himself the luxury of window openings with shutters. Away from a settlement, windows were a disadvantage. They could let in marauders along with sunlight and fresh air.

  Now the red-bearded storekeeper pushed open one pair of shutters next to the stone fireplace. Abraham drew a deep breath between gulps of whiskey. The blazing logs in the hearth made the room stifling.

  Clapper seemed to sense something important on Abraham’s mind. His forehead furrowed as he watched his guest drink. Abraham didn’t say anything. Clapper gazed outside again as a squad of mounted soldiers clattered toward the fort.

  In the distance the horizon glowed orange. The light came from torches around the camp meeting tent. The weeklong event was being conducted by a Bible-brandishing Methodist evangelist who’d ridden up from the state of Kentucky. People had driven rigs or come on horseback from as far away as thirty or forty miles, just to attend tonight’s final meeting. Abraham could hear the shouts of praise and joy as the crowd replied to the evangelist’s exhortations.

  Clapper’s wife Rachel and his daughter Danetta, as well as Daniel Junior and his young lady, were attending the four-hour service that combined hymn singing, hell-fire preaching, public confession of sin and the evangelist’s promise of salvation. Maybe I should be there, Abraham thought, pouring one more drink—

  Clapper stayed his hand. “Listen, I been waitin’ ten minutes! Speak your piece!”

  “I need to ask your advice.”

  “Ask away.”

  “The reason is—I’m going to give up the farm.”

  With a sigh, Clapper ambled to the table. He poured a little whiskey for himself, then combed fingers through his long red beard.

  “Figured it might be comin’ to that. Of late you been lookin’ mighty spiritless.”

  “It’s Elizabeth I’m worried about. She—well—she’s been acting strange.”

  “Expect you want to talk about it. Else you wouldn’t bring it up, am I right?”

  Slumping in his chair, Abraham nodded. He poured out the story, finishing, “She was hunting for the baby she lost on the Ohio, not Jared.”

  “Yep, I caught that drift.”

  Abraham peered into his cup. “I don’t even know whether it was a boy or a girl.”

  “Don’t know myself. If Miz Edna knows, she’s never said—and I ain’t asked. I do know what she’ll discuss and what she won’t. Women things is on the won’t list.”

  “I don’t suppose a doctor could explain what’s wrong with Elizabeth. Something in her mind, maybe. Her father was supposedly half crazy.”

  “Never heard that before.”

  “It’s true.”

  “I told you once I thought she was a mite frail—”

  “I remember.”

  “Why’d she ever agree to come out here?”

  “Oh, a lot of reasons. I went along with them. Obviously we both made a mistake.”

  He filled his cup again, ignoring Clapper’s frown.

  “The point is,” he said, “I’ve got to remedy the mistake before things get worse.”

  “So you’re puttin’ the farm up for sale.”

  “I think I should be able to get rid of it, don’t you?”

  “Lord yes! On my last trip south, the Ohia was blamed near solid with boats.”

  Abraham grimaced. “We’re already being passed by—I saw that for myself when I went with you to Cincinnati.”

  “Don’t get to thinkin’ it’s too civilized around here,” Clapper cautioned. “The Shawnee, they’re still burnin’ farms and stirrin’ up trouble. I musta seen a dozen of ’em when I was out peddlin’ the first of the week. They been a lot more active ever since ol’ Tecumseh’s brother set up his town on the Wabash. Soldiers at the fort say Tecumseh an’ the Prophet are preachin’ some sort of wild scheme to pull all the tribes together, from New York State clear down into the Creek Nations.”

  “Why?”

  “To push out the white people that took Injun land, why else?”

  “The tribes signed a treaty with Wayne—”

  “Not that Tecumseh. ’Cording to what you told me, he never set foot in the door at Greenville.”

  “That’s true. We’re off the subject. I’m going to sell the farm, but I don’t know the next step. I hate like hell to crawl back to Boston and tell my father I failed.”

  “This father of yours—the one what printed the Bunyan book in the box yonder—he a pretty strong-minded soul, is he?”

  “A banker friend of his once said my father could make Satan look indecisive.”

  “Sounds like an all-right sort. You an’ Elizabeth could go back an’ see him if things really got bad, couldn’t you?”

  “I’d rather not. I was hoping maybe I could find a way to make a living here in the settlement. Elizabeth might be more comfortable with more people around.”

  Quietly, Clapper asked, “Did the two o’ you ever sit yourselves down and decide what it is you want?”

 
; Abraham shook his head. “Pointless. We don’t know. I’ve come to believe what you told me on the ark, Daniel—that most people who chase after some vague hope are only running away from problems.”

  “Absolutely right! Mebbe I got one answer for you, though—”

  Abraham noticed a peculiar glint in Clapper’s eyes. The storekeeper fingered his beard a while before he continued.

  “The urge is on me again, Abraham. I want to pick up an’ head out. Injuns or no, this part o’ the country’s gettin’ crowded. Ten years ago there wasn’t more’n three or four thousand souls settled north o’ the river. Now I hear there’s ten times that many. People are sayin’ there’ll soon be enough folks in the territory to make Ohia state number seventeen. I need elbow room, Abraham! Next spring, I’m goin’!”

  “Does your family know?”

  “Miz Edna’s been watchin’ me mighty close lately. She can feel it comin’. You’re the first to hear, though.”

  Abraham thought a minute. “Are you suggesting maybe I could take over the store?”

  “Yep.”

  “I don’t know as I’d be any better running a place like this than I am at running a farm, Daniel.”

  “Hell, it’s easy! Everythin’ practically falls off the shelves—”

  “Except that china I traded to you.”

  “Well, that’s fancy stuff. The necessary things sell themselves—an’ like you say, Miz Elizabeth might be easier in her mind livin’ closer to the fort. Havin’ womenfolk to visit with regular—”

  Abraham did see how the plan could work. With a little more animation, he said, “If the pattern of the last couple of years holds next year too, there’ll be new families arriving in the spring. I could sell the farm to one of them, buy you out and pay you every penny I owe you—”

  “I’ll only sell you the building an’ half my goods. I’ll need some stocks to set up when I get where I’m headed.”

  “Got any idea where that is?”

  Clapper grinned. “Nope. I’ll light there same way as I lighted here. But once I take a notion to go, I want to git—fast. So I won’t gouge you on the price, an’ it’ll be a fair deal all around.”