The Seekers

by John Jakes

  “But it wasn’t that big a thing—”

  “You ain’t got much pride in yourself, have you, boy?”

  Jared glanced up suddenly, started to speak, hesitated, then said, “No, I guess I don’t.”

  “Well, it’s time to start havin’ some! I’d be proud to call you my partner.”

  That was when Jared recalled something Judge Jackson had said. Something about the accomplishment of reaching Nashville on his own. At the time, he hadn’t paid much attention. But he remembered it vividly now.

  He remembered Governor Clark expressing astonishment over the journey, too. He began to feel a little heartened—

  Do you suppose we never know we’ve fought some battles until they’re over? he asked himself. Maybe I do have some reason to hold my head up—

  The thought pleased him. True or not, it lent him a touch of courage he’d lacked for a long time.

  Weatherby said, “Tell me something.”

  “Sure.”

  “Your cousin—did she make the whole trip, like you say?”

  “To Tennessee? Yes. Then she obviously came this far with Blackthorn—”

  “How’d she get along?”

  “When she was with me, not too well—at first. By the time we left Louisville, though, she’d toughened up a lot. She—”

  He stopped, sensing the trapper’s intent. Weatherby said, “What you’re saying is, she’s got the stuff too. That oughta give you some hope that she’s still alive. Hell, I bet you taught her plenty about how to get along—and did it without even knowin’ it.”

  Jared would have liked to believe that, too. But skepticism brought a bitter laugh. “You’re just softening me up so I’ll throw in with you. I haven’t got a cent.”

  “The money was to be my part. I was only askin’ for a strong back an’ a strong belly. I think you got both of ’em—only somebody or something has whipped you so bad, you talked yourself into believin’ the belly part ain’t there. You think it over. I mean really think about what it took to get all the way out here. Think about that little girl, too. Whether you really want to act like she’s dead when there’s a chance she ain’t. If you change your mind, I’ll probably still be roomin’ at Ungerleider’s Hotel when they let you out.”

  “Do you honestly think we could find her, Mr. Weatherby?”

  “I know we could have a damn good shot at it.”

  Jared stared down at the fob on the pallet, confused, his emotions churning—

  Weatherby put a hand on his arm.

  “Listen here. I can hire me a dozen no-goods. But I don’t come across ones like old Marcel—or you—very often. I ain’t never kissed any man’s boots to make him feel good. When I say somethin’, I mean it. Life’s too goddamn short to have it any other way.”

  Weatherby turned and hammered on the cell door. When the jailer let him out, he snatched back his trade musket and disappeared, calling over his shoulder:

  “That’s Ungerleider’s Hotel. Anybody can tell you how to find it.”

  iv

  Jared Kent sat cross-legged on his pallet a long while afterward, running his ringer across the surface of the fob medallion and scrutinizing the Latin inscription. The ball of his thumb began to work back and forth over the raised letters.

  He did want to believe what Weatherby had told him. He wanted to believe that he had passed through a testing fire without even being aware of it. Making mistakes, yes, dreadful ones—

  But surviving.

  And what had the trapper said about the country where he traded? That it forgave almost anything a man wanted or needed to have forgiven—? Perhaps that was one reason why people sought the land by the hundreds and the thousands—

  Jared’s thumb stopped, resting on the tea bottle again. Was it possible Amanda could be alive? His thoughts raced back to Tennessee just before Blackthorn’s appearance. He recalled the night beside the fire when he’d been struck by the new strength in her.

  But God above, she’d been raped! And who knew how many times since then Blackthorn—and others—had abused her?

  Still, he had to admit in the privacy of his conscience that he was guilty of inventing reasons for going south and abandoning the search—which was another way of saying he was guilty of giving in to his fear.

  Maybe he didn’t need to give in any longer. Maybe on the long, arduous journey from Boston, step by step and mile by mile, he’d trampled an enemy underfoot and never known it—

  If he didn’t quite believe it yet, he had the desire to believe, and the desire lifted his spirits in a way that had been foreign to him for months.

  He stared at the medal.

  Assuming Amanda was dead—or that he couldn’t find her, which was just as likely—he was the only Kent left. What was he to do with his life?

  Weatherby offered him a chance to learn the fur trade. He’d find no similar opportunity ready-made in New Orleans. If he could go with the trapper and not be afraid of the land—not be afraid because he had already won one battle against it—

  Then wouldn’t he be a fool not to accept Weatherby’s offer of a new start? He could provide for himself. Perhaps even prosper—

  His thumb began moving on the medal again.

  He was the last of the Kents.

  Not Abraham Kent.

  Jared.

  Not a poor creature tormented to failure, but one who had walked a thousand miles—

  Before he was sixteen years old.

  He had always believed everything Harriet Kent said about him. But he knew she had hated him. Perhaps some of the things she’d said were born of her hate, not altogether true—

  Desperately, he sought for proofs of the possibility in the past. Once more he thought of his father.

  After Abraham Kent had failed, he had gone home. To despair. To ruin and, presumably, death.

  But he, Jared, failing in Tennessee, had kept on—

  Perhaps he wasn’t doomed to repeat the past. Perhaps he needn’t be its lifelong prisoner. As Weatherby said, that was one of the promises of the western land: it forgave, and let a man begin again—

  He was not Abraham.

  He was Jared—

  Unless he ran away.

  He looked at the medal.

  Take a stand and make a mark.

  Who was right? Weatherby? Or Harriet—and the voice of self-doubt that had been his companion for as long as he could remember—?

  Was there a possibility Amanda was alive?

  And had he made too many terrible mistakes, and put himself beyond all chance of self-forgiveness? Weatherby claimed he had sinned great sins. How could they possibly be worse than Jared’s own—?

  Alternating between bursting hope and cynical despair, he paced and fretted for nearly an hour. He still did not know clearly what he should do—or whether he was capable of anything except helpless retreat.

  Evening deepened outside the bars of the cell. From the riverfront he heard the sounds of the town’s lusty life: horses drumming, men singing, a gun going off—

  Weary of self-examination, he sought diversion. The only thing that offered it was a newspaper. He shouted through the small grille in the cell door—

  No answer. The jailer had gone off to supper.

  Frustrated, he ran a hand through his yellow hair. His eye fell on Rachel Jackson’s Bible.

  He picked it up. Turned pages aimlessly. Came at last to the ribbon that marked a place in the Old Testament. He supposed the marker had been inserted randomly, and he was just about to flip to the next page when something caught his attention.

  Someone—the judge’s wife, evidently—had inked brackets around a passage in—

  He tilted the Bible so he could make out the page heading in the dying light of sunset. Ezekiel. The thirty-fourth chapter.

  The brackets marked the sixteenth verse. He read it and realized the position of the ribbon marker was no accident. He read the verse a second time:

  I will seek that which was lost,
and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick—

  With a shiver, he sat down on the stool and began reading at the head of the chapter.

  When he reached the sixteenth verse, he closed the Bible and held it on his knees. Jackson’s wife must have suspected he would falter, hesitate and question along the way. And so she had carefully marked those few words. In the Lord’s promise to His people, Jared saw at last, a clear sign of what he himself must do.

  I will seek that which was lost—

  Bring again that which was driven away—

  Failure to carry out that command would forever break the vow he’d given Uncle Gilbert. Failure would make the precious medal a mockery—

  Only one question remained, then. But it was of such magnitude that it wracked him all through the sleepless night.

  Could he do what must be done?

  Was he strong enough?

  Was he Jared Kent—?

  Or Abraham’s helpless doomed son and twin?

  Even in the ruddy light of a new morning, there was no sure answer.

  v

  When Jared was released, he reclaimed his few belongings and put the Bible and the fob with them in his small canvas bag. In a deserted street near the jail, he squatted down in the shadows. He drew a long breath, then did something which two Indians wandering by watched with amazement.

  Using the Spanish knife, Jared pricked the ball of his left thumb.

  He sheathed the knife and squeezed his thumb until the blood ran freely, bright red—

  The nausea churned up from his belly, horribly sour in his throat. He gripped his left wrist with his right hand and forced himself to stare at the small wound—at the blood—his teeth locked together, his forehead sweaty, for some five minutes.

  During that time, he felt faint. Felt the urge to hide his hand behind his back, shut out the sight of that awful redness—

  But he watched the tiny wound until his trembling stopped and the nausea receded.

  The prick in his thumb clotted. He stood up, pale but satisfied on one score.

  This strange, debilitating enemy might be with him to the end of his days. But at least he saw the affliction in a truer perspective. Not so much a curse—punishment for unworthiness, real or imagined—as a burden whose origins, though they might be rational, would be forever hidden.

  That, he could endure.

  Walking with long, swift strides, he started for the fur warehouse of Manuel Lisa.

  vi

  The clerk checking through the bales outside the warehouse looked at Jared as if he were a lunatic. With an annoyed shake of his head, the clerk turned his attention back to his ledger.

  “I haven’t got time to answer fool questions about Indian fairy stories—”

  Jared stepped around in front of the clerk. The clerk’s head lifted. He met Jared’s blue eyes and almost dropped the ledger.

  “You’ll tell me where I can get an answer, then,” Jared said.

  Nervous, the clerk glanced past the boy, pointed his quill. “Maybe—maybe old Jeanette. See her over there?”

  Jared followed the direction of the pen, saw what he hadn’t before: beyond two gaudily quilled and beaded trappers cutting the bindings on bales of summer pelts, a figure hunched against the warehouse wall, seated in the shadows and almost lost within them.

  “She’s half Osage, half French. She speaks pretty fair English. But she’s—”

  The clerk tapped his temple with the quill.

  “She’s waiting for her husband. A free trader.” The clerk went “Huh!” softly, either in pity or derision. “He disappeared up the Mizou ten years ago and never came back.”

  Nodding, Jared pivoted away.

  He walked by the trappers to the deep shadow along the wall. Though it was full daylight, and the October sun was warm, a chill settled over him as he inspected the old woman sitting cross-legged, her clothing layered on her frail body in filthy pieces, no two of which matched.

  The old woman’s face was like a finely detailed map, crosshatched with dozens of delicate lines. Her hair was almost pure white. The hands resting in her lap were emaciated. She smelled of dirt and human waste and tobacco.

  Jared crouched down in front of her. The old woman’s eyes were closed. But in her lap, one hand moved, fumbled with the flap of a worn pouch, reached in for a small, moist gob of tobacco.

  Without opening her eyes, the woman slipped the tobacco between her lips and up against one of her diseased, toothless gums.

  He said softly, “Jeanette?”

  The ancient, leathery jaws began to work the tobacco. Her closed eyelids seemed lifeless.

  He repeated her name.

  She looked at him. Jared caught his breath.

  The old woman’s eyes were brown and clear. He saw no hint of madness in them, but neither did they hold any emotion. They seemed like natural objects—great stones, a river, the earth itself—that had no need of human feeling.

  “Jeanette,” he said a third time, “my name is Kent. The clerk said you might tell me something I need to know.”

  Slowly, so slowly, the lined jaws worked the tobacco and the old eyes remained fixed on his, unblinking.

  The wrinkled lips opened, no more than a slit. “Ask.”

  “I met a man. He used a word—he said it meant something very bad—”

  Her voice was thin, a thread of sound, and raspy. “What word?”

  “Windigo.”

  She uttered a strange, chantlike syllable, and swayed from side to side. Her eyes seemed a little more animated.

  “The devil. The great devil who walks in the dark. Accursed. A monster. Not fit to look upon.”

  “Not a real person?”

  “Some men—a few—whom the Father-spirit chooses to hate—they become like the great windigo.”

  “But what is it that makes them so terrible? Do they kill—?”

  “The great windigo kills. He kills out of pain and anger that the Father-spirit has made him what he is.”

  “Have you ever seen him?”

  She was silent almost half a minute, the brown eyes opaque again, unreadable.

  “The great windigo? No. I have seen two men in my life—maybe three—who became as he is. Accursed.”

  “Why are they accursed?” Jared persisted, feeling he was drawing close to something he might be better off avoiding. The old woman was undoubtedly senile. Yet somehow, he feared her—

  “Because they have done what the great windigo does,” she said. “They have eaten the flesh of a human being.”

  vii

  Jared’s throat felt thick. He fought for a breath of air in the foul-smelling shadows. The old half-breed woman looked at him, and he thought that she saw him for the first time.

  “The Father-spirit in heaven made the windigo so man would be humble and thankful. When the great windigo walks, higher than a house, with fire burning here”—one hand touched an eyelid—“so bright it lights the night, an ordinary man knows the Father-spirit has showered him with love. An ordinary man is humble and thankful even if he is weak and evil, because no matter how terrible a man’s lot, he will bless it forever if he meets the windigo.”

  In a whisper, Jared said, “Thank you.”

  Her right hand lifted from her lap, her palm a cross-work of lines.

  “Do you have a little snuff for me?”

  “I don’t, I’m sorry. I wish I did.”

  She became agitated. “Have you seen Langlois?”

  “Lang—?”

  Jared stopped. Did she mean her husband?

  “He will be back by sunset, they say. I told him I would be waiting here.”

  Jared stood up. Grasped her open hand and pressed it gently. “Yes, I heard he was coming back.”

  She relaxed, and seemed to smile.

  “You have heard that? I am glad. That means he is truly coming. I will go on waiting.”

  Jared tur
ned away, shaken and full of pity for the old Osage woman. But he understood why Weatherby had revealed his shameful secret.

  viii

  Jared stayed at the Lisa warehouse the better part of an hour, speaking to several men. Then he asked directions to Ungerleider’s Hotel. He set off at a run, hoping he was not too late.

  Chapter IX

  “I Will Seek That Which Was Lost”

  i

  ON THE FIRST OF November 1814, Elijah Weatherby and Jared Adam Kent boarded a keelboat that would take them several hundred miles up the Missouri River with Weatherby’s assortment.

  In the assortment were the standard twenty-five-yard bolts of coarse woolen cloth called strouding. The Indians fashioned it into clothing. There were several bolts each of calico, melton and cotton cloth; two dozen three-point Mackinac blankets, prized by the Indians for their warmth; and a collection of carefully packed kettles, needles, threads, axes, awls, hand mirrors, animal traps, shot and powder.

  The assortment also included less utilitarian items which the Indians favored for personal adornment: cheap combs, a rainbow of ribbons, falconry bells, and white, red, gray, black and purple shells polished and strung to make wampum.

  Weatherby had used the last of his funds to buy three dozen silver trinkets. There were gorgets and half-moons, some bracelets, and fifteen pairs of enormous silver earrings, which Weatherby said the vainer braves wore with great pride. Weatherby had also bought two horses and enough food for three months.

  ii

  The keelboat pushed up the Missouri under a favoring wind. Jared stood at the bow on the twelfth day of November 1814. His new buckskins were stiff; sweat and exertion had yet to lend them the desired pliability.

  The early evening was warm, unusually warm and dry for this far north and this late in the season, Elijah Weatherby said. But the sun was darkening rapidly, Jared noticed. Huge black clouds spilled out of the northwest. In the clouds, lightning flickered.