Designed for defense with a second story that overhung the first, the Block House and its palisaded yard now seemed to serve more as an inn and trading post than as a refuge from marauding Indians. Still, Livi welcomed the foot-thick walls, the high, barred gate. The sense of invulnerability about the place. It was the first time she'd felt truly secure since they'd left Lynchburg.
All manner of people were gathered around the dining table on the Block House's first floor. They stared at Livi and the children as they sat down, sizing them up as potential traveling companions. Livi stared back with the same intent.
John Anderson made introductions, but the spicy tang of the rabbit stew Mrs. Anderson began ladling into bowls made Livi incapable of concentrating on anything else. It was as if the woman had somehow discerned all of Livi's fancies and fulfilled them with a stir of her spoon. The taste of the stew lived up to its aroma, the meat succulent and tender, the vegetables cooked to perfection, the gravy savory with a hint of rosemary and dill. There was a knob of dark bread in the center of the table, and Livi used her third piece to swipe up the stew in the bottom of her bowl.
When she returned her attention to her companions she saw a round-faced man and woman and their round-faced sons; a shy young couple with a baby asleep in its mother's arms; an old man and three strapping boys. There were several single men at the table, too. One with a patch over his eye and a red mustache, another great bear of a man missing most of his teeth, and the sallow-complected fellow kept to himself.
At a glance David would have known which of these people would be the most dependable congenial on the trail. He would have known how to approach them, how to form an alliance that would weather the miles. Livi had no idea at all how to do that.
"Ma, can I be excused?" Tad asked when talk around the table turned from tales of Kentucky to a debate about the merits of certain varieties of seed corn.
"If you take your sister with you," Livi replied.
"Aw, Ma!"
"It's safe for them to wander as far as the edge of the woods," Mrs. Anderson put in as she cleared the meal away.
"You heard her," Livi warned as the children headed toward the door.
"There's a bed and a trundle still available upstairs, Mrs. Talbot," Jane Anderson continued, "should you and the children want it."
Livi asked the price then gave the older woman a nod. "A bed sounds like heaven after sleeping on the ground even these few nights."
"As soon as I've seen to the dishes, I'll show you the way."
The room at the end of the hall was dark and airless but scrupulously clean. There were what looked like fresh linens on the bed and a washstand in the corner. Livi could not have been more delighted if the bed a tester hung with silk.
The loopholes plugged with big wooden pegs and the trapdoor in the floor that enabled defenders to fire down at an enemy storming the walls reminded Livi that she and the children had ventured far beyond everything that was safe and familiar. They also made her feel as if she might dare to sleep tonight.
"Your husband joining you soon?" Mrs. Anderson inquired, breaking into Livi's thoughts.
"No, he's not." Livi felt her throat close up. She fought to weigh her words. "He—" Livi swallowed hard. "David..."
"Your man die recently, then?"
Livi refused to meet the other woman's gaze. "On the trail."
Jane Anderson offered an indelicate snort rather than the questions or the words of sympathy Livi had been dreading.
"And you're going over the mountains anyway? Alone with those two children? All the way to Kentucky?"
Livi's chin came up. "David claimed his three hundred acres for serving with Colonel Clark during the war. We were supposed to start a new life out there."
She knew it wasn't a new story. Half the people who passed through the Block House must be headed for land they'd garnered fighting for Virginia or North Carolina in these past years.
Jane Anderson gave Livi a long, assessing look. "And you're going ahead with his plans."
Livi nodded.
"You know what you're getting into, girl?"
"No."
"Kentucky's not the best place for a woman alone."
"I haven't anywhere else to go."
The other woman mulled that over. "You have someone to fell the trees and build a cabin? To clear the fields?"
"David cleared several fields when he was in Kentucky last fall. We'll be able to put in corn as soon as we arrive. I figured I might find someone going west who would trade his services for some of my land."
"It'd have to be the right man," Mrs. Anderson mused, leaning thoughtfully against the doorjamb.
As long as Jane Anderson was in an expansive mood, Livi decided to take advantage of it. "What about the men at the table today?"
"Well, you don't want Red Swazey—the man with the patch. He's a scrapper and a boozer. And Billy-boy Bryant is hardly better. Les Winslow ain't half bad, but he sets to wheezing sometimes. He'll never make old bones, you mark me well."
"Perhaps I'll find someone once I get there."
Jane Anderson's eyebrows conveyed her disbelief. "Well, perhaps."
"When are these people moving out?"
"Tomorrow morning. But by the look of you, I'd say you need a few days' rest. You ain't slept much since your husband passed, have you? And unless I miss my guess, you're breeding, too."
Livi's mouth dropped open. "How did you know?"
"I saw the way you ate at dinner. A woman built like you don't pack away that much food unless she's carrying. You going to be able to keep it down?"
"I'm not sure." Livi had never spoken so frankly to anyone, let alone a stranger. "But no matter how I feel, there isn't time for me to rest up if these people are leaving in the morning."
"There'll be other folks through here soon enough," the older woman said. "We had lots of them pass by while there was snow on the ground, and there will be more in the next few weeks. We just got to find the right ones for you and your young'uns to travel with."
"You mean you'll help me?"
"Lord, girl!" Jane Anderson laughed. "Half of what me and John do is set folks up together for the trek over the mountains."
"I can't afford to wait too long. I need to get the corn in by the middle of April."
"Just where is your husband's land?"
"South and west of Logan's Station."
The older woman nodded. "Then you've got a week or two yet. Lots of time to find some suitable traveling companions. Though the good Lord knows there won't be many willing to tote a lone woman and her children all that way."
"I can take care of myself and my children!" Livi insisted.
Jane Anderson gave a second derisive snort. It was unnerving how this woman saw through Livi's every pretense.
"You just lie back on that bed and have a good sleep," Jane advised sagely. "You got circles under your eyes as dark as lantern soot. I'll keep watch over your young'uns for you this afternoon, and we'll talk later about the rest."
Mrs. Anderson swung away and disappeared down the hall before Livi had a chance to so much as thank her.
* * *
Jane Anderson was right. Lots of people stopped at the Block House on their way to Kentucky, more each day as the weather improved. Not one of them was willing to add a widow and two children to his party.
"Now, just why would a pretty lady like you want to settle in a wild place like Kentucky?" the men would ask when Livi approached them about passage west.
"I have land near Logan's Station."
"Do you indeed? And just what do you intend to do with that land once you reach it?"
"I intend to do the same as you, build a cabin and start a farm."
"Alone?" they would demand, their voices rife with incredulity. "A woman like you won't last a week in the wilds. A lady alone will never make it beyond the Cumberland Gap."
Each refusal turned Livi harder, grimmer, more desperate. Each day she and the children spent a
t the Block House called into question the decision she had made, weathered away a few more grains of her confidence and made Tad even itchier to be on his way. A party going west might well hire a boy his age on to help with chores. Concern for his mother and sister kept Tad at the Block House—but for how much longer?
When a group of travelers from a church near Petersburg pulled in late one afternoon, Jane Anderson alerted Livi.
"Surely they'll take pity on a widow woman," Jane murmured encouragingly as they watched the group make camp in the meadow beyond the Block House's open gate.
Livi stiffened. She didn't want the settlers' pity. What she wanted was passage over the mountains. But she had to admit that this group offered what might be her last and very best chance.
An hour after the churchmen rode in, Livi found herself preparing to meet their leader, the good Reverend Amos Lindenwood. Securing her heavy coppery hair in a knot at the nape of her neck and placing a crisp, bleached-muslin cap atop her head, Livi peered into the scrap of mirror suspended on the wall above the washstand.
Haunted moss-green eyes stared back at her. New hollows sharpened the sloping line of her cheekbones and highlighted the angle of her jaw. With her wide-set eyes and broad-boned face, her mouth seemed pale and small and vulnerable. She looked more frightened than determined. More like eighteen and inexperienced than self-possessed and twenty-nine.
She pinched color into her cheeks and bit her lips. Tawdry tricks, but necessary. She tied a fresh apron around her still-slim waist, infinitely grateful that her pregnancy hadn't yet begun to show. It was the one liability no one could see, and Livi had no compunctions about keeping her secret.
She glanced in the mirror one last time. Did she look calm and strong and capable enough to brave the trip? Could she convince Reverend Lindenwood to grant them passage? She swallowed hard and reminded herself she had no choice.
Tad was pacing circles in the yard when she came down. She could see he'd washed up good and slicked back his hair.
"Do you want me to come with you?" he asked when he saw her standing in the doorway.
Tad knew as well as she that time was running out for them. If they didn't start up Boone's Trace by the first of April, they might as well give up on David's dream.
"I thought it might go better if I went, too."
"I think I have to go alone," Livi answered him. "It's me they'll be having doubts about."
Tad turned the brim of his hat in his hands. "It's just that it's getting so close to planting time..."
Livi's breath fluttered, trapped beneath her ribs as much by ambivalence as by nervousness. "I know, Tad. I intend to do everything I can to convince this Reverend Lindenwood that we'll be an asset to his party—not a liability. I just don't have any way of knowing how charitable this group of Christians is prepared to be."
"I know you'll do your best, Ma."
The weight of those words settled over Livi like a yoke.
Before she could think of how to answer her son, John Anderson came out of the Block House. "You 'bout ready, Olivia?"
Livi dredged up what she hoped was a cocky grin. "Got the horses already saddled."
Anderson laughed and headed for the gate.
"Good luck, Ma," Tad called after them.
It helped to have John Anderson beside her as they crossed the field where the settlers were pitching their camp. By making the introductions, he added the weight of his recommendation to her request for passage. Surely his willingness to do that meant that John had faith in her, that he believed her capable of making the trek to Kentucky, of working David's land.
Around them, the churchmen were putting up tents while their women shook out bedding and unpacked food. Older children hauled water from the stream, and younger ones carried logs from the two huge stockpiles Anderson provided for the travelers' use.
They found the Anglican pastor splitting wood. With his shirtsleeves rolled up and a sheen of perspiration on his brow, Amos Lindenwood looked a good deal less intimidating than he might have been in clerical robes and standing by the sanctuary door. He was a big, bluff man in his middle years, and Livi liked the looks of him immediately.
"I'm pleased to meet you, Mrs. Talbot," Lindenwood said, setting his ax aside and wiping his face with a bright bandanna handkerchief. "The captain says you want to travel with us to Kentucky."
"That's right, Reverend Lindenwood. My husband's land lies near Logan's Station. My children and I need to reach it as soon as we can."
"And why isn't your husband escorting you, dear lady?" the pastor inquired with real concern.
"My husband is dead, sir. He died on the trail some miles east of here."
Lindenwood reached across to take her hand. It was the practiced gesture of a man who had comforted scores of widows in his time. "Then may the Lord grant you strength and solace in your time of loss."
The reverend's sonorous tone reverberated in Livi's chest, brought an unexpected need for comfort to the fore. Resolutely she ignored it.
"Thank you," she answered, lowering her eyes.
"With your husband so recently taken from you, dear lady, wouldn't it be wiser you went back to where you came from? Surely you have family who can see you through this crisis."
Not once in all the years since she'd turned her back on the Tidewater plantation where she'd grown up had Livi considered going to her family for help—not when she realized how hard life with David was going to be, not when her husband marched off to war, not when she lost her babies. She would not turn to the Chestertons now. Still, the reverend's suggestion brought a clutch of unexpected desolation.
"There's no one to go back to," she answered quietly. "We must press on."
"You aren't going to live on the land in Kentucky all by yourself, are you, dear?" Lindenwood asked.
After Livi had been refused passage so many times, she and Jane Anderson had concocted a story to assuage any fear the men might have of being held responsible for Livi and the children once they crossed the mountains.
"No! Oh, no," she assured the reverend with what she hoped was sufficient conviction. "We won't be living there alone. My husband's brother is at the cabin now. But—George—has no way of knowing what happened to David, no way of knowing we're stranded here. We have no way to join him unless, of course, you're kind enough to let us accompany you."
Deceit never sat well on Livi. In the face of Lindenwood's obvious sincerity and genuine concern, it rankled even more. And surely it was doubly wrong to dupe a man of the cloth. That Anderson had heard the recitation and said nothing was either a tribute to John Anderson's persuasiveness or even more evidence of his confidence in recommending her.
"Well, I'll have to discuss this with the others in my party before I can give you an answer," Lindenwood told her. "It's highly irregular, a woman traveling alone. Still, I can see the need of it..."
"Then I leave the decision to you," Livi said with what she hoped was just the right amount of approbation. Experience had already taught her that these men might demand a strong and capable woman for life on the trail, but she must be soft-spoken and infinitely biddable when she wasn't saddling horses or loading rifles for the camp's defense.
Lindenwood asked her a few more questions before he let her go and promised he would give her his answer after supper. Livi felt more hopeful than she had in days, and when she returned to their room at the Block House, she found Tad and Cissy packing.
* * *
The dawn's first rays slanted through the trees, tinting the mist that veiled the meadow a diaphanous amber rose. Even at that hour of the day, the area around the Block House was astir with travelers striking tents, rolling bedding, and saddling horses. Children laughed and chased one another through the drifting banks of fog. As they finished their chores, women gathered around the few remaining campfires, drinking coffee and talking, their voices low and vibrant in the cool, still air.
The dew-damp grass whispered against Livi's skirt as she and
her children led their animals toward where the party of churchmen was preparing to get under way. A ring of men stood conferring in the midst of the confusion, leaning on their long rifles as they made their plans.
As Livi approached, their circle subtly shifted, minutely closed. At first she thought it might have been some vague, unconscious movement, but as she came nearer she could see the squaring of the men's shoulders, the tightening of their stance. Though Reverend Lindenwood had given her permission, these men clearly opposed adding a widow and two children to their party for the journey west.
Feeling both intimidated and strangely belligerent, Livi paused a yard or two from where the men were standing. "Good morning, gentlemen," she said softly but distinctly.
They ignored her to a man.
"Good morning!" She tried again, forcing the words past the knot in her throat.
Amos Lindenwood turned at the sound of her voice, genuinely surprised to see Livi standing behind him. The preacher was the only man in the circle who hadn't noticed her.
"Mrs. Talbot, good morning. Come meet some of the others of our little band."
Begrudgingly the men shuffled aside, looking Livi up and down as she took her place among them. She was dressed for the trail with David's altered hunting shirt belted over her bodice and skirt. The canvas sack filled with necessities—parched corn and jerky, salve and bandages, a needle, thread, and tinderbox—was slung across one shoulder. Jane Anderson had given her an old, indestructible, wide-brimmed hat that shaded her face and gave her what Jane called "substance." Livi wasn't sure what "substance" was, but she figured it wouldn't hurt to have some in the days ahead. She also clung to David's long rifle as if it had been grafted to her hand.
What the men thought of her was anyone's guess, but Livi stood her ground in spite of their flaying scrutiny.
After everyone had looked his fill, Reverend Lindenwood went on with introductions. "This is my church deacon and friend, George Willoughby, George's brother, Sam, and Sam's oldest boy, Jacob."
A Place Called Home Page 5