Many Sparrows

by Lori Benton

  “Better in every way!” Philip had countered, sidestepping her primary question. “The land east of the mountains is overworked. But the west—the west is untouched. Virgin soil. The yield there will be bountiful beyond anything we’ve seen. More yield for less toil. Think of it, Clare.”

  She thought of the hardships of wilderness travel. She thought of hacking out a forest of massive trees to lay bare a patch of that virgin soil. Of raising a cabin with a hatchet and their hands. Of bearing her child in a wilderness.

  It was all she could do not to weep. “Why not wait, at least until after the baby is born?”

  “If we wait, the best land will be claimed. You’ve heard how many settlers are passing through Pittsburgh and Redstone, all with the same aim in mind as have we—”

  “As have you.” Philip never seemed to grasp that distinction. “And what about Indians?”

  He had waved away that most abiding of her terrors as if it were a gnat. “It’s been peaceful for months. Likely there’s so many of us coming downriver now they’ve thought better of provoking us. They’ll give way. Move west. They always have. It’s inevitable.”

  Inevitable.

  Rehearsing that conversation and others like it for the hundredth time, still trying to find the thing she might have said—might still say—to divert this disastrous course her husband had set, Clare scanned the trail ahead. It leveled into a wider, straight stretch with no trees or rocks to maneuver the cumbersome wagon around. She swiveled to peer deeper into the canvas-covered bed where their son, Jacob, rode cushioned in a nest of cornmeal sacks, tucked between the few cherished furnishings they’d had room to bring along.

  At four years old Jacob was, according to Philip’s mother, the spitting image of his father at that age, with a mop of pale curls and dark brown eyes. Clare had adored him at first sight, squalling and pink-faced, and loved him with a devotion that gripped her at times with its intensity.

  Equally intense was the rage that rose at the thought of anyone, painted or otherwise, harming her son because of his father’s choices—a rage that found its target in Philip, who she hoped was prepared to use the rifle he’d bought at the outset of this sojourn, which rode now behind the wagon seat. If it came to it, she would spend her last breath defending her child with the hatchet that lay next to it.

  “Jacob, would you like—”

  It was all Clare uttered of the question she’d meant to ask before the right front wheel hit a rut she hadn’t seen coming.

  Lurched airborne, she yelped in startlement before her bottom jarred on hard wood. Pain shot through her hips and back, then arced around her belly in a tightening, terrifying band reminiscent of the pangs she’d felt at Jacob’s birth.

  But it was far too soon for that.

  Behind her Jacob cried out, but only in reaction to her outcry, for when she righted herself and turned she could see he was unharmed. Still it was the final straw.

  “Stop the horses, Philip. Now.”

  Philip drew back on the lines. The wagon lurched to a halt.

  Birdsong and a nearby stream’s steady chatter filled the silence as trail dust settled. “Clare, what is it?”

  “I am in pain, Philip,” she said through gritted teeth and saw her husband’s face contract.

  “The baby? Is it coming?”

  “No!” At least she hoped not. “I’ve simply had enough jolting.”

  “I’ll take it more slowly—”

  “If we take it any more slowly we might as well be going backward.” Exactly the direction Clare wished to go.

  Philip clenched the lines as the horses waited, stamping and blowing, looking no happier than she.

  “Let Jacob climb down to walk for a spell. I’ll walk with him.” She bit back harsher words, rubbing at her aching lower back.

  “Clare, I’m sorry this is hard on you. We…” Philip caught her gaze again and didn’t finish the statement. Perhaps he’d been tempted to say they would stop early and camp. But they’d barely made one tedious mile, this second day out from Redstone, and the sun was still high.

  It was a relief to be on her feet once she’d finally clambered down to earth. Ahead, the wagon creaked and groaned with every rut and rock its iron-bound wheels surmounted. At least for the moment they weren’t attempting to scale a ridge, or descend one. The latter was most harrowing, requiring Philp to chain the rear wheels and Clare to pray the wagon didn’t go plunging down the side of a ravine, taking the horses and all their worldly belongings with it. They’d seen the wreck and ruin of more than one wagon, shattered among rocks and trees far below the trail.

  “Mama? Mama! Let me show you something!”

  Thrilled with his freedom, Jacob had been darting back and forth in the wagon’s wake, ferreting among ferns and rocks and the massive boles of trees lining the trail, blithely ignoring her warnings about snakes. Now he held out a grubby palm, in the center of which rested a flat triangle of stone, grooved at its base on two sides, one point elongated and sharp.

  Clare’s mouth went dry.

  “Give me that.” She took the arrow point from him, intending to throw it into the woods as soon as Jacob was distracted, which occurred in short order when Philip called back to them.

  “Jacob! Care to run ahead of the wagon and throw aside these rocks from the path?”

  Fear came in a cold wave. Clutching the arrowhead, Clare grabbed her son before he could race away. “Philip, no. It’s not safe, his being ahead on the trail.”

  Philip halted the horses and leaned out to view them past the canvas. “You worry excessively, Clare. He’ll be in plain sight the whole while. I’ll not let him range far ahead.”

  Clare felt the vibration of pent-up energy radiating through their son’s shoulder. Jacob gazed up with hopeful eyes. “Please, Mama? I can help.”

  Though it went against her every instinct, she released him.

  “All right, but be watchful.” To her husband she called, “Do keep an eye on him, Philip. There may be snakes in the way.”

  The arrowhead bit into her clenched fist. Or worse.

  “With all the racket we’re making? I should think we’ve cleared the path of snakes and anything else for a mile at least.” Philip smiled at her, a grin that had charmed her years ago, smoothing over many an initial disappointment and heartbreak.

  It had long since lost its power to reassure.

  Moving to where she could glimpse her son whenever he ran to the track’s edge to toss a stone into the underbrush, Clare cupped her hands around her belly, feeling the babe stir beneath petticoats and shift.

  Thankfully she thrived with the carrying of children. With Jacob she’d been ill nary a day, still able to complete her chores and walk the miles to Uncle’s mill the evening prior to his birth. She’d enjoyed similar robust health with this one and expected there was time enough to reach Harrod’s Kentucky settlement before her childbed was upon her.

  A month, if she was lucky.

  A month of this. Her gaze failed to pierce the gloom of the forest canopy around them. Childbearing didn’t daunt her, but that impenetrable forest stole the strength from her knees and the breath from beneath her half-laced stays. She wished she’d taken the hatchet from the wagon when she’d clambered down. She’d feel better with it clenched at her side. Where she wanted Jacob to be. Now.

  “Jacob!” She raised her voice to carry over the wagon’s rumbling. “Enough rock-throwing. Come back to me!”

  She saw him toss a final rock and turn to scamper past the wagon, flashing a grin up at Philip as he did so. Her heart seized as his tiny frame passed by the rolling front wheel. He pressed nimbly through the space between it and the immense trunk of a tree, clambered over a sloping rock embedded in the trail, and slipped through the tight spot just before the heavy rear wheel reached it.

  Clare drew one easing breath before calamity ensued.

  The horses must have veered, for the rear wheel rode up high on the rock the front wheel had mis
sed and crashed down on the other side. There was a crack of breaking timber before the wheel came away from the axle, hit the tree and spun into the forest, missing knocking Jacob flat by inches.

  Clare rushed forward as the wagon tipped with a splintering, clanging, and thudding. Canvas split and contents spilled. Something struck her shoulder as, shielding Jacob, she got a hand on his arm and yanked him backward.

  They went stumbling and reeling until they tangled in her petticoat and fell in a heap on the trail.

  Bruised and breathless, Clare took stock of herself. Sharp pain had shot up her thighs and back as she’d landed, but Jacob had fallen across her lap. Surely that had been its cause.

  “Jacob? Are you hurt?” She swatted aside her hampering petticoat, ignoring the pain still throbbing in her lower back.

  Even as she grappled for him, Jacob scrambled to his feet, nary a graze in evidence, eyes wide and focused on the trail ahead.

  “Papa?”

  Clare got to her knees, pushed herself upright, and with Jacob her shadow hurried past the listing wagon, terrified of finding Philip cast aside in similar broken state.

  “Philip, are you—” She halted at sight of her husband sitting up in a bed of ferns, brushing leaf matter from his coat.

  “Merely chipped and dented!” Philip retrieved his hat and shoved it onto his head, then winced as he examined a torn stocking, the exposed skin scraped but scarcely even bleeding.

  He’d managed to jump free of the wagon as it lurched sideways, he explained. Once he’d seen she and Jacob were likewise whole, he turned his attention to the horses, for which Clare had given scarce thought even as she’d rushed past them. Pinned by their traces to the listing wagon, they stood twitching and nervous but unharmed.

  “I’d say we’ve come through remarkably unscathed,” he pronounced. “This might have fallen out a good deal worse.”

  That he’d said it at all was stunning. That he’d said it smiling…Clare gaped, mouth trembling like her hands and knees.

  “Philip—have you even looked at the wagon?” The contraption would have been on its side had it not fallen against the tree; one wheel missing, a second cracked nearly through, likely a broken axle, canvas gaping, possessions scattered on the trail. “Unscathed?”

  Philip’s smile faltered. “Granted, the wagon does look bad, but…”

  Clare never knew what else he might have said, for that was when her shaking stopped and fury surged high. Her husband had never taken to gaming to restore his family’s fortune, but apparently he was willing to risk their very lives, which could be lost without warning at any bend of that terrible trail—as had just been proven.

  “Why wouldn’t you heed the men at Redstone? Better still, never left Uncle Alphus’s farm in the first place! What were you thinking? What was I thinking to have come this far with you? To bring Jacob into this? You’re going to get us killed!”

  Philip raised placating hands. “Calm yourself, Clare. Let me—”

  “I’ll not calm myself!” Infuriated, she stepped back, hands cupping her belly. “I ought to have taken Jacob and gone back to Richmond months ago as my parents begged of me!”

  Philip’s face drained of color, leaving the fresh sunburn across his nose a stark red blaze.

  What had she said? Richmond, her parents begging…Oh, no.

  She’d concealed from Philip the letters her father had penned, letters imploring her to return to Richmond with their grandson. Her father had declared his lack of faith in Philip to provide them a living after so many years. Desperate to deny her own doubts in that regard, she’d never replied.

  The truth was out now. Philip’s face showed the marks of its wounding. “I wish you would trust me, Clare. At least in this one thing—I will not get you or Jacob killed.”

  “Trust you?” She put her back to her husband, too overcome to scream, to sob, though the need for both pressed hot in her throat.

  “Mama, I want to live with Papa!”

  Shame washed over her at Jacob’s urgent words, broken by sniffling gulps. That she’d revealed such doubt—hers and her parents’—to Philip was bad enough. To have done so in front of their son was unforgivable.

  “It’s all right, Jacob,” Philip said. “Your mother was frightened, is all.”

  Tears blurring her vision, Clare reached for Jacob. The boy rushed to her, arms stretching around her belly in an attempt to embrace her. She pressed his head to her side. His tousled hair was sweaty, his cheek wet with tears.

  “It’s all right.” Hearing Philip’s powerless words coming from her lips, she amended, “It will be all right.”

  As soon as they were headed east again.

  She met her husband’s imploring gaze and felt her will harden. She would do what she must to protect her children, no matter the cost to Philip’s dreams. Or his pride. It would be all right, for she would make it so. One way or another, she and Jacob were going back to Uncle Alphus’s farm.

  They said no more until Jacob was comforted and sent to play at a stream a few paces from the trail, well within her sight.

  Philip drew near, putting his hand on her arm. Meant as a comforting gesture, no doubt.

  “Clare, if your parents have lost faith in me, I’m to blame. But should you find it in you to give me one last chance to prove I can provide for you, for Jacob…” He dropped his hand to her belly. “For this one. Can you do that?”

  He was doing it again. Sweeping aside her concerns with a quick apology, a gentle pleading for her to see it his way. Do it his way. No matter if his way screamed of folly.

  “Can we just go home, Philip? Please.”

  Philip’s hand slid away. “All right.”

  Before she could fully take in those glorious words he added, “Unless it proves I took the wrong turning this morning, back where the trail forked.”

  As he spoke, Philip began gathering up large stones from the trail’s edge, dropping them beside the broken wagon, going back for more.

  “Perhaps I’ll find someone who can help us fix the wagon, perhaps the axle can be saved.”

  “Even if the axle is still functional, Philip, the wheels aren’t. We have one spare but need two.”

  “Just let me do this, Clare,” Philip said, voice stiffening with that familiar bullheadedness as he went on doggedly piling stones that clacked together as the pile toppled and fell. “Let me see what help I can find. I’ll take one of the horses, ride back—it wasn’t much more than a mile if memory serves—check out that other trail. Perhaps you can be sorting through your things while I’m gone.”

  Clare’s chest tightened with apprehension as she watched her husband hunker beside the tumbled stones and begin to stack them. He was being unreasonable. Utterly unreasonable. And it frightened her.

  “Who do you think you’ll find, Philip? Someone who just happens to have an extra wagon wheel they’re willing to give us? What are you doing?”

  The answer to that last question grew clear as she voiced it. He was piling the gathered stones beneath the broken axle to support the wagon.

  “I ought to have listened to the Redstone men,” he said, pausing in the work and lifting his gaze. “I will own to that. But even if I find no help, we can still catch Harrod at Wheeling if we sort through everything, figure out what the horses can carry…”

  He’d gone back to piling stones. Clare watched, too weary to reply to this preposterous notion. He would have her walk to Wheeling Settlement? That was simply not going to happen, but she thought she could just manage to walk back to Redstone, and for that she would have to sort through the wagon’s contents. Stabilizing the wagon so they could clamber around within was a step in that direction.

  “All right. I’ll do that.”

  Perhaps this accident was a blessing in disguise. Philip would find no better path, or help. He’d already admitted to his misjudgment about the trail. He would return to them that evening and admit the full defeat, which wouldn’t be defeat in Clare’s es
timation but triumph. She only wanted to retrace their steps before something worse befell them.

  They pitched a camp where the wagon had broken. Clare listened dully as Philip pointed out the amenities of the site—the stream, the clearing where the horse he wasn’t taking was picketed to graze.

  “As if the Almighty Himself chose the spot,” Philip said without meeting her gaze.

  Do not bring God into this, she wanted to say. Her husband was a man of faith, though she no longer knew in what exactly he put his faith—the Almighty or his own schemes and hopes.

  They were strangers to each other, it so often seemed.

  In the clearing Philip built a fire and erected an open-faced shelter out of pine boughs. It was barely past midday, the sun high in a clear sky, and Jacob had fallen asleep inside the shelter, when Philip saddled his favorite of the wagon team.

  “I’ll be gone no more than an hour or two, Clare. You’ll be fine.”

  “I know.” Her heart gave a lurch at the lie. Philip was leaving her with a loaded pistol and his hatchet, taking only the rifle for himself.

  “I’ll shoot us some supper while I’m gone,” he added as he mounted up.

  She was fairly certain he had never fired the piece.

  He grinned down at her, but she turned her back to set about sorting through the contents of the wagon that had spilled during the crash. “Have the stewpot ready.”

  She heard the attempt at lightness in his voice but didn’t reply.

  “Clare?”

  She straightened without facing him. “What?”

  “It’s going to be all right. I love you.”

  She could only wonder at the hope in her husband’s voice—from where did it spring? And the rare note of vulnerability.

  Her throat burned. Her eyes burned. She didn’t let him see she wept.

  “Just return before nightfall,” she said, expunging all trace of tears from her voice. “Please.”

  And in the morning let us put this Kentucky foolishness behind us and go home.

  “I will,” Philip said. “I promise.”