From Sea to Shining Sea

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  He was in the valley where the forks of the Blue River met, and not far ahead of him, though he could not see them through the mist, he knew there lay a range of steep hills full of caves and sinking rivers. George had shown him several caves just off the Trace where a man might come in out of the rain, build a fire, even keep his horse in shelter with him. Dickie was thinking of one of these caves in particular, one whose mouth was protected by a natural parapet of earth and a thicket of trees that would hide from bypassers’ eyes the glow of a fire built inside. He wanted to get to that cave tonight if he could because his clothes were wet and he was getting chilled, and if he was going to have to hole up in the vicinity of some unseen Trace-watchers, he wanted it to be in a place where he could defend himself.

  So now he spurred his horse into a canter and prayed silently that if there were people stalking him, they were not between him and that cave.

  THREE HOURS LATER, DICKIE WAS BEGINNING TO SMILE AT the fears he had been feeling earlier. He lay in his blanket upon a pile of dry leaves on the floor of the cave, stomach full of venison jerky and johnnycake, two swallows of rum from his canteen making his eyelids grow heavy as he gazed at the small flames licking the end of an oak chunk in the coals of his fire. Tethered in the mouth of the cave a few feet away stood his horse. The oak burned with very little smoke, and that smoke rose to the ceiling of the cave and flowed up and out through the cave mouth into the night, as well-draughted as in a flue. Dickie could hear the rain still hissing in the leafless woods outside and snugged down further into the blanket, his pistols by his hip, his head propped on his saddlebags, and he was glad he had come to this cave instead of trying to make a camp in the open somewhere. Compared with those cold, wet woods, this cave was a paradise.

  That thought entertained his sleepy mind for a while. He thought of home in Caroline County, the big, snug, handsome stone house he had been born and raised in, the beds with their clean sheets and fluffy goose-down comforters, and wondered what his mother would feel if she knew he was as blissfully grateful for these comforts of a cave as he had ever known to be for those of the house. The thoughts of his home and his mother made him homesick now, gave him a pang of longing for the family.

  They’re all there but me, he thought. Even George is there.

  He could remember those years before the war when he himself had always been there and only George had always been missing, always out here on this side of the mountains. He rolled onto his back and watched the dying fire gleam on a trickle of moisture along a contour of the sooty, irregular ceiling of the cave. Farther back in the cave he could hear the tiny, echoing ploip, ploip of water dripping from the ceiling into a little pool. He tried not to think of the skeleton he had found back there. A human skeleton with a broken skull. That was one trouble with caves. They were such good places that every Indian and every renegade knew where they were. He tried not to think of this. He thought instead about how good it would be to see old George when he came back, and to hear the news of home. George had gone back for the purpose, among other purposes, of persuading the family to come out to Louisville town and settle on the beautiful lands he’d claimed for them, and Dickie was sure George would persuade them. George was some persuader.

  Dickie remembered the night they had talked about making him an officer and about all the things they would have to do to hold the territory, and how true that had been, everything George had said. Dickie had been in several smart battles since he had joined George, and George had won them all, and had kept the territory together—all with virtually no help from the state. And Dickie had indeed become, as George had said he would, the travelingest lieutenant this side of the mountains.

  Dickie was thinking these warm thoughts about George and the family when he went to sleep in the cave with rain falling outside in the dark.

  He dreamed he heard a horse nicker, and it awakened him, and in the last small flare of the oak-wood fire he saw a devilface shining above him. His heart slammed once in his chest and a cry mounted to his throat but before he could grab a pistol the face moved quickly and Dickie felt a blade come through the blanket and between his ribs, and he felt it go into the core of his life.

  CHRISTMAS CAME. THE CLARKS ALL WALKED OUT TO THE oak grove to put a wreath of pine and holly and mistletoe on Johnny’s grave, on the white wooden cross with his name on it. A stone was being carved, but it was not ready yet. Then they went back for their last Christmas feast in the big stone house. George had divided his tracts of land near the Falls of the Ohio and had deeded the ones on the south bank to his father and to Jonathan. John Clark’s new farm in the West would be where the spring poured from the ground near a mulberry grove on a hill. Jonathan would set out with George and Bill after Christmas, when they left with their surveying party. He would take a work party of skilled Negroes and they would start next spring to build John and Ann Rogers Clark a fine two-story house of mulberry logs. George showed them a drawing of it that he and Uncle George Rogers had designed. When John Clark sold the Caroline County place here, they would come across the mountains and down the Ohio, and their new home would be waiting for them, on the richest piece of land George had ever seen. “And I’ve seen a lot of land in my days.” There were thousands of people going every year to Kentucky now. And the Clarks would be the foremost family among them.

  So now it was almost time to quit Virginia, and John Clark was as eager as a young man to go to the land his son had shown him a dozen years ago. The father was ready to follow in his son’s footsteps.

  AFTER CHRISTMAS, GEORGE RECEIVED SOME MAIL FROM Richmond. One letter agitated him visibly. His family watched him scowl as he read. The State of Virginia, it said, could not honor his request for payment of the vouchers he had signed out West, because there was no sign anywhere of the itemized accounts he claimed to have sent to the Auditor’s Office in 1779. “By Heaven, I did send ’em,” he hissed. “Dickie was there, he’ll swear to it. By George Shannon with a strong guard I sent ’em, seventy packets full, and he brought me back their receipt! Well, we’ll see this gets resolved! Many a good patriot out there’s ruined, myself first, if some fool’s lost those!” He remarked too that the letter ignored his request for his officer’s pay for the duration of the war. Billy saw that George’s hands were shaking.

  The other letter was from Governor Jefferson, and this one restored his good humor. “Well, what o’ this! They’re talking at the capital about sending a party of exploration up the Missouri, to seek a water way to th’ Pacific! Think o’ that! And he asks would I like to lead it! Well, if I haven’t dreamed o’ that a thousand nights!” His eyes seemed to look through the walls and afar off. He was remembering a day at the Missouri’s mouth, his hand in the swift water. Teresa.

  “Pacific! The Western Sea?” Billy breathed, his own eyes full of blue distances. “May … Maybe I could go with’ee?”

  George winked. “Maybe so, but don’t load on your knapsack yetawhile. From what he says here, there’s not much hope they can raise a fund for it. It’s another o’ Tom’s great daydreams. Like mine. By time it ever goes, I’ll likely be too old and feeble.”

  “No, ye won’t! Not ever! We’ll go, George. I just know it!”

  George squeezed Billy’s shoulder with a gruff, fond chuckle. “Ah! Aha! I do believe,” he told the family, “we’ve got us another Westerner here!”

  BOOK TWO

  1784—1799

  22

  CAROLINE COUNTY, VIRGINIA

  October 20, 1784

  THEY SAT ON TRUNKS IN FRONT OF THE COLD FIREPLACE OF the library, John Clark and his wife, and looked at each other. The house echoed with distant footsteps and the voices of girls, with knocks and sounds of scooting. The light from the rain-spattered windows was pearl-gray.

  He cleared his throat and the sound reverberated in the emptiness of the stripped room. “Eh, well, a cheery birthday to ye, Annie,” he said.

  “Likewise to you, John. Cheery it is.” She took a long
breath through her nose, then sighed heavily, looking around the room. Pale rectangles and ovals on the smoke-dulled walls marked where pictures had hung for years.

  The hair showing under the edge of her bonnet was as much silver as red-gold now, but still as thick and wavy as that of a girl. The rims of her eyelids were pink and moist, and the end of her straight, narrow nose was ruddy. From the hallway now came the sounds of the girl’s voices and footsteps and rustling dresses as they went out the front door for the last time, and John Clark saw a great sadness in his wife’s face at these sounds. He gave a quick sigh then, and slapped his big, callused, blunt-fingered hand down on his thigh. “By Heaven, I do mean cheery!”

  Her back stiffened slightly. “Aye, John. Cheery it is.” But this time she did smile. “A birthday is the start of a new life, isn’t that so?”

  “Surely is in our case.” He raised his eyebrows, which were thick and black, sprinkled with white, and squinted one eye, and the furrows down his cheeks deepened as he tried to smile, but the smile went away and his black eyes gazed as if through the wall. His hair was almost white, thinning above his freckled forehead, and a few white hairs had fallen on the shoulders of his black frock coat.

  John Clark had long anticipated that this day of their departure for Kentucky would be a joyous and eager day, but the house seemed full of ghosts. And he could not stop thinking about Dickie. And though neither he nor she had said anything about him for weeks, except in their private prayers, he was sure she was thinking about Dickie too.

  Door hinges squealed somewhere and footsteps came up the hallway, hard heels on hardwood. John and Ann Rogers Clark looked toward the door as if eager for someone to interrupt this awkward silence.

  Edmund bustled into the room, tall, red-haired, sturdy, and cheerful. He wore a coat of brown wool and leather leggings flecked with mud to the knees, and carried his three-cornered hat in his left hand. He saw how morose his parents were. “Eh! No more o’ this mopery on your birthdays, you two,” he boomed. “And on th’ day you set out for Paradise! Well, everything’s loaded but what ye be sittin’ on. It’s time.” He extended a hand to his mother and she rose to stand, majestic as a queen, almost as tall as he was. John Clark put his hands on his knees and stood up too, come to life at last.

  “Cupid,” he bellowed. The rangy servant appeared in the doorway, his head tilted. “Give me a hand here, and be lively. We’ve got a thousand miles to go!” The Negro bent and grasped one handle of a trunk, and John Clark grasped the other. They lifted it from the floor and looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, and each saw the glint of tears. Cupid had been in this house as many years as they had.

  Edmund grabbed both handles of another trunk and hoisted it onto his thighs. “Eddie,” his mother said, “get York to help ye with that, ere y’ split your gut.” He ignored that, and staggered out with the load, chanting:

  “Fare ye well, Virginia, and hullo, Kentuck! Here come some more Clarks!”

  Three loaded wagons, roofed with tarpaulins stretched over ashwood hoops, stood in a row on the muddy driveway in front of the entrance. From under the canvas came the murmur and laughter of the girls, who were making their nests amid the baggage, sheltering from the sifting cold rain. Saddle horses were tied behind the wagons. Mrs. Clark squinted against the rain as she came out of the house, and passed a gaze around the big trees, which were still about half-clothed in autumn colors. Then she looked back at the house with its two rows of white-shuttered windows. “I will say I liked living in a stone house,” she said.

  “Aye, Ma,” grunted Edmund. He heaved the trunk onto the back of the second wagon and came around to help her up onto the front seat. “But there’s many a stone house, and I daresay ye’ll be the rare lady who’s got herself a grand house made o’ mulberry logs, bright yellow mulberry wood. And it’s a fine-built place, too. Jonathan cut no corners. George likes it so well he said he might come live there with’ee.”

  “Huh! Fancy him settlin’ down anyplace!” She was arranged on the hard seat now. York, big, pudgy, now fourteen, was on the seat beside her, importantly posed, holding the reins with one hand, an umbrella in the other. He gave the umbrella to her and she held it over her head, looking balefully at the waterdrops falling from its edge. “O’ course it would rain on this day,” she muttered.

  Now the last of the baggage had been lashed on, and most of the voices had fallen to mumbling.

  “Well, what are we waitin’ on now?” she demanded. John Clark, going forward to take the reins of the lead wagon, answered aside:

  “For Cupid. Went back for some o’ his things.”

  “Slow as ever,” she sighed. She gave a rueful look at York, who had never seen Mrs. Clark act so crotchety. “What in tarnation’s he got, anyways, but what ’e can carry on ’is back?” The answer came when Cupid emerged around the corner of the house. He was wearing three coats and apparently several layers of old clothes. Mrs. Clark suddenly laughed. “He is carryin’ it all on his back!” Swaddled like a mummy, Cupid had some difficulty clambering aboard the wagon, the girls laughing at his exertions.

  William suddenly appeared from somewhere, hatless, a shock of wet red hair sticking to his forehead, yelling, “Ready? Ready! I’m set to go to Kentuck!” He grabbed York by his coat and pulled him down off the driver’s seat, vaulting into his place and snatching the reins.

  “Eh, Master Billy,” York whined up from the driveway, “I wan’ to drav.”

  “Soon enough,” said William. He was fourteen now, but already taller than his father. “But on a big start-out like this’n, got to be a Clark man drivin’ every wagon, don’t y’see?”

  York made a toad mouth and bulged his eyes. “Thowt I was a Clark man.” Then he shrugged and went back to hoist himself over the tailgate.

  “Gee-ya!” came John Clark’s voice from the lead wagon, and it began rolling forward.

  “Gee-ya!” William whooped, flicking the reins, and the second wagon lurched away from the house.

  “Gee-yah!” Edmund’s voice bellowed behind, and the third wagon came along.

  The convoy rattled off among the rain-dripping trees, and one by one the Clarks looked back at the big stone house where the family had lived for a quarter of a century.

  The creaking wagons were not two hundred yards from the empty house before Ann Rogers Clark called out:

  “John, stop here!”

  “Ah, sure, Annie. I was stoppin’.”

  The three wagons came to a halt. Faces began peering out from under the canopies. Mrs. Clark was clutching her skirts and climbing down the wheel to the ground. “Everybody out,” she commanded, and made her way onto a graveled path that led among the massive trunks of an oak grove, and in a moment everybody, men, girls, and slaves, had got off the wagons to follow her. John Clark caught up with her and walked beside her with his right hand at the small of her back. Raindrops dribbled off the oak leaves. She led the procession to the small glade where scythed grass lay wet and yellow. In the middle of the glade stood a new, small slab of granite, on which was chiseled:

  CAPT. JOHN CLARK IV

  15 September 1757-29 October 1783

  Died of

  Man’s Inhumanity to Man

  The family and servants formed a semicircle in front of the stone while the fine rain dampened their heads and shoulders. When Mrs. Clark saw that all heads were bowed, she stuck her elbow in her husband’s ribs. He cleared his throat.

  “Our Almighty Father, look upon us with favor as we make this last visit—like as not it’ll be our last visit—with our beloved son and yours, Johnny Clark, who ought to be with us now in the glory of his youth as we set out for the Kentuck.”

  He paused. Several pairs of eyes peeped at him to see if he had finished already, but he continued.

  “We ask Thee also, our Almighty Father and Supreme Director of All Things, to protect his brother Richard, whose whereabouts in that wilderness You only know. But if Ye’ve already gathered him unto your
bosom, where Ye hold this beloved Johnny Clark, then may our two fine sons walk the gilded streets of Thy Kingdom arm in arm, and may they forget the worldly strife that flung ’em untimely to You. And may they remember us, who remember them every day without exception.”

  He paused, his breath whistling slightly in his nostrils, then said, “Amen.”

  Fanny pulled a branch with oak leaves and acorns from a low limb and placed the cluster on the grave as they left.

  For years during the war they had had to live overshadowed by the unknown fate of Johnny. Now they knew where Johnny was. But months ago Dickie had vanished somewhere along the wilderness trace between Vincennes and the fort at the Falls, and nothing had been heard of him since, and now that mystery hung over the family, like these heavy gray rainclouds, dampening the joy of their departure to the new land.

  THE WHEEL RUTS OF THE ROADS WERE FILLED WITH A SOUP of red-clay mud. It balled up on the horses’ hooves and clogged the wagon wheels and sucked at the boots of anyone who stepped down into it to put a shoulder to a mired wagon. The mud was slick as grease and sticky as glue at the same time. Gobs of it would slither down the back of a slow-turning wheel and fall with a flob, flob sound back into the ruts, to be picked up again by the next passing wheel. The horses were caked with muck to their shoulders, and balls of it clung like berries to the hairs of their long tails. The men had mud smears up to their lapels, even on their hat brims, because of their struggles with wheels and horses and harness.