The Seekers Page 4

iv

  Boldly, General Anthony Wayne remained camped in the meadows half a mile from Fort Miami. Although the British commandant refused Wayne’s demand for surrender, the redcoats stayed safely behind their palisade and didn’t fire even a single shot when Wayne ordered McKee’s station burned.

  Next the Americans burned the huts around the trading post. Finally they set fire to the gardens and cornfields where the Indians raised their food for the winter.

  On the way south again in the rain, the army still managed to light enough firebrands to start the cornfields along the Maumee blazing. While the wagons carrying wounded creaked and oozed through the muddy bottoms, pillars of black smoke climbed to the drizzly sky. Wayne had not only vowed to defeat the federated tribes—which he had done in thirty minutes—but also to leave them no means of survival.

  Abraham rode Sprite through the rows of ripened corn, setting the tall stalks alight with a sputtering torch. His emotions were in turmoil. He knew that destroying the corn was a military necessity. Yet doing it somehow made him miserable.

  He felt that during the brief battle, he had come a little closer to full manhood. But the experience was not nearly as glorious and gratifying as he’d imagined it would be. He found himself thinking frequently of his family. Found himself calling on Lieutenants Clark and Lewis whenever he had a free moment, helping himself to quantities of their whiskey.

  And he always avoided looking back at the smoky horizon as the triumphant army marched south in the waning summer.

  v

  A commotion brought Abraham running from his barracks at Fort Greenville one brittle gray afternoon late in January. Dull silver fight tinged the western horizon. Lamps had already been lit in General Wayne’s neat house with its border of white picket fencing. On the ramparts, sentries were hallooing while other men lifted the great log bar that held Greenville’s gates shut from the inside.

  Crowds of soldiers had already gathered. In one of them, Abraham found red-haired Lieutenant Clark.

  “Why all the excitement, William?” Abraham asked, shivering in his all-too-thin dark blue winter coat. He blinked as a couple of snowflakes tickled his eyelids.

  “Party of red men coming in,” Clark answered in his soft Virginia speech. Several officers dashed to the porch of Wayne’s house. One pounded on the door.

  The fort gates swung inward. A strange silence fell, broken only by the wind’s whine. A file of about three dozen Indians straggled into the fort, looking considerably less prideful than their peers at Fallen Timbers. In fact Abraham had seldom seen so pathetic a sight as the half-dozen hunched old men who led the procession on horseback.

  The protruding ribs of the horses testified to their near-starvation. The men wore ragged blankets, or filthy cast-off British army coats. They huddled together while an American interpreter in buckskin spoke to the leaders with words and signs. Among the soldiers gathered on the perimeter of the parade area, there were brief outbursts of contemptuous laughter, and a few obscene jests. The laughter soon died. The jokes drew little response.

  How different from the day in late December, Abraham thought. Wayne had assembled the Legion and the Kentuckians in the post-Christmas cold to hear a reading of a proclamation from Philip Kent’s old friend Knox, head of the Department of War. The proclamation said President Washington and the Congress joined in commending Major General Wayne’s men for the good conduct and bravery displayed by them in the action of the twentieth August last, with the Indians—

  Afterward, the cheering was long and loud.

  Now some of those same Indians, hollow-cheeked and shivering, stood helplessly in the midst of their enemies under the lowering winter sky. They awaited the emergence of the White Captain from his cozy house. Abraham remembered the dreadful harvest of skulls on the Wabash; reminded himself that perhaps some of these very chiefs had caused that slaughter—

  Yet he understood their reasons. Pitied them again as he recalled the way their erstwhile friends had denied them sanctuary after the battle. Ever since that simmering morning in August, he’d scorned himself for ever thinking that war, in whatever cause, could be ennobling.

  Necessary, perhaps. But ennobling? Never.

  Men drifted from group to group, identifying members of the Indian party.

  “That’s Half King’s son, the Wyandot.”

  “And the Delaware, Moses. The only English letter he can write is M, they say—”

  “Well,” remarked Lieutenant William Clark, “this is what the general wanted. Beating them in the field wasn’t enough. They had to be beaten in their bellies and their hearts and their minds before this country could be pacified. I’ll venture this is only the start, Abraham—the first trickle.”

  “You mean more of the chiefs will come?”

  Clark nodded. “Wayne will have a treaty with all the tribes before the year’s out, mark my word.”

  “That’ll mean furloughs!” a soldier behind them exclaimed. “Damme, I can’t wait to fuck one of those Cincinnati whores, never mind how bad they smell—”

  Someone else snickered. But only for a moment.

  Abraham was thinking of something other than women. He was thinking that if the Northwest had indeed been secured, he could return home when his enlistment ran out at midyear. The realization triggered a memory of Wayne’s remarks about the opportunity in the new land.

  But Abraham knew himself reasonably well now. He couldn’t simply defy his father and never go home. He’d have to return to Boston at least for a short time.

  The thought of the homecoming filled him with conflicting emotions. On one hand he longed to be among familiar comforts and familiar people again; on the other, he dreaded facing the owner of Kent and Son.

  He dug his hands deeply into the pockets of his thin coat. The more he thought about Wayne’s words that stifling morning beside the river, the more he questioned them. At the moment he could see very little in this western frontier that was attractive. Memories of shimmering meadows, abundant forests, white-water brooks and plentiful wildlife all seemed lusterless here in the dull silver light of a January afternoon—

  The front door of Wayne’s small house opened, spilling lamplight in which a shadow loomed. The general hobbled out, tall and somehow awesome in spite of his infirmity. The Indians drew closer together.

  “Yes, it’s the end,” William Clark said. He sounded relieved. A moment later he clapped a hand on Abraham’s shoulder. “Care for some whiskey by way of celebration?”

  “Very much so,” Abraham answered, with more feeling than his friend understood.

  vi

  Some thirteen months after the defeat of the federated tribes, with the great treaty signed in Greenville’s council house, men began to be released from Wayne’s command. Abraham Kent was one.

  Turning Sprite over to the new cornet whose mount she would become, he spoke with the unconsciously condescending air of the veteran addressing the green replacement.

  “Take care of her. She’s a splendid campaigner”—his natural manner broke through the feigned superiority; he smiled in a rueful way—“better than I am, in fact. There’s a great deal to recommend this western country, Cornet. But I don’t have much fondness for the human price paid for settling the question of its ownership. I mean the price on both sides.”

  The new junior officer merely looked puzzled.

  “One final word of advice,” Abraham added, with a broad wink. “It’s in reference to the whiskey they freight up from Kentucky. Or Kaintuck, if you prefer. If you can survive the first few sips—and develop a fondness for it—you can face the worst life has to offer out here. The Kentucky brew, in case I don’t make myself clear, is potent as hell. It’s also necessary as hell.”

  He was only partially joking.

  Chapter III

  Clouds at Homecoming

  i

  AFTER THE MAGNIFICENT DINNER, Abraham held forth for a quarter of an hour.

  He described how more than eleven
hundred braves and sachems of the northwestern tribes had come to Greenville the preceding August to listen to Wayne’s passionate, if lengthy, speeches of persuasion. Dressed in a fine suit of brown New England broadcloth, he jumped to his feet as he launched into the closing of the general’s last speech, which he’d memorized.

  “—I now take the hatchet out of your hands—”

  Abraham added gestures to the recitation, aware that four pairs of eyes were focused on him with varying degrees of attentiveness. One pair particularly—eyes at which he dared not glance—stirred him in a strange and surprising way. His voice strengthened.

  “—and with a strong arm throw it into the center of the great ocean, where no mortal can ever find it!” A mimed throw dramatized the line. “And I now deliver to you the wide and straight path to the Fifteen Fires, to be used by you and your posterity forever. So long as you continue to follow this road, so long will you continue to be a happy people. You see it is straight and wide—and they will be blind indeed who deviate from it!”

  Flushed, Abraham paused. He’d jumped up almost unconsciously, carried away with excitement. He sat down before going on.

  “That was virtually the end of it. Wayne had won them—every important chief and brave in the Northwest Territory except one. A Shawnee named Tecumseh. He refused to come to Greenville because his father was shot to death by white hunters when he was a boy—and he saw his village burned on orders of George Rogers Clark just a couple of years later. The day after Wayne’s speech, the chiefs began signing. They’re to receive twenty thousand dollars this first year, half that in succeeding years in return for the land they’ve given up. I’ve heard the area amounts to as much as twenty-five thousand square miles. The treaty line runs roughly east to west, from a river called the Cuyahoga to Fort Recovery. There, it angles down toward the Ohio. Everything south and east of the line is reserved for white settlement. The Indians must stay to the north and west—but Wayne very cannily granted the tribes the right to hunt and fish all the way to the Ohio so long as they conduct themselves peacefully. At the same time, he negotiated U.S. possession of sixteen choice parcels within the Indian territory. Altogether, the terms were complex to explain to the sachems. But they were eager to sign when the general finished speaking. I was listening outside the council house a good part of the time, and I’ve never heard such eloquent delivery.”

  “Nor I,” said Elizabeth, seated on Abraham’s right. He couldn’t help turning red again.

  He wanted to look into the girl’s pale blue eyes; wanted to savor the sight of her fair, perfectly coiffed hair and the fetchingly rounded breasts that had barely been visible on her slim body when he left for Pittsburgh three years earlier.

  But Abraham Kent had served in the army. He could discipline himself. Instead of making a show over Elizabeth’s admiration, he acknowledged his stepmother’s smile from the lower end of the table, and kept his eyes on her as she spoke.

  “I agree, Elizabeth. We may have raised an orator as well as a soldier.”

  Peggy Ashford McLean Kent’s smooth white hands rested, on the polished surface of the great dining table imported from Mr. Phyfe’s increasingly popular—and immensely expensive—New York shop. When Abraham departed for the west, the family had only been settled six months in the new home on Beacon Street overlooking the Common. Since his return a week ago, he had been dazzled by the opulence of the furnishings added in his absence.

  “A soldier I’ll never be, Mother,” he said now. Out of politeness, he always referred to the dark-haired, graceful woman from Virginia as Mother, even though she was his father’s second wife.

  Peggy Kent had a gentle, lovely face, and eyes that occasionally revealed some private sorrow Abraham had never fully understood. She was taller than his father, but that hadn’t proved an impediment to a happy marriage. Philip, the head of the household who was sitting silently at the other end of the table, more than made up in strength of personality what he lacked in height. Abraham fidgeted, aware of Philip’s unblinking gaze.

  Across the table from Abraham, thin and sallow little Gilbert, going on twelve, leaned forward and exclaimed, “Tell us again about the fight at Fallen Timbers, Abraham.”

  “Come, I must have recited that four times already this week.” Abraham grinned.

  Gilbert was Abraham’s half brother, the only child of Philip Kent’s second marriage. He had a fragility to his bones and a luminosity in his eyes that showed him to be his mother’s child. The brightness of his mind somewhat compensated for his lack of size and stamina.

  He answered Abraham with a gay smile. “Actually it’s five. But I don’t tire of it.”

  “Let’s spare the family, then, shall we? I’ll repeat the story in private.”

  “A promise?” asked the boy. He’d been named for his father’s lifelong friend Lafayette, the French nobleman who had fought valiantly for the American cause during the Revolution.

  “A promise,” Abraham replied.

  “Abraham.”

  The voice from the head of the table was quiet yet commanding. Abraham turned, almost dreading to meet his father’s eyes.

  At forty-two, Philip Kent’s strong features had acquired some of the lines of age. His neatly tied hair showed gray streaks. Abraham could never remember Philip using powder, or covering his hair with one of the wigs now rapidly passing out of fashion. This evening Philip wore an expensive suit of deep emerald velvet, a fawn waistcoat and snowy linen. He’d returned late from his business establishment—it occupied three floors in an old building near Long Wharf, and was already outgrowing the space—and hadn’t bothered to remove traces of ink from beneath his blunt fingernails. Owner of the highly successful printing and book publishing firm of Kent and Son, Philip was by no means an absentee manager.

  “Yes, Papa?” Abraham said.

  Philip continued to scrutinize his older son. There was something a bit forbidding in that stare, Abraham thought.

  Or was that only his imagination? His guilt? In the short time he’d been back in Boston, he had seen Philip but briefly; the inevitable subject of Abraham’s future hadn’t yet arisen.

  At last Philip spoke. “You favored us with some interesting accounts of your time in the west. But you’ll forgive me if I observe that very little of what you’ve said is anything more than superficial.”

  Abraham frowned. “I don’t understand, sir.”

  “Well, for instance—during the charge, were you frightened?”

  Peggy clasped her hands together. “Oh dear, Philip, must he answer? You’ve a way of tossing people straight onto the griddle with your, questions.”

  “My thought exactly!” Elizabeth agreed.

  Her words drew a frown from Philip. But that wasn’t all. “Young woman, I believe I’ve made it abundantly clear that you have a great many thoughts of which I don’t approve.” His glance leaped to his wife. “Have you seen to the disposal of that trashy novel Elizabeth brought into the house?”

  “Yes, she did,” Elizabeth said, angry. With a slight turn of his head, Abraham saw the fire in the girl’s blue eyes. Almost reckless, those eyes. An inheritance from her father, the family had long ago concluded—

  Elizabeth’s father had been a Virginia gentleman of good background but poor character. On the rare occasions when he was discussed in the Kent house, it was said that he’d been given to heavy drinking, and furious rages. Now Elizabeth showed more of that inheritance. She pouted, struck the table with one dainty fist.

  “I should think, at seventeen, I might read what I please.”

  “Not Mrs. Rowson’s sinful novel,” Philip declared. “Charlotte Temple is sentimental tripe. It dwells excessively on seduction, and is therefore unfit for young women of breeding. The book may have enjoyed a vogue in England. But I refused the opportunity—if you care to call it that—to bring it out in America under the Kent imprint. That summarizes my opinion, I believe.” He addressed his wife again. “Is it gone?”

&n
bsp; Peggy smiled a tolerant smile. “Yes, what Elizabeth told you is correct—I’ve seen to it.”

  “Good.”

  Abraham kept a straight face. The little dialogue just concluded only demonstrated again the thickness of the shell of conservatism that had hardened around his father in the latter’s advancing years.

  Philip said, “Now, Abraham, back to the question—which I didn’t mean unkindly, by the way.”

  “I realize, sir.”

  “A man who goes into battle without fear is the worst sort of fool.”

  “Then, happily, I guess I’ll escape that label. I was terrified.”

  Gilbert’s worshipful expression vanished. “You were?”

  “Of course. At the same time, I still wanted to do well—wanted to acquit myself honorably.” That pleased Philip. “But after ten minutes in the thick of the fighting, I’d frankly had enough to last me the rest of my life. I discovered there’s nothing pleasant or uplifting about killing another human being.”

  “Yes, I discovered the same thing. On several occasions,” Philip added, letting it go at that.

  Abraham naturally knew most of the details of his father’s history. Philip Kent had emigrated from England before the Revolution, as a result of trouble over an inheritance from his father—an English peer dead almost six years now. The duke had never married Philip’s mother, a French woman of great beauty but low birth who had been an actress in Paris for a time. Philip frequently intimated that he’d had to defend his own life more than once in the uncertain years before he gave his wholehearted support to the cause of the Boston patriots. Philip’s struggle for survival as a young man—and perhaps his bastardy—explained to Abraham why his father had acquired an aura of confidence, power, even arrogance that often intimidated others of his sex—his sons included.

  Not that Philip was overtly truculent. The quiet air of absolute authority was simply part of his makeup. It showed in the challenging quality of his next remark. “You’ve decided that soldiering is not a career you’d want to pursue, then?”