Dorothy Garlock - [Wabash River] (2 page)

“Hush yore mouth! It ain’t fittin’ fer a woman to be talkin’ such as that. A woman ort ta keep to her place—”

“What place is that? You expect me to work for my keep like a dumb milch cow, is that it? Work, service a man, and keep my mouth shut? I’ll be damned if I will! I’ll be his helpmate, but not his servant.” Liberty looked at her father’s bent, thin shoulders when he turned his back on her, as he always turned it against trouble. Her voice softened with resignation. “Oh, get some sleep. I’ll sit up with Jubal.”

Elija didn’t reply. There was plenty of argument left in him, but he knew he didn’t stand a chance to win. The only woman he had ever known who was like his daughter had been her mother, and during their entire married life he hadn’t won an argument with her. He had not been able to put an end to her independent ways, either, and the nonsense had been passed on to the daughter who was the spitting image of her.

For the past few days, Liberty had spent most of her waking hours tending her sick husband in the Dearborn wagon in which they were making the journey cross-country to Vincennes. Their two oxen and two horses were picketed nearby, and in the quiet she could hear the comforting sound of their stamping and cropping the grass. After leaving the boat at Louisville, they had joined four other families for the journey cross-country to the Wabash River. Now, because the settlers feared Jubal had the flux, Liberty’s family was forced to travel far behind the other wagons.

“Come on out and go to bed, Amy.” Liberty stood at the end of the wagon and helped her sister as she climbed over the tailgate. Twelve-year-old Amy was a slim, wiry girl with brown eyes and curly brown hair. She had been born to Elija’s second wife to whom he had been married a scant year when she died in childbirth.

“Jubal’s hot, Libby, awful hot. I kept the wet cloth on him like you said.”

“I’ll take over, now. Get under the wagon and get some sleep.” Amy crawled into the nest of blankets and Liberty dropped a sheet of canvas over her to shield her from the wind. She and Amy were forced to sleep under the wagon with Elija since their belongings and Liberty’s sick husband occupied all available space inside.

From inside the wagon Jubal Perry’s hacking cough became stronger, ending finally in a choked gurgle. Liberty climbed into the wagon and moved the copper dish containing the burning black gunpowder closer to the pallet of folded blankets. So far the acrid fumes had done little to clear the strangling phlegm from Jubal’s throat. His skin was stretched tightly over the bones of his face, and she could see the large veins throbbing at his temples. He had lost so much weight since they had started this journey that she doubted if his weight even equalled hers now.

Liberty didn’t know what else to do for him, and because of that, she felt a strong sense of guilt, a conviction that she was failing this man when he needed her most. He had stepped in and married her, giving her his protection and his name, and by doing so had snatched her from the clutches of Stith Lenning, who had been determined to have her.

A severe fit of coughing seized Jubal, and when it subsided he lay breathing heavily.

“You came out here more for me than for yourself, didn’t you, Jubal?” Liberty’s fingertips smoothed the sparse hair back from his dry, hot forehead. “You knew that if we stayed Stith would have found a way to have me even if he had to kill you. You gave up everything you had worked for to come to this new land. You’re such a gentle man, Jubal. All you ever wanted was to make your pots and jugs. But you insisted on coming—saying you wanted to go to your brother so I wouldn’t feel bad about you giving up so much. I guess in your own way, you’re as stubborn as I am.”

Jubal lay with his eyes closed. He had said very little all day. He had just lain there, not complaining as her father would have done. Liberty didn’t know if he had gone to sleep or not. Yet she talked, wanting him to know that she cared for him, in a way. He had not asked anything for himself, not even the consummation of the marriage. Jubal Perry was not the kind of man who fought for what he wanted. Small of stature and weak of body, he had made his pots, seemingly content to stand on the sidelines and watch life pass him by. The only daring thing he had ever done in his entire life was to marry Liberty Carroll, knowing a younger, stronger man wanted her desperately, and also knowing Stith was capable of killing to get her.

Stith Lenning, a storekeeper in Middlecrossing, had watched Liberty grow from a child, younger than her sister Amy was now, into a lovely young woman. He had planned for years to ask Elija for her hand in marriage. It wasn’t her comely features that attracted Stith so much as her strong, proud body, made for rutting and childbearing, and his desire to squelch her independent spirit. She also would have brought to the marriage her father’s hands to labor in the fields behind his store. In spite of Elija’s hangdog attitude and complaints of ill health, he had a good ten years of work left in him. Amy would have helped with chores in the barn and they would have brought oxen, horses, and a houseful of furniture Liberty’s grandfather, an excellent craftsman, had made. He would have beaten her when she was rebellious and scolded her for her foolish dreams. He would have made her old and worn out before she was thirty.

Jubal realized this. He married Liberty when she asked him, because her father wanted Liberty to marry Stith, and the law said a father had the right to give his daughter in marriage to a man of his choice. Stith was considered a rich man, and Elija saw years of easy living if his daughter married such a man. Jubal pampered her, provided for her father and sister, and when she wanted to leave Middlecrossing in upper New York State because she feared for his life, and because it would fulfill her dream of building a home in a new land, he sold his pottery shop and purchased supplies for the journey. During their year of marriage he had made no attempt to drive the laughter and ambition from her as Stith Lenning would have done. And now she felt a touch of shame, for she had only affection to give him, affection much like that a woman would give an older brother.

All through the long night hours Liberty applied warm cloths to Jubal’s chest, trying to relieve the congestion that was slowly strangling him. An hour before dawn she dozed, and when morning came, she looked out of the wagon and into a steady rain. The wagon was sitting on a small rise in the middle of a shallow pond.

“Libby! Come on out here. I ain’t likin’ what’s agoin’ on a’tall.” Elija stood at the end of the wagon with his shoulders hunched and spoke in a tired, fatalistic voice.

Liberty lifted her long skirts and climbed out over the tailgate. She could tell by the tone of her father’s voice and the way his head was sunk between his shoulders that he was unable to cope with whatever was wrong.

“What do you mean?”

“Jist that.” Elija waved his hand at the water standing in the trail and around the wagon. “The confounded rain is washin’ us away. Can’t nobody travel in sich weather as this here. We ain’t never agoin’ to get out of here. I said we ain’t ort a come,” he murmured in a tone that said he’d walked with trouble for a long time. “I told ya, and I told Jubal. We ain’t ort a come. But ya jist wouldn’t listen.”

Anger blazed into a sudden flame in Liberty’s mind, but she doused it with logical reasoning. There was nothing she could say that would change her father’s attitude. She gave him a quelling look, and he stopped talking.

“If the wagons up ahead can travel, so can we. We’ll hitch up and go on. Jubal needs medicine.” She bit her lower lip so she could speak without anger. “He needs medicine or he’ll die.” She said the words slowly as if her father didn’t understand.

“Where’ll ya find medicine? That a way?” He flung his hand toward the thick forest.

Fury reddened Liberty’s face and narrowed her eyes. She clenched her fists in frustration. “You don’t care if he dies! If he does you think we’ll turn back. We are not turning back. We’re going on until we reach the Wabash and follow it to Vincennes.”

“Oh, Lordy! Oh, Lordy, mercy me!” he wailed.

“Papa?” Amy crawled out of her nest under the wagon and went to him.

“I’m all right, sister. Get in the wagon outta the way.”

Amy ran to the back of the wagon and climbed in. Elija, moving slowly, sloshed through the water to where the oxen were tied and led them to the wagon.

Watching her father’s slow, ponderous movements, Liberty felt tears of rage run down her face, already wet with rain. There were times when she wished, truly wished, her father had remained in Middlecrossing. He was against every decision she made. Now there was the chance Jubal would die. The dampness and the jolting of the wagon might kill him, but what else could she do? They had to get to dryer ground before the water rose any higher.

As she worked, she thought of the words wheezed in her ear by Hull Dexter, the leader of the party that had moved on without them.

“Ya don’t hafta stay with ’em. Ya be a purty bit a fluff, even if’n ya are skinny as a starved rabbit. Ya ’n the gal can come with me. I’ll bed ya gentle like.”

“You buzzard bait!” she had replied. “I’d as soon bed down with a nest of rattlesnakes. Get your filthy hands off me.”

“Yore old man stinks like the flux. When he goes, bury ’em deep or the wolves’ll get ’em. If’n ya don’t come down with it, ya can c’mon ’n catch up. I’ll be waitin’ fer ya up ahead.”

“I’ll come on all right. I’ll get you, you rotgut, flea-bitten, son of a jackass! You took our money to lead us to Vincennes. You give it back or I’ll have the law on you. My brother-in-law is with the militia at Vincennes. He’ll—”

“Ya figgered he was at Limestone, then at Louisville.” Hull Dexter laughed. “If’n I warn’t sure yore old man’s got the catchin’ sickness, I’d not leave ya. Ya’d not be so feisty if’n ya had a real man atween yore legs ’stead a that puny thin’ ya got.”

“You’re not a man, Hull Dexter. You’re a . . . a lily-livered, bush-bottom warthog, is what you are.” She had shouted the words as he mounted his horse and told the others to move out. “Every blasted one of you put together wouldn’t make the man Jubal Perry is. You wait till Hammond Perry hears what you’ve done.” Liberty was so angry, unguarded words spewed from her mouth. “I’ll blacken your name all over this territory, you . . . louse! Hog! Rotten river trash! I’ll have you arrested and put in the stocks, and I’ll throw cow dung in your face! By jinks damn! I . . . I hope you
all
get scalped!”

Hull Dexter laughed heartily. “I’ll be back to get them fine horses, if’n the Injuns don’t steal ’em.”

The women from the other wagons were appalled by her outburst and turned their backs. Those riding climbed into the wagons, the ones walking switched the oxen, and the wagons moved away. Liberty had tried to make friends with them. They had tolerated her but made no overtures themselves. Deeply religious and subservient to their husbands’ wishes, they had been shocked to discover she was not properly submissive, that she argued with her father, spoke with the men as if she were their equal, left her hair uncovered at times, and was the one in charge of the family.

Liberty shook her fist at the departing wagons. Angry tears filled in her eyes.

“I’d prefer the Indians to have them rather than you, Hull Dexter. You’re a coward, a blackguard—”

“Hush up yore hollerin’, Liberty. Yo’re makin’ a plumb fool a yoreself. Ya ain’t gonna say nothin’ that’ll hurt ’em, ’n they ain’t carin’ what happens to us. Oh, Lordy! I don’t know what’s to become of us way out here in the wilderness all by ourselves.”

That was two days ago, and Elija’s voice of doom had droned continually since then.

“I jist knowed it’d turn out like this. I jist knowed we hadn’t ort a come. They ain’t even a track a them folks, we done dropped so fer behind. Ya jist wouldn’t listen, would ya? We had us a place, but ya had to go ’n get Jubal all riled up to leave it, atellin’ him tall tales ’bout Stith agoin’ to kill him. Ya just go a root-hoggin’ to get yore own way. Now see what ya’ve gone and done? Ya got me ’n Amy stuck off a way out here, ’n Jubal is dyin’—”

Liberty turned on him. “Hush up, Papa!” She lifted her skirts and pushed her way through the wet grass toward the horses. “Stop feeling sorry for yourself for a change! We had a place all right. It was Jubal’s place and right next to the Bloody Red Ox. That was right handy for you, wasn’t it, Papa? How long do you think we’d have stayed there? Another week? Month? Can’t you get it through your head that Stith was going to kill Jubal? He bragged about it to me and to Jubal. Jubal and I decided this together, Papa. I preferred to take my chances out here in the wilderness, and Jubal did too. He had rather come than stay there and face sure death.” Her last words were shouted angrily.

“Stith was a workin’ man. He warn’t agoin’ to kill nobody a’tall. I told ya when ya married Jubal that a dog what follows anybody what comes along ain’t worth a hoot. Beats me all hollow how two men can be so different. Stith had a good place, woulda give us a home. All Jubal done was fiddle around with them pots, atryin’ to make ’em pretty. But ya wouldn’t listen. Ya tied up with a man who pandered to yore foolish notions. I told Jubal a dozen times to look afore he jumped up ’n sold ever’thin’. He paid no more heed than ya did. To hear him tell it,
ya
knowed all that was fit to be knowed.”

Liberty took several deep gulps of air into her lungs, then said calmly but firmly, “Don’t ever say another bad thing about Jubal. If you do—I’ll take Amy and the wagon and leave you sitting right here. Do you understand, Papa?”

Elija snorted. “Back to that, are ya? Well, there ain’t no use arguin’ with a woman like ya are.” He shook his head. “Ya sure like shootin’ off yore mouth, but ya never listen to a word a body says. I might jist as well hush my mouth ’n save my breath.” He tied one of the horses behind the wagon and moved the oxen up in front and hitched them.

“Yes. Save it and use it to help me get this wagon someplace where we can build a fire, if not for Jubal’s sake, then for yours and Amy’s.” She picked up a stick and struck the patient ox on the rump. “Get to humping, Molly. Move on out, Sally.” The oxen strained at the yoke and slowly pulled the heavy wagon out of the mud and onto a trail that ran between trees so thick one could scarcely see twenty feet into their depth. “Amy,” Liberty called once they were moving, “how is Jubal?”