Dorothy Garlock - [Wabash River] (4 page)

Still kneeling, Farrway Quill looked up at Liberty and she saw eyes as green as new oak leaves in the spring—eyes of a man in his middle or late twenties, eyes that revealed nothing but saw everything. They looked into hers for as long as it took him to get to his feet. Then they passed out of her line of vision, and she stared at his brown throat and the patch of chest hair that showed between the lacing of his shirt.

She studied him while he shrugged the pack from his broad shoulders and slipped it beneath the wagon. He was not a handsome man, but he was far from being an ugly one. He had a scar on his chin and one on the side of his mouth that drew it slightly toward his cheekbone. The stubble of beard on his face was as black as his lashes and brows. His hair was long and clubbed in the back.

Amy smiled broadly at the little girl. She loved any child younger than herself. “Isn’t she pretty, Libby?” She sank down onto the pallet beside the child. “I’ll sit by her in case she wakes up. What’s her name?” Amy had to tilt her head far back to look up at the stranger.

The man squatted down on his haunches, and a smile spread over his face, changing it magically. “I don’t know. I found her a couple of days ago. She doesn’t say much. I’ve called her girl, but she should have a name of her own. Could you give her one?”

“Can I? Really and truly?” Amy’s eyes shone, and her smile displayed even white teeth. “I’ve never given a name to anything except a dog we had back home. I named him Zeke after a mean old man, cause he was a mean pup.” She put her hand over her mouth and giggled.

“Zeke doesn’t quite fit her.”

Amy giggled again. “I know. How old is she?”

“You’ll have to ask your—” His dark brows drew together and guarded green eyes looked up at Liberty.

“She’s my sister. How old do you think she is, Libby?”

“Two, maybe. She isn’t as big as the little Swenson girl back home.”

“I’m going to call her Mercy. Is that all right?” Amy’s shining eyes went from the sleeping child to the man’s face.

“Mercy. That sounds just right for her.” He stood, and for an instant his big hand rested on Amy’s head before he turned his back to Liberty and went to the fire.

*  *  *

“We’d be glad fer ya to eat.” Elija moved briskly around the fire to where the teakettle sat in the coals and filled a pewter mug. “We got plenty a pap left over.”

“Sounds mighty tempting, but I had a bait of river trout. I’d be beholdin’ if you’d spare some for the child when she wakes up. Be glad to pay for it.”

“Why . . . I’d not hear of it.” Elija sputtered.

“We’re not so short that we can’t feed a hungry child, Mr. Quill,” Liberty snapped.

The sound of a severe fit of coughing came from the wagon and Liberty hoisted her skirts and climbed into the back to kneel down beside Jubal. His eyes were closed and he was breathing heavily. She could hear her father talking to the stranger. Not a trace of a whine was in his voice now.

“Her man’s got the lung fever. We been aworkin’ over him day ’n night. Bad off he is, real bad off. We jist done all we could fer him, but it’s no use.”

“Yes,
we
sure have,” Liberty muttered angrily and wiped the back of her hand across her eyes. “You haven’t sat up with him one time, Papa. You’d have liked it if he’d died back home. Jubal was good to you. He never asked you to lift a hand. I had to do all the asking, or you’d have sat on your bottom all day long in the Bloody Red Ox.” Liberty bowed her head and covered her face with her hands. She hurt inside because Jubal was dying and there was no one to care but her.

“He warn’t a strong man no ways. Ain’t like us men what can make do with what’s at hand. It’s certain his time is come to stand at the Pearly Gates.” Elija’s voice took on a dreary note and droned on. “Pot maker is what he was. Goodun, too. But didn’t turn ’em out fast a’tall. All the time behind with orders. Had to be paintin’ rings round ’em ’n fancyin’ ’em up. We had us a good place thar in Middlecrossin’, but that girl a mine is got the wanderin’s.”

“Papa! Mr. Quill isn’t interested in our personal affairs.” Liberty climbed down from the wagon.

Farrway Quill was sitting on his haunches beside the fire. The flickering light shone on his still, sharply chiseled features. The brim of his hat covered his eyes, but Liberty could feel them on her and suddenly became aware that her hair was hanging down about her shoulders.

No decent woman back in Middlecrossing would have allowed a stranger to see her hair hanging down her back—or up for that matter. She wore her day cap or was classified as a fallen woman.

Liberty wondered if the strain of the journey and Jubal’s sickness had muddled her mind. Back home she’d always remembered to do the conventional, respectable things. Oh, fiddle with being respectable! In an act of pure defiance for all the misery she had suffered in that blasted village and since leaving it, she reached into the back of the wagon and brought out one of her most precious possessions, the ivory handled hairbrush Jubal had given her just after they married. She turned her back to the men and began to brush her hair. After the snarls were out she started the plaiting process, fully expecting her father to chastise her. He was too busy, she realized a moment later, bragging to the stranger about how
he
had brought them this far, and how
he
had told Hull Dexter he wasn’t forgetting the wrong he’d done them.

When she turned, the stranger had pushed his hat back on his forehead and his green eyes were looking directly into hers. He had been watching her swift, deft movements as she twisted and overlapped the individual hanks into one long braid that hung past her waist.

“If you want to keep that hair, ma’am, keep it covered.”

“We were told the Shawnee were friendly.”

“Some of them are, but not all. Tecumseh is friendly, but he’s not liking the whites coming in and taking up the land.”

“See thar. I tole ya we’d done a foolhardy thin’ comin’ out here. Yore stubbornness will get us all kilt, is what it’ll do,” Elija moaned, his boastfulness suddenly gone.

“We were told the militia had built forts on the Wabash.”

“The only one I know of is at Vincennes. There’s one at Cairo and at Illinois town, and Fort Dearborn is up north. Folks don’t usually come into this country unless they’ve got a force of six or eight armed men.”

“What about yourself? You’re traveling alone.”

“I always do.”

Liberty waited to see if Farrway Quill would say any more about himself. When he didn’t, she said, “We’re with four other wagons. They’re up ahead.”

“Why is that?”

“They moved out ahead of us when my husband became sick. The dunces think he’s got the flux and refused to let us continue on with them. That’s why we’re sitting out here by ourselves.”

“Does he have the flux?”

“He’s got the lung sickness. Any fool would know it if they would listen to his chest.”

Farrway Quill shrugged his shoulders and drained the tea from the pewter cup.

Elija refilled it. “Is we far from the Wabash? The guide said we could get a boat to take us to Vincennes.”

“You may find a boat to take you up the Wabash, but you’ll have to wait a while. It would be dangerous to do so now. This track will take you to Shawneetown. There’s a ferry at the river to take you across if you can afford to pay. Hull Dexter knows this isn’t the way to Vincennes.”

“That dirty, low-down, bush-bottom warthog!” Liberty’s eyes dared him to contradict her. He ignored her outburst and looked away from her. Suddenly she disliked him intensely. “Is he a friend of yours?” she asked bitingly.

“I know him.”

“My brother-in-law, Hammond Perry, will settle with him. He’s expecting us.”

“Libby! He ain’t doin’ no such thing.”

Liberty’s face turned a fiery red, but she held her head proudly and faced her father.

“Yes, he is, Papa. I sent word ahead with a regiment going cross-country.”

“There ain’t no reason fer us to go on now, what with Jubal dyin’ ’n all. We can go back home where we belong ’n stop this here slitherin’ ’round. I jist knowed it would end up like this. I jist knowed me ’n Jubal’d die fightin’ the heathens ’n you ’n Amy’d be carried off. Ya ain’t ort a made me ’n Amy come, Libby. We ain’t ort a be wanderin’ round out here in the wilds like a chicken with its head cut off. The man said we’re just a few miles from the Ohio. We can get a boat ’n go back upriver. We can go home—”

“We’re here, Papa. It’s too late to be placing blame, and I don’t have money to take us back upriver by boat. You didn’t have to come, and you can go back anytime you want to. You can work your way back home.” Liberty tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice and speak patiently, not daring to look at Farrway Quill lest he see her anger and embarrassment.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t ya? You’d not have nobody to buck ya, nobody to remind ya of yore shortcomings. Ya could go fiddle faddlin’ all over, havin’ yore own sweet way till ya got yoreself ’n Amy took by the savages.”

Liberty turned her back on the two men and stooped down to put another cover over Amy and the sleeping child. It bothered her, even after all these years, when her father whined and complained while in the company of others. It was, she supposed, an affront to his imagined manly superiority, that she, and her mother before her, were more capable of coping with the trials of everyday living than he was.

“Guess ya ain’t no stranger to these woods.” Elija was talking again. “We’d sure be obliged if ya’d trail along with us. It’d beat walkin’ ’n carryin’ the youngun.”

“I’m not going to Vincennes, or to Shawneetown.”

Liberty turned and looked down at the man who had removed his hat and placed it on the ground beside him. His thick hair was lighter than she had at first thought it was—a light brown, and pulled straight back from a broad forehead.

“How far are we from Shawneetown? My husband will die if he doesn’t get help soon.” Her blue eyes looked directly into his.

“Do you mind if I take a look at him?” He got to his feet and waited. Liberty felt dwarfed beside him. He was extremely tall. His fringed buckskin shirt came down over his hips and was belted. There was a knife at his waist and a small ax was tucked into the back of his belt. His buckskins were clean, but smelled strongly of woodsmoke.

“I’d be grateful for your help.”

Farrway grasped the end of the wagon and hauled himself up. Liberty took a burning stick from the fire, brought it to the end of the wagon and held it aloft so he could see. He knelt down beside the pallet. The man’s breathing was an agonized sawing for breath. His eyes were deep sockets and his gray whiskered cheeks were sunken. He was small, and the thin hands that lay on his chest were slender, like a girl’s. What surprised Farrway was that Hammond Perry’s brother, this girl’s husband, looked as old, or older than her father.

“Ma’am, he’s in a bad way,” he said gently. “The only thing I know to do is something I learned from the Indians. We can put him in a steam tent. It might help, but it might kill him, too. It’s a chance, if you want to take it.”

“He’s going to die anyway, isn’t he?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m afraid so.”

“Then let’s do it. Let’s take the chance it might help.” She turned and poked the burning stick back into the fire. “Papa, help me take the canvas off these poles and build a tent. What else do we need to do, Mr. Quill?”

“We’ll need a lot of firewood.” He stepped from the wagon and walked off into the darkness.

“Ya know this ain’t goin’ to do no good, Libby. Why don’t ya let the poor man die in peace? If’n ya’d only listen—” Elija put his hand to the small of his back and bent over several times. “My back’s killin’ me.”

Liberty ignored him, folded blankets and placed them under the wagon before she shook Amy’s shoulder to waken her.

“I’ve fixed you and the little girl a pallet under the wagon. You can snuggle up together and keep warm.”

“Her name’s . . . Mercy.”

“All right. Crawl under and I’ll put Mercy beside you.”

“I jist never heard of rousin‘ a dyin’ man out of his bed on a night so cold.” Elija grumbled as his fingers worked at the knot holding the canvas to the poles. “Yo’re determined to keep us all stirred up, ain’t ya, Libby? Stith don’t know how lucky he was that Jubal got ya, but then, he’d a not took yore sass like me ’n Jubal’s done.”

Liberty straightened after she placed the child beside Amy and covered them. Her mouth was set and her eyes held shards of anger.

“Hush your complaining! If you don’t want to help, get out of the way.”

“Ya ain’t ort a talk to yore pa like that. Yo’re hard, Libby. My back—”

“There’s nothing wrong with your back except that it’s weak!” she hissed.

“By Jehoshaphat! Ya ain’t got no feelin’ a’tall. Now, if’n I jist had a tot of Bald Face—”

She elbowed him out of the way and unfastened the ropes. Farrway returned carrying a flat stone and an armful of wood. He set them down and began to feed the fire with heavy chunks of wood.

“I was jist atellin’ Libby that I hurt my back somethin’ awful during the runkus I had with them rivermen in Louisville. Guess I never knowed it at the time; I was so dang bustit mad when they sung out at my girl here. I ort a knowed better than to take on more’n one at a time.”

Liberty saw Farrway glance at Elija, then away. Oh, Papa, she thought, why didn’t he shut up? She loved him in spite of his complaining, and she hated seeing him make a complete fool of himself. She yanked the canvas off the poles and went to pull up more wood for the fire.

“What else do we need, Mr. Quill?”

“A couple buckets of water to start.”

“I’ve been catching rain water in a barrel.” Liberty looked pointedly at her father.

“I reckon I could get it, if’n ya ain’t wantin’ a full bucket. My poor back—”

“The water can wait until after we get the tent up.” Farrway took a small axe from his pack.

“Well, if’n yo’re sure. I’m plumb willin’ to do what I can.” Elija sank slowly down on the wagon gate, his hand pressing into the small of his back.

Farrway placed the rock in the flames at one end of the fire, waited until it was blazing hot, then filled the iron teakettle from the water bucket and set it on the rock. He took the axe, and with a few well-placed strokes slimmed down two forked poles and stuck them into the ground. After placing another pole in the forks he swiftly threw the canvas over and pegged it down, leaving a side open to the fire, then picked up the oak water bucket and dipped it into the barrel.