The Chisholms (5 page)

“I’m sure happy to hear that,” Minerva said.

“And there’s islands and rocks all along the way...

“Soundin better all the time.”

“But look down below there, Ma. Look at all them kinds of craft floatin on the river down there. Now
they
made it safe through the Falls, didn’t they? Ain’t no reason we can’t do the same.”

Below, there were flatboats and keelboats, galleys and barges; bateaux, pirogues, dugouts, and skiffs; scows and arks and rafts and canoes; steamboats and schooners and even brigs that had sailed from Europe. She could scarcely name a third of the vessels she saw down there on the river, but the very profusion of them filled her with a new dread. Even if they did make it safely over the Falls — or
through
them, as her son insisted — wouldn’t they then collide with one or another of the craft below, so clotted was the river?

“No,” she said, and shook her head.

“Let’s find a livery stable,” Hadley said, and sighed.

The city frightened her as much as had the river.

Back home, she knew what to expect, there were no surprises. You came into town on a wide dirt road lined with board-and-batten buildings. There were several smaller dirt roads branching off it on either side, likewise lined with wooden structures, some of them dating back to the time of the first settlement. The town proper started just beyond the branch to Bristol. The wide main street of the town was, in fact, the old Wilderness Road itself. They had followed it west when they left on the twenty-second — she would never forget that date — and it had taken them clear to the Cumberland Gap. There were four hundred some-odd people (“some of them
mighty
odd,” Hadley said) in the town Minerva called home. There were twenty thousand here in Louisville.

The noise alone was enough to make her ill.

She hurried her daughters along the sidewalks, clinging to their hands, one on either side of her, fearful they would all be trampled underfoot if they did not keep pace with a population that rushed and pushed and jostled shoulder to shoulder everywhere around them. The sidewalks were lined with lampposts. The streets were paved with limestone blocks. In the streets there were men riding horses, jackasses, and mules. Carriages and coaches clattered and rattled, carts and wagons rumbled by — it was worth a person’s life to try crossing to the other side! Here now came a burly black man pushing a wheelbarrow and shouting to another man lounging in the doorway of a saloon. The city was a blur of noise and motion, horses neighing and mules braying, peddlers shouting their wares to passers-by, delivery men banging crates on the sidewalk, even babies bawling louder than any Minerva had heard in her life. The din everywhere called to mind for sure the passage in Revelations, where John beheld a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his head, and his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did not cast them to the earth, and none of that could have made more commotion than was here in this noisy, noisome city of Louisville, Kentucky.

The girls wanted to dawdle, oohing and ahhing over whatever caught their fancy in shopwindows along the way. But Minerva briskly pulled them along past silversmith and coppersmith, tailor shop and pharmacy, a saddlery selling fancy Spanish saddles for forty dollars each, a furniture store and three mercantile stores, one of them advertising dry goods from Boston and New York. They rushed past theaters and dining rooms, taverns and more saloons than a thirsty man could drink his way through in a year. When at last Minerva found a store selling the staples she needed to replenish their dwindling supplies, she threw open the door as though she and her daughters were being chased by highwaymen, and closed it immediately behind her.

Silence.

Blessed silence.

The proprietor was a ruddy-faced man with a bald head; he regarded the three of them with mild amusement, his eyes twinkling behind gold-rimmed spectacles, a faint smile on his mouth. Minerva suddenly saw herself through his eyes — she was scared of this city, and was certain her fear showed on her face. The man’s smile annoyed her because she felt it indicated ridicule or pity, and she could abide neither.

“What do you find so amusing?” she snapped.

“Ma’m?” he said, and his eyes popped open wide behind his glasses, and she knew she’d made an error in judgment, and blushed as she hadn’t since she was Bonnie Sue’s age. In apology, she told the truth. “The streets frighten us,” she said.

“Not me,” Annabel said.

“Hush,” Minerva said. “We’re far from home, and have never seen a city this size.”

“It’s a good city,” he said, “though the waters are stagnant and the inns infested with varmints. Will you be staying at one of the hotels?”

“No,” Minerva said, “but much obliged. Is that coffee I spy?”

“That’s coffee.”

“How much the pound?”

“Fifty cents.”

“Fifty cents!” she said.

“That’s not a bad price,” he said.

“It’s an outrageous price. Back home I can get it for thirty.”

“It’s been thirty-eight here, even before it got scarce.”

“I’ll need it anyway,” Minerva said. “But you couldn’t do better with a pistol and a mask on your face.”

The man laughed.

“We’re going west,” Annabel said.

“Are you now?” he said. “How many pounds will you be wanting, ma’m?”

“Make it two. But
just
,” she said. “We’re not going west, Annabel.”

“Sure we are,” Annabel said.

“Where west, young lady?”

“California,” Annabel said.

“Or Oregon,” Bonnie Sue said.

“‘We haven’t decided yet,” Annabel said.

“We’re going home, is where we’re going,” Minerva said.

“And wise you’d be. How are you for corn-meal, ma’m?”

“How do you mean wise?”

“You’d be foolhardy to attempt the trip this time of year.”

“The Falls, do you mean?”

“Well, the Falls aren’t so bad. I’m talking about running into snow in the mountains. Did you say meal?”

“Five pounds,” Minerva said. “What snow?”

“In the Rockies. You’re late starting. Were you hoping to meet a wagon train in Independence? Cause they’re all gone by now, you see, and there’s nothing would please the Indians more than to come across a lone wagon on the prairies. Those bloody savages’ll—”

“You needn’t worry,” Minerva said. “We’re going—”

“—scalp your menfolk, burn your wagon, steal your horses, take you and your daughters captive.... How are you for molasses?”

The saloon was a long narrow room with a bar along one side of it and a cluster of tables at the far end. A mounted elk’s head was hanging in the center of the far wall, and there were five or six men looked like tough customers sitting at the tables there drinking hard liquor. Gideon and Will stood at the bar, drinking beer, three or four other men ranged along the bar beside them. A mirror framed in dark wood hung behind the bar, together with some portraits of what looked like riverboat pilots. There was also a picture of a showboat called the
Delta Maiden,
with a black dwarf wearing a checked suit and a straw skimmer, standing on the dock alongside the paddle wheel.

“Man was all out of linchpins,” Will said, and shook his head.

“Kingbolts, too,” Gideon said.

“You’d think a town this size...”

“I just hope Pa had better luck finding a cover.”

“We could maybe still get the chain and rope we need.”

“We’d do better in Evansville, I’m thinkin.”

“Or maybe Independence.”

“We ever make it that far.”

The man standing at Gideon’s elbow suddenly turned to them and said, “Excuse me, gentlemen, but if you plan to stock a wagon, it’s Independence will be better.”

He looked to be about Gideon’s age, maybe a year or two older, handsome enough fellow with black hair partly hidden by the blue felt wide-brimmed hat he wore tilted over his forehead. His eyes were a brown the color of wild ginger, and he was smiling now and showing teeth that had never once been yellow.

“Cause Independence is the jumping-off place,” he said. “That is, if you was planning on going west.”

“We was,” Gideon said.

“My name’s Lester Hackett,” the man said, and extended his hand.

“Gideon Chisholm,” Gideon said, and shook hands briefly and cautiously. “My brother Will here.”

Will nodded.

“You’re startin a bit late, though,” Hackett said. He was leaning casually against the bar, one elbow on the polished mahogany top. The saloon was a drab and dreary place; he twinkled in it like a blue jay flashing through the tree-tops. Dressed in blue from tip to toe: the blue felt hat, and then a blue jacket with velvet collar and cuffs, blue string tie hanging over the front of his ruffled shirt — only thing wasn’t blue on him, that and the brown boots. “Trains start making up late April, early May.”

“That’s what this is,” Gideon said. “Early May.”

“May the third, you want to know,” Will said. He resented Hackett’s intrusion. Back in Virginia, strangers didn’t come breaking in on tavern talk unless they were politely wanting directions to Bristol or Fincastle or westward to the Gap.

“The third it is, right enough,” Hackett said, and nodded. “But in Evansville downriver, it’s already the sixth. And in Independence, which is clear the other side of Missouri, it’s now the middle of June.”

“I don’t follow you,” Will said.

“I’m telling you, sir, that with any luck you’ll reach St. Louis by the end of the month, and you’ve got to figure at least another two weeks on top of that for the trip to Independence. That’ll put you the second week in June. All the trains’ll have left a month or more before you get there.”

“There’s bound to be some late travelers,” Gideon said.

“Not likely,” Hackett said.

“We’ll find some.”

“There’ll be none left, Mr. Chisholm. You did say Chisholm?”

“I said Chisholm.”

“Gideon, was it?”

“Gideon.”

“Gideon, I’m telling you they’ll have gone long since. You’ll not find anyone foolish enough to risk snow in the Rockies. They’ve got to be well beyond them before the fall. You get snow sometimes early as the middle of September. You got any idea how many miles you’re talking about? Where do you plan on heading? Is it California or Oregon?”

“We ain’t decided yet,” Will said.

“Well, sir, when do you hope to make your decision, would you tell me? When the Indians have scalped all in your party and are dancing on your graves?”

“I don’t see as that’s any business of yours, sir.”

“Pardon me then,” Hackett said, and turned away.

“Besides, sir, how do you know so much about the journey west?”

“Let it pass,” Hackett said, his back still to them. “It’s no business of mine, you’re right, sir.”

“You’re the one as opened the discussion,” Gideon said.

“And I’m the one as now is closing it,” Hackett said, but turned to face them again. “Thank you, gentlemen, for passing the time of day with one who’s only been guiding parties west since the year 1837, and who’s familiar not only with Independence as a jumping-off place, but also with Westport and Fort Leavenworth, and St. Joe fifty-five miles to the northwest.”

“If you’re a guide,” Will said, “you’d best be hurrying, Mr. Hackett. It’s already the middle of June in Independence.”

“Well put, sir,” Hackett said, and began laughing. “Well put. I’ve already missed the wagons this year for sure. Believe me, were it not for business I’ve had here in Louisville, I’d have been somewhere on the Missouri border this very minute. This is when the trains are leaving, friends. You’ll be late by a month when you get there. Take the advice of a well-meaning stranger. Go back to where you’ve come from.” He lifted his whiskey glass, drank, smacked his lips, and then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Where might that be? I’d guess someplace upriver if it wasn’t for the sound of your voices. That’s neither Ohio nor Pennsylvania I’m hearing.”

“It’s Virginia,” Gideon said.

“Then you’re less than two weeks from the Gap. Turn around. Go back.”

“We’ve come this far—”

“This
far
?” Hackett said. “Why, when you get to Independence, you’ll
still
have two thousand miles to travel before you reach the west coast, whether it’s Oregon or California you choose. Turn around now and save yourselves a lot of grief.”

“I think not,” Will said, and shook his head. “Then let me buy you both a drink,” Hackett said. “For you’re either heroes or madmen, and I’ve never before met either.”

It was late afternoon and the lamplighter was making his rounds. Behind the glass panels on top of each post, the lamps sputtered into light, flickered, and then began to glow more boldly, casting warm circles onto the sidewalk. The city seemed less frightening now. The crowds had thinned, there was less traffic and less noise.

The wooden sign outside the hotel creaked in a brisk breeze blowing in off the river. The grocer had warned Minerva that the hotels in Louisville were bug-infested, but she didn’t plan to sleep here, and besides, the sign told her that a woman was the proprietor. Laden with groceries, she marched her daughters through the lobby to the front desk. A clerk there was writing something into a leather-bound book. She waited till he was finished.

“I’m lookin for Alice Pierson,” she said.

“Yes?” the clerk said.

“Yes. Is there an Alice Pierson here?”

A woman in her sixties, sitting and reading a newspaper in a chair near the desk, looked up sharply and said, “I’m Mrs. Pierson. What is it?”

“Are you the one whose name is on the sign outside?”

“That’s me,” the woman said. She had not risen from the chair. Her hair was white, and she wore a long black dress, four strands of pearls draped over her bosom. She looked up at Minerva and the girls along the length of a nose too long for her face.