The Conquest: The True Story of Lewis and Clark
XX
_THE OLD VIRGINIA HOME_
Back over Boone's trace, the Wilderness Road he had travelled so manytimes, went General George Rogers Clark sometime in the early Springof 1783, past the thrifty fields of Fincastle and the ShenandoahGermans, with their fat cattle and huge red barns. Every year thestout Pennsylvanians were building farther and farther up. Year byyear the fields increased, and rosy girls stacked the hay in defianceof all Virginian customs across the Ridge.
But the man who a thousand miles to the west held Illinois by theprowess of his arm and the terror of his name, sprang not with thebuoyant step of six years before when he had gone to Virginia afterthe gunpowder. His thoughts were at Kaskaskia, Vincennes, Louisville,where his unsustained garrisons were suffering for food and clothing.
"Peace, peace, peace!" he muttered. "'Tis but a mockery. Must Kentuckylie still and be scalped?"
Still the savages raided the border, not in numbers, but in squads,persistent and elusive. Isham Floyd, the boy drummer of Vincennes, hadbeen captured by the savages and three days tortured in the woods, andburnt at the stake.
"My boy-brother in the hands of those monsters?" exclaimed thegreat-hearted John Floyd of the Bear Grass. A word roused the country,the savages were dispersed, but poor Isham was dead. And beside himlay his last tormentor, the son of an Indian chief, shot by theavenging rifle of John Floyd.
Riding home with a heavy heart on the 12th of April, a ball struckColonel Floyd, passed through his arm, and entered his breast. Behindthe trees they caught a glimpse of the smoking rifle of Big Foot, thatchief whose son was slain. Leaping from his own horse to that of hisbrother, Charles Floyd sustained the drooping form until they reachedthe Bear Grass.
"Charles," whispered the dying man, "had I been riding Pompey thiswould not have happened. Pompey pricks his ears and almost speaks if afoe is near."
At the feet of Jane Buchanan her brave young husband was laid, hisblack locks already damp with the dew of death.
"Papa! Papa!" Little two-year-old George Rogers Clark Floyd screamedwith terror. Ten days later the stricken wife, Jane Buchanan, gavebirth to another son, whom they named in honour of his heroic father.
With such a grief upon him, General George Rogers Clark wended hislonesome way through the Cumberland Gap to Virginia. Now in thenight-time he heard young Isham cry. Not a heart in Kentucky butbewailed the fate of the drummer boy. And John Floyd, his loss was apublic calamity.
"John Floyd, John Floyd," murmured Clark on his lonely way, "theencourager of my earliest adventures, truest heart of the West!"
Lochry's men haunted him while he slept. "Had I not written they wouldnot have come!"
His debts, dishonoured, weighed like a pall, and deep, deep, down inhis heart he knew at last how much he loved that girl in the conventat New Orleans. At times an almost ungovernable yearning came over himto go down and force the gates of her voluntary prison-house.
In May he was at Richmond. A new Governor sat in the chair ofJefferson and Patrick Henry. To him Clark addressed an appeal for themoney that was his due.
But Virginia, bankrupt, impoverished, prostrate, answered only,--"Wehave given you land warrants, what more can you ask?"
With heavy heart Clark travelled again the road to Caroline.
There was joy in the old Virginia home, and sorrow. Once more thefamily were reunited. First came Colonel Jonathan, with his courtlyand elegant army comrade Major William Croghan, an Irish gentleman,nephew of Sir William Johnson, late Governor of New York, and of thefamous George Croghan, Sir William's Indian Deputy in the West.
In fact young Croghan crossed the ocean with Sir William as hisprivate secretary, on the high road to preferment in the British army.But he looked on the struggling colonists, and mused,--
"Their cause is just! I will raise a regiment for Washington."
While all his relatives fought for the King, he alone froze andstarved at Valley Forge, and in that frightful winter of 1780 marchedwith Jonathan Clark's regiment to the relief of Charleston. AndCharleston fell.
"Restore your loyalty to Great Britain and I will set you free," saidMajor General Prevost, another one of Croghan's uncles.
"I cannot," replied the young rebel. "I have linked my fate with thecolonies."
Nevertheless General Prevost released him and his Colonel, JonathanClark, on parole. Lieutenant Edmund was held a year longer.
Directly to the home in Caroline, Colonel Jonathan brought his IrishMajor. And there he met--Lucy.
Then, with the exchange of prisoners, Edmund came, damaged it is true,but whole, and John, John from the prison ships, ruined.
At sight of the emaciated face of her once handsome boy, the motherturned away and wept. Five long years in the prison ship had done itswork. Five years, where every day at dawn the dead were brought out incartloads. Stifled in crowded holds and poisoned with loathsome food,in one prison ship alone in eighteen months eleven thousand died andwere buried on the Brooklyn shore. And then came the General, GeorgeRogers, and Captain Richard, from the garrison of Kaskaskia where hehad helped to hold the Illinois.
In tattered regimentals and worn old shirts they came,--the army ofthe Revolution was disbanded without a dollar.
"And I, worse than without a dollar," said General George Rogers. "Myprivate property has been sacrificed to pay public debts."
But from what old treasure stores did those girls bring garments,homespun and new and woolly and warm, prepared against this day ofreunion? The soldiers were children again around their father'shearth, with mother's socks upon their feet and sister's arms aroundtheir necks.
Jonathan, famous for his songs, broke forth in a favourite refrainfrom Robin Hood:--
"And mony ane sings o' grass, o' grass, And mony ane sings o' corn, And mony ane sings o' Robin Hood Kens little where he was born.
"It wasna in the ha', the ha', Nor in the painted bower, But it was in the gude greenwood Amang the lily flower."
"And you call us lily flowers?" cried Fanny, the beauty and the pet."The lilies of the field, they toil not, neither do they spin; andhere have we been spinning for weeks and weeks to dress you boysagain."
"And what has William been doing?"
"Learning to follow in the footsteps of my brothers," answered the ladof thirteen. "Another year and I, too, could have gone as a drummerboy."
"Thank God, you'll never have to," ejaculated the General solemnly.
The old house rang with merriment as it had not in years. The negroes,York and old York and Rose his wife, Jane and Julia and Cupid andHarry, and Nancy the cook, were jubilantly preparing a feast forwelcome.
Other guests were there,--Colonel Anderson, aide-de-camp of Lafayette,who was to wed Elizabeth, the sister next older than William; andCharles Mynn Thruston, son of the "Fighting Parson," and DennisFitzhugh, daft lovers of the romping Fanny.
Since before the Revolution Jonathan had been engaged to Sarah Hite,the daughter of Joist Hite, first settler of the Shenandoah.Thousands of acres had her father and hundreds of indentured whiteservants. Joist Hite's claim overlay that of Lord Fairfax; they foughteach other in the courts for fifty years. Should Hite win, Sarah wouldbe the greatest heiress in Virginia.
From the sight of happy courtship George Rogers turned and ever andanon talked with his parents, "solemn as the judgment," said Fanny.
A few blissful days and the time for scattering came. Again the oldbroad-porticoed farmhouse was filled with farewells,--negro slavesheld horses saddled.
"But we shall meet in Kentucky," said old John Clark the Cavalier.
George Rogers bade them good-bye, waved a last kiss back, whipped uphis horse, and entered the forest.
In October John died. A vast concourse gathered under the mulberrytrees where the young Lieutenant lay wrapped in the flag of hiscountry, a victim of the prison ship. Great was the indignation offriends as they laid him away.
And now preparations were rapidly carr
ied forward for removal toKentucky.