“I hope to return to Kentucke right away—after I see my mother and brother in Bardstown.” She colored slightly as she spoke, wondering if they knew her mother had already remarried and, with Ransom, had left the settlement. She had told only Miss Mayella, stumbling with embarrassment over the news that had come at the end of Ma’s grievous letter.
“Women are so few on the frontier, Lael. You must not judge your mother too harshly,” Miss Mayella had told her.
But Lael felt fresh resentment flare within her as she sat stoically before her instructors. Ma’s mourning hadn’t lasted two months, and her haste to marry again seemed a blatant show of disrespect to Pa’s memory.
The headmistress said, “I suppose you plan to teach at the Kentucke settlement school.”
“No, I . . . I have no desire to teach at all.”
“Then what do you plan to do—you, a young woman, alone?”
Lael hesitated.
“There are still wild savages about, mademoiselle,” her French instructor warned.
At this Lael nearly smiled. “Not so many as when I was a girl, I should think.”
Another of her teachers pressed, “But how shall you support yourself if you do not teach?”
Put in some corn. Dig ginseng in the woods. Ride up and down the hollers and balds. Just . . . be. She said nothing, knowing how foolish this would sound to them. All but Miss Mayella.
The lines of displeasure in the headmistress’s face deepened. Her thoughts were plain. All the years of study wasted!
“I shall take my books with me,” she said quietly. “They are like old friends and shall be put to good use.”
“All right then. But if you should ever change your mind,” came the terse reply, “you can always return to Briar Hill.” When your plans fail and you realize how utterly futile—and dangerous—it is for a woman alone on the frontier, you may fall back on our beneficence, her tone implied.
But Lael was finished with Briar Hill forever. Dutifully, she would write to let them know she was well and settled. But for five long years her soul had chafed at a life lived by unbending rules, when every thundering strike of the grandfather clock in the great hall signaled prayers to be said, lessons learned, niceties uttered, and meals taken.
Alexandra Ice lifted upturned palms in a gesture that signified resignation. “I should be quite apprehensive in regards to your future, Lael Click, but for one thing: You are your father’s daughter.”
In the long years between leaving Kentucke and finally escaping Virginia, Lael had hoarded every single shilling Pa had sent her in hopes that they would someday see her home again. Now with sufficient funds needed to travel, she set out, though she was unprepared for the unceasing spring rains and the nearly impassable roads awash with mud on the first leg of her journey.
Traveling by coach, she took lodging in respectable inns and taverns, eating little and sleeping less, always looking out for trouble. Her twin trunks would follow later, bearing her books and dresses. By the time she reached the Virginia border and secured a horse and food and shunned a guide, it was as if her sheltered, cosseted life at Briar Hill had never been.
She’d thought to meet up with other travelers. The newspapers had reported them pouring through Cumberland Gap on the trail Pa had first blazed, spurred on by the war’s imminent end, or coming down the Ohio River on flatboats to start new settlements. But not a soul was to be seen. The edges of the wilderness wooed her, still and lush, an eternal green. She fancied Pa’s spirit lingered on in these woods. Heading west, she’d not made many missteps. Somehow it seemed he was with her, careful to keep her on the right path.
On the sixth day, before darkness fell and the moon rose, when the deer gathered at the watering places, she came upon a bonnet. It lay limp and lifeless along a creek bed and had no color at all, the dye long since washed out and bleached by the sun. Reaching up, she touched the wide brim of her own straw hat, recalling how she hated wearing a bonnet. Unable to see beyond the wide brim, she always felt boxed in, her head hot beneath the cloth. Had she not felt the same at Briar Hill and even Fort Click when the wild woods beckoned? Was Pa’s wanderlust not her own?
As she rode on she heard rather than saw the hot springs, clear and warm as fresh milk. Above the springs was a cave, breathing a cold sigh into the tepid night air. Fireflies winged all about her, and it was here that she made a cold camp.
Piling her traveling clothes atop a rock, she slipped into the steaming water and gasped with glee. The water swirled and bubbled, smelling of sulfur, assuaging the weariness out of her. Unpinning her hair, she ducked under the surface, then sat where the warm water was up to her neck. Looking up, past the towering elms and oaks, the sky called to mind the Star of Bethlehem quilt, white with stars.
When she had pulled free of the spring, her long hair covering her nakedness, she combed through the sandy tangles before making a braid. There was no more need of a fancy traveling suit, black as it was for mourning. She traded it for a light linen dress, rolling up into a blanket near where her horse was hobbled, wanting a fire but too tired to make one. And too careful.
In the morning she worked at igniting a small amount of powder with a spark from a flint, feeding the small flame with dry leaves and twigs. She mixed water with meal and a pinch of salt and set some small cakes on a flat rock in the heat of the fire for her breakfast. Out of another leather pouch she took a bit of dried meat and chewed on this while waiting for the cakes to bake. Once finished, she was careful to put out the fire, raking the coals flat and dampening the ground with water, then covering it over with dirt and leaves. She wanted to be certain she left no trail. From this day forward she would keep to the waterways when she could to hide her tracks, just as an Indian would. She recalled Pa had done the same.
How many days had she traveled? Nothing seemed familiar to her, and yet she kept in a westerly direction, certain she would eventually come to the Louisa, or Kentucke River. She recollected the Shawnee called it the Chenoa, the telling landmark she looked for.
Time and distance worked to dull her excitement at leaving Briar Hill but did nothing to unburden her. Cold, hard grief now seeped in, her shock at learning of Pa’s fate now giving way to a fearful hurt. She was heading home, but what awaited her? Several years had been lost to her. Letters from the settlement had been few and far between. Ma had written but twice, and only Pa had visited her at Briar Hill, returning once that first spring, but it proved so painful he never came back.
When she saw him, she’d been certain he meant to take her home. “Oh Pa, I was a-feared you’d forgot all about me,” she gushed, gladness spilling out of her. “I’ve got to get shed of this place. I always believed you’d come get me in—”
“This place grieves you, Daughter?”
“Oh, it’s tolerable. But I never liked it. I reckon I’ll like it a heap better when it’s behind me.”
His usual stoicism turned to sadness, as if any hope he had of her happiness had been struck down. What girl, taken from the wild woods and tucked into the cocooned, comfortable world of Briar Hill, could want for anything at all? Was that what he thought?
“Your teachers tell me you’re doin’ fine.”
Fine? She didn’t feel fine, she felt sick with a hunger for home that never ebbed, only flowed. And she didn’t look fine, what with the ladies being so shy of the sun and the elements and covering up every chance they got. She was pale as frost herself and longed to be barefoot and brown as dirt.
“Your ma sent you some crabapple jelly,” he told her. “And this here’s from Ransom.”
At the sight of a linen hankie full of dried flowers, she burst into tears. And she did what she vowed she would never do— she clung to him until he had to pry her arms loose to leave, his face so filled with angst it nearly broke her heart in two . . . even now. Recalling this last encounter with Pa, she couldn’t see the trail for her tears, but she kept on, bowing to the wind as it began moaning through the treetops. A
thunderclap nearly unseated her, and her horse reared then veered off the trail. Another gust snatched away her straw hat, and it went flying birdlike behind her, ribbons fluttering. Lightning lit the woods and the wind twisted the trees into grotesque shapes, keening and crying in mournful melody.
For the first time in years she felt fear. The mare sensed it and grew more skittish, plunging into a briar patch and tearing her skirt. Sliding off, she grabbed hold of the bridle and with all her strength, pulled the animal beneath a rock overhang just as the heavens opened and poured forth a cold, pounding rain. Nay, she could go no farther this day.
23
That night she dreamt she was on the river again. Only this time Susanna was with her, both of them dangling cane-cut feet in the cold water. She was paddling, but the oars were as willful as twin mules, going every which way but the way she wanted. The canoe was like a leaf caught in the current, the wind shoving them toward the opposite shore—the Shawnee shore.
Susanna screamed, but Lael was speechless. There, crouching low behind a tangle of mountain laurel, was Captain Jack, just as she’d known he would be. All at once she was drenched with river water. He was dragging her and gesturing to the scalping knife at his waist. Behind her, Susanna screamed and screamed and would not stop.
She came awake at once, throwing back the thin blanket that seemed to hold a weight of water. The only sound was the drip of the rain outside the rock shelter. For a few lonesome moments she sat, heart a-gallop, not drenched in river water but her own salty sweat. She shut her eyes tight as if to block the dream.
What had Ma Horn once told her? Stay standing . . . won’t nothing ever befall you that the Lord don’t allow. If this was true, she reckoned the Lord had allowed Pa to die. Yet couldn’t He have reached a hand down from heaven and helped her father at the last? Couldn’t He have soothed the swollen river long enough to let him pass?
She broke camp and continued on her way. She knew she must still be mourning for the blooming dogwood and wild plum in her path only cut her with their beauty. Still, nothing looked familiar. Sometimes it seemed she was just circling, crisscrossing her own tracks, completely befuddled.
Lost, the still woods seemed to whisper. Lael Click . . . lost.
Had Pa ever been lost? Nay, not lost, she remembered him saying, but he confessed he’d once been bewildered for three days. Right then and there she got off her horse and knelt down in the cool, damp clover. She could ill afford to be befuddled three days, so she bowed her head and prayed to be set on the right path.
Soon after, she came to a wide trace, rutted and worn away by the trek of buffalo. The trace gleamed hard and white in the spring sun. Something within her, some remembrance long buried, broke free.
She was almost to the river.
The Louisa. The Shawnee Chenoa. The Kentucke.
The name mattered little. She was coming home.
She’d long dreamed of returning in spring when the dogwoods and wild plums were white as fine linen against the greening woods. In the meadows the rye grass and clover tickled the bottoms of her feet for she’d long since abandoned her boots. They hung from the saddle by their laces, forgotten.
The sun had come out as if in welcome, raising her spirits. She took a deep breath as she caught sight of the Kentucke River, winsome and curvaceous, a timeless blue. Beyond its spring-swollen banks on the opposite shore were the huge oaks and elms she’d known from childhood that now hid the Click cabin from view.
She’d come this way to avoid the settlement. She wanted to look again upon the place from which Pa had made his timely escape from a party of Cherokee when first coming into Kentucke all those years before, leaping off his horse and jumping off the rocky bluff into the waiting arms of the maple below. There it stood, solid and newly green and far taller than she remembered.
Unafraid, she urged the mare forward into the river. As if sensing her ease, the horse swam effortlessly into the cold current to the bank beyond. She could see her old homeplace now, chimney and all, and the sight made her oblivious to her dripping dress and saddlebags.
From a distance the cabin looked unchanged, hugging the tangled hillside, the grassy yard dotted with stumps and framed all around by the dark woods. But never in her remembering had the cabin sat so lonely and desolate, inhabited by pigeons, the chinking crumbling, the porch sagging beneath the weight of time and roses.
Nearly noon now, she climbed the hill and tethered the mare to a rail fence fashioned by Pa’s own hands. The sun-warmed wood was soothing against her fingers, and along its length twined blackberry vine. Slipping off her heavy dress, she draped it over the fence to dry and retrieved another from the saddlebag.
How small the cabin looked! Her eyes ran over its hand-hewn details as she approached. The substantial chimney of river rock and mud. The tiny loft window. The old worn door stone. The sagging porch now bereft of Ma’s rocking chair. She would need a rocker. Pa always said mountain ash couldn’t be beat for furniture. A porch without a rocker looked naked and unsightly. And the rose canes—pretty though they were—would have to be cut back lest they grow right through the cabin door.
She kicked at a pile of dry leaves on the porch with a bare toe and watched them crumble to dust. Her whole being longed to straighten up and polish and set things right. This was home . . . her home! She felt like crying with her gladness.
At the door she paused, suddenly chilled, as the sun passed behind a cloud. Who had last passed through this door? Pa? Her mother? The day she’d left the settlement still hung heavy in her heart. She’d been but a girl then, heartsore and homesick. Now she was a woman, much the same.
She pushed against the heavy door, and it groaned in resistance. The room was dark and musty, and she went to the windows and threw open the shutters. Cobwebs caught in her hair, but the light was a welcome sight, dispelling every shadow. She made a face at the mess, as the chinking between the logs had begun to crumble and now littered the floor. The cabin had sat empty for a long time—after she’d gone to Virginia, her family had moved farther west to the Falls of the Ohio, where Pa built another cabin and surveyed land.
But truly, little had changed within. The long trestle table and benches were in the middle of the room, whitened with dust. The rope bedstead occupied one corner but was bare of a tick. On the mantle rested two wooden bowls and some gourds. Ma had taken little, she realized. But then, she’d had no need of such homely things, living in town and married to a man of means.
Next she inspected the barn and was surprised to find the old plow there along with a broom and some old tools. Taking the bucket, she drew water from the spring, thinking how fine the cabin looked with door and shutters wide open in welcome. It was dusk when she finished scrubbing the worn floor with sand and water and an old petticoat.
Chilled, she longed for the comfort of a fire. Taking the flint from a saddlebag, she coaxed a flame at the hearth, feeding it twigs and dry moss before adding old wood from the barn. The fire crackled and smoked gratifyingly, and she leaned back on her heels, cast back to another time when Ma had done the same each morning. The iron spider sat in back of the fire, blackened from years of use. Ma always said her chimney drew the best in the country.
But there would be no supper since she’d run out of provisions. By the light of a candle she took out a scrap of paper and quill and ink and began thinking of all that she needed. Salt. Cornmeal. Potatoes. Coffee. Sugar. Hunger made a long list, she mused. She had some money left and needed to go to Fort Click soon or starve.
But . . . what if Fort Click was not Fort Click at all but had been renamed? Five years away was not a coon’s age, surely, but long enough to have wrought change in the settlement. Could it be true that numerous cabins now surrounded the stockade? What if Ma Horn had passed on?
She blew out the candle abruptly and retreated to her makeshift bed of old hay and quilts before the flickering fire. For a time she tossed about uncomfortably, finding the hard floor even less hospitab
le than the spring ground. She’d grown soft, she thought ruefully. Hadn’t Pa preferred the forest floor in and out of season to a corn-husk or feather tick? She could hear his voice now as clearly as if he called from the corner.
Settle yourself, Daughter. There’s worse things than a hard bed.
She listened to the faraway scuttle of a mouse in the loft and fell into an exhausted slumber.
24
Early the next morning she took the path to Pigeon Ridge. The familiar trail was overgrown, which Lael took as a troubling sign. But at every turn was a lovely gift—a clump of dewy violets, some tender shoots of salat, a fine mist that hung like a bridal veil from the treetops.
She knew at first sight that the cabin had been empty for some time. Tears of disappointment stung her eyes as she opened the door and stepped inside. There was no rocker by the fire or honeysuckle baskets overflowing with herbs and roots. Empty and cold as a tomb, not a stitch of furniture remained.
Ma Horn had not passed on, surely. Someone would have sent word from the settlement to Briar Hill. Theodora Humboldt Horn had no Kentucke kin but Neddy, yet someone would have taken her in if she were ill or infirm.
Lael could not rest until she knew where Ma Horn was. With Ma Horn gone, Susanna and Will were her closest neighbors. She had no choice but to take the mare, for the Bliss cabin at Cozy Creek was miles away. She missed so much by riding, failing to see all the little details spring had wrought. The morning was the warmest yet, and a faint wind stirred the newly leafed trees all around her, creating lacy patterns of light on the forest floor.
Halfway there, she stopped to drink at a spring and stared at her reflection in the whispering water. Suppose Susanna didn’t recognize her—or was sore over her lack of a farewell long ago? As she rode, she prepared herself for their reunion. Maybe Will had moved them west to Missouri or some other distant place. With her heart beating so furiously it seemed a bird had been loosed in her ribcage, she took a deep breath.