The Seekers

by John Jakes

  Jared shuddered.

  In its jaws, the cat held the remains of a smaller, darker animal.

  A raccoon? A possum?

  No way of telling. The prey was dead, crushed, nothing more than mangled meat and brown, bloodstained fur. Jared put the back of his hand against his lips, feeling the sickness rise—

  With immense grace and power, the cat turned and loped away from the shore, and then Jared understood.

  The land was like the cat. He and all the others who came to it were prey. Some survived. Some could not.

  He was one of the latter. Bone-deep, he knew that.

  Times beyond counting, Aunt Harriet had told him that he was what his parents had been: flawed. He had seen countless evidences of his own. Wasn’t the tremor in his belly, stirred by the sight of the bloody carcass in the cat’s mouth, just one more? He was the child of Abraham and Elizabeth, knowing with a certainty that he bore their weaknesses. Sometimes he tried to tell himself the conviction was irrational. Yet he believed.

  If he challenged the land, it would destroy him. That was why he and Amanda had to flee to New Orleans, to civilized comforts. It wasn’t merely a matter of being far from Boston. He probably could lose himself anywhere out here. But he would not—

  He understood, on that scarlet morning, the real reason he hated the land.

  He hated it because it made him afraid of himself.

  vii

  Louisville impressed Jared as a prosperous, if faintly pestilential, place. A profusion of ponds dotted the forests of oak, hackberry and buckeye that surrounded the town. But Louisville proper was as lively as Pittsburgh, and the warehouses and docks testified to its importance in commerce. Kegs and barrels containing everything from whiskey and flour to corn and lard were piled high on the wharves. Chickens and turkeys squawked in great tiers of wooden cages. The river men who carried and handled the goods kept the taverns and bordellos noisy all through the night.

  Jared found temporary work unloading and uncrating newly arrived shipments at a general store. The store’s signboard read Audubon & Rozier, Merchants. Mr. Ferdinand Rozier was the only partner in evidence. During the week and a half that Jared worked for Rozier, he learned that the man’s former associate preferred fine art to business. Audubon and his wife had moved down the river to Henderson a few years earlier. There, Rozier said, Mr. Audubon had no doubt abandoned storekeeping entirely, in order to make sketches and paintings of what interested him most—wildlife, birds, chiefly. Rozier laughed at that. There was no market for portraits of birds! He was convinced his former partner was destined for failure.

  Rozier agreed to pay some of Jared’s wages in trade. Provisioned again, he and Amanda set off along the Cumberland Trail during a warm spell in early March.

  In forty-eight hours, the weather changed. Sleet began to slant down from the sky.

  The cousins were struggling along a heavily wooded stretch of road at twilight. Great tree limbs soughed in the wind. Within minutes, the sleet completely soaked their clothing.

  They hunted for a farm that might offer shelter, but found none. They were forced to spend the night in the open.

  The storm continued until the following morning. When the light broke, Jared’s head was hot and his eyes had a glazed look. Though not ill, Amanda was almost as miserable.

  “We—we’ve got to hole up a while,” Jared gasped as he and his cousin started out. The whole world seemed gray, wet and forlorn. “Anyplace—I’m not feeling good—”

  The sunny visions of New Orleans were gone. Instead, he saw only his cousin’s drawn face—or feverish imaginings.

  Hamilton Stovall strutting through the main floor of Kent’s—

  Stovall’s general manager dying in a welter of blood—

  The printing house afire—

  “Take my hand,” Amanda said, sniffling. Jared was terrified by the sickly whiteness of her skin. What if she caught a chill and died just because he’d dragged her all this way—?

  They managed to negotiate another half-mile of road, passing a bogged and abandoned freight wagon. Jared’s eyes watered and blurred. The world seemed to consist of gargoyle trees against a sodden sky—

  Suddenly Amanda exclaimed, “There’s a creek ahead!”

  “I don’t see—”

  “And a cabin!”

  “I can’t make it out—”

  “Here, hang on to me. I’ll lead you—”

  It was the longest distance Jared had ever walked. Or so it felt. His head ached. One moment he burned; the next, he froze. After an interminable time, they reached the creek and crossed.

  The water soaking his feet felt warm—another indication of how sick he was. As they stumbled across the dooryard of the cabin, a damp rooster scolded them from a small shed nearby.

  Jared’s voice had a wheezy sound. “Knock on the door, Amanda—”

  She did, loudly. In a moment the door was opened. Swaying, Jared heard a young girl speak. “What do you want?”

  He tried to focus his eyes, saw only shifting gray shapes.

  “Who is it, Sarah?” a woman called.

  Before the girl could answer, Jared lunged forward. Not intentionally—his legs simply gave out. He fell toward the door, his hands scraped by the rough logs on either side. The last thing he heard was the girl’s shriek of fright.

  Adding her wail to the commotion, Amanda threw herself on top of her cousin. Sobbing, she begged him to get up. But he lay motionless, his head and chest resting on the cabin’s puncheon floor, his legs extending into the yard where the sleet beat down.

  Chapter V

  Reverend Blackthorn

  i

  “JARED?”

  On the other side of the small fire he’d built at sundown, the boy rolled onto his belly.

  “What?”

  “Are you feeling all right?”

  Jared peered through the flames at his cousin, who was even more wan and pinch-faced than she’d been just a few weeks ago. He tried to make his he convincing. “Yes.”

  “You look funny.”

  “I’m fine.”

  She regarded him in stoic silence. He tried to recall when he’d last seen a smile on her face. It was in Kentucky, he decided. At the cabin on Knob Creek, below Louisville, where he’d collapsed from sickness and exhaustion in early March.

  The cabin belonged to a farmer and his family. Jared and Amanda stayed with them almost two weeks. The famer’s wife put cooling poultices on his sweating skin, and brought him slowly out of his lethargy with generous helpings of food and attention. At the end of his recuperation, Jared was convinced he’d beaten the disease.

  But now it was mid-May, and since leaving the cabin on Knob Creek, he’d suffered a similar illness twice more. It had shaken him with fever and chills, watered his bowels, left him limp—and forced them to stop for a day or so each time.

  From the way he felt at the moment—weak and shivery—he might be in for still another attack. Apparently Amanda saw it coming too.

  Across the fire, she locked her frail arms around her knees. Her shoes were splitting apart at the soles. The hem of her muddied skirt was ragged, and so was her fine coat. She stared dully into the darkness of the Tennessee woodlands beyond the perimeter of light.

  She was the same young girl who had left Boston with him, yet she had changed. Almost without his being aware of it. It was more than a matter of growing an inch or so, more than the pronounced development of her figure. She no longer protested about the hardships they were undergoing. She shared the work of building evening fires. Sometimes lately, he gazed at her and thought he was looking at a grown woman. Her strength seemed to be increasing while illness drained his away—

  Trees newly leafed rustled in the night wind. The cry of an owl drifted through the clearing. Unseen nearby, a small river purled over stones.

  “I’m so tired tonight,” Amanda said at last, not complaining, stating a fact. “I’ll be thankful when we get to New Orleans.”

/>   Bracing on one elbow, Jared shoved his long and dirty yellow hair off his forehead. As he did, he felt the clamminess of his skin. He tried to sound encouraging. “I’ll bet we make it before the end of June.”

  “Those men with the wagons—the ones who came over on the ferry with us—”

  “What about them?”

  “They said there was a town near here.”

  He nodded. “Nashville.”

  “I think you should see if someone will put me to work while we’re there.”

  “You—?” He laughed, a kind of croaking sound.

  She jumped up, tearing a burr out of her dark hair. “Don’t make fun of me, Jared Kent!”

  “I’m not—” He forced a straight face. “But I’m the one who works.”

  “I can wash floors and carry water just as well as you can! Besides, you’re sick.”

  “I am not.”

  Stamping her foot, Amanda showed some of the animation he remembered from another time—another world. “You’re fibbing. I can always tell when you’re fibbing—” She circled the fire to kneel beside him. “Do you know what I’d really like? To stop for good—so you don’t keep getting sick—”

  “Amanda, the answer is no.”

  “I’ve heard that till I can’t stand it any more!”

  Jared sat up, trying to keep his temper. He held out his hands to warm them at the fire. His nails were cracked and grimy. His hair hung nearly to his shoulders. His cheeks were sunken, his good looks all but destroyed by paleness and the fever-glint in his eyes.

  With a sigh, he said, “You know I won’t stop anywhere around here. This is the kind of country where Mama died.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard that too. Over and over! I still don’t understand—”

  “Because you’re too young. Let’s not argue. We’re going where life doesn’t demand so much of people. It’s warm in the south. New Orleans has soft air—balmy winters. I didn’t stop in Louisville for the same reason I won’t stop more than a couple of days in Nashville. I despise this country, and you’ll just have to accept that.”

  Unsatisfied, she flounced back to her original place. “Oh, I don’t understand you, Jared. Why does it make any difference where your mama and papa lived?”

  “It does, that’s all! You don’t know what this country did to them. I do. We’re going to find a better place.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t make sense.”

  “I’m tired—so let’s drop it!”

  His anger produced another unhappy look from the girl. She started to reply, but didn’t. She sat down, arms crossed on her knees, her face stony.

  Jared’s ears rang as he stumbled around the fire, feeling ashamed all at once. He dropped down beside his cousin, tried to cradle her against his shoulder. At first she resisted. But the loneliness and the chill of the spring night proved stronger than anger. She huddled close.

  “Take my word, it’s better that we go on to New Orleans,” he said. “The worst part’s over. The warm weather’s coming. And the wagon men said General Jackson whipped the Red Sticks for good a month or so ago. The trace from Nashville should be safe to travel—”

  “We could stop,” she said quietly. “We could if you didn’t hate everything so much—”

  “We’re going on.” His tone carried a note of finality, warning her to say no more.

  She sighed again. “All right I know better than to talk to you when you’re sick.”

  “Damn it, I’m not—”

  “Jared, be quiet and cover up.”

  She pulled up the thin blanket given them by the Konigsbergs in Pennsylvania. Then she changed her position so that he could lean against her shoulder. She started to stroke his forehead. Spent and dizzy, he didn’t protest—

  Unquestionably, the fever was back, brought on by continued exposure to the elements, and poor food. Their diet lately had consisted of creek water, wild berries, and occasional corn filched from the cribs of isolated homesteads.

  Her hand moved slowly, comfortingly across his damp skin. “You know what I’m thinking about now?” she asked in a drowsy voice.

  The fire seemed to afford very little warmth. His bones felt locked in ice, and his teeth clicked as he answered. “No.”

  “Knob Creek. I could have stayed there the rest of my life. It was such a nice, warm cabin—”

  “But too small for permanent boarders. We were lucky the Lincolns took us in as long as they did.”

  Lost in her memory of bright lamps and kindness, she mused on, sounding almost happy. “I could have gone to blab school with Sarah—it would have been such fun, being in a schoolroom where everyone reads their lessons out loud at the same time. I could have taught her little brother, too. Taught him his letters—Abraham was fascinated with letters. Always trying to draw them on his slate with charcoal, or in the mud with a stick. He’ll be smart when he grows up, I think. For five years old, he was very quick—”

  “He was,” Jared nodded, shuddering. The owl hooted again.

  “He liked me. He kept asking me to write words for him. We could have stayed somehow—”

  “No. I heard Lincoln and his wife talking about moving to Illinois or Indiana, where the soil’s better for crops.”

  He did remember Tom Lincoln and his wife Nancy with fondness, though. They had been much more open and generous than the German farmer in Pennsylvania. For a moment he almost wished Amanda’s dream could have come true—

  “I only hope New Orleans is as nice as you say, Jared.”

  “It will be,” he murmured, not at all certain.

  “I never want to be cold again. I never want to be hungry again. I’ve had enough.”

  “Well, we finally agree on something. I have too. Now go to sleep.”

  ii

  When Amanda closed her eyes and began to breathe regularly, Jared eased away from her. He didn’t want to move, but the fire needed more wood.

  He covered her with the blanket. Circled the embers, stumbling once—the fever was rapidly growing worse. He was sweating heavily.

  He shuffled into the darkness at the edge of the clearing. It seemed to take an eternity to gather a small quantity of loose brush. As he worked, he glanced occasionally at the stars visible through the treetops.

  He hadn’t learned the geography of the heavens well enough to use it to judge direction with complete accuracy. He tried to recall the conversation of the teamsters coming across on the ferry further up the Cumberland. The men said the north-south stream near which they’d camped was a small river known as Stone’s. It emptied into the Cumberland. A few miles west of the point where the rivers met should be the town of Nashville.

  There, Jared hoped to find a place where they could rest out of the weather for a day or two.

  He’d also have to find some chores to do again. He almost smiled, thinking of Amanda’s insistence that she hire herself out. Lord, how she’d changed in only a couple of months!

  Once supplied with food, they’d head south along the trace, the Chickasaw Road, that would take them nearer New Orleans. And by summertime, there might be an end to the weariness and hunger and pain—

  He dumped a last armload of green sticks on the fire and coughed as smoke clouded up. God, how he ached! His face was wet with perspiration—

  He mustn’t weaken now. They had survived the winter, and he was thin and hard because of it. He didn’t know how many miles they’d traveled since leaving Boston, but it must be an incredible number. What seemed ironic was the possibility that something entirely uncontrollable might defeat them. Not the danger of animal predators. Not unscrupulous humans, either, but sickness. The sickness that had gripped him intermittently since late February, and threatened to reduce him to helplessness again—

  He stumbled a second time as he returned to his cousin. He lay down beside her and tugged part of the blanket over his legs. The back of his head rested on the hard ground. He stared at the stars. They blurred and changed position too qui
ckly as the fever mounted—

  iii

  He opened his eyes. Felt the brush of the May wind on his face. Saw, as if through gauze, the high, budded limbs of trees against the rosy sky.

  Dawn.

  He heard the soft rush of Stone’s River. And another sound, totally unexpected—

  The stamp of a horse.

  He lay still, trying to clear his throbbing head. Where was his pistol—?

  In his canvas bag. But his knife—

  He felt its reassuring hardness at his belt.

  Only then did he lift the blanket so as not to disturb Amanda. He rolled on his side, scrambled up—

  A lean man hunkered beyond what was left of the fire: a few red coals glowing amidst white ash. The man wore a filthy beaver hat with a hole in it. Behind him, a swaybacked gray horse fretted, tied to a low branch.

  “Morning, boy. Trust you don’t mind sharing your fire with another traveler—?”

  At the sound of the voice, Amanda stirred, sat up. Jared put his hand behind him, moved it back and forth, a wave of warning. He heard her quick intake of breath. She understood. She got to her feet, hid behind his back.

  “Who are you?” Jared asked. “Where’d you come from?”

  The man chuckled. “Why, I might ask both questions of you.”

  He rose, dusted off his hands—big, hard-looking and bruised. As he turned slightly, faint eastern light pinked his face beneath the brim of his beaver hat.

  Tufts of gray hair showed around the man’s ears. His linen and stock had a yellow cast—like the teeth he displayed in a smile that struck Jared as false. The man’s fingers hung nearly to his knees. His abnormally long arms looked powerful.

  He extended his right hand in greeting. Jared didn’t offer to shake. “I want to know where you came from.”

  Frowning, the man lowered his hand. His arm brushed the flap of a coat pocket aside. A small black-bound book stuck out of the pocket. A testament—?

  The man jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Came up Stone’s from Nashville. I’m headed for a little place I own a few miles east of here. Left Nashville late, and without supper. So when I saw the fire—”