American Challenge

by Susan Martins Miller

  The foursome walked six streets from the river to the public square, the Diamond.

  “A lot of the wagons are gone,” Aunt Eleanor said. “I guess we should have walked farther around the square this morning.”

  “We got a lot of things on our list, and Saturday’s another market day,” Mother said. “I wonder how long we will be in Pittsburgh.”

  She repeated the question that evening after dinner when the two families once again visited in the Millers’ room.

  “That depends,” Father said, “on how many men we can find to help us build the boat. We’ve put the word out today that we’ll be hiring and hope for men to come by the site tomorrow. The lumber is there, and Paul has approved it.”

  “Not a knot in it,” Uncle Paul said with pride. “You can’t use knotted wood for a boat. Water pressure can push the knots out and sink the boat.”

  Early the next morning Betsy, George, Father, and Uncle Paul walked out to the building site. Betsy and George sat on lumber to weigh it down while the men sawed it to length.

  “It’ll be fourteen by fifty feet,” Uncle Paul said. “Narrow enough to get through tight places and long enough to hold our movings.”

  “George, over here,” Father called.

  And that was the way most of the morning passed. Betsy held boards for Uncle Paul, and George held boards for Father. Betsy glanced over at Father, who was in a discussion with George. Of course George could talk to a wall, so that was no surprise. But it rankled, just the same. Was Father thinking of George as the son he didn’t have?

  Betsy did exactly what Uncle Paul asked her to do, determined that she could do a boy’s job as well as a boy and certainly better than George.

  By late morning a few men had drifted to the site, asking about the job. And before noon, Father had hired three men and sent Betsy back to the inn. George was allowed to stay.

  Betsy walked slowly back to their lodgings, wondering why Father preferred George to her. What had she done wrong?

  She found Mother and Aunt Eleanor packing food from the inn to take to the men.

  “They’ll be too dirty to come in for the noon meal,” Mother said. “So the innkeeper has allowed us to take food to them. We can use your help carrying.”

  “I can’t go back,” Betsy said. “Father doesn’t want me there.”

  Mother set a pot of beans down on the table with a thump. “What did he say? What did you do? Why did he send you back here?”

  “I don’t know,” Betsy said and held back a sob. She knew all right. He wanted George. He wanted a son.

  “I’ll talk to Thomas,” Mother said thoughtfully. “This is unlike him.”

  Betsy carried a basket and followed the women the few blocks near the river where the men were laying out the framework of the boat.

  “There are extra men here,” Mother said in a low voice.

  “Yes. Father hired them this morning.”

  “I see.” The women left the food, and Mother said they’d come back for the pots and dishes a little later. She spoke a moment with Father then walked back to join Betsy and Aunt Eleanor.

  “A couple of the men are a little rough,” Mother explained as they walked back to the inn. “Their language isn’t something that Father wants you to hear.”

  “But he lets George hear it,” Betsy said.

  “I suppose since he’s a boy, the men feel it won’t offend him. Sometimes, Betsy, it’s a mixed-up world. No one should speak in a manner that would offend another person. But that’s not always the way it is. Your father wants to protect you from this.”

  So she would not be allowed on the building site except to deliver food. George and her father would become even closer, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  For the next week, Betsy shopped with the women and tightly packed their purchases in crates for the trip. She exercised Silverstreak each morning and afternoon and learned the city of Pittsburgh. She explored the ruins of old Fort Pitt and visited Grant’s Hill on the eastern edge of the settlement. At the foot of the hill was Hogg’s Pond—home to wild ducks and half-wild hogs. After the pigs caused Silverstreak to shy and almost unseat Betsy, she cut the pond from her exercise route.

  And she secretly worked on a surprise for Father.

  At noon she carried food to George and the men. George strutted around and practically crowed that he was allowed to participate in such an adult project as building a boat.

  Most of the time Mother and Aunt Eleanor accompanied Betsy, but on Wednesday of the second week, they had returned to the farmer’s market, and Betsy made the trip to the site by herself on horseback. Baskets of food were strapped across the horse, and after Betsy delivered the food, she waited for the men to eat so she could load the utensils and return them to the inn.

  George had taken Jefferson out to the site and had him tied to a post, but Betsy took no chances with the food. Once she had loaded the plates with fried chicken and bread, she put the pan of fried chicken high on top of a pile of lumber—out of Jefferson’s reach.

  She retrieved it when the men asked for more chicken and served them.

  “I want another piece,” George said not one minute after she’d asked if he wanted more. She pretended not to hear him and asked Uncle Paul a question about the boat building. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched George get up and walk to the chicken. Good. He had to serve himself. He tried to reach the chicken, but it was over his head, so he jumped and grabbed for the handle of the pan. He succeeded in bringing the pan right down on his head. Since he was looking up, the handle hit him in the eye.

  To Betsy, the accident seemed to take place in slow motion. She screamed and jumped up when she saw the heavy pot fall, but she couldn’t reach George in time to prevent the injury.

  Father examined the bump on George’s head and the gash under his eye. Blood trickled from the wound. “Betsy, take George back to the inn. Wash his wound and put the white ointment on it that’s in my bag. George, you get to take the rest of the day off to play. Your wound isn’t serious, but you may develop a headache from that bump. Betsy will stay with you.”

  “I’ll load up the pots and dishes, and we can walk beside Silverstreak,” Betsy said.

  Once she got him in the Millers’ room at the inn, she obeyed her father’s instructions. George winced but didn’t cry when she bathed the wound with well water.

  “You’re going to have a black eye,” Betsy said. “It’s already starting to turn.”

  “A shiner? I’m going to have a shiner?” George seemed elated with the information that would have mortified Betsy. How could he enjoy the prospect of having people stare at him and wonder what had happened to his eye?

  “Probably take it a week to disappear,” Betsy said, drawing on her knowledge of her father’s experience. Sometimes in Boston she’d accompanied him on calls, so she could watch the patient’s children, her father had said, but mostly she watched what he did for the sick.

  When the women returned laden with more purchases, they made a fuss over George. But he seemed restless once the women went to the Lankfords’ room to pack the household goods in crates.

  “Let’s go down to the river to see if any other travelers have come,” he suggested.

  “No. Father wanted you to rest, so you should remain quiet.”

  “But what’s there to do here?” His hand motion took in the tiny room. “What do you do all day?”

  Betsy didn’t want to tell her younger cousin, but she felt responsible for his accident and wanted to make up for it. “I’ve been studying the Navigator.” She held up a copy of the traveler’s guide to the western rivers. “It tells how to get down the Ohio.”

  “Father has a copy of that, but reading isn’t really doing anything.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Betsy said and left her room to fetch Uncle Paul’s copy of the Navigator. When she returned, she opened it and handed it to George.

  “Look at this page on shoving off at Pitt
sburgh,” she said. “There’s a large flat bar at the mouth of the Allegheny, nearly meeting the foot of the Monongahela.” She read aloud, “‘There is, however, a good passage between these two bars, in a direction a little above the Point or junction of the two rivers, towards O’Hara’s glassworks. Before you get quite opposite the Point, incline to the left, and you will get into the chute, keeping the foot of the Monongahela bar on the left hand, and the head of that of the Allegheny on your right.’”

  “Sounds hard,” George said.

  “But it’s not. Look,” she said and drew a folded copy of the Pittsburgh newspaper, the Gazette, from the trunk. “I’m drawing pictures of the river on this paper. Try to block out the words and focus on my lines. See, here’s the river and the two sandbars. This X is the glassworks. You’ve seen it across the river. This arrow shows the route we need to take to avoid the sandbars.”

  George examined her drawing. “This is good,” he said, and Betsy let out a breath she was unaware she’d been holding.

  What was she doing? She certainly didn’t need George’s approval of the way she was passing time waiting for the boat to be finished.

  George flipped to the next drawing. “How far have you gone down the river?”

  “Not too far. I have about eight maps drawn. How much longer will it take to build the boat?”

  “It’s going fast with so many workers,” George said with pride in his voice. “We should caulk with oakum and pitch on Monday, but Father says he wants that to cure good before we turn the boat. While it’s curing, we’re going to start the walls of the cabin.”

  “But how long?” Betsy asked again. George was like Uncle Paul. He had details in his mind and couldn’t answer a simple question with a simple answer.

  “Hard to say. It depends some on the weather. But I imagine in another two weeks of work we’ll be ready to go.”

  Two weeks to work on her drawings. She could probably have them done by then.

  CHAPTER 8

  Danger on the River

  The boat turning took place two weeks after work had commenced on the flatboat. The large, awkward structure needed to be turned over so that the bottom could rest in the water. Extra hands were needed to wield the monstrous frame into the river. The men had rolled it to the water’s edge on logs and then piled huge rocks on one side to weigh it down.

  Betsy and George and the women helped some of the men hold ropes to steady the boat as others lifted it with poles, setting and resetting them as the edge of the flatboat opposite the water lifted higher and higher. The weighted-down side was underwater, and within minutes of the pushing of the poles and pulling of ropes, the boat flipped over and settled on the Ohio River.

  Cheers rang out from the workers, and Betsy joined in. Another phase of the building began as the workmen prepared to build up the sides and put a roof over the living quarters for the families.

  “The hard part’s done,” George told Betsy as if he knew what was involved in building a flatboat.

  “At least my part is done,” Betsy said and dropped her rope. She and the women returned to the inn and the packing. Their movings had arrived by freight wagon and were being stored in one of the huts on the riverfront. Some of those crates needed to be repacked since they’d been damaged in the move.

  “Good thing we got rid of so many things in Boston,” Mother said. “How will we ever fit all of these crates on the boat?”

  “We’ll pile them high,” Betsy said.

  “Your father wants to buy glass here for our windows, but I don’t know where we can put it. Perhaps he should purchase it and have it sent on the merchant ships. We can’t take all the supplies it will take to build a house in Cincinnati.”

  The night after the boat turning, Father brought a man to the inn for dinner and introduced him as Marley.

  “He’s a bargeman who’ll help us get down the Ohio,” Father said. “Marley’s made twenty trips down the Ohio. He knows every crooked turn of that river.”

  “And there are many,” Marley said. He was a short, stocky man but appeared to be all muscle, not fat.

  “Betsy and I’ve made maps of the river,” George said, and Betsy gasped. She’d let him work on the maps that one day when he’d gotten his black eye. It had healed now, but she felt like giving him another one. He was claiming responsibility for her work.

  “Have you now?” Marley asked. “Can I see them?”

  “Sure,” George said. “Where are they, Betsy?” Almost as an aside he added, “Betsy did most of them.”

  With all eyes on her, Betsy excused herself and went to her room to get the maps. When she returned, George was explaining about the Navigator to Marley.

  “I know the fellow who writes that guide, and he’s thinking of putting maps in it someday. But it will take some time for him to draw them up and get them printed.” Marley reached out and took the maps Betsy had drawn on the newsprint. The others crowded around his chair to look them over.

  “Now this is some fine studying of the guide,” Marley said. “You sure you haven’t been on this river before?” He laughed a loud, friendly laugh.

  “This is fine work,” Father said and looked directly at Betsy. “We’ll rely on you and Marley to get us to Cincinnati without mishap.”

  “Oh, there’ll be mishaps,” Marley said. “Most folks think they’re going on holiday when they set out. They think they can just sit and gab on the boat, but they learn soon enough that it’s not that way. There’s lots of work to be done to keep the boat in the current and not caught in an eddy or stranded on a sandbar.”

  Betsy had read enough to know exactly what he was talking about, but George looked a little puzzled. He probably thought he’d fish the whole time.

  The men talked of the boat construction and when departure day would come. A new man had been hired to lay up the fireplace so they could cook on the trip. The brick would be used again for their house.

  Although it was enlightening to hear these things, Betsy let her mind drift to the actual journey down the river. Now that she had studied the bends and curves and sandbars, she was anxious to begin the trip.

  From under lowered lashes, she studied Marley. She had seen him in church the two times they had attended local services. He’d sung hymns in a deep bass voice—a loud voice, much like his laughter. She supposed he was loud because of yelling orders on flatboats. His eyes twinkled when he caught her watching him, and she quickly looked down at her hands.

  After Marley left, Father said that he had been searching for a Christian man to pilot them down the Ohio and was pleased that Marley had agreed.

  “Be kind to him,” he said to Betsy. “He’s known some tragedy in his life.” He didn’t elaborate, and Betsy was left wondering what that tragedy was.

  Another week passed. Betsy finished reading the Navigator as far as the Cincinnati port. Her mother had taken her to one of the two bookstores in Pittsburgh and let her pick out several books to add to her limited collection, calling them part of her education. They had intended to continue sums and writing and reading study, but her mapmaking study combined all three in a way that satisfied Mother. And that was fine with Betsy. She figured her schooling would be ahead of whatever type of school was held in Cincinnati.

  Betsy accompanied Father to a chemist and mineralogist who was trying to establish a manufacture of acids. The doctor had already found many native materials for making drugs, and Father purchased several medicines to take to Cincinnati and arranged for further orders.

  The day before leaving arrived, and the women helped the men load the boat. They evenly stacked crates and trunks in certain positions to guarantee a balanced boat.

  “Can’t have one corner in the water,” Marley said. “Put that one down here, young George.”

  “Hold this blanket,” Mother instructed Betsy. They strung it on rope as a room divider under the roofed area, separating the sleeping areas from the cooking and living area.

  By nightfall th
e boat was loaded and only lacked perishables and Silverstreak. Early the next morning the travelers loaded the horse and George’s dog and climbed on board, and the next phase of the journey began.

  “Cast off that line,” Marley ordered, and Uncle Paul unlooped the cable on the dock and jumped on board.

  Betsy sat on a crate near the front of the flatboat with her maps in hand. Father held a great long oar on one side of the boat, and Uncle Paul did the same on the other. Marley steered from atop the roof with a long sweep that acted as a rudder.

  Although she didn’t say a word, Betsy watched with great interest as Marley maneuvered the boat between the sandbars of the Allegheny and the Monongahela that she had read about and mapped out. They shot by Hamilton’s Island in a chute that was narrow and rapid, and then they were truly in the Ohio River.

  Within minutes they had left the smoky haze and the noise of manufacturing behind them. Betsy sighed. Marley may have said it wasn’t a holiday, but it seemed like one to her. The April sunshine warmed her all over, and George and his dog were at the stern behind the enclosed space and as far from her as possible. They floated past farmland and brushy undergrowth so thick she couldn’t see through it.

  “Push off toward the left,” Marley called to Uncle Paul. Betsy admired the way her father and Uncle Paul worked in tandem, as if they could predict the other’s move with his sweep.

  As they rounded a bend, they met with head winds. Betsy pulled her cloak around her against the chill. For the next hour they made slow progress against the wind. Once around another curve, the wind switched again, and they picked up speed.

  “How far will we get today?” she asked Marley, who had traded places with Uncle Paul and was now manning one of the long poles.

  “Depends. Could make twenty or twenty-five miles. Where do you have us on the map, little lady?”

  He always called her that. At first Betsy thought he was making fun of her, since she was taller than he, but she soon discovered that “little lady” was his title of respect.

  “I have us past Hog Island and headed for Dead Man’s Island.”