by Jamie Carie
Thomas smiled a grim smile, sipping again. “Would that I could have gone with you.” He stared off into the distance. “I didn’t blame you, you know. I understood.” A long pause in which Samuel was wise enough to keep silent followed. “I was a young man once, wanted to join the army in the French and Indian war. But we’d only just arrived. And my father wanted the impoverished aristocrat’s life. We didn’t have time for our country or our manhood. We had a farm to build.”
Samuel had never really thought of it that way, had never wondered if his father had wanted anything different from this life he seemed so set on prospering. “I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t. Had I told you, I wouldn’t have had a chance of keeping you here. As it was, you were determined to make your own mark. You never wanted mine.”
Samuel looked hard into his father’s eyes. “I don’t want you to think I took it for granted. I wanted to want it. I tried. But after Sara … everything opened up underneath me, and I thought—no, I knew—that if I stayed here, I would never be anything.”
“Is that why you’re back? Are you ready to face it?”
Samuel looked down at the saddlebag of gold beside his chair. He rose, lifted it, and dumped the massive amount of coin, trickling like a waterfall as they cascaded onto the desk. “I am ready to face you.”
Thomas stared at the coins, glittering in the candlelight. “You didn’t use it.” He seemed surprised. And proud.
“A little. I married a woman, a French woman from Vincennes, and I needed a little to get us both back here.”
Thomas chuckled and nodded over his clasped hands. “Yes, women will cost you extra.” He reached for the gold, lifted up a handful, and let it pour through his fingers back to the desk. “Is she worth it? This blow to your pride.” He was smiling, but it was a kind, understanding smile.
Samuel didn’t smile back. “I have done many things that I never dreamed I would do to have her. She is worth everything.”
Thomas nodded. He looked up at his son in the flicker of the candlelight, reading his son’s eyes. “And what do you want now, Samuel? Do you want this plantation? Because I’ve kept it for you. I won’t let some son-in-law inherit what rightly belongs to a Holt, though they plague me to death to do it. Or do you prefer the gold? I will double it since you are married. Women are expensive creatures.”
Samuel shook his head. “I don’t know. Being back is bittersweet. I have been walking the land. I see it differently now. I know its cost. And then there’s Belle.”
“Ah, Belle. Now you can’t take my only joy from me.” He looked serious.
Samuel decided to bare his heart as he never had. He needed this man’s advice. “Tell me then. I’ve married a woman who can outshoot, outtrack, and outfight most men I know. I’ve married a gypsy who is as at home in the wilderness as she is decked out in finery in a ballroom. The Indians who captured her named her That Which You Cannot Imagine, and there is nothing better to call her. She astounds me at every turn. And then I have a daughter that seems tied up inside. Isabelle would free her of that. I would free her of that. But I know Belle needs stability and a good education. I know now that you love her, and she said to me that her greatest request is to go to Williamsburg with you. You have been more a father to her than I.”
He paused, seeing tears well up in Thomas’s eyes.
“And I … I could run this place. I have remembered how much I loved it in the days I’ve been back. I could stay here. Make it work. But there would be a part of me, and of my wife, that would long for something else … something greater than a secure life could provide.
“Tell me, what should I do?”
Thomas stared off into the flames of the fire, considering. Finally he spoke. “The needs of a young man are different from the needs of an older man, Samuel.” He leaned across the desk toward his son. “Do you see this gold?”
Samuel nodded.
“It is not so much. Less than what I am giving the girls for their dowries. I only wanted to make sure you didn’t starve.” He laughed. “I want them to marry men who have something of their own to give them, and they will. RaeAnn has a beau that will make her very comfortable, if she will come around. And Becky? Becky has her pick of the men around here. She will do just fine.” He took another long drink and said thoughtfully, setting the glass on the desk, his fingers wrapped comfortably around it, “From everything you have told me, I think you and your wife should take this gold and live your young lives as you see fit. And then, when you are both older and ready to settle down, your mother and I will probably be ready to hand this place over to you.”
Samuel breathed in and out, trying to grasp such generosity.
After everything he’d done. After everything he had put them through, his father only wanted his son to have his inheritance.
“Why would you do that?”
“Because, as you will see with Belle and any other children you have … this is what fathers dream of doing. Why do you think I have worked so hard? Why do you think I go out there every day to make this place function and thrive? My father birthed it for me, and I have expanded it for you. Who knows the limits of what you will do for your children? And they for theirs? It is what fathers do.”
Samuel was overcome. He could only stare in wonder at the man he had left. “I’m sorry I hurt you.”
Thomas huffed. “I understood. After that mess with Sara, you needed to find out who you were. And now that you have, … you will make me proud. You already have.”
Samuel found himself without words and a throat clogged with emotion. When he looked up, he saw that his father was struggling as well.
“What about Belle?” Samuel finally managed to ask.
“Just … give me a few more days.” His father looked down at his loosely clasped hands in his lap, then back up at Samuel. “I think I would like to take her to Williamsburg, buy her some candy, show her the sights.” He smiled. “Then, if you and your wife need to haul her off into the wilderness or into the great world for a while, why, I think that would be a good thing. Your mother, God bless her soul, has put too much starch in a child of her age. It would do her some good to grow up away from here.” He nodded, as if talking to himself. “Do her some real good.”
Samuel rose. He went around the desk and touched his father on the arm. “Thank you.”
Thomas rose from his chair and took Samuel into his chest with a crushing hug. “I am glad you came back, son. I am so glad.”
Author’s Note
As an author of historical novels, the writer uncovers many fascinating facts. Research is like digging for gold. There are so many stories to tell. Stories of great heroes and heroines. Stories of our ancestors. Stories of fellow Americans.
George Rogers Clark was bigger than life. He was one of the men in that time and place who embodied the spirit of courage, had steadfast faith in his mission, and knew a call to greatness.
When Samuel and Isabelle left him in Kaskaskia, Clark was sitting on a ticking bomb. Henry “the Hairbuyer” Hamilton heard of the capture of Vincennes and retaliated with an army of trained British soldiers and American Indian braves.
On October 7, 1778, Hamilton left Detroit, traveled down the Maumee and Wabash Rivers, marching on Vincennes to take it back. Hamilton was easily successful. After all, only a token army under the command of Leonard Helm held the fort for Clark.
What happened next was one of the greatest military blunders of the American Revolution: Hamilton decided to postpone an attack on Kaskaskia and wait until spring, sending his native allies home for the winter.
It was then another hero arose—an Italian trader by the name of Francesco Vigo, a wealthy man committed to Clark and the American cause. He was permitted to leave Vincennes for St. Louis on a supposed trading mission. Vigo kept his word and went straight to St. Louis but on the way back made an inconvenient but important side trip. He headed for Clark with the news of all Hamilton had done and planned to d
o in the spring.
When Clark learned of Hamilton’s victory, it was late January, and winter held a firm grip on the land. Clark realized that his small force could not hold the Illinois posts of Kaskaskia and Cahokia if Hamilton was given sufficient time to gather his forces in the spring. So, being Clark, he boldly decided to move on Vincennes immediately. His letter to Patrick Henry states his conviction so succinctly, that if he failed, “this country and also Kentucky is lost.” Clark firmly believed that in gaining the territory north of the Ohio River, they would gain a nation. And if they lost it, they would lose everything.
On February 5, 1779, Clark led one hundred and seventy-two men, nearly half of whom were French volunteers, from Kaskaskia to Vincennes. They marched through flooded country, often shoulder high in water, with freezing temperatures and rain that fell unceasingly. There was never enough food as the hunting parties often came back empty-handed. It took eighteen days to make what should have been a five- or six-day trip. It is a traumatic tale of fortitude and the miraculous. It’s the story of the power of one man’s conviction and the men who were brave and inspired enough to follow him.
During that harrowing march, Clark buoyed the spirits of the men by taking the lead when plunging into a body of water, singing with them and telling them how they were the greatest of men. As they waded through swamps and streams, the men held their rifles above their heads, their food and ammunition upon their shoulders, and they sang at the top of their voices, their legs quivering with weakness in the freezing temperatures. A drummer boy floated beside them, ever rapping on his drum.
On February 23 the frozen, little army surrounded Vincennes. Clark ordered that the flags be marched back and forth behind the slight rises to convince the British that theirs was an imposing force of six hundred men rather than less than two hundred. Old Testament fighting, to be sure. They opened fire on the fort with such accuracy that the British had to abandon their cannon ports. Two days later Hamilton surrendered. He was sent to Williamsburg as a prisoner of war.
The British never regained control of Cahokia, Kaskaskia, or Vincennes. Later the lands won by George Rogers Clark and his Long Knives were ceded to the United States in the Treaty of Paris in 1783, four long years after Clark’s harrowing campaign. The British withdrew from Detroit without Clark and his men ever having to fire a single shot.
Clark’s mission had been successful beyond even his wildest imaginings—and this was a man who knew how to dream. The west was opened, and America now stretched to the Mississippi River, the Great Lakes becoming the northern boundary of the young nation.
Like many of our greatest heroes, Clark was not recognized during his lifetime as he deserved. He died on land in Kentucky that he had to fight to possess. The Virginia Legislature would not recognize that Clark personally indebted himself to keep the campaign afloat and refused to pay his war debts. He died in debt. He died in pain.
His was a life spilled out for his country.
There was, however, a well-worn path to Clark’s cabin. He received many visitors in his old age. Indian chiefs whom he had made treaties with, men who still admired the tall redhead, remembering him as a man of his word. Men who had followed him and argued with him and heard him and loved him. Men who knew what he had done and were in awe of the man named Clark. He was, to the end, a hero to the free landowner of the Northwest Territory and to the new people west of the Allegheny Mountains who called themselves Americans.
My hope is that his courage and faith are being rewarded every day, day after day, in eternity. George Rogers Clark accomplished what he was set on this earth to do, and no one can ask for more than that.
Did I mention he had a brother? William Clark of Lewis and Clark fame. Those boys must have had some kind of parents. Between them, those men carved out a nation from sea to shining sea. I would like to be as inspiring as those parents. I would like to be like those men, pressing on in freedom and courage, rushing headlong and victorious into the glory of God. Only maybe in a dress. One as red and as flashy as Isabelle’s.
And dancing.
A gypsy worshipper in a dance song for Him.
