by Chet Hagan
Horace’s screams chilled Dewey’s blood, but he finished the job. The jockey was unconscious. “Put him in his bed and someone go for the doctor. Hurry! Hurry!”
By the time Charles got back to the mansion, his clothes smeared with blood, Martha had been told what had happened by one of the housemaids.
“Oh, Charles, it’s just horrible!”
He didn’t answer her, but went to his desk, and took a pistol out of a drawer. He checked the priming.
“Charles! What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to kill him,” he answered with little apparent emotion. “I’m going to rid the world of that vermin.”
Martha threw her arms around him, unmindful of the blood. “No, Charles, you can’t! Don’t do this! Please, darling—have someone go for the sheriff.”
“There are times when there’s only one way—”
“No! No! If you go up there with a gun, if you kill Funston, you’ll be no better than he is! An animal!”
Charles stared at her for a moment, then dropped the gun on the desk. “Very well. Send for the sheriff.” He dropped into a chair. Weeping.
V
HIS name was Caleb Mercer. He was a slovenly man with big hands and feet and a fat, puffy face. He was the sheriff of Goochland County, and he was unhappy that he had been rousted out of his home that late at night.
Charles told him the story.
“There ain’t nothin’ Ah kin do,” the sheriff drawled.
“For God’s sake, Mercer, Lee assaulted that boy—he cut off his hand! Don’t you understand that?”
“Yas, suh, Ah understan’ thet.” He shrugged. “But after all, Squire Dewey, it were a nigger. An’ he stole somethin’ from Mistah Lee.”
“Do you mean to tell me—” Charles couldn’t find words in his angry frustration.
“He’s only a nigger, squire.”
Charles swept up the gun from the desk, pointing it at the sheriff. “Get out of here, you bastard, before I pull the trigger!”
The big man was unconcerned, perhaps because Charles had neglected to cock the pistol. He shrugged again, nodded to Martha, and left Fortunata, content in the knowledge that he had done his duty.
VI
HORACE survived the ordeal.
Charles Dewey’s association with Goochland County, Virginia, did not.
Before that terrible night had ended, Charles had decided to leave Fortunata. He was going west. Now.
Uncharacteristically, he didn’t discuss the decision with Martha. He simply told her they’d be leaving. His wife accepted the decision calmly, recognizing that there was no other way for him.
Martha wanted to ask him about the nagging feeling she had that Funston Lee was driving them away. But she thought it out, as she knew Charles must have thought it out, and concluded that there would be no happiness any longer at Fortunata.
For Charles. For herself. For her children.
16
LEAVING Fortunata was not something that could be done quickly.
Within the week, Charles rode to Richmond to consult with the lawyer, Millard Exner. He gave him power of attorney, asking him to begin to seek a buyer for the estate. The two men spent most of the day cataloging Dewey’s assets, determining what would be sold and what would be taken along.
“Lee might be a prospective buyer,” Exner suggested.
“Never! I’d put Fortunata to the torch before I’d sell it to him!”
The lawyer wisely changed the subject, asking about Charles’s specific destination.
“Nashville, I think,” he replied. “I have a friend there—a friend in correspondence, at least—and I’ve written to him asking about the availability of good property in that area.”
“I know nothing about Nashville, but there’s talk that our next state will come from that region.”
“Most likely. And from what I’ve learned, it’s an ideal place to raise horses.” Charles smiled for the first time that day. “The racing there, according to my correspondent, is rather spirited.”
“Well, wherever you go,” Exner said, “you’ll arrive as a rich man, I can assure you of that. Your assets add up to a rather impressive total. In one sense, you’ll probably be more wealthy in the West than you are here in Virginia. Land values are cheaper there. So, too, should be the general cost of day-to-day living. More Spartan, too, I would imagine.”
Charles made several major decisions that day: that he would carefully review his equine holdings and empower Exner to act as his agent for the dispersal of those horses he didn’t want to take with him; that the lawyer would find him a competent and honest manager-in-residence for Fortunata for the transition period.
“What of the nigras?” Exner asked. “Are you going to take them with you?”
“I wish I could free them now, so that I could make my way to a new life without them.”
Dewey grimaced. “But there’s a strange reality about slavery, Squire Exner: it’s difficult to let go of. If I freed them, what would they do? Most, I’ll wager, would be back in slavery with someone else. Within days, probably; certainly within weeks. There are too many Funston Lees in Virginia to risk that. If I take them with me—as I must do, it seems—I perpetuate myself as a slaveholder. Maybe in the West I’ll find a solution to the problem.”
II
MARTHA began preparing the children for the move. Franklin, the eldest at nine, and George, at age seven, were the most enthusiastic. It was going to be a great adventure.
“Will we see any Indians, Mother?” Franklin asked, his eyes wide with the wonder of the thought.
“I imagine we might.”
“Will they kill us?”
“Don’t be silly, Franklin. Your father will be with us.”
“Oh, sure.” That was enough guarantee for the lad.
Corrine, at age six a very sober young lady, was concerned about one thing. “Will I take my pony along, Mother?”
“I would think so.”
“Good, because I won’t go if my pony can’t go!”
Martha laughed at her, hugging her tightly. “We’ll keep that in mind, darling.”
The twins, Lee and Louise, less aware of what was really happening—they were only four—nevertheless danced about the mansion, singing a nonsense ditty taught to them by their black nanny: “We’re going west, you hear, for to be a pioneer.” Over and over again.
III
IN the first week of June 1796, Dewey heard the news that Tennessee had been admitted to the Union as the sixteenth state, with Knoxville as its capital. He had hoped to be well along on the road by that time, but dreaming of the West, and getting there, were two different things.
Charles was learning that there was a lot about preparing for travel in the wilderness that he didn’t know. He had confidently designed a large, deep-bodied wagon, meant to carry the household furnishings both he and Martha wanted to take along. The body would be boatlike, so that it would float, if necessary, in fording the deep rivers.
There were to be two of the large wagons, and the slaves were set to the task of building them. When the first was finished, it was floated on the James River as a test. So cumbersome was it, and so unstable, that it listed to one side, shipped water, and sank.
A week, then, was wasted in trying to refloat the sunken wagon and salvage it. Only the wheels were brought out of the James.
After that experience, he re-adapted his design to widen the beam and to fasten pontoon-like devices on each side to keep the second wagon level in the water. But, that made it so heavy a team of oxen had difficulty pulling it, even before it was loaded.
Angry with himself because of his ignorance of wagon design, Charles abandoned what he had once proudly dubbed the “Fortunata wagons” sending a fast rider to Pennsylvania to order four of the tried Conestoga wagons from the craftsmen there. Three weeks passed before they could be delivered.
Yet another problem, and another delay, grew out of the difficulty of finding
a manager-in-residence to look after Fortunata until it could be sold and until what he would be leaving behind could be brought to Tennessee at a later date. Lawyer Exner had made two recommendations to him, but Charles, after interviewing the men, had turned them down.
“Perhaps I seek a paragon,” Dewey admitted, “but I must, initially, leave behind all of the blooded horses and a majority of the Negroes, and I need someone I can trust implicitly.”
“I have such a man in mind,” Exner assured him, “but he hasn’t yet replied to my letter.”
“Please do what you can to expedite this matter. I hope to leave by the end of June.”
His first target date for departure had been the end of April.
By the third week in June, the Conestoga wagons had been delivered and were being loaded. Exner sent word that the man he was recommending “most highly” for the managerial position would arrive within two days.
On the morning of the second day, Charles paced the drawing room nervously, hoping that the lawyer had finally found the right man. When he heard horses on the road, he strode out onto the veranda and looked down the long lane. As the riders came closer, Charles gasped.
“Come quickly, Martha,” he shouted into the house. “My God, it’s Andrew!”
MacCallum raced his horse to the entrance of Fortunata, ahead of Exner, vaulted off it, and embraced his old friend. Martha, laughing and crying, joined in the welcome, kissing her former tutor in a most unladylike manner.
“You’re to be my manager?” Charles asked, finding it hard to believe his good fortune. He hugged the Scotsman once more.
“I came, Charles,” MacCallum said soberly, “because I’m so delighted that you’re putting this … uh … stultifying life behind you. You’ll remember I told you once that the time would come when you’d leave Elkwood—”
“I remember.”
“—and that you shouldn’t hesitate when that time came.”
“Perhaps the time did come earlier, Andrew, but I couldn’t leave while Statler still lived. His last days were very unhappy.”
“So your letters told me. But now you’ll leave, and I’m very pleased to be even a minor instrument in the beginning of your new life.”
“I have a grand idea!” Charles exclaimed enthusiastically. “When we’re established in Tennessee, and it comes time to bring the horses and the rest of the household there, you can join us!”
MacCallum grinned. “No, no, I’m not a frontiersman. I’m very happy in my post at Princeton. When this is finished, I’ll be content to go back there. I’ll leave the adventuring to you.”
IV
WITH MacCallum at Fortunata, Charles pressed his plans to leave Virginia by the end of June.
It was an impressive caravan he put together: the four Conestoga wagons, each drawn by four light draft horses; two open-body farm wagons, with two horses each; riding horses for himself, Martha, the two older boys, plus the pony for Corrine; a half-dozen extra mounts, two milk cows, and seven slaves, including Martha’s young housemaid, Angelica, brought along to help care for the children.
One of the six black men was Horace, who had pleaded with Charles not to leave him behind. “Ah’ll work hard, Mistah Charles. This”—he held up his handless arm—“ain’t gonna stop no hard work, Ah kin tell ya.”
“I don’t know, Horace. It’s going to be a very difficult journey, and I’ll need—”
“Please, Mistah Charles! Ah’m ’fraid when ya leaves thet Mistah Funston he gonna kill me!”
Dewey thought, at first, that the slave might be exaggerating the danger he faced, but the more he thought of it, the more he remembered about Funston Lee. Horace was added to the travel party.
Finally, June 28 was selected as the departure day.
On the preceding afternoon, after Martha had arranged with Katherine to have Funston Lee away from Elkwood, the Dewey family knelt at Marshall Statler’s grave for a moment of silent prayer.
When they got to their feet, Charles said, “I hope that you older children will remember your grandfather. He was a great and kind man, and he loved you very much.”
The sun was only a rosy presence in the east the next morning as the wagons lumbered away from Fortunata. Looking back at the mansion, Charles could see Andrew MacCallum standing on the veranda, waving. The Scotsman cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted: “God keep you all!”
The slaves of both Fortunata and Elkwood lined the road leading out of the plantation, many of them weeping.
Martha wept, too.
But Charles Dewey shed no tears.
It was too joyful a moment for that.
17
IT was three days to Charlottesville. By the end of the first week they had made the torturous climb to the summit of the Blue Ridge Mountains and had started down again.
Charles had decided to keep a journal on the trip. In it he wrote, “July 5: Slow going, but the weather has been most favorable. The children are delighted by seeing the countryside and all manner of wild creatures—none of a dangerous nature as yet. We hope for Staunton in two more days.”
However, a wheel on one of the Conestogas was damaged when it bounced over a large rock, and it was four days, not two, before the travelers saw the village of Staunton. There they were to turn south to Lexington, cross the western reaches of the James and the Roanoke rivers and journey on to what was called the Wilderness Road, heading for Bristol on the mountainous border with Tennessee.
“July 10: Left Staunton at first light this morning, after having purchased a crude map of the wilderness area south of here. Much concerned about our slow progress.”
Three days later they reached Lexington, the last substantial community they would see for some time. Charles and the family stayed overnight in comfortable accommodations at the Old Blue Travern, which was filled with travelers.
The children were fed and put to bed. Charles and Martha had the small luxury of eating together in the dining area of the tavern. The innkeeper, one Mr. Willingford, was an extrovert who chatted amiably with them.
“Where you headed, folks?” he asked.
“To Tennessee.”
“A long journey—a long journey, indeed.” He looked at them quizzically. “I gather that you’re new to wilderness travel?”
“Yes, we are,” Charles acknowledged, feeling inadequate at having made the admission.
When they finished their meal and had ordered ale, Willingford brought to their table a buckskin-clad young man named Abner Lower, identified to them as a long-hunter. His face was leathery; there was a greasy odor about him. Lower sat down with them.
“What is a long-hunter, Mr. Lower?” Martha asked.
“Some say a fool, ma’am.” The young man grinned. “Some of us hunters go into the western wilderness for furs and stay several years at a time. A long time—so long-hunters.” He pondered for a moment. “It’s been three years since I’ve seen my home at New Market. I hope to be there in three or four days.”
“Are you married?” Martha wanted to know.
The hunter laughed heartily. “I was when I last left. I’ll just have to see if I still am when I get back to New Market.”
Charles got out the map he had bought in Staunton spreading it out in front of Lower. “Is this accurate?”
Abner studied it. “Aye. Accurate enough, it seems.” He looked up at Charles. “Those wagons outside, the ones with the nigras, are they yours?”
“Yes.”
Lower shook his head doubtfully. “I’m afraid, sir, you might have a misconception of what the Wilderness Road is like.” He nodded toward the map. “You see, it’s more like a trace—a buffalo trace, really—pounded hard by God knows how many of those beasts over God knows how many years. It’s clear enough to follow, that’s true. But a road? Well, sir—”
“We didn’t anticipate that the travel would be easy,” Charles commented. There was a certain defensiveness in his tone.
The long-hunter sighed. “My
daddy used to say that unasked-for advice is no advice at all because it won’t be followed.” A hesitation. “But I wouldn’t be honest, Mr. Dewey, if I didn’t tell you that you’ll not make it over the Wilderness Road with those wagons.”
Charles’s shock showed on his face.
“Aye, that’s right,” Lower insisted. “The best thing I can tell you is to sell the wagons and most of what they carry, right here in Lexington, and make your way on horseback.”
“But we can’t,” Martha cried. “All of our household furnishings are in the wagons.”
The long-hunter grunted, sorry now that he had given the unsolicited advice. “Well, ma’am,” he said pleasantly, “it’s true that I never tried it with wagons myself, and maybe…” He drained his tankard, bowed to Martha, and left the table.
“Charles, we can’t just abandon everything here,” Martha insisted, tears coming to her eyes.
Dewey patted her hand. “Calmly, dear. We’ll proceed as planned.”
II
“JULY 15: Our first bad weather,” Charles wrote in his journal. “Heavy rain, with severe thunder and lightning, swelled the Roanoke, turning the banks of the river into the stickiest mud ever seen. Waiting here on the north bank till waters recede for safe crossing.”
It was the seventeenth before they could cross the Roanoke and continue their journey. Charles began to fume more and more about the slowness: “July 19: That long-hunter was right. ‘Road’ is a misnomer in this wilderness. At times it is but a footpath, and it becomes difficult to move the wagons through. I know now that I have made a basic error with the wagons, but we must persist, error or no. Becoming concerned that we may not reach our destination before winter. Damn the slowness!”
Three days later they faced another delay. The trace bar on a Conestoga was split when the wagon jolted over a deep rut, unseen because it was filled with leaves. Dewey had no choice but to pitch camp while the repairs were being made: “July 22: Probably couldn’t have picked a more beautiful place to be halted. If there is more natural beauty on the face of the earth than this wilderness, I cannot imagine it. Shot a white-tail in the afternoon and all enjoyed its meat roasted over a large gay fire. All are well, in good spirits. All are working hard, including the older children and dear, uncomplaining Martha.”
