The Rebels: The Kent Family Chronicles

by John Jakes

  But that’s the end.

  Lazarus, reborn for a few hours, had lacked the fortitude to survive. Angus Fletcher was right after all. Judson betrayed and destroyed at every turn. Never quite strong enough; never quite knowing why—

  Well, at least there was the promise of a drink.

  “All right, I’ll accept the offer,” Judson said with a wan smile. He and his tall friend started along the landing.

  George moved with his customary silent grace. The bull bellowed and tossed its horns as they passed. Judson gazed at the swift-flowing river, thinking of the ruinous tide that coursed through him. That tide had swept him to a final chance—then, just as quickly, swept the chance from his grasp.

  Uncomfortable in the awkward situation, George tried to make conversation:

  “These are interesting craft, you’ll find. They’re oneway boats. Designed to be torn apart again, and the lumber used for shelters once we reach the falls of the Oh—”

  Judson barely heard his friend hesitate. He was ready to turn and flee, his guilt deepening moment by moment. He decided to tell George he’d changed his mind; intended to make his way back into the settlement at once. Just as he was about to speak, he grew aware of a peculiar tension in his friend’s stance.

  George had stopped talking—and walking—just where the square stern of his flatboat bumped gently against the landing pilings. The moon burned in the pupils of George’s narrowing eyes as he raised a finger to keep Judson silent.

  Wrenched from the morass of his own misery, Judson followed George’s pointing hand. Up the plank sidewalls, past a latched wooden window to the slightly arched roof. Judson sucked in a breath. The trap lay back; open.

  And, running to it from the far edge of the roof, was a track of small, glistening puddles of water.

  George bent close to Judson’s ear:

  “Someone’s inside. Crawled up from the other rail—from the river—”

  “Who would it be?”

  “No idea. But I keep my public orders aboard, locked in a strong box. I’ve wondered if some Tory sympathizer might try to steal them. The other set’s here—” He touched the belly of his hunting shirt. Then he tapped Judson’s rifle:

  “Is that primed?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, look sharp—”

  George sidled near the rail of the moored boat, one hand darting down to his boot. The blade of his long knife flashed as he raised it waist high.

  “I don’t care to jump through the trap and surprise our visitors in the dark,” he whispered. “But maybe we can flush them out into the light—”

  As Judson lifted his rifle with sweaty hands, George leaned forward and started hammering a fist on the sidewall of the flatboat.

  iii

  The moment George stopped thumping, he heard sounds inside. Quick, light footsteps; then an oath, as something banged the deck planks.

  “After my strong box, all right—” George began.

  Hands shot from the black square of the open trap. A tall-crowned hat with a flop brim seemed to levitate swiftly into the moonlight. By the time the lithe intruder hauled himself onto the roof, Judson recognized him.

  It was the lounger from outside Semple’s Tavern. The man who had concealed his hands. Judson thought he understood why—

  The intruder’s hat blew off as he scrambled for the river side of the flatboat. Judson had a swift impression of a knife blade glittering in one brown fist, and metal-work shining on the pistol in the man’s belt. George Clark leaped up onto the rail, then to the roof.

  Judson jammed his rifle to his shoulder. He had a clear shot at the moon-silhouetted stranger. He steadied his grip, triggered the weapon.

  An explosion—a dull glare of orange—

  Then the aftermath of silence, signaling a flash in the pan. Damn! Either he’d lost most of his priming, or it had gotten damp—

  “Stop!” George yelled, starting across the flatboat roof. He was between Judson and the intruder now, so that even with another weapon ready, no further shots would have been possible. Judson put a knee on the flatboat rail, stretched out his bandaged arm, clenched his teeth, dragged himself up to the roof as George lunged across it, knife in one hand, the other shooting out to catch the fringe of the intruder’s hunting shirt.

  The man let out a wild, terrified cry that instantly raised voices of alarm from the other boats. By sheer strength, George held onto the spy’s shirt while Judson painfully hauled himself up to the roof. As he did, he saw the chiseled starkness of the intruder’s face; saw black, moon-washed eyes blinking with rage and terror; saw dark, grease-dressed hair hanging straight to the man’s buckskin collar—

  The Indian fought as George tried to drag him back to the center of the roof. Judson gained his feet at the roof’s edge, unsteady because the struggle had set the flatboat bobbing. All at once he saw something else stuck in the Indian’s belt:

  Folded papers. The orders from the strong box.

  With a guttural yell, the Indian yanked his knife from his belt, swiped at George’s throat with a bright arc of steel. Judson shouted a warning but George was even quicker. Releasing his hold on the captive, he jumped backwards.

  His left boot landed in the trail of water left when the Indian stole aboard. George skidded and sprawled, hitting the roof with a loud clump. By then Judson was moving, peripherally conscious of clamoring voices, of boots pounding the landing as people poured from the other flatboats—

  But all he saw was the Indian’s throwing hand jerking back, then streaking forward.

  The knife was poorly aimed. George wrenched his right shoulder up. The blade struck the roof where he’d been lying, skittered away.

  The Indian’s other hand closed on the butt of his English dragoon pistol. Crouching, he transferred the weapon to his right hand with startling speed, drew back the cock—

  George Clark was a target too large and too close to miss. The Indian’s teeth shone, clenched in a kind of death’s-head grin as he extended his pistol arm full length. Frantically, George started to roll aside. But he was too late; too late—

  Judson launched himself hard and fast. He had a dream-like sensation of almost flying across the roof. The Indian swung instinctively. The pistol discharged at close range. Judson doubled as the ball struck him in the gut.

  Smoke drifted. Judson felt flowing warmth in his middle. Then pain.

  He dropped to his knees, holding back a hurt cry. He heard the shouts of men clambering up the flatboat’s side behind him, several bringing lanterns whose light flooded the roof. George Clark had regained his feet and caught the Indian. He wrenched one arm around the spy’s windpipe. With his other hand he pressed his knife to the writhing captive’s throat.

  Judson watched with a dreamy sense of unreality, even though ferocious pain was eating through his midsection, and blood was washing down under his trousers into his crotch. He knew very well why he had endangered himself deliberately. It was more than friendship. It was the terrible need for absolution.

  Curiously, despite the pain, there was tranquility in him. Paying the high price of expunging some of his guilt brought a light-headed feeling of release; freedom. For a moment a strange parody of his old, shining smile wrenched his mouth.

  Harsh voices sounded as the flatboat men rushed by him across the roof:

  “You all right, George?”

  “Who’d you catch? Who fired?”

  “Damn half-breed, looks like—”

  Clear and strong above the clamor, Judson heard George’s voice:

  “See to Fletcher there. He took the Indian’s ball.”

  George flung the captive into the hands of others as the lanterns tossed grotesque shadows back and forth across the swaying roof. In the pen area of a nearby boat, frightened sheep bleated louder than ever, quickly joined by squealing pigs, then a wailing infant.

  George rushed to the men gathering around Judson, pushed them aside as Judson lowered himself clumsily to the
roof. Breathing seemed difficult. The initial violent pain in his middle had subsided, replaced by a steady ache. From the waist downward he was blood-soaked. He could feel the drenching along his thighs.

  George knelt beside him, face pale in the starlight. Several of the other men seized the Indian, pressed pistols and knives against his body, struck him in the face, barked questions:

  “You speak English?”

  “What’s your name, you red bastard?”

  “Where’d you come from?”

  “Say something or we’ll shoot your damn head off.”

  In a rasping voice, the Indian snarled a word:

  “Nen-nemki”

  About to speak to Judson, George Clark glanced back over his shoulder.

  “‘The Thunder.’ I’ve heard of him. Part English, part Shawnee—and one of Hamilton’s roving agents. He was after the orders in the strong box.”

  “Got ’em, too. Almost,” a man said, jerking the folded papers from the spy’s belt.

  Judson coughed. That worsened the ache in his belly. He rested his head against the flatboat roof, seeing George outlined against the moon. His friend’s hair glowed like silver fire, and his voice had an odd, strained quality:

  “You took that shot deliberately, Judson.”

  “You—” Speech required immense effort. “—you—would have gotten it—otherwise. And—”

  More coughing, this time with a phlegmy sound.

  “—it’s more important—you get—where you’re going than—that I go with you—”

  “Let’s have none of that kind of talk. We’ll carry you to the surgeon at the fort—”

  “What—whatever you say. Doubt—if it’s worth the trouble, though—”

  Over the muted conversation, rougher voices were continuing the interrogation of the half-breed. He fought in the grip of the men holding him, tried in vain to avoid the kicks to his groin, the yanks of his hair, the knifepoints raked along his exposed skin. George kept staring at Judson, stricken to silence.

  Nen-nemki started to scream at his tormentors, an outburst of badly pronounced English:

  “Goddamn long knives! Come just for pelts, there is land enough for all. But now, goddamn Kaintucks, you want the land too! Come with your women, come with your plows, come with your houses of log and steal our hunting fields, our deer forests, so we fight you for Great Father George! You can kill Nen-nemki—”

  “You bet your damn greased-up hide we will,” someone growled.

  The Shawnee paid no attention, his shrieks silencing the clamor of the growing crowd on the landing:

  “—but others will run the trails with guns from the Hair-Buyer, powder from the Hair-Buyer. You steal the land, we throw down the red war belt until we die or you die—!”

  Listening to the shriek over a steadily rising roar in his inner ear, Judson somehow felt sorry for the captive. Beneath the fury of the Shawnee’s ranting was an almost pathetic undertone of misery and loss. Judson grieved for the savages in that strange moment, because he understood why the Shawnee cried his outrage. As the tidewater planters had gradually taken the freedom of the blacks, the frontiersmen too were taking what was not theirs: the lush woods and meadows Judson had seen only through the descriptions in George’s letters; but on those lands, Nen-nemki’s forefathers had roamed for generations—

  Now George Clark and his boatloads of riflemen and pigs and children would ride the river westward. And if George’s great plan succeeded, the tribes would have even less land than they’d had before.

  Perhaps it had to be. But, oddly, there was little hate for the Shawnee in Judson, even though he knew the half-breed had mortally wounded him.

  Judson couldn’t hear the rest of Nen-nemki’s harangue. The roaring in his ears had grown too loud. He felt an overpowering desire to rest.

  Fingers touched his cheek. George’s—

  “We’ll fetch you to the surgeon now, Judson.”

  “Still think—it’s useless—” One hand struggled up to clasp his friend’s, because he was all at once cold and afraid. “I’m—only sorry—I’ll never—see Kentucky with you—”

  Sudden darkness descended.

  iv

  He woke on a straw pallet in a log-walled room at Fort Dunmore. George was there, and the post doctor as well.

  The doctor hesitated a long time and cleared his throat twice before saying softly that the pistol ball couldn’t be removed; that Judson was evidently bleeding internally; that an opium tincture had been forced down his throat to ease his pain; and that saving his life was next to impossible.

  Judson listened in a detached way, light-headed. When the doctor finished, Judson whispered that his wound didn’t hurt all that much, thanks to the tincture. He endured a fit of coughing, then asked George when he intended to head the flatboats down the Ohio. George said they would push off shortly after sunrise next day.

  “I—” Judson swallowed, then smiled, his sweat-slicked face shiny in the flickering light of the room’s one lantern of pierced tin. “—I’ll live—long enough to see that, anyway.”

  George and the doctor glanced at one another. Despite Judson’s feeble voice, he sounded certain.

  How remarkable, Judson thought. He did feel peaceful. As if a struggle had reached an end, and he could rest in good conscience.

  Before drifting off again, he mumbled a question about the Indian spy. George told him that Nen-nemki had confessed. The Shawnee had indeed been dispatched by Hamilton at Detroit. His mission was to watch for signs of any substantial military force being assembled at Pittsburgh.

  “I suppose Hamilton chose him because he’s half white, and therefore less suspect. Nen-nemki did make one most revealing statement, though I doubt he himself understood its significance.” George paused a moment. “Hamilton wants to know how many men might be coming to fortify and defend the Kentucky settlements.”

  “The Kentucky—? That—that means the British still haven’t guessed—”

  Judson stopped, realizing the doctor was still in the room. He started to mutter an apology, but George’s icy smile said it wasn’t necessary:

  “Our true purpose? No, evidently not.”

  Judson breathed one more word—all he could manage:

  “Good.”

  He remembered George staying with him a long time, hunched on an up-ended section of log with his hands locked around his ankles while his pale eyes watched with a mixture of guilt and regret. Judson woke occasionally, attempted to speak to the tall young man. He wanted to tell George to have neither regret nor guilt because he, Judson, had been the one with the tally of guilt that required erasing. That was one reason he’d lunged between George and the Shawnee with the pistol. One reason, but only one—

  He couldn’t muster enough strength to say what needed saying, though, and that saddened him. He floated in a foggy limbo where the pain was constant and, at times, close to unbearable. He made no outcry.

  In one of Judson’s wakeful intervals, one of George’s men—a member of the six from Semple’s Tavern—appeared to say that Nen-nemki had been hanged.

  v

  Barely awake, and having consciously willed himself to live the night, he asked to be carried to the shore in the morning sunshine.

  He sensed a sizable crowd around the litter on which he lay; he could hear their excited voices. Though he couldn’t feel it in his chilly hands, he knew he must be holding the small New Testament because he recalled asking for it.

  Gradually, he separated other sounds from the hubbub: an almost continual thud of boots on the landing; the sharp commands of George’s men making the flatboats ready for departure.

  Judson saw next to none of the actual activity. His eyes were slitted against the bright daylight. He felt the sun on his cheeks but it was curiously heatless. From his chest downward, his body seemed thick. He knew he was bandaged and doped with the surgeon’s tincture.

  Time dragged. At last, a woman near him, exclaimed, “Oh, they’re goin
g—!”

  A round of huzzahs split the early summer air. Judson cried feebly, “Lift me up! Please, someone lift me up—!”

  At last, he was heard. Hands grasped the end of the litter where his head lay, elevated it slowly. He was disappointed. He could see little more than a glare of sunlit water.

  He blinked and kept blinking until, finally, in a welter of confusing shapes and colors, he discerned a glowing patch of red.

  Red hair—

  George Clark.

  Where was he standing? On the roof of one of the flatboats? It must be so. The tall figure of his friend burned bright as an angel’s in the sunshine. And it was receding ever so slowly.

  “Man the sweep when we pick up the current!” a voice boomed in the distance.

  Suddenly Judson was more afraid than he had ever been in his life.

  His hands had turned to ice. He had to exert tremendous effort just to feel the grainy surface of the testament cover between his fingers.

  Shining and fierce and powerful, the figure of George Clark floated off in the sunshine. The cheering started again. Gone away, Judson thought. Gone away into the west I never saw. Gone away to—what were the names?

  Kaskaskia was one. He couldn’t recall the other.

  But he did remember that George had an important secret mission in the Northwest Territory. By paying the price of his guilt—a price that had needed paying for so many years—he had helped make George’s journey possible. It was a good thing to think about. One good thing to balance against all the bad—

  Faces drifted through his mind. A wrathful Angus. A disappointed Donald. Butchered Seth, and Alice, drowned. Vengeful Lottie. Sorrowing but stern Tom Jefferson—

  Peggy. Lovely Peggy.

  The memories disturbed his sleepy comfort. He’d brought others so much sorrow; done so much that was despicable. He had so few good memories. The best, perhaps, was having seen the nation born—

  And there was George. There, he could be proud. He’d helped one of Virginia’s finest captains set out to extend the boundaries of the new nation. That could be written down in the meager column opposite the much longer, blotted one.