American Dreams Trilogy

by Michael Phillips

  “Yes,” she said, “Indians who kill white people.”

  “But think of the opportunity! We’ll start a church… maybe several churches. Doesn’t the thought of being the first missionaries to enter a region and establish communication with the people of another race and tongue… doesn’t the thought of it thrill you!”

  What could she say without sounding like she didn’t want to further the gospel? But it was not her vision to do it in that way.

  “Just think, you can be the first woman to cross the Rockies into the Oregon Territory. You will be famous, known as the first woman missionary to the west of the American continent.”

  The prospect did not sound particularly appealing. “I care nothing about being famous,” said Carolyn. “I would rather stay alive.”

  Her father’s objections were stronger yet.

  “I am not convinced it is right,” he said. “There are many dangers.”

  “I know,” said young Randolph, “but we can meet them.”

  “I am not sure that the two of you are old enough or experienced enough for it yet. Why not wait a few years? Give God time to make his will clear to us all. You do not need to be the first.”

  “That is the thrilling part, to be the first, to go where no one has gone before and do what no one has done before. If we wait, we will be treading over ground that others have trod before us. It takes away the sense of adventure.”

  In the end Randolph’s vision and enthusiasm and assurances that God was leading carried the day. They were married, and within six months the former Carolyn Peters was on her way to join a handful of other intrepid pioneers and several wagons leaving Independence, Missouri, and striking out across the vast western prairie of North America.

  She had forebodings almost from the day they set out. It was hot and dry, their progress slow. No Indian attacks hampered them, but several storms did, as well as one flash flood, one broken axle, and a missed landmark that cost them a week in the wrong direction. Midway across the great plains, two wagons turned back, then in sight of the Platte River, another two. With only four wagons left, by then she was the only woman. If they were harassed by Indians now, there were too few of them to fight back. They would be massacred.

  It was not Indians that ended her husband’s adventure in tragedy, but a six-foot-long rattler snoozing in the shade beside a large rock next to the stream where they had paused to water the oxen and fill their containers. As Randolph jumped over the rock with the last of their canteens in hand, the startled snake struck with lightning speed, its fangs sinking deep into Randolph’s leg.

  His cry brought Carolyn running. She stared aghast to see him struggling to run toward her, dragging the hideous thing, still attached by its wicked teeth, behind him across the ground. Her screams brought the other men. They quickly drew pistols and blasted the rattler into half a dozen bloody pieces.

  Two carried her husband to the stream to cool the leg while another ran for a knife. Within minutes, they had cut a deep gash, sucked out what they could of the yellow venom, and applied a tourniquet at the knee. But it was not enough. The wound was deep, and his brief attempt to run for help had pumped the poison rapidly up the leg, past his knee and into his bloodstream. They carried him back to the wagon, where Carolyn attempted to make him comfortable.

  By evening, he was unconscious, his skin on fire.

  By morning she was a widow.

  The other men offered to help, but Carolyn buried her husband of a mere few months alone… then turned back. As she saw the last of the wagons, with their six men, disappearing west toward the Rockies, she stood a few minutes longer beside the lump in the ground where her husband lay. The cross made of two sticks bound together by a strand of leather hardly seemed a fitting tribute to a human life. She stared at it a moment, unseeing. Then she climbed back up onto the wagon, took the reins, slapped them and called to the two oxen, and set out at a painfully slow pace back toward the east.

  In truth, she never expected to survive the return journey. How could she find her way, find water, keep the oxen fed and healthy? All she needed to do was encounter one other human being, of any race—because out here what could it be but a man?—and she was sure to be raped or killed. Not only that, she might starve or die of thirst. She was only twenty-one… how could she possibly survive out here alone?

  But God had been with her more than she realized or acknowledged at the time, watching out for her, guiding her, protecting her, and making her path straight. She met a couple of groups going west. They refilled her water barrels and gave her fresh game. After a month of the loneliest days she had known before or since, and feeling the twinge of autumn in the air, she began recognizing signs that said she was approaching civilization again. Carolyn had often wished she could look back and know that in the spiritual desert of her despondency she and the Lord deepened the bonds between them. At the time she could not discern it. All she felt was heartache, grief, aloneness… and no sign of God anywhere.

  She reached Independence, with the kindly help of a number of people along the way, sold the team and wagon and everything else she possessed for whatever she could get for them, bought a one-way ticket back to Charleston, and by winter of the year when she and Randolph had expected to be in Oregon, she was passing out hymnals at her father’s church, a widow at the age of twenty-two.

  “Here we are!” said her husband’s voice, bringing Carolyn’s thoughts back to the present.

  She wiped a solitary tear from one eye and drew in a deep breath as they entered the long drive up a tree-lined incline to their home.

  Richmond led the horses along a winding drive through a sparsely clustered wood of beech, oak, and ash. The trees were far enough apart—indeed, the natural wood in whose midst the original plantation house had been set a century earlier had been expertly thinned, leaving only the stateliest of its specimens—such that it could not properly be called a forest in either size or density. Yet the trees which remained, surrounding the house on almost three sides, were huge, wide spreading, and magnificent. When walking in its midst, the enveloping canopy overhead, and the massive thick trunks below, sent one’s thoughts toward fairy tale woods of the black forest of Germany rather than a plantation of northern Virginia.

  It was this three acres of magnificently clustered giants which they simply called “the wood” and which offered a visitor his first impression of the grounds, from which Greenwood Acres derived its name. It had also been the inspiration for Richmond’s and Carolyn’s smaller and more ornamental arbor which stretched down the slope on the opposite side of the house. The two “woods”—the one natural, tall, and ancient, the other new and thus smaller of height and more planned and cultivated—bordered one another in such a way that one might easily walk between the two without being able to identify the exact point of transition between old and new, between arbor and wood.

  Not only were the gardens and arboretum of Greenwood of some renown, so were its stables. Everyone in the family was accomplished in the saddle. Besides having had a slave, formerly, now a hired black, to act as gardener to the estate, they also employed one of their former slaves, a man of about fifty-five, graying but sinewy, strong, and keen of mind, as full-time trainer, groom, and tack man all in one. Where this Alexander had come by his uncanny way with horses was a mystery. But no one harbored the slightest doubt that he possessed a sixth sense with the stately monarchs of the animal kingdom. A look of the eyes, a snap of the finger, a word, a gesture, was all he needed to communicate his will to any horse of any age, color, temperament, or breed. To see him whisper gently in an animal’s ear, one hand holding the long nosey head firm with leather halter, the other open to fleshly lips with a chunk of sugar or slice of apple, was to observe a genius at work. Much to the delight of the elder Davidson, Alexander seemed, whether consciously or unconsciously, to be passing on a portion of his gift to Seth.

  Richmond Davidson’s father and grandfather had made use of horses only as
the utilitarian tools of their trade, to pull their wagons and carriages and ploughs. The recent development of a riding and racing stable had originated not long after the first child of the present Davidsons had learned to walk. They found Cynthia outside standing close to an old horse named Barg who was hitched to the wagon of a visiting friend and tied to the rail in front of the house, its head bent low nuzzling Cynthia’s face. Carolyn had run outside in terror, until she realized that Cynthia was in no danger. The old horse seemed to recognize the gentle innocence of the toddler babbling away in its face. Carolyn stood a moment and watched in awe, all but certain that some indefinable bonds of creature-communication were passing between child and beast. When at length Cynthia turned to see her mother standing watching, the beaming smile of pleasure on her face brought tears to Carolyn’s eyes. A lifelong love had been born.

  Their first purchase of what might be called recreational horseflesh came with Cynthia’s fifth birthday—a chestnut Welsh Cob mare whom Cynthia called Cobby.

  Cynthia was an expert in a man’s saddle by eight, and more horses followed. They all took to riding together, and some breeding was the inevitable next step. As with most things Richmond Davidson undertook, he threw himself into it with wholehearted zeal and gusto, learning everything he could about various breeds, which were more suitable for what sorts of work and riding, what were their various temperaments, and which they should make the dominant focus of their energies at Greenwood. His father Grantham was pleased when he saw his son expanding the plantation’s resources.

  One thing led to another. Stables and a new barn were added dedicated to the horses, certain fields and pastures were either cleared or converted from other uses to more equine pursuits. Perhaps the greatest development of all was the discovery of Alexander’s special gift. It happened altogether by accident. One of a team of four pulling a wagon loaded high with cotton had suddenly gone wild for no apparent reason. The horse reared and bolted, frightening the other three. They darted out of control and upset the wagon, throwing off two slaves from its bench seat. The horses broke free and tore across the field. They circled in a wide arc, eventually slowing as they began to tire. All around was a commotion of ropes and whips and shouts, the senior Davidson yelling out orders to subdue the wild creatures.

  In the midst of the pandemonium, they saw the slave of Richmond’s father slowly walk out toward the team, heedless of the ears laying back and the glint of danger still in the eye of the instigator of the madness. He walked straight toward the horse, speaking in gentle, barely audible tones, putting his head up next to the wild creature and slowly stroking its nose. He found the yellow jacket that had caught under the harness, removed it, and soothed the spot with a bit of mud.

  A few minutes later he was leading a calm team back.

  “Dey be all right, Massa Dab’son,” said Alexander to Richmond’s father. “He jes’ tol’ me he gots him a pain where dat bee stung him, but he be fine by’n by. He jes’ need a little rest, dat’s all.”

  “Of course, of course, Alexander, whatever you say,” said Grantham Davidson.

  Alexander unhitched the team from one another, led away the red Bashkir, and moments later was refitting the harness as the horse stood by with the docility of a child.

  From that day on, Alexander had been given charge of any special equine needs about the place. More recently, in Richmond’s and Carolyn’s time, Alexander had seen to most of the breaking and training, whose secrets and mysteries Richmond would have given anything to learn but about which he still confessed himself mystified. When he tried to model his words and movements exactly after Alexander’s, horses reacted in a completely different way. The only other individual at Greenwood who possessed a similar knack for communicating in the invisible equine language of subtlety, nuance, and whispers of love and command, was Seth, who grew up loving the animals as much as had his sister.

  The carriage passed a large fenced corral on their right as it approached the house. A few horses cantered toward them as they passed.

  Carolyn again turned pensive as their stately red brick home drew into view amid the trees. There were moments she almost imagined that Greenwood was of another time and place when life moved slower and things were simpler than they seemed determined to become nowadays. At the Beaumont estate, she had felt an urgency and haste amid the crowd. Maybe that was why she left Greenwood as seldom as she did. The drive up through the trees toward the house represented more to her than merely coming home. It always meant a slow and peaceful return to the pastoral simplicity of the lives they had carved out for themselves.

  If they could not slow down the cadence of the world’s drumbeats, perhaps at least they could find a corner of that world to be a refuge where they could live their own lives. They had determined that serenity and calm would be the undergirding foundation of their existence. The only way to achieve this was to steadily refuse to allow the world’s pace to dictate their own. They hoped, in some small measure, to be able to offer that same serenity to any and all who chanced to come to Greenwood.

  At length they emerged from the trees. The house that came into view had been entirely constructed out of classic old orange terra cotta brick, with tile and slate roof. The architecture was German, unassuming yet stately in its own way, and typically Virginian at the same time, with tile and protruding ornamental brickwork bordering windows and doors. There were two full floors of living quarters, though a cellar as well as a mostly empty loft beneath the roof essentially made it a structure of four floors. Behind the main house and connected to it stretched what had once been a cattle barn but was now mostly used for the storage of machinery, wood, and for the drying of tobacco. Several other smaller barns stood parallel and at right angles with the main house, all also of orange brick and slate or tile roof.

  Thirty-four

  The train ride between the Virginia border and New York City was one Cecil Hirsch had made dozens of times once he got old enough that conductors didn’t put him off at the next stop after discovering he was just a kid traveling alone. In recent years he had even been able to afford a ticket.

  His low-level schemes had taken him from Atlanta to Boston and everywhere between. He knew all the cities, all the hotels, all the important sites, and enough gossip to get him by. But on this occasion his mind was filled with ambitions of a more political nature than usual. This was no hotel hustle, no nickel-and-dime con to impress tourists. This time he had the feeling he may have stumbled into the big time. He had gathered enough information to keep his devious brain busy for weeks. Whether any of it would do the senator any good, that he’d have to find out when he got to New York.

  Frankly, he could care less about politics, Hirsch thought to himself. Yet something about yesterday’s gala at the Beaumont estate sent his brain reeling in new directions. Suddenly it dawned on him that these people of the South would never relinquish what they believed in.

  That’s when the realization broke in on him—there was only one way this conflict could end.

  In war.

  As he sat looking out on the peaceful countryside of Pennsylvania, Cecil Hirsch knew that an armed conflict between the Northern and Southern states of the so-called United States of America was on its way. The handwriting on the wall was not so difficult to read.

  The thought, however, filled him with no angst, no sense of fear or dread. Rather, a light burned in his eyes and his mind spun with the possibilities. Conflict always brought shifts in power… and profits to those who knew how to exploit them. The greatest benefits would go to those who knew how the game was played. Wars not only meant death and destruction, wars created wealth and power. War meant opportunity.

  Furthermore, as he had moved about, drink in hand, smiling and donning his most affable nondescript tongue and gracious plantationesque demeanor, he had discovered another powerful secret—women rather than men could well be the key to the subterranean flow of clandestine information.

  As he had l
earned long ago on the streets of New York City, he could easily make a buck telling the wives of visiting businessmen or tourists what they wanted to hear. Yesterday, however, the opposite truth—and one potentially far more potent—had gradually come clear as he had watched and listened and glided in and out of small cliques of wives and belles and mothers and grandmothers of all ages. Opportunity might come to one who was a good listener even more than to one who merely possessed the gift of interesting gab. By giving the wives of politicians and dignitaries the chance to say what they wanted to say, unseen vaults could be opened. Most of them were annoyed at their husbands—he could see it in their faces and mannerisms and the snide comments to one another about “the men”—for treating them like political and intellectual lightweights. They did not like being ignored.

  When another man showed a woman the courtesy and attention she felt was lacking from the man she slept with at night, she ate it up. When a decent-looking guy like himself turned on the charm, employing just the right flattering obsequiousness, it took very little to loosen a woman’s tongue. Best of all, no one ever knew—the woman herself least of all—that the lock had been picked and the informational vaults raided.

  Yesterday’s conversation with Lady Daphne Beaumont, for instance, had proved a veritable gold mine of tidbits about nearly everyone on the guest list, not to mention having secured him an introduction to her daughter.

  He had just been glancing about and had seen a familiar face. It took him a few seconds to place it, then he remembered—Boston… a journalist called Waters. He hadn’t expected to see anyone from the North, especially New England, and the fellow had looked at him a little too keenly. Where had they crossed paths before?

  Then a few yards away Hirsch had spotted the opportunity he had been waiting for. He moved in its direction.