They made only fifteen miles the first day, slowed by mud, and by neighbors who came down to the road to say farewell. As the evening grew gray, they reached a familiar zigzag fence of split rails and soon turned up the road to the home of George Rogers. Quarters had already been created for the mud-caked travelers, in Joe’s empty room and the upstairs ballroom, and the servants were bedded in the old slave quarters where Governor Hamilton and his fellow prisoners had been kept, so long ago. Johnny Rogers was here, handsome, and still unmarried, helping his father run the plantation and his building trade.
George Rogers was sixty-two now, totally white-headed but still ruddy-faced and vigorous. In candlelight at the late meal he mentioned, in his grace, his nephew Dickie, asking for his safety, and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that George Rogers was remembering the years when his son Joseph’s fate had been just such a mystery. Both of them had been lost by following George’s dream, but George Rogers did not say that. Even after all that had happened, George was still his favorite nephew. That Joe had died in his arms, reunited at last with his own race, had made that bond of uncle and nephew even more profound.
A celebration of John and Ann Rogers Clark’s birthdays was observed at the meal. He was sixty and she was fifty. George Rogers talked wistfully with her for a while about the mischiefs of their childhood, and though the Clark girls were heavy-lidded from the strain of the day’s travel, they came very much to life, as children do when treated to anecdotes of a parent ’s youthful aberrations. “Why!” George Rogers exclaimed in mock astonishment, “d’you mean to say, Sister, that you’ve never told them that you were a mite shy o’ being an angel?”
“I was some’at closer to that ideal than you were, Brother George, and I’ll remind ye that when you point a finger at another, you’re pointing three at yourself. Go on any more and I might be compelled to reveal what I know about a certain blazing barn.” And now his own sons and daughters gaped at him.
George Rogers puckered his mouth, and after a while he said, “It grieves me to see ye go so far away to live, Sister. But seeing what sland’rous memoirs my sons and daughters might ha’ been exposed to, I reckon seven hundred miles might be just about comfortable.”
And they embraced each other, laughing with tears in their eyes.
THEY HAD HARNESSED THE WAGON TEAMS AND WERE ON the road by dawn. The rain had continued throughout the night, soaking the countryside. The road now was like a creek of clay soup. The air was chillier; breath condensed visibly.
York drove the second wagon this morning. Young William had saddled his bay and he ranged around like a scout, advising of the condition of the road ahead, which was always bad, and dismounting frequently to help pry a swamped wagon out of a rut or a fast-running ford. He had lost another hat, and his red hair was lank with rain.
They passed through Fredericksburg and crossed the Rappahannock early in the afternoon, stopping for nothing, as they intended to reach Gunston Hall by evening if they could possibly make the distance. They had written ahead to old George Mason about their departure for the West, and he had sent an express back down, inviting them to lay over at Gunston Hall at least one night. He had greetings and messages, he said, for George.
Above Fredericksburg they found the road much improved, some of it having been topped with gravel, some of it with logs. Late afternoon found them in Prince William County. John Clark hailed his son. “Billy, ride on ahead and announce us to Colonel Mason, so’s we’ll not surprise the good gent. Here. Take my pistols.”
William looked as if nothing could please him more than to run afoul of some highwayman who’d test his mettle. But as he started to gallop ahead, his mother called him. He wheeled and came back. “Billy,” she said, “ha’ ye not a lick o’ sense? Put on a hat, and by heaven, don’t you lose this’n.”
Momentarily a boy again, he went back among the wagons and emerged with his prize fur cap on his head. It was one he’d made himself from a muskrat he’d trapped.
“All right, then,” she said. “I know that’s one ye’ll not lose. Y’re off now, and Godspeed.”
He thundered away, his horse’s hoofs flinging mud, and vanished into the woods ahead. He was a man again.
THE WAGONS ROLLED UP THE DRIVEWAY OF GUNSTON HALL in twilight, between giant elms and stretches of level, cropped lawn. Here was the field where George had run and jumped and ridden and won wrestling and foot-racing medals in those carefree days before the war. Under each tree lay a carpet of yellow leaves. Light glowed in the downstairs windows. The house was of brick with four tall chimneys, one of the finest mansions on the Potomac. It was cozy with firelight and candles inside. George Mason, portly and round-faced, sat in the embrace of a scarlet, wing-backed Chippendale chair with his foot up on a gout stool. He groaned and his breath wheezed whenever he reached to shake a hand, but he was cheerful and his eyes twinkled as he apologized for being unable to rise. John Clark sat in a black leather armchair across the hearth from Mr. Mason; Edmund sat reverently next to the oak writing table upon which, he knew, Mason had composed the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the Virginia Constitution. Colonel Mason had come to be known as “the pen of the Revolution.”
“Your son William,” Mason said warmly. “I see George stamped all over him. Such a vigor! An Olympian, that George!”
“Billy’s made right on his pattern,” agreed John Clark. “A bit more amiable, perhaps, without that temper George had.”
“No better a scholar, though,” Edmund remarked, winking at William. A chuckle went around the room. William grinned. Any comparison was fine with him.
“Well, there are kinds of scholars,” said Mason. “Some who can prove beyond question how a ghost might pass through a needle’s eye, others who understand our present world and know how to make things work in it. George was that latter kind. It matters not that he doesn’t spell a word twice the same way; he makes words move men, and farther than they’ve ever moved before, at that.” John Clark was beaming at this tribute to his son from the great Virginian.
“But even more,” Mason went on, “eloquence by deed. No man I know of, nay, even Washington, ever made a finer example for men to copy.” He paused then and looked thoughtfully, rather sadly, at John Clark, but said nothing more for the moment.
After dinner, George Mason made a present to the Clark family of a fine inlaid backgammon board. And, while Mrs. Clark and her children hovered over it and began playing on it against each other, the host got himself and John Clark off into the library for a glass of brandy, pipes, and a few confidential words. John Clark could see that a matter of some delicacy was about to be broached, as Mason was grave and awkward. At last a question came forth.
“Tell me. Does your son George, ah, like liquor?”
At first John Clark presumed that Mason was merely thinking of sending George, perhaps, a keg of good brandy as a gift. “Why,” he replied, “I don’t know many a Virginian who doesn’t. Look at ourselves.” He raised his glass and smiled, adding, “And from what I’ve heard, there are even fewer Kentuckians who don’t.”
“But I mean to say, sir, is he, ah, temperate?”
“Why, I daresay as temperate as either of us, sir. Why do you ask me that?”
Mason shifted heavily in the chair and gazed into the fire as he replied.
“Sir, as you must know, seats of government are like laundry rooms, for rumor and gossip. And political men are worse than laundresses. If one must absent himself from a room, he may be certain that he will be the subject of calumny from the moment the door closes behind him. Your son George, as you know, is an important man who, being beyond the mountains, is forever out of the room, so to speak.”
John Clark flushed with indignation. “By heaven! Who dares? Why, praise is all I hear of ’im!”
“Yes, yes. Yes. But you, sir, do not frequent the seat of government, where every utterance is calculated riot to express truth but to advance him who utters it.”
John Clark
’s lips were thin and hard. “Then mayhaps I should frequent the seat of government now and then, and grab someone by the scruff when I overhear a lie. Come, now, Dr. Mason. I sh’d like to know who ’tis that says such things.” His voice had been rising, and George Mason made a calming motion with one hand, glancing toward the library door, beyond which the Clarks could be heard at their cheerful game.
“Sir, I’d not name names, for I don’t like to create enmities. I’ll only say this, that the rumor first appeared in the war’s last days. You’ll recall there were some militia expeditions from eastern Kentucky that were very ill-conducted.”
“Blue Licks?”
“Aye, among others. Well, sir, my guess was that certain county officers, wanting to make it seem George’s fault—”
“But he was a hundred miles from Blue Licks at the time of that debacle!”
“Nevertheless. Governor Harrison chose to believe certain persons, who insinuated George was incapable because of the habit.”
“He has no such habit! And the governor believed that?”
“Eventually—belatedly—he investigated and found out it wasn’t so.”
John Clark was almost grinding his teeth. “George saved that country! He shouldn’t have an enemy in it!”
“You don’t know how small men can become until you give them a political place. Now that the Kentucky land is divided into three counties, there are factions, you know. Lincoln and Fayette counties feel they give more than their due share of men and provision for protecting the country. They resent it that Jefferson County needs more protecting. And George, of course, bases himself in Jefferson County.”
“If these be county lieutenants you speak of, then the snake I smell in the brushpile is Arthur Campbell. Long Jaw. I know how he and George are about each other.”
Mason shrugged. “As I say, I speak no names. I just hope George understands that he does have jealous enemies. And rumors of that sort are never quite forgotten. I am as solicitous of your son’s reputation perhaps as you are. Any time I hear such an allegation, you may be sure, I say what I can to scotch it.”
THE MUD OF THE ROAD HAD FROZEN. THE WAGON WHEELS, which had been sinking out of sight at the start of the journey, now banged and creaked and threatened to break as the vehicles lurched through the deep, rock-hard wheel ruts. The girls wailed as trunks and bundles slid and toppled against them, had to be righted, then tumbled again.
The sleet had turned to a fine, stinging snow as they had entered the Allegheny foothills two days ago; it blew in swirls over the new-fallen brown leaves in the mountainside forests, and in one end and out the other of the wagon canopies. The girls were wrapped in blankets like Indians. Noses grew red and feet numb. Cold-stiffened fingers were painfully stove against hard falling objects time and again. “Eddie,” called Fanny, “can’t we just stop at somebody’s house and wait for better weather?”
“Nay, little sister,” he called over his shoulder. “Winter won’t wait. Got to cross this pass ere it’s snowed shut. And get down the Monongahela ere she freezes over. Winter won’t wait, sister, even for us!”
The blizzard hit them just as they reached the top of the pass and started easing down the westering road toward the Monongahela. One minute they were looking at the iron-gray, snowless mountains rising into the overcast on either side of them; the next minute everything was blanked by a whirling white veil of driven snow.
“Whoa up!” John Clark roared back to the other wagons, and hauled back on the reins. In a moment William appeared on the ground beside him, squinting. There were snowflakes sticking to his fur hat and his eyelashes.
“Hey, Pa! I like t’ drove plumb into th’ back o’ your wagon! All’s I could see o’ my own team was their rumps!” He was shouting into the gale. If he was worried, he was hiding it behind a happy mask.
Edmund materialized out of the whiteness. His head was bent forward and he was holding his hat on as he came up. “I doubt we’ll outrun this winter, after all!” he shouted.
“Shelter,” John Clark yelled. His hat blew off his head and tumbled back into the wagon, where some quick black hand caught it. “Know of any shelter close by?”
“Empty cabin, but it’s a good mile down,” Edmund yelled.
“Can we get there?”
“Grace o’ God! Only if these wagons don’t slide off th’ mountain! Only if we can see it when we reach it!” Edmund sounded very worried. He had been through this pass before, going to and from the frontier, but never before in a snowgale, burdened with his loved ones and all their belongings.
“Dast we stay here?” John Clark shouted into the wind.
“May have no choice,” Edmund cried. “But I fear we’d perish sure. I … I maybe could go down, look for that cabin, mark a way …” He sounded dubious. And his father was faltering, in the face of the two apparently hopeless choices. “It’s sure we can’t turn around, Lord help us.”
John Clark would always get around to bringing in the Lord when things were tight, but not usually so quickly. Young William noticed this. And he noticed that anxious female voices were coming from back in the wagons and the snow was deepening while the two older men hesitated. He was the youngest male Clark and he fully respected his father and brothers. But sometimes, it seemed to him, he saw certainties quicker than most grown men did.
“I say this,” he spoke up, wrinkling his freckled nose and trying to blink snowflakes out of his lashes. “I sure wouldn’t split up the family in a blind place like this!” They looked at him, as if eager for advice even from a boy. He pointed to the lead horse of his father’s team. “I’m good with Flag there. I’ll walk and lead. I can keep the road, on foot. And cabins aren’t all that hard t’ find, either. How say ’ee, we stay in a bunch and go ahead down?”
They had nothing better to advise; the boy found himself in charge. He grasped Flag’s bridle and started, straining to see into the whirling whiteness. York drove the second wagon. William let his feet do the ground-seeing that his eyes couldn’t. When his one leg or the other would plunge down thigh-deep into the snow, chances were good that he had stepped into one of the wheel ruts and was still on the road. A few seconds’ groping would confirm that.
And thus, a cautious and suspenseful yard at a time, with twilight turning the white to gray, voices calling questions or encouragements through the blindness, the three wagons came down from the top of the pass. And before nightfall, William sensed, more than saw, a squarish form off to his left.
They had crept four hours since the blizzard started. But without a mishap, William had brought them to the cabin.
WIND WAILED AROUND THE EAVES. THE WALLS OF THE abandoned cabin had large gaps where chinking had fallen out but these gaps had been stuffed with anything available—extra clothing, shoes and hats, leaves and straw raked up from the cabin floor—and baggage had been stacked around the walls almost to the ceiling, so the cabin was snug. The entire floor was covered by people rolled in blankets and quilts, snoring, sometimes turning over with groans of discomfort. It was some indefinite hour after midnight, and Ann Rogers Clark had been awakened by the aches in her right hip and shoulder. Slowly, to avoid disturbing her husband, she eased herself over onto her left side. John stirred slightly and snorted but did not wake up.
At the end of the cabin, the ceiling was yellow with light from the hearth fire. She could smell woodsmoke and tobacco.
She saw one figure sitting up by the fire. It was William, smoking a pipe, staring into the blaze, his profile limned with yellow light.
Ann Rogers Clark looked at her youngest son and wondered what their plight might have been by now if he had not done what he did in the blizzard.
All froze to death, we’d be, as like as not, she thought. Or rolled down the mountain.
She watched William turn his face away from the fire and look in her direction, at all the sleeping people, the people of his family and their Negroes. She couldn’t see his face now that it was turned toward the dar
kness, but she could see the firelight outlining his red hair, and it could have been George some eighteen years ago when he was that age. William looked into the darkness for a minute or two, not knowing his mother was looking at him and thinking these things about him. Then he bent down and she heard him beating the dottle out of his pipe, and then she saw him stand up. She watched him swing a cloak over his shoulders and put on his fur cap and move silently as an Indian to the door. There was a momentary rise in the noise of the wind, and an eddy of cold air.
She was back to sleep when he came in from checking the horses.
TWO FEET OF SNOW LAY ON THE MOUNTAINSIDES FOR three days after the blizzard had passed, and the Clarks had no choice but to remain in the cabin until a melt. They were well provisioned and wanted nothing but space. There were fifteen people, including the Negroes, and the cabin was no more than twenty feet square. The air was close and odorous and full of “excuse mes” whenever anyone moved. Elizabeth and Fanny and Lucy crowded in a corner, playing backgammon or reading. There were bags of wheat and barley and corn, and a steel grain grinder, so Old Rose could bake fresh bread. There was salt pork from a small keg. There were turnips. On the second day Edmund and William went out in separate directions and each killed a deer. William spent much of his time outdoors, roaming the heights and the steepnesses with York. The young Negro was strong but rotund, and was forever panting and calling after his master to slow down please.
William knew almost every living thing in the wilds and had been trying for years, diligently but without much success, to teach York to identify useful trees and plants.
“Name me that one, York,” he’d say, standing in knee-deep snow and pointing.
“Mast’ Billy,” York would say plaintively, “I can’t tell ’em without they leaves, I told you that already.”