“Your folks? Were they—?”
“We buried them yonder,” Eve said quietly. “They drowned together. Ma was no hand in the water, and pa wasn’t the sort to leave her. We found them snagged in the brush, a mite downstream.”
“If anybody had a straight ticket to heaven it would be them.” His eyes looked into hers. “Eve, I ain’t much on talkin’, nor am I any hand to court a woman, but all the way down here I been tellin’ myself that if I found you alive … Eve, will you go east with me?”
“No, Linus, I’m stayin’ right here. I’m not movin’ a foot, one way or the other. Ma and pa, they wanted a farm in the West, and this is as far as they got. Seems to me this is where the Lord intended them to be.” “Sam will need rest an’ care, Eve, an’ winter’s comin’ on. I mean there ain’t but a couple of months of time—less’n that—before snow flies. Winters here are tol’able hard.”
“I’m going to stay, Linus. I’m going to make my home right here.” “I don’t like to say it, you being bereft an’ all, but you ain’t makin’ much sense, Eve. I don’t need to tell you that.”
“Half the folks who come west don’t make much sense, Linus. You know it as well as I do.”
Linus looked at her for a long time, and then he looked up and studied his surroundings. Dense forest of huge trees stood about, and very little brush, for this was virgin forest that had never been cut off to give the brush a chance. But the meadow drew his attention as it had drawn Eve’s, and he stepped around her and strolled out through the trees to look at the meadow and the grassy bench that overlooked it. Yes, he decided reluctantly, it was a good place, a very good place.
That trickle of water running down from the bench meant there was a spring up there somewhere, and the stream in the meadow’s bottom was three to four feet wide and half that in depth. The grass was good, and judging by the grass and other vegetation, he knew the soil was rich.
He had noticed already, his hunter’s eye being quick to observe such things, the tracks and the droppings of deer. A bit earlier when coming downriver he had seen a black bear at the water’s edge. Oh, it was a game country, no mistaking that!
The river offered good transportation. From here a man could easily go downstream to the Mississippi with whatever he had to sell—furs and the like—and he could grow most of what the forest did not provide. A man could build a right nice house on that bench, using timber from the slope behind, and there was plenty of fuel for the winter in the deadfalls and such like that lay about. If a man looked spry he might even find stray cattle in the brush, for he had heard of westing pioneers losing their stock. “Eve,” he said when he again came back to her side, “you’re a strong-minded woman. I reckon I’ve seen the varmint for the last time.” He turned to the others. “You’re all welcome to stay on with us. This here will be your home as long as you want, and whenever you’re of a mind to come back. Sam, I’m thinking you’ll be wanting to go west, but you’d best stay on an’ get your strength back. Zeke, you’re welcome.”
He turned to Lilith and she drew back. “I’m goin’ east, Linus. I said it to them and I’ll say it to you. I don’t want to live on no farm.” “Why, that’s what I figured,” he replied mildly. “If you don’t feel you ought, you oughtn’t. But you’d best wait until I sell my furs. “Fixin’s … you’ll be needin’ some fixin’s. If a woman is goin’ east among proper folk, she’d best be dressed to meet it. Without folks knowin’ you, they set store by the way you look. And then I figure you’ll make out if you have one of those there accordions like you had.”
He took out his pipe and filled it carefully. “When I sell my furs I’ll see you’re fixed up proper, with some money to bide you. After that, it will be up to you.”
Lilith started to speak, then her eyes filled with tears and, turning, she fled toward the riverbank.
“Eve, if we’re fixin’ to stay, we’d best pick a site for a house. You boys come along. We’ll be needin’ advice, more’n likely.” Together, they walked up the slope to the bench where the house would stand. The meadows would lie before them, and on their right would be the river where they could watch the boats go by.
“I figured the kitchen about there,” Linus suggested. “If a woman has something to watch, she doesn’t feel so closed in, like. And there you can see the boats. Time goes on, they’ll be plentiful.”
He turned to Sam. “Even if you’re not going to stay, you’d best stake out some land next to mine. I can farm it, and if you never come back, I’ll have it. If you do, it will be yours. Always warms a man to feel he owns himself some land, somewheres.”
He looked toward the river. They would have their own landing, of course.
Part 2—THE PLAINS
The distances were immeasurable, the difficulties uncountable, but hundreds of men and women with white-topped prairie schooners came in plodding, dogged streams. This was a land of peril, thundering herds of buffalo, savage red riders who struck and slew and fled to turn and strike mercilessly again. This was a land whose asking price was blood and raw, unbeatable courage…
Chapter 7
Cleve van Valen paused on the corner and glanced distastefully at the river of mud that separated him from the lush confines of the Planters’ Hotel and its boasted 215 rooms and “the largest ballroom west of the Alleghenies.” He was not planning to dispute their claim. All he wanted was to get across the street without ruining the polish on his elegant Paris-made boots or spattering the fine broadcloth suit, tailored in New Orleans. The truth of the matter was that Cleve van Valen was riding a streak of bad luck at the tables and elsewhere, and he knew enough of gambling to know any man was a loser who played when he had to win.
The run of bad luck was no new thing, for it actually had begun, he decided bitterly, almost fifteen years ago when his father dropped dead of a heart attack while Cleve had been taking the Grand Tour of Europe. Rushing home as swiftly as the sea would permit, he found he had been less swift than the vultures, for in the interim his father’s estate had mysteriously vanished. Scarcely twenty-one, and without business experience, he listened to the glib explanations of his father’s associates and knew they lied … but they had covered their actions very well.
They showed him notes signed by his father that he knew were forgeries, but he had no evidence, and the men who had defrauded him were prominent in business and social circles. He had no evidence, and what little sympathy there was for him was lost when he called John Norman Black a liar and a thief. Black challenged him, making a great show of regret at the necessity. A skilled duelist and a noted pistol shot, Black assured all who knew him that the duel had been forced on him, and the last thing he wanted was a duel with the son of his former partner.
Yet on the field of honor, when they stood briefly back to back and out of earshot of the others, Black spoke over his shoulder. “Had your father not dropped dead, I should have killed him, for I did rob him and he discovered it. I shall now kill you.”
Perhaps he hoped to make Cleve angry enough to be careless. Perhaps he merely wished to twist the knife in the wound. John Norman Black was a dead shot, and unworried. He took the required paces and turned, bringing his pistol down on the target.
Cleve van Valen had never fought a duel nor fired a pistol in anger, yet there was nothing wrong with his reflexes. Instead of bringing his pistol down in the usual way, taking careful aim, he had simply turned and fired. Black’s pistol exploded harmlessly in the air, and he fell, shot through the heart. Feeling was against Cleve. All believed he had made wild, unreasonable accusations against a reputable citizen, and that he had been a hot-headed fool to challenge him. All agreed he had been astonishingly lucky to kill such a man. Without friends, the estate now far removed from him, he had nothing to gain by remaining in Maryland. So he started west, following the Natchez Trace. He had neither profession nor trade. The business education which his father planned to give him on the job had gone glimmering. The one thing at which he possessed a degree of skill was cards. He had a natural card sense, a good memory, and he played well.