Part 2 (2/2)
Later that same day his two sons met in the wainscoted room hallowed by their father's books and filled with his lingering spirit--a library noted in a land where books were still few enough to distinguish their owner.
Between them, even in this hour of common bereavement, stood a coolness, an embarra.s.sment which must be faced when two men, bound by blood, yet parted by an unconfessed feud, arrive at the parting of their ways.
Though he had been true to every requirement of honour and punctilio, John the elder had never entirely recovered from the wound he had suffered when Dorothy Calmer had chosen his younger brother Caleb instead of himself. He had indeed never quite been able to forgive it.
”So soon as my father has been laid to rest, I purpose to repair to Mount Vernon,” came the thoughtful words of the younger brother as their interview, which had been studiedly courteous but devoid of warmth ended, and the elder halted, turning on the threshold to listen.
”There was, as you may recall, a message in General Was.h.i.+ngton's letter to my father indicating that an enterprise of moment awaited my undertaking,” went on Caleb. ”I should be remiss if I failed of prompt response.”
Kentucky! Until the fever of war with Great Britain had heated man's blood to the exclusion of all else Virginia had rung with that name.
La Salle had ventured there in the century before, seeking a mythical river running west to China. Boone and the Long Hunters had trod the trails of mystery and brought back corroborative tales of wonder and Ophir richness.
Of these things, General Was.h.i.+ngton and Captain Caleb Parish were talking on a day when the summer afternoon held its breath in hot and fragrant stillness over the house at Mount Vernon.
On a map the general indicated the southward running ranges of the Alleghanies, and the hinterland of wilderness.
”Beyond that line,” he said, gravely, ”lies the future! Those who have already dared the western trails and struck their roots into the soil must not be deserted, sir. They are fiercely self-reliant and liberty-loving, but if they be not sustained we risk their loyalty and our back doors will be thrown open to defeat.”
Parish bowed. ”And I, sir,” he questioned, ”am to stand guard in these forests?”
George Was.h.i.+ngton swept out his hand in a gesture of reluctant affirmation.
”Behind the mountains our settlers face a long purgatory of peril and privation, Captain Parish,” came the sober response. ”Without powder, lead, and salt, they cannot live. The ways must be held open.
Communication must remain intact. Forts must be maintained--and the two paths are here--and here.”
His finger indicated the headwaters of the Ohio and the ink-marked spot where the steep ridges broke at c.u.mberland Gap.
Parish's eyes narrowed painfully as he stood looking over the stretches of Was.h.i.+ngton's estate. The vista typified many well-beloved things that he was being called upon to leave behind him--ordered acres, books, the human contacts of kindred a.s.sociation. It was when he thought of his young wife and his daughter that he flinched. 'Twould go hard with them, who had been gently nurtured.
”Do women and children go, too?” inquired Parish, brusquely.
”There are women and children there,” came the swift reply. ”We seek to lay foundations of permanence and without the family we build on quicksand.”
Endless barriers of wilderness peaks rose sheer and forbidding about a valley through which a narrow river flashed its thin loop of water. Down the steep slopes from a rain-darkened sky hung ragged fringes of cloud-streamer and fog-wraith.
Toward a settlement, somewhere westward through the forest, a drenched and travel-sore cortege was plodding outward. A handful of lean and briar-infested cattle stumbled in advance, yet themselves preceded by a vanguard of scouting riflemen, and back of the beef-animals came ponies, galled of wither and lean of rib under long-borne pack saddles.
Behind lay memories of hard and seemingly endless journeying, of alarms, of discouragement. Ahead lay a precarious future--and the wilderness.
The two Dorothys, Captain Caleb Parish's wife and daughter, were ending their journey on foot, for upon them lay the duties of example and _n.o.blesse oblige_--but the prideful tilt of their chins was maintained with an ache of effort, and when the cortege halted that the beasts might blow, Caleb Parish hastened back from his place at the front to his wife and daughter.
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