Follow the River Read online

  A Ballantine Book

  Published by The Random House Publishing Group

  Copyright © 1981 by James Alexander Thom

  Maps copyright © 1981 by Ron DiScenza

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  eISBN: 978-0-307-76311-2

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Author’s Note

  Other Books by This Author

  About the Author

  CHAPTER

  1

  Sunday, July 8, 1755

  She shivered, despite the heat of the hearth, and glanced again toward the sunny rectangle of the cabin door. No one was there, not a shadow. But she felt that same uneasiness that had returned to her several times this morning: a sense that if she had looked a second sooner there would have been a figure in the doorway.

  It was not the nature of Mary Draper Ingles to be afraid in the daytime. Sometimes in the deep wilderness nights, when the wolves wailed and the owls conspired high on the Blue Ridge east of the valley, when the dying fire made shapes move on the ceiling and the restless sleeping children rustled their corn-shuck mattresses, Mary Ingles would feel frightened. But seldom was she fearful in bright daylight like this, when the valley was familiar and peaceful and the locusts unreeled their eternal dry shrills under the summer sun.

  Mary turned back to the cookfire. Its heat baked her sweaty face. The little black iron stewpot with the rabbit in it was almost bubbling over now. She pulled it across the iron arm a little, moving it away from the hottest coals, so that the stew might simmer the afternoon away and be at its tenderest when William came back up from the fields. The old clock at the far end of the room ticked slowly.

  She brushed a strand of sweat-damp auburn hair back away from her cheek. She braced her palms on her knees to help lift her weight from the low puncheon stool and stood up, wheezing with the effort. Her swollen belly, firm and turgid with life, tugged down at all the strong young muscles of her torso. She smoothed the faded homespun cloth of her dress down over the mound and cupped her palms underneath, a caress and an appraisal. It would be happening any day now; she could feel that.

  She paused there, looking through the sunny doorway, out at the lush meadows, over the dark green treetops, toward the ranks of somber Allegheny mountains marching away to the west where no one except Indians lived.

  This little group of cabins at Draper’s Meadows was deeper into the mountains than any other white community in Virginia. It was the first settlement west of what her husband Will called the Allegheny “divide.” She and Will had been, indeed, the first white people wed on this wild side of the Blue Ridge. Five years ago, it had been: a pastoral wedding between the blue mountains with God seeming to breathe through the whole vast stillness of it. And they had lived prosperously and happily and in peace those five years. Their health was robust and both of their first two children had lived. The valley, fertile with limestone-rich soil where dense bluegrass grew and rippled, was irrigated by never-failing limestone springs, whose waters flowed down crystalline creeks into the lovely, twisting New River and thence out of their valley into the uncharted west. It was a place for health and high spirits, where one’s first look out the cabin door every morning made the heart swell up. So, surely her uneasiness of this morning would pass.

  Of course, Mary Ingles knew, a woman’s feelings are at their most unsettled, their most skittish, when she is full of the humors of childbearing. She tried to smile away her anxiety. Even William had made light of it this morning, as he often made light of women’s fears. This morning he had passed it off just that way, as the spookishness of a mother-to-be.

  “Must’ee go?” she had asked him after their Sunday morning prayers, when the valley had still been full of the shadow of the ridge. “I … I be afraid, a wee bit.”

  And William Ingles had hesitated here in this cabin door with his cradle scythe over one shoulder, a bag of hoecake and a watergourd over the other. He had never before heard Mary profess fear in the daytime. “Why afraid?” he had said then, with that joshing smile of his, looking down at her swollen middle. “When Tommy an’ Georgie come, y’ squzz ’em oot slick as a grape-pip. And your ma’s here to help. Bettie’s here, too, who wasna before. And if ’ee start birthin’, why, only send down for me, and y’ know I’ll come a-runnin’, Mary darlin’.”

  So she had smiled him away down toward the grainfield, that great, dear, strong, hairy man whom she loved till her heart ached with the sweetness of loving, that man who kept her from being as fearful as she might have been here in the wilds with a lesser man. She had not tried to explain to him this morning that it was not the birthing she feared. Nor, really, was it anything else she could name. She had stood in the doorway and watched him join her brother Johnny Draper at the edge of the meadow, strong Johnny with his own scythe over his shoulder, and they both had turned to wave back at her as they disappeared—seemed to sink—below the rippling grass at the brow of the meadow.

  They would have been working four hours in the barley by now, she reckoned—scarcely ever pausing, shirtless, pouring sweat, probably singing to give a cadence to the sweep of their scythes. She knew how they looked working because she had always worked beside them. This was the first year she had not helped with the harvest; her term was too close. But she could envision them as clearly as if she were down there. Those two were durable men and could work all day long, even in this July sun.

  Her eye somehow went to William’s long rifle, which lay across its two pegs on the far wall, beside the grandfather clock, a powder horn and bullet bag hanging under it, and again she felt the foreboding. Should not he have carried the gun down to the fields with him, as he had done in the first few years? Lately he had simply dismissed it as extra weight.

  The Indians who had passed up and down through Draper’s Meadows since their arrival here in 1748 had never annoyed them nor given them cause for alarm. Usually they were parties from north of the distant O-y-o River, going down to raid their enemies, the Catawbas, who lived farther south. For centuries they had used the New River as their war road through the mountains. They had caves in its cliffs and canoes secreted in its tributaries. But even in their war paint, they had always been friendly with this little vanguard of white families here in the valley. They would always drink spring water offered them in gourd dippers, smacking their lips and smiling, apparently trying to dispel any uneasiness their war-painted faces and their bristling weaponry mig
ht be causing. Sometimes they would take bread that was offered to them, eat it while nodding in appreciation, and then stand and raise their hands in a peaceful salute and continue down the ridges. And then the white people who had remained hidden inside the cabins with their flintlocks cocked, ready for the first unfriendly move, would ease forward the hammers of their guns and exhale in relief, hang up the guns and come out to resume their work or to watch the savages fade into the woods. Only twice had Indians caused any mischief in this valley: in 1749 when a band had raided the cabin of Adam Harmon to steal furs, and in 1753 when another party had stolen skins from George Hoopaugh and Jacob Harmon and killed their barking dogs. Those were old and negligible incidents. So William Ingles had got out of the habit of taking his gun with him to the fields. “More sensible, I’d say, to leave it here for your peace o’ mind,” he had joked to her once this summer.

  True, there was war in the land now, in distant places along the frontier, war against the French and their Indian allies. And once, a few months ago, a young Virginia lieutenant-colonel named Washington, a serious-looking giant of a fellow but a gentleman withal, had passed through this valley with a small escort of horsemen, talking to Colonel James Patton, the valley’s militia leader, about what was happening in the distant conflict. Colonel Washington had advised Patton to have his people on their guard for armed Indian bands with Frenchmen among them.

  But the people of Draper’s Meadows had seen no Frenchmen, and only friendly Indians; and the weeks had rolled on, and the plantings had been done; the crops had grown, and edibles from the woods had been gathered and preserved, and Bettie Draper’s infant son had learned to crawl, and Mary Ingles’ baby had made movements inside her; those were the main concerns of the people in this isolated valley where war surely had no reason to come. Their King was two thousand miles away in London Town and surely gave no more thought to these distant subjects of his than they gave to him. If he was at war with France, how could it affect them here in this valley His Majesty had never even heard of?

  Still, Mary would think now and then with dread about Indians. Her mother, Elenor Draper, was a widow because George Draper had failed to return from a hunting expedition ten years ago and was presumed to have fallen victim to Indians. And though Mary had never seen any Indian exhibit a hostile look or gesture in her life, their existence out there beyond the western mountains did nonetheless hang like a dark cloud on the horizon of her mind, the only thing that seemed likely ever to trouble this Eden folded between the mountain ranges.

  But now Mary was here on a peaceful summer Sunday, cooking for her beloved William, as on any day; in a moment she would take the family’s soiled clothes over to the spring under the big willow and wash them there in that delightful cool place where the water purled and gurgled and refreshed one’s soul as well as one’s heated body. Her sister-in-law was over there already—Mary could hear her slapping her family’s wet clothes against the rocks—and they would talk while they worked.

  Thanks be to heaven that Johnny found himself such a cheerful and pretty wife, Mary thought. Mary had come to love and admire Bettie Robertson Draper, in the year since Johnny had gone over the mountain and brought her back as his bride. Mary had been midwife for Johnny and Bettie’s firstborn, and that did make a bond between women.

  Aye, Mary thought, the dread now beginning to drift off of her soul as she tied the soiled clothes and a cake of tallow soap into a bundle, there’s nought to fear in this good place. Through a window she could hear the voices of her sons laughing and murmuring as they gathered berries in a nearby thicket with their grandmother. Aye, Mary felt, surely all’s well here.

  And so, swinging the bundle of clothes over her shoulder as easily as a man might, Mary went out the door of the cabin, preceded by her swollen belly into the sunny fresh air.

  The moment her gaze fell over the settlement, she realized that what she had been dreading was about to happen:

  Indians were running crouched and swift toward every cabin in the settlement.

  Shwop! Shwop! Shwop!

  Bettie Draper, kneeling on a flat rock beside the spring near her cabin, slapped her husband’s soapy shirt several times against the rock, then dipped it into the pool of cool water, held it there a moment, pulled it up and twisted it to wring the water out. She was in the shade of a big willow whose gnarled roots bulged out right over the spring. The constant shade and the delicate green ferns growing around the spring kept the place pleasant on the hottest days. Nearby, spread to dry over sunbaked rocks beyond the shade, more of her family’s laundry lay, creamy-white linen and faded gray homespun. She hummed as she worked, pausing now and then with an ear toward the house for sounds of her baby’s awakening. Her husband, Johnny, had built both a front door and a back door in their cabin, and when both doors were open, as now, the breeze up from the valley could flow through the house and the baby could nap comfortably in his hollowed-log cradle, not waking fitful and flushed and sweat-damp as he often did in the night when the doors were kept shut. It was so cool in the Draper cabin, in fact, that sometimes on the hot days Mary would bring her two-year-old boy Georgie over to nap there instead of in his own bed. “By heaven, Bettie,” Mary had said with a conspiratorial smile only yesterday, “one day after the harvest, you and I sh’ll take my Will from both sides at once, and ’suade that old hardhead t’ saw me oot a back-way just like’t.”

  Shwop! Shwop! Shwop! John’s spare pair of britches now. As usual with a button off one knee and a tear in the seat, she noticed. A hard-working and a hard-playing man he was, strong as a bull and just as heedless, and there was something to mend every week when he changed his clothes. But Bettie smiled. She rejoiced in any chance to do some little thing for him. Johnny was a prize of a man indeed.

  Now wringing out the britches, Bettie looked up and saw Casper Barrier, a neighbor, coming up toward the spring with two empty oaken pails dangling by ropes from a yoke across his shoulders. Casper was a widower, bald and lonely, and Bettie had observed that he would always drop whatever he was doing to come fetch his water when there was someone doing laundry at the spring. And he would strike up a chat, all innocent enough, and stay there wistful-eyed for as long as the hapless laundress would listen, talking about how good his wife had been to everyone, and about how he would never find as good a one to marry, so why even leave the valley to seek? Well, I won’t have much time t’ hear out Mr. Barrier’s woes today, Bettie thought, inspecting the tear in the britches. With mending to do and all … the Sabbath’s no day of rest when ye’ve a man to care for …

  When she looked up again, Casper Barrier was no longer walking toward the spring. He was lying face down on the footpath. A naked Indian, painted and shining in the sunlight, crouched over him, chopping into the back of his head. Casper’s bald scalp was bright with new blood. There were other Indians running down the slope from the path.

  A scream tore out of Bettie Draper’s throat. She jumped to her feet. By instinct she sprinted toward the cabin, to get to her sleeping baby. She screamed again and again as she ran, screams that were not coherent words because there were no words for this.

  In the corner of her eye she saw figures running as if to flank her, heard the slumping of their breath. She leaped with flying skirts upon the front-door threshold and into the cabin’s shadowy interior. She snatched her baby boy out of the cradle and ran straight out the back door. “PLEASE GOD!” she was screaming now. “HELP! MARY! ELLIE! INDIANS! THEY KILT CAS … OH GOD HELP!…”

  Colonel James Patton was sitting at a table inside the door of his cabin, writing a report to Colonel Washington—a report of nothing. The region, which he knew well because of his huge landholdings and his responsibility as militia chief, had lain in utter peace since Colonel Washington’s visit; there had not been a tremor of disturbance anywhere on this western side of the Blue Ridge. Colonel Patton was in fact just now trying to organize the early harvest rather than any sort of military readiness. He had just se
nt his nephew Bill Preston down Sinking Creek to Philip Lybrook’s house to ask him to come up and help with the barley cutting.

  James Patton leaned back in his chair and looked at the page upon which he had been writing. He put the quill in the ink bottle and twirled it there, resting his other hand on his thigh. White chin-whiskers hid his broad chest. His chair creaked under the weight of his powerful frame as he extended a leg straight out under the table. Sitting cramped him, and he hated anything—ledgers and letters—that took him off his horse or out of the fields or woods and made him have to fold himself up to fit furniture.

  On the table by his right hand lay a great antique weapon that he had kept with him ever since he had grown big enough to carry it. It was a claymore—a straight broadsword, as long as an ordinary man stood tall, and it weighed as much as an axe. It had been passed down through his family along with a legend that it had belonged to some ancestor who had been a Scottish Highland chieftain. Its hilt was made to be held by two hands, and an ordinary man needed two hands to wield it. But old James Patton, who was four inches over six feet tall, had always been able to swing it, with equal facility, by either hand, and could do so even now as a sixty-three-year-old widower. Though it was too precious to use as an everyday tool, James Patton had found occasion in camp or in the fields to lop down thick hardwood saplings or branches with this great weapon, usually in a single stroke.

  The dazzling doorway suddenly was darkened. At the same moment, a woman’s voice screamed outdoors. Colonel Patton looked up from his word gathering, and his heart leaped. Two painted Indians had entered, each with a raised tomahawk, and as James Patton grabbed the handle of his great sword, he saw others at the door.

  The colonel wasted no time getting free of the furniture. Rather, he exploded into a standing position, hurling the heavy table at the Indians with an upsweep of his left arm while the chair fell backward with a clatter behind him. The flying table slammed one of the braves back against the doorway. The second warrior had nimbly sidestepped, and with a gurgling yell he aimed a tomahawk blow at the old man’s forehead. But the broadsword swished, glittering, and the warrior felt a strange tug in his shoulder and saw his forearm fall to the floor, spurting dark blood. It was the last thing the warrior saw; the great sword whiffed again and his head rolled on the cabin floor.