The Seekers by John Jakes
The Seekers
The Kent Family Chronicles (Book Three)
John Jakes
For my daughter Ellen
CONTENTS
Introduction:
The Author as (Bad?) Actor
The Kent Family
Book One: Kent and Son
Chapter I Battle Morning
Chapter II The Charge
Chapter III Clouds at Homecoming
Chapter IV The Storm Breaks
Chapter V “Scenes of Life Among the Mighty”
Chapter VI Wedding Night
Chapter VII Wagon Road
Chapter VIII Ark to the Wilderness
Book Two: The Enemy Land
Chapter I The Cabin
Chapter II Old Ghosts and New Beginnings
Chapter III The Burning
Chapter IV Problems of a Modernist
Chapter V The Mark
Chapter VI Blood
Book Three: Voices of War
Chapter I Jared
Chapter II A Mackerel by Moonlight
Chapter III The Frigate
Chapter IV The Devil’s Companion
Chapter V “Her Sides Are Made of Iron!”
Chapter VI Heritage
Book Four: Cards of Fate
Chapter I Mr. Piggott
Chapter II Act of Vengeance
Chapter III Act of Murder
Chapter IV Ordeal
Chapter V Reverend Blackthorn
Chapter VI Judge Jackson
Chapter VII Pursuit to St. Louis
Chapter VIII The Windigo
Chapter IX “I Will Seek That Which Was Lost”
Epilogue In the Tepee of the Dog Soldier
A Biography of John Jakes
Introduction:
The Author as (Bad?) Actor
TOWARD THE END OF this, the third novel of The Kent Family Chronicles, you’ll encounter an amoral character named Elphinstone, attorney for the wicked Hamilton Stovall. When the novel went before the camera as a miniseries at Universal Studios, I visited the set for a few days. The producer, Bob Cinader, knew of my intermittent interest in acting, and one Thursday afternoon he suggested I play Elphinstone in a scene to be shot the following Monday.
One scene—seven short speeches—a chance to appear with two famous actors, George Hamilton, playing Stovall, and the late Ross Martin, playing the shop foreman of the family printing house, Kent and Son—how much persuasion did it require? Just about none.
On Friday, I met with a person in the Universal casting department in the Black Tower. He went over my “deal”—the financial arrangements. I hardly remember what was said; I could only think about the scene, in which I had to fall to the floor after Stovall shot me, for his own nefarious reasons. I didn’t know how to take a dive, at least not gracefully. I spent most of the weekend in a suite at the Beverly Wilshire, practicing that fall while my wife, Rachel, critiqued my efforts. Memorizing the lines was the least of it.
Monday dawned. I reported early for makeup and costume, as the call sheet demanded. I paced up and down on the back lot all day—the scene was delayed until Tuesday morning. When it was finally ready to go, the director, an elegant Englishman named Sidney Hayers, stood back with arms folded, looking more than a little dubious.
Sidney gave me not one word of direction. Consequently I overacted, punching the lines much too hard, as though I were in a stage play in a 1200-seat house with two balconies. The fall didn’t go badly—I eased into it by grasping and sliding down a handy pillar. Hamilton/Stovall discovered I was still alive, smothered me with his handkerchief, and I finally died.
Afterward, both George Hamilton and Ross Martin were generous with their compliments. I particularly remember Ross Martin smiling and saying, “Good job. You stay out of my business, I’ll stay out of yours.”
When I saw my scene in the finished picture, I cringed. I’ve since run the show a few times and graded the performance slightly better. You can judge for yourself if you wish: the Universal home-video version is still available.
It was a giddy experience, growing out of the enormous success the Kent novels were already experiencing. But it convinced me that my place was in front of the typewriter, not in front of the camera, and there I’ve stayed ever since.
I thank all my good friends at Penguin Group (USA) Inc. for sprucing up the Kent Family for public view—and, I hope, your approval—in these new editions. Thank heavens I don’t have to solicit a vote of approval for my acting.
—John Jakes
Hilton Head Island,
South Carolina
“Ask these Pilgrims what they expect when they git to Kentuckey the answer is Land, have you any. No, but I expect I can git it. have you any thing to pay for land, No. did you ever see the Country. No but Every Body says its good land…
“Here is hundreds Travelling hundreds Of Miles, they Know not for what Nor Whither, except its to Kentuckey, passing land almost as good and easy obtained, the Proprietors of which would gladly give on any terms but it will not do…its not the Promised Land its not the goodly inheratence the Land of Milk and Honey.”
1796:
Moses Austin,
founder of Texas,
writing of a journey
from Wythe County, Virginia,
to Louisiana Territory.
“I of course expected to find beaver, which with us hunters is a primary object, but I was also led on by the love of novelty common to all, which is much increased by the pursuit of its gratification…”
1827:
the journal of
Jedediah Smith,
mountain man.
* Book One *
Kent and Son
Chapter I
Battle Morning
i
ABOUT FOUR O’CLOCK ABRAHAM KENT woke from a fitful sleep and realized he couldn’t rest again until the day’s action was concluded, in the Legion’s favor or otherwise.
His heart beat rapidly as he lay sweating in the tiny tent. He heard muted voices outside, saw a play of flame and shadow on the tent wall. Campfires, burning brightly in the sweltering dark. No attempt had been made to conceal the presence of three thousand men on the north bank of the Maumee River. The Indians already knew that the general who commanded the army of the Fifteen Fires had arrived, and meant to fight. The only question was when.
Abraham had learned the answer to that the preceding evening. Sitting his mare in formation, he’d listened to the reading of the general order that announced a march at daybreak. Men cheered—principally some of the less disciplined Kentucky mounted militia, whose ranks numbered close to fifteen hundred.
On hearing the order, Abraham Kent felt both relief and sharp fear. Relief came from knowing that nearly two years of preparation, marching, fort-building in the wilderness of the Northwest Territory was finally reaching a climax. The general had repeatedly sent messages to the tribes, urging peace and conciliation even as he drove his Legion of the United States deeper into the lands north of the Ohio, constructing stockade after stockade en route. The reply of the tribes to the last message had been equivocal. So the general had let it be known he meant to attack.
Abraham Kent experienced fear on hearing the order because he’d never taken part in an actual engagement; not in all the twenty-four months since he’d arrived in Pittsburgh in response to the recruiting notices in Boston. Those notices declared that the United States was raising a formal army for the first time since the Revolution.
There had been engagements as the American army twisted back and forth across the hostile country, earning the general the name Blacksnake from the Indian spies who watched the army’s progress. Earlier in the summer, for example, a Shawnee war party had launched a ferocious attack
Today, the twentieth of August 1794, that situation was likely to change.
He crawled out of the tent, his linen shirt and trousers already plastered to his body. For a moment he wondered whether he would see the dawn of the twenty-first.
Scouts had brought reports into the camp beside the river that upwards of two thousand Indians had gathered some seven to ten miles northeast, near the rapids of the Maumee where the British had brazenly erected a fort close to McKee’s trading station. Warriors from all the major tribes had come: Blue Jacket’s Shawnee, including the young warrior with the fierce reputation, Tecumseh, who had led the unsuccessful attack on Fort Recovery. Little Turtle’s Miamis were there. The Wyandots under Tarhe the Crane. Captain Pipe’s Delawares. All united to resist the Americans who were bent on taking the Indians’ land—
Not a man in the Legion of the United States considered it anything but American land, of course. The vast expanse west of Pennsylvania, east of the Mississippi, north of the Ohio and south of the Lakes had been ceded to the new nation by Britain as part of the peace treaty of 1783. Yet in the following decade, the British continued to maintain their posts in the surrendered territory; kept urging the Indians to demand that the northern border of American expansion remain the Ohio River.
Small expeditionary forces had marched into the Northwest before, to try to settle matters. One, St. Clair’s, had met death along the bend of the Wabash tributary where Abraham’s commanding general had built Fort Recovery the preceding winter. Yawning and stretching as he walked past the men talking around the campfires, Abraham vividly recalled the stone gray winter’s day he had ridden as one of the eight hundred pressing forward to the site of St. Clair’s defeat—
In the first drifting snowflakes, he had seen skulls and bones protruding from the frozen ground. As the new fort rose on the site during the early months of 1794, men working the earth dug up and counted the human skulls. Over six hundred of them. Six hundred of General Dicky Butler’s soldiers, slaughtered—
Abraham ambled on through the steamy darkness, breathing the acrid wood smoke, listening to the strained, subdued conversations, seeing here and there a surreptitious jug passed, in violation of the general’s edict forbidding use of alcohol in camp or on the march. Nineteen years old, the young soldier had wide shoulders and a stocky build; heavy brows and the dark eyes of his parents. He’d also inherited their dark hair, which he never bothered to dress since dashing about on horseback loosened all the powder. He stood five feet ten inches, taller than his father.
Abraham passed the end of an earthwork. Behind it, the general had deposited the army’s baggage and wagons, in case they needed to be defended during a retreat. Outside a command tent Abraham saw aides conferring with Captain Zebulon Pike, who’d been put in charge of the rear position. He strode by the circle of lantern light, swatting mosquitoes that deviled his neck, and soon reached the picket lines where the dragoon horses fretted and stamped in the predawn heat.
A sentry thrust out his musket. “Who goes?”
“Cornet Kent. I want to see to my mount.”
The sentry saluted the junior officer, stood aside. Abraham ducked between two nervous stallions, found his mare at her tether, ran his hand down her neck, soothing her as if she were human.
“I hope they fed and watered you well, Sprite. You’ll need to be lively when the sun’s up. They say the Indians have taken positions among some fallen trees destroyed by a storm a long time ago. That’ll be hard ground for galloping and jumping, my girl—”
The mare nipped at his caressing hand, but not viciously. Abraham smiled. In two years, he and the mare assigned him at Cincinnati had established a bond between them; the kind of bond infantrymen and other, lesser orders of human beings could never comprehend. Like the other dragoon officers, Abraham talked to his horse frequently. He knew Sprite recognized his voice if not the sense of his words. Now he almost spoke his fear aloud to the animal, almost launched into a monologue concerning the special reason he was apprehensive about the coming battle. He had admitted the reason to few other human beings; he admitted it to himself only with some shame—
Oh, he was a good enough soldier, he supposed. But his motive for enlisting—for making the difficult overland journey to Pittsburgh—had not been purely patriotic. He had no desire for glory in battle, and hence feared combat perhaps more than some officers did—
Noticing the sentry watching him, Abraham kept it all to himself. After one more stroke of Sprite’s sweating neck, he turned and made for the river, feeling a steady pressure in his loins.
He was again thankful that his father’s business had prospered sufficiently to permit him to go riding on the Common on a fine hired mount when he was growing up. Abraham was likewise thankful that his stepmother had encouraged the lessons in horsemanship. Except for that, he would never have been accepted for the dragoons.
But astride Sprite, and commanded by an excellent officer—a captain with the peculiar name Robert MisCampbell—Abraham knew that in the coming battle, he would be less of a target than those in the four sublegions who advanced on foot with bayonet-tipped muskets. Whether the general’s combined infantry and cavalry stood a chance against the untrained but elusively swift tribesmen waiting somewhere up the Maumee, he couldn’t say. That made him even more glad that he was going into danger on an animal he loved and trusted.
A trampled patch of corn and the charred smell of a burned Indian lean-to told him he was nearing the shore. He smelled the wet loam of the bottoms, heard night birds crying among the rushes. The stars were lost in a humid haze. He unfastened the buttons of his trousers and started to urinate in the river.
While in this prosaic but somewhat restrictive position, he heard slow footsteps along the bank.
He turned his head, choked back an exclamation as he recognized the man limping out of the darkness, a rangy silhouette against the distant fires.
Faced with the choice of saluting or closing up his trousers, he decided on the latter. Only afterward did he whip up his right hand in the respectful gesture due the tall, somewhat rotund officer whose left boot and pants leg were almost entirely swathed in strips of flannel.
Major General Wayne—admiringly called Mad Anthony ever since his daring seizure of the British fort at Stony Point during the Revolution—rested a hand on the butt of one of the two pistols thrust into his belt and stared at Abraham Kent, whose face all at once felt hotter than ever.
ii
The general, appearing rather bedraggled in his old blue coat, leather sword belt and leg-bandages, smiled at last.
“Cornet Kent. Good evening to you. Good morning, rather.”
“Good morning, sir,” Abraham managed to say in a reasonably calm voice.
Wayne hobbled toward him; Abraham guessed the general must be close to fifty now. Supposedly his left leg still contained a piece of ball lodged there during the Virginia campaign at the close of the War for Independence. He had been called out of retirement to head the army sent west by President Washington to quell the Indian threat in the Northwest Territory once and for all.
Wayne’s men loved him; Abraham was no exception. The Indians dreaded him because it seemed that he was never off guard, never slept, knew everything that transpired for miles around whatever position he happened to be occupying.
In gentle reproof, Wayne said, “I urged my men to get as much sleep as possible, Cornet. All my men.”
“Yes, sir, but—well, sir, that’s hard, facing an engagement as we are—”
To Abraham’s relief, Wayne nodded. “As you can tell from my presence here, I understand perfectly. I hope our red adversaries aren’t resting. I know they’re not eating,” he added with a thin smile.
Abraham knew the meaning of Wayne’s last words, of course. The general’s stratagem had been the talk o
Via his scouts, Wayne had let slip word that he intended to fight, knowing full well that, by custom, the Indians would never eat on the morning of a battle. For that reason Wayne had carefully refrained from mentioning exactly when he intended to engage. Thus the enemy had probably taken little or no nourishment for almost forty-eight hours.
Wayne stumped closer. As always, the general’s limp reminded Abraham of his father’s, the result of a hit by a musket ball at the battle of Monmouth Court House. The general asked, “Did the last pouches of mail from Cincinnati bring any word of your father, Cornet?”
“Yes, sir, I had a letter. He’s recovered from the grippe that kept him in bed for a time. His business continues to do well.”
“Success evidently runs in the family. Captain MisCampbell informs me you’re an exemplary junior officer.”
“That’s good to hear, sir—thank you for telling me.”
Wayne had acknowledged his acquaintance with Abraham’s father when Abraham first reached the training camp at Legionville, down the Ohio from Pittsburgh. Part of Abraham’s reverence for the general was due to his father having fought beside Mad Anthony in the Revolution. During the retreat after the American defeat at Brandywine Creek, Philip Kent had joined the reckless young officer in a charge against some Hessians harrying the retreat route. And Philip often referred with pride to standing with Wayne a second time at Monmouth Court House.
Wayne stared at the dark-flowing river. “May I ask you a personal question, Cornet?”
“Of course, sir.”
“It comes to mind because you are an excellent officer, and because I remember your father so well. Do you intend to make the army a career?”
Abraham hesitated a moment, then decided to answer truthfully. “No, sir. I imagine I’ll go back to Boston when the campaign’s over.”
“Perhaps that will be accomplished by this time tomorrow. There is a very great deal at stake in the next few hours—”