Journey Home Chapter Fifteen

            Verity Moray Killmarin relaxed for the first time since the ragtag assembly of men had come pounding at the door.  In fact, for the first time since the door had opened to admit the natives who had turned out to belong to the tribe of Israel Boone.  It was an irony that had not been lost on her or her half-Cherokee father that Daniel Boone’s son had chosen to live as an Indian, when all of his own children had elected to live as whites.  Perhaps the time they had spent in England and Scotland had formed them so completely that they could not think of living as Indians. 

            Verity watched as the tall white-haired man stepped into the room to face the unruly crowd, rifle in hand and a lop-sided grin on his still handsome face.  She recognized him, of course, from long acquaintance as her father’s friend, Daniel Boone.  She didn’t have enough fingers and toes to count the tales her father had told her as a child of this tall frontiersman doing just what he was doing now – striding in at the last moment to save the day.  It was amazing that he could still do so at fourscore plus years.  It was amazing as well to see the looks on the faces of the younger men he faced down.  Though they were better armed and more than half drunk, they quickly grew sober.  The tall frontiersman commanded respect, and more than a modicum of fear.

            As Daniel Boone spoke, Verity turned to check on the Johnston girls – and found them gone.  Puzzled, she shifted toward the back of the room where they had been clustered, thinking perhaps they had become so frightened they were hiding under a table or behind the counter.  With a glance at her mother and Raeanne who seemed safe enough, she set to searching but came up empty-handed.

            It was then she felt the chill of night air on her skin.

            They had forgotten about the back door!  She had seen men bringing supplies through it the morning before.  How could they have forgotten to make certain it was secure?  Terrified that other men had taken advantage of their carelessness and abducted the children, Verity raced to the door to check it.  With a glance back at the main room, she put her hand to the latch and started to lift.

            Fingers unexpectedly caught her arm.  A second later a hand was clamped over her mouth.  As she started to struggle, the man shifted his grip and pulled her close.  Verity’s parents had made certain she knew how to defend herself, but at this moment all of her training was for naught.  She could not escape.  The man’s hold on her was sure and strong.

            And his hands were white.

~           

            “You men mind tellin’ me what this is all about?” Daniel Boone asked.  He waited a moment and then added, “The question ain’t rhetorical gentlemen.”

            There was a general murmur, but no one answered.  Dan leaned back and let his gaze move from face to face.  He recognized some familiar features, like maybe he had known these men’s fathers, but he didn’t know any of them.  He’d been too long from Boonesborough.  It wasn’t his town any more.  At least they were hanging their heads and looking ashamed –

            Well, all of them but one.

            A man with sandy hair parading all the bravado of small town authority stepped forward.  “I ain’t afraid to tell you, Mister Boone.  We’re hunting Injuns.”

            “Injuns, you say?  I heard there ain’t too many left in these here parts.”

            “There’s enough,” the man replied, his lips quirking with some secret knowledge or intent.  “And more been coming lately.  You heard about the killings?”

            “I heard about how the killin’ started after an Indian was murdered.”

            “You can’t murder no Indian!” someone shouted from the back.  “They ain’t human!”
            “That right?” Dan countered.  “Seems to me that they eat and breathe, and mate and die just like the rest of us.”

            “You’d say that,” the sandy-haired man muttered to a general grumble of approval.  “You’ve always been soft on Injuns.”

            “If you mean I’ve had Indians for friends, well then, that’s right.”  Dan was still staring down Ticklickers barrel.  He shifted his grip just to remind the men she was there.  “But then I’ve had my share of Indian enemies too.  Like this man Hawk I came here huntin’.  The one causin’ all the trouble in these parts.”

            “The one related to that filthy savage the good men of Boonesborough executed,” the man countered.  “Like father like son.”

              “You talkin’ about Hawk and Little Bear now?  Or someone else?” Dan asked quietly.

             “I’m talking about you, Boone.  You and that traitor son of yours.  The one who lives with the savages.”

            For a second, Dan said nothing.  The emotions running through him were clouded with debris as surely as if a bank had burst in a gully-washer.  He had never understood – and maybe never accepted Israel’s choice – but it had been made and he respected his son for sticking to it.  Pain stabbed Dan like a twig thrust by that raging water as he remembered his red-headed wife standing with one hand on her hip and a finger shaking at him.  ‘Daniel Boone,’ Becky had said, ‘what else could the boy have done but become a trailblazer like his pa.’

            “Boone?”

            Dan lowered Ticklicker and leaned his weight on her barrel while resting the stock against the floor.  “You seem like a might angry man, mister….”  His eyebrows wagged and asked the question.

            “Keller.  Simon Keller.”

            Dan thought a moment.  “That name sounds familiar, stranger.  The man who killed Little Bear – ”

            “That was Peter.  My son.”  Keller’s jaw tightened like leather in the sun.  “The man your Injun son murdered in cold blood.”

            “Eye for an eye,” Dan said softly.

            Simon Keller bristled.  “What!  Damn you, Boone!  How dare you – ”

            “Ain’t that what you believe, Simon?  Little Bear killed your brother, so your son killed Little Bear.  Israel, you say, killed your son, so you mean to kill him.  You kill me, I kill you.  Eye for an eye.”  Dan’s fingers tightened on the smooth metal of his gun.  “Oh, no, wait.  That ain’t the Good Book.”  He hesitated for effect.  “That’s an Injun blood feud.”

            Simon Keller had progressively grown crimson as the raspberry bushes outside the inn.  Dan hid his smile.  The settler was looking mighty like a redskin.

            “You got somethin’ to say, spit it out, Simon,” he said quietly.

            “You think you’re something special, Boone; you and that son of yours.  And that heathen you’ve been friends with all your life.  But you ain’t.  You break the law, you go down just like anybody else.”  Simon Keller stiffened his spine and lifted his chin.  One thumb pointed to his chest.  “I’m the law in Boonesborough now, Boone.  You answer to me.  So you just watch yourself.  Cause I’ll be watching you!”

            Dan said nothing for a full ten seconds.  Then, calmly and evenly he responded.  “You’ve had your say, Mister Keller.  Now I think it’s time for you to go.”

            Simon Keller laughed.  “You got one gun, Boone.  We got a dozen..”  He raised his hand and the men behind him raised their weapons.  “Who’s going to make us?”

            “A dozen to one.  Considering just who is holding that single long rifle, I think you might count that as even,” a man’s cultured voice remarked from the stair’s landing.  “Even though, truth be told, it isn’t just one.”

             Dan didn’t have to spin to look.  Even as the fact that they had been outsmarted began to penetrate the mob’s thick skulls, Adam Fox descended the steps – albeit a bit slowly – flintlock pistol in hand.  Adam was joined at the bottom by Curious Dent as well as Dan’s granddaughter, Bekah, and Mingo’s oldest girl.  All of them were armed.  Dent had been designated to first remove the young Johnston girls from the scene, and then to let Verity in on their plans.  Israel was somewhere watching the girls.  It was too soon – and too dangerous – for him to show his face.

            Israel.  Israel was alive.  Israel was here….

            The tall frontiersman drew a breath.  “Who’s gonna make you?” he asked with a grin.  “We are.”

~

           The reprieve wouldn’t last long.  Just long enough, perhaps, to mend fences.

If he remembered how.

Israel Boone looked at his hands.  They were scarred and callused and burnt nearly as brown as his wife’s native skin from constant exposure to the sun.  They were the hands of a man who had pulled his life from the land for the last thirty years, but not by walking behind a plow or using a pick and shovel.  He had learned to run with the wind and to be as fleet of foot as the deer; to fall as softly as the rain, and strike as hard and fast as flint against steel.  There was little that daunted him.  Less that frightened him.

But he was frightened now.

Before him, framed in the Wild Wood Inn’s back doorway, stood a lean figure topping six feet; still straight and tall as the virgin trees of Kentucky in spite of having walked the land for over eighty years.              Israel had been sitting on a stump, waiting. He rose to his feet as he had always done when seeing his Pa out of a combination of love and respect – but this time something kept him from flying into his arms.

            “Father,” he said.  Then with a shrug and a shy smile changed it to, “Pa.”

            “Israel.  It’s been a long time.”

            The man was a mountain.  One he could never hope to scale.  “I know.  I’m….  I’m sorry about Ma.  Sorry I wasn’t there.”

            “She missed you.  We both missed you.”

            His pa’s voice didn’t quiver.  Daniel Boone’s words were carved in granite.  His own were soft as freshly churned butter.  “I’m sorry, Pa, that I didn’t want the life you had.  I know it ain’t been easy for you.  But I loved Sunalei and this was her choice and mine – ”

            His father’s hand was up.  “You’re a man.  You made your choices.  They were yours to make.”

            Israel wasn’t going to accept that.  “Don’t lie, Pa.  You ain’t a liar.  You never accepted me livin’ as an Indian.”

            “I accepted Mingo.”

            “Mingo’s only part white.”  He paused and then added softly, “And he ain’t your son.”

            His father continued to stare at him for a moment, and then turned away and faced the horizon.  The night was far underway and the stars blazed.  “You have any boys, Israel?” he asked at last.

            The question stabbed him.  His father didn’t even know.

            “Yes.  Two.”

            The big man glanced at him and then away again.  “What do you want for them?”

            “What do you mean?”

            “A big house?  Fine clothes?  Money, so they don’t ever have to worry about a thing?”  The old man’s lips curled in a smile.  “To be chief and wear the otter skin and carry a swan’s wing staff?”

            “No.  I want them to be happy.”

            Daniel Boone’s hazel eyes had faded with the years, but the mind behind them was sharp as ever.  “That’s all I ever wanted.  All your mother wanted.  Are you happy, Israel?”

            Israel thought a moment.  With a sigh, he admitted, “I ain’t happy about everythin’.  Living Indian’s hard.  Harder today than yesterday.  I don’t know what my boys future will be.  I worry about them.  I worry what kind of men they will be.”  He hesitated and went on with a snort.  “Sounds familiar, don’t it?  But, yes, I am happy in the choice I made.  But I sure ain’t happy that it came between you and Ma and me.”

            “Your mother never faulted you,” his father said quickly.

            “But you did?”

            The big man turned away and leaned on the inn’s wooden fence.  “I faulted you for breakin’ your mother’s heart.  For not growin’ up to want a cabin down the road from ours where she could visit.  For not wantin’ plowed fields and a settled life.”

            “Something you never wanted,” Israel interjected.

            His father nodded.  “I broke her heart too.”  Before he could respond, his father went on.  “I was never there.  I was always gone.  Your Ma raised you young’uns and you were all she had.  When you left, it opened up a big hole.  I should have been there to fill it, but I wasn’t.  I never was.  I was always…movin’ on.”

            “But she had Nathan and the others….”

            His pa nodded.  “Becky never blamed you.  She used to tell me that the father’s sins of wanderin’ are visited on his son.”  His hazel eyes pinned him.  “You been there for your wife?”

            “As much as I could.  There was huntin’.  And the last war….”

            “The war?  You fought in the war?”

            “I did intelligence for the United States.”

            Daniel Boone shook his head.  “My word, it has been a long time….”

            Israel crossed the lawn to his father’s side.  He leaned his back against the fence and looked at him.  The trail-blazing frontiersman had grown old.  He probably didn’t have too many years left.  But here they were.  Now.  There was no time to waste in regrets.

            “Pa….” he said.

            His father drew a breath.  “Son.”

            Israel grinned.  “I’d like that hug now, if you don’t mind.”

            For a second the big man looked startled.  Then he opened his arms wide.  And feeling every bit the little boy he had once been, Israel Boone fell into and was swallowed by his father’s arms.

          ~

             Rebekah, daughter of Whitehair snorted and turned away in disgust from the scene.  How dare her father offer forgiveness!  The old man had done nothing to merit it, and everything to earn their disdain.  The great Daniel Boone who could walk to Florida, who fought with Braddock and built a settlement from the wilderness, who blazed trails and opened up new lands – the great Daniel Boone who could not see fit to seek out his son and his grandchildren and come to know them.

            No doubt because they were Indian!

            She had heard her father and mother talking late into the night.  In a lodge there were no walls and very few secrets.  This old man – this stranger – had caused her father deep pain.  Boone had kept him from his mother, from getting to know his younger brothers and sisters.  Kept them from being a part of the family.  And for the Indians, family was all. 

            Well, she would not forgive.  Ever.

            “Bekah.”

            The young war woman whirled to find her Uncle Adam standing close behind her.  “Yes?”

            “Is your father nearby?”

            She scowled.  “Behind the trees.  With Daniel Boone.”

            Adam must have sensed something in her voice.  “Your grandfather?  Have you spoken to him yet?”

            “No,” she answered, adjusting the strap on her bow.  “I am going now.  I will keep watch.”

            Adam caught her arm as she tried to move past him.  “Has the defendant been given a chance to answer the crimes he is accused of?”

            “What?” she snapped, pulling away.

            “It seems you have condemned your grandfather without due process.  Does he not have a right to defend himself against whatever charges are held against him?”

            “You talk like a white man,” she spat.

            “And you sound like a savage – not an Indian,” he answered softly.

            Bekah’s spine stiffened. “If you were not family, I would not accept such an insult without demanding an answer to it.”

            “Pistols…or arrows at twenty paces?” Adam asked her with an infuriating smile.  When she made no reply, he went on.  “Bekah, people make the choices they do and other people have to live with them.  Often they are neither right nor wrong.  Most times, they are either and both.  A man’s choice is made after he weighs all his options and then determines what is best for all involved.”

            “You excuse the old man,” she snarled.

            Adam shook his head.  “ I was speaking of your father.  You might consider which Boone it is you are the angriest at.”  With that, he walked away toward her father and grandfather who were still speaking in quiet tones, leaning side by side on the fence.

            Bekah shook with fury.  Her fingers balled into fists and she drew several deep breaths.  Then, as womanish tears began to fall, she fled her father and her emotions and disappeared into the woods.

~

            “We’re ready to go,” Adam announced as he joined the other men.  “The wagon is loaded and all are aboard.”

            Both Boones turned to face him.  “Thanks for offerin’ to take the women out of harm’s way,” the older man said.

            “My pleasure.  I was on my way to join my sister anyhow.  Curious has told me where she is, near the waterfall.  I’ll remain there with her and the others until I see you all again.”  Though both Rachels had protested, Adam had at last wrung an agreement from them to go with him.  Dent would stay behind and join the hunt with Israel, his father and Bekah.  “You go to find Mingo and his son?”

            “And John Johnston and Hawk,” Daniel Boone said.  “A gnawin’ feelin’ in my craw tells me that when we find one, we’ll find them all.”

            “Do you think you can prevent this war that Hawk intends to unleash?”

            “We have to,” Israel said.  “The white man only tolerates the Indian.  Somethin’ like this, well, it will give the settlers a reason to drive us off our land.  Or worse.”

            Remembering what had happened to his parents in Georgia, when his father had been beaten until almost dead and his mother’s land stolen from them, Adam shook his head.  “I fear, in the end, there is little hope of stopping it.  Have you considered what you will do if the government insists on removal?”

            “We’ll fight as long as we can.”  He glanced at his father.  “Legally.  And then, if we have to, we’ll go.  All of us, together.”

            Adam saw the pain Israel’s words brought his elderly father.  To end on a reservation somewhere, exiled to sure and certain disease, such was not the end Daniel Boone had foreseen for his white-haired boy.

            At his son’s look, the older man said, “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

    ~          

He hadn’t once been known as the greatest tracker living for nothing.  Daniel Boone paused with his hand on a branch.  Through the rustling pine needles he could see her.  She was a big girl.  If she’d been a boy, he would have called her strapping.  But that seemed wrong somehow.  The thing his granddaughter put him the most in mind of was an unbridled colt.  She stood now with the wind whipping her colored hair about her shoulders; her spine as stiff and unbending as the rocky spine of the hills beyond her.  Bekah had her bow raised and was taking aim.  From the ease of her muscles, he presumed it was at a deer and not a man.  He waited, not wanting to spoil her shot.  Two minutes later he watched as she lowered the bow without making the kill and then sank, defeated, to the ground.

The old frontiersman stepped out of the trees and waited.  He could tell by the change in her posture that she knew someone was there, and by her lack of action that she recognized it was a friend and not a foe.  She’d probably nosed him, just like the deer she let go.

“When your pa was a little boy, the first time I took him huntin’ he couldn’t bring himself to shoot the turkey we were huntin’.  I think it reminded him too much of Hannibal, his pet goose.”   When the young woman said nothing, he moved closer.  “You have any pets when you were little?”

“A wolf,” she replied, snarling like one.

Now that he was closer, he could see that her face was wet with tears.  Dan crouched down before her and waited until she met his gaze.  Her hazel eyes were amazingly like his own.

            “Bekah, what are you scared of?” Dan asked.

            “I am scared of nothing,” she replied, looking away.

            “Nothin’ you can outrun or outshoot, no.  But I think you’re scared to let someone in.”

            “And how would you know, old man?” she snapped.  “You who have never seen me before?  Who has not seen my brothers or sister?  Don’t pretend to know me….”

              “Now, Bekah, that wasn’t my choice.  Your pa and me, well, we lost contact.  I didn’t know where you were or how to find you.  And, truth to tell, I was afraid to.”

            “Afraid to what?  Make contact with Indians?”

            Dan pursed his lips.  The girl was sure angry.  “You think I don’t like Indians?”

            “You killed enough of them.”

            “Only if they tried to kill me first.”  Dan rose to his feet and looked toward the horizon.  The sun hadn’t shown yet, but the sky was lightening, and there was a promise of rain in the air.  There was maybe an hour left before dawn.  Adam had departed an hour before.  While it was risky traveling in the dark, they had decided it was worth it to get the women to a place of safety as quickly as they could.  Israel and Curious Dent were waiting for him now.  It was time for them to leave as well.  “I’m sure Israel told you about Mingo.  If I hated Indians, I had a strange choice of friends.”

            “Mingo was half white.”

            “So are you.”

            Bekah hesitated, and then rose to her full height.  She came near to his chin and had to be at least five foot eight or nine.  “I do not have to talk to you,” she said, her voice as steely as the sky.  “I owe you nothing.”

            He let her walk away and then said softly, “But I owe you.”

            She spun on her heel.  With her bow slung over her shoulder and her men’s clothes, she looked every inch the warrior.  “What do you owe me?”

            “Your past.  Stories of your father.  And your grandmother, your namesake.”  He paused as his throat choked, and then swallowed to clear it.  “You put me in mind of her.  You’ve got her spirit.  Now, you don’t have to like me, but I’d like you to walk with me and let me talk.  Let me tell you about where you came from.”

            “There is no honor to be found in walking with one’s enemy.”

            Dan bit back his anger.  The only way to tame a colt was with sugar.  He had to remember that.  

            “There’s no honor in bein’ afraid to either,” he said quietly.

             Several heartbeats passed.  Then she said, “Very well, old man.  I will walk with you, but that is all.  If you expect more, you are mistaken.”

            Dan watched the young woman walk past him into the trees.  He waited until she had disappeared and then turned back.  Drawing in a deep breath of the fleeing Kentucky night, he sighed.  He’d missed her, this land.  She was part and parcel of his soul.  As a gentle rain began to fall, Dan shook himself and turned to follow his granddaughter.

            It hadn’t taken too much to make her bend, but he’d have to be gentle, or she’d break.