The Journey Home Chapter One

Georgia 1838

“Father?”

The old man looked up, weary beyond words.  The fight was over.

            “Father.  If you are going to do this thing, it is time.”

Rising to his feet the old man looked out the window of the small cabin he had for the last six years called home, and sighed.  He was a tall man, dignified, dressed in a long dark coat and trousers, with a shirt that had a black silk scarf tied around the upright collar.  The only sign of his earlier rebellious nature lay in the long gray hair that graced his still broad shoulders.  Once it had been an ebon wave; in the years when he had ranged free, running through the forests, hunting deer and bear, mink and beaver.  Those days were long gone.  The beaver were all hunted out and the streams and fields where they had played, dammed up and made to work for man on man’s terms.

And the people who had hunted them?  His People?

They were gone as well.

Or nearly.  Out of the window was the last remaining remnant of what had once been the mighty Cherokee nation.  They were preparing to journey toward their new home.  A hand came down on Mingo’s shoulder.  He turned to find his son.  There were tears in the Danny’s deep blue eyes. 

“You do not have to do this, Father,” he said.

Mingo laid his hand over his son’s.  “You know I do.”

Anger flared and touched Danny’s soft voice.  “No, you do not.  You are just being  stubborn.  You will never survive the march.”

“Because I am old?” Mingo laughed.  He was now in his ninety-second year and had only given up riding a horse regularly five years before.  Over the last fifteen years he had traveled by coach to Washington City and back many times with John Ross, the elected chief of the Cherokee and others.  They had hoped to persuade the Congress and the government of the United States that the actions they contemplated were wrong.  He had been there on the great day in twenty-seven when the Cherokee had become a nation of their own, with a House of Representatives, a Senate and a constitution.  He had been there as well in eighteen hundred and thirty-two when that constitution had been revoked, and in thirty-five when one-tenth of the Cherokee had ceded all of the Cherokee’s rights; when young, foolish men had sold their homeland in exchange for cash and land in the Oklahoma territory.  The resulting strife had divided their people and hastened the end, though until this day some had held out hope that they would not be made to leave their chosen homeland.

Hope.

            Mingo had known there was no hope, for there was no money to be had or prestige to be found in championing a conquered race.  There was, on the other hand, money to be made in taking what the Cherokee would leave behind: their farms and their animals, produce and property, and the Georgian land itself which, unfortunately, had turned out to be not only rich in soil but in gold deposits.  Chief Ross was himself seven-tenths a white man, but still he stood with the rest of their people, preparing to go.

Mingo’s son had remained silent, watching this knowledge reflect in his eyes.  Danny squeezed his shoulder.  “No,” he answered softly, “not because you are old, but because your heart is broken.  Because you no longer care.  If you did, you would not desert your children and grandchildren.  Because, Father, you want to die.”

Danny’s words were harsh, but true.  Mingo lowered his chin to his chest.

“Mother would not have wanted you to give up.”

Rachel had passed almost a year to the day.  Three years short of their having spent sixty years together on this earth.  She was waiting for him now in the land beyond this one, and he was so weary.  Their marriage had been blessed with a total of seven children, three of whom had also proceeded her in death.  But it had been Rachel who had been his rock, his love and the light of his life.  Her inner beauty had shone into the darkness that had always threatened to overwhelm his all too melancholy soul.

Now she was gone as well.

“Father?”

Mingo turned and looked at his son.  Danny was in his mid-fifties now.  He had a tall, willowy build that belied what his father knew to be a core of steel.  His son had chosen to live as a white man.  He was a merchant, and had spent the last eleven years supplying the Cherokee with goods that were neither overpriced nor inferior in quality to the detriment of his own establishment.  It was simply not politick anymore to be kind to the Cherokee.  It had been a hard fight.  Every means of malice and deception that could be thought of had been used by those profiting on the Cherokee’s pain to thwart him in his efforts.  Danny had fallen ill from sheer exhaustion the season before and nearly not survived.  There were still tale-tell signs of the fight in his face.  It was haggard, too thin, and not the light golden color that was its usual wont.  The end of the Cherokee would mean Danny’s freedom in a way.  He and his family lived would move on.  Danny would be forced to move on….

Once he was gone as well.

“My valise is nearly packed,” Mingo said as he touched his son’s arm in passing.  “When it is done, I will be ready to go.”

Danny spun, his dark eyes following his father.  “Is George coming for you?”

Mingo nodded.  His old friend Copperhead, whose white man’s name was George Fox, was journeying with the Cherokee as well.  Copperhead’s son, Adohi or Adam, was joining him with his family, intending to travel west and then set up in a law practice in a nearby town.  Miriam, like Rachel, had died several seasons past.  The frontier was a hard life for a woman.  Both Rachel and Miriam had lived long lives, but had worn themselves out worrying over, and caring for, their bullheaded husbands and the children of their loins.

“I look forward to seeing Adam,” Danny said.  “I will just wait on the porch then.”

Mingo nodded again and turned and walked into his room.  The cabin had been built to his specifications and had high ceilings and a little more than the usual space.  He still had money and land left from his holdings in Europe and from Rachel’s Uncle Hugh’s estate, some of which he had used to help his people fight for their cause.  The rest was held in trust for his children and grandchildren.  Living here, on land owned by the Cherokee nation, he had had few needs other than newspapers and books, and money to travel on.  He had never been able to stand tight, enclosed spaces.  Mingo smiled.  Probably a left-over from those days he had spent confined in a jail cell.

Captivity did not sit well with him.

Mingo started to rearrange the shirts in his valise to make room for a few more items, but then turned and instead sat on the bed.  The last seven years had taken much out of him.  It seemed that, at last, the fire that had always fueled him had been extinguished. There had been so many losses: the children…Rachel….

            Daniel Boone.

Mingo rose and walked to the bureau that rested against the plank wall.  He picked up the miniature portrait and stared at it.  His daughter Verity had painted it long ago when they had first returned to the United States.  From the depths of heavily lacquered oil two faces stared back at him: a woman – her once fire-red hair gone white – wearing a gracious smile, and a raw-boned, gray-haired man with a crooked grin and the eyes of someone only half his age.

Rebecca Boone had died in eighteen-thirteen.  Daniel several years later at the venerable age of eighty-five; seven years younger than Mingo was now.  Daniel had been buried in a cherry-wood coffin he had made himself, in the family graveyard overlooking the rich Missouri bottomland.

He had not been at his friend’s side when Daniel passed.  He had not been able to tell him goodbye.

It was something Mingo regretted to this day.

“Sir?”

Mingo looked up expecting to see his son, but instead found himself face to face with a tall, dark-haired raw-boned young man who looked to be in his early twenties who was standing in the open doorway.  A glance at the braid on his sleeves and shoulders marked him as an officer and a first lieutenant, and if Mingo was not mistaken, a member of the elite core known as United States Dragoons. 

“Can I help you?” Mingo asked as he turned toward him.

The young man doffed his regulation cap.  His sword clattered against the door jamb as he ducked to enter the cabin.  Mingo smiled.  He had to do the same thing.  This dragoon was almost as tall as he.  At least six foot three.  

“Are you….”  The young man paused as if uncomfortable.  “Is your name Mingo, sir?”

Mingo nodded.   “Yes.”

“Pray forgive the impropriety of my addressing you by your first name, sir.” 

A broader smile tickled the edge of Mingo’s aged lips, but he suppressed it.  The young man was in earnest.  “I have no other.  Mingo will do.  It always has.  Have you some business with me?”

“In a way.”  The young man’s demeanor softened and his rigid military bearing eased a bit.  “First, I bring Captain Boone’s respects.”

“Nathan?  You know him?”  Nathan Boone was Daniel’s youngest son.  The last years of Daniel’s life had been passed happily in Nathan’s home, surrounded by his grandchildren.

            The soldier nodded.  “I served with him, sir, in Oklahoma.  An honorable man.”

            “As was his father.”  Mingo waited and then asked softly, “And?”

“Sir?”   The young man looked confused.

            Mingo laughed.  “You said ‘first’….”

            “Oh.”  The soldier laughed in turn.  He ran a hand through his thick, wavy black hair, brushing it back from his forehead and then reached into his jacket.  Mingo noted that his eyes were dark and rather large for a man’s.  Piercing.  Intelligent.

            And slightly familiar.

The soldier pulled out an envelope bound with a bright blue ribbon and held it before him.  “I was asked to deliver this to your wife.”  He glanced about.  “Is she here?”

            Pain stabbed through Mingo.  For a moment he couldn’t breathe.  He steadied himself with a grip on the back of a chair.  “No, she is not here,” he answered quietly as he turned his face into the shadows to hide the tears.  “My wife is dead.”

            Even though he could not see him, Mingo felt the young man’s horror and embarrassment.  “Sir. Forgive me.  I didn’t know,” he gasped.

            Mingo glanced back.  The dragoon stood there, at a loss, with the letter clutched tightly in his long elegant fingers.  “There is nothing to forgive.  You could not known,” he said at last as he turned back, the tidal wave of emotion held at bay for the moment.  “You have not told me your name,” he added, quickly changing the subject.

            The young man moved into the room.  “There, I am remiss again,” he said.  He walked, Mingo noted, with a slight limp, favoring his right leg.  When he arrived, the dragoon held out a white-gloved hand.  “Johnston.  Lieutenant Abraham Robinson Johnston.  At your service, sir!”

            Robinson Johnston?  There was something familiar about the name as well.  He knew he should know it – and possibly, know it well.  Age was the great leveler, Mingo thought ironically, making the educated and ignorant one.

            Mingo inspected the young man as he took his hand and shook it.  The bones were prominent in his cheeks and somewhat wide, almost as if there were native blood somewhere in his pedigree.  The face was long.  The forehead high.  His eyes so brown they were almost black.  His nose had a bony ridge high up near the bridge, but otherwise was thin and straight.  His long rangy figure might have been considered underweight by some, but to Mingo, who was used to the deprivations of the Cherokee nation, it appeared athletic and strong.  And even though the dragoon was thin, there was nothing of weakness about him.  Abraham Robinson Johnston was all muscle and sinew.

And at this moment quite chagrinned.

            “Johnston?  From where?” Mingo asked, seeking to ease his discomfort.

            “Ohio, sir.”  At Mingo’s deepening frown, he added softly, “Upper Piqua by birth.” 

“Upper Piqua?”   That too was familiar.   Mingo puzzled over it a moment and then he had it.  “Ah!  John Johnston, the Indian agent?”

            Abraham Robinson Johnston smiled at last.  “My honored father.  Do you remember – ”

            “Good God!  Robinson?  It’s been….”

            “Eighteen years ago.  You do remember then?”

            Mingo nodded.  How could he forget the Lord’s year of eighteen hundred and twenty?           

            The year Daniel had died.

           Danny soon joined them in the cabin.  It seemed his son and Robinson, as he found the young man preferred to be called, had already renewed their acquaintance.  Robinson had gone to Danny’s mercantile establishment earlier seeking information to locate him.  He had not indicated the purpose of his need other than to say he had a letter to deliver.  Danny had not known it was for his deceased mother.

Mingo sat on the bed he had shared with Rachel, turning the letter over and over in his hands.  Robinson and Danny were in the other room talking.  The dragoons had been sent here to keep order during the evacuation.  Mingo could tell the young man was troubled by it.  He spoke animatedly about his life in the military and his training and service at West Point, but when it came to talking about the native peoples and his current work with them, Robinson grew silent.  It was almost as if he was uncomfortable in his role as military policeman.

John Johnston’s second son had much experience with natives.  He had grown up in an Indian Agent’s home and considered many of the natives his personal friends.  It was an irony that most of his father’s charges had been Shawnee and Wyandot; the wolves of Mingo’s past and the ever-present plague of Boonesborough. 

In fact it was an Indian who had brought them all together.

“Father?”

Mingo’s head came up.  He looked toward the door.  “Yes, Danny?”

“Are you all right?” his son asked as he stepped into the bedroom.

“Yes.  Did you need something?”

            Danny nodded toward the common room.  “Robinson needs to report in.  I am going to check in on the packing of the goods at the store.   He would like to come back tonight, and I have told him I will as well.  After supper.  You will be here?”

            It was asked as a question, but spoken as if a statement of fact.

            Mingo nodded wearily.  “Yes, Danny.  I will be here.”

            His son’s eyes settled on the unopened letter.  “Will you read it?”

            Mingo sat the letter aside.  It was from John Johnston’s wife.  Her name was Rachel as well, though the letter was signed in an elegant script ‘Raeanne’ which was what his dear spouse had called her.  “I have not made up my mind.”

            Danny said nothing.  Only nodded.  “Until later this evening, then, Father.”

            Once his son had departed and he heard the door close behind the two young men, Mingo rose wearily to his feet.  He went to the window that looked out, not onto the open court filled with the throng of angry and despondent Cherokee and edgy, nervous soldiers, but onto the green space that was the garden and an additional food source for his family.  Rachel had started it.  His eldest daughter Verity came now when she could to help tend it.  Verity lived about a day’s ride away.   She had long been widowed.  Her husband had been killed in the second war with the British, the one that had been fought in 1812.

            Verity had been with them in 1820.  As had Danny.  She had come to the home he and Rachel had established in Missouri, bringing her five small children to live with them after finding the life of a single mother on the frontier too arduous.  When the trouble had come they had left her children as well as their youngest with Nathan and his wife, and gone to find Daniel to begin the hunt.  Mingo had not wanted Rachel to go with him.  He had told her it was too dangerous.  She hadn’t listened.

            Mingo laughed.  She never did.

            It was then that his Rachel had met Rachel Hoping Johnston, the wife of the Ohio Indian agent and Robinson’s mother.   He remembered her now.  A fresh-faced beauty with the frost of gray just settling on her deep brown hair, in her late thirties –  much too slender to be the mother of seven children, six of whom were still living.   Born a Quakeress, she had instantly connected with Daniel whose roots were the same. 

            He could still see Rachel Johnston standing by the side of the stream – six months pregnant at the very least – surrounded by four wide-eyed children; her husband’s flintlock in her hand.

            Pointed straight at him.