A Place Called Home Read online

  Livi wandered back to her camp and tried to concentrate on the mending. But while her needle danced, she kept scanning the camp for a shock of wheat-gold hair and strained her ears hoping to hear Tad's voice, raised in excitement.

  "Tad not here yet?" Molly asked when she and her girls brought Cissy back to the Talbot campsite. It was late afternoon, time for the hunters to be returning.

  "I don't know what gets into that boy," Livi grumbled. "Killing that buck seems to make Tad think he's a full-grown man."

  "Well, haven't you been treating him like one?" Molly asked, her voice gentle. "Haven't you been expecting him to shoulder at least some of David's load? Tad's only doing what he thinks you expect."

  Livi rubbed at the anxiety gathering beneath her breastbone. She didn't want to examine what she'd asked of Tad since David died.

  "He'll be along any time now," Molly assured her before she left.

  The sun was melting over the drifts of hills when Joss Smiley and Sam Willoughby showed up on the far side of her fire. Livi rose to face them on legs that quaked.

  "Isn't Tad with you?" she asked.

  Sam shook his head. "We haven't seen the boy all day."

  "Did you see his tracks? Did you hear his shots?"

  The men glanced at each other. "If he'd asked, we'd have taken Tad hunting with us."

  "I know you would, Joss. You and Sam have been so good about looking out for him."

  "He'll turn up, Livi," Willoughby offered. "Been lost in the woods a few times, and don't think I'm any the worse for it."

  Lost. Her son lost in the woods, Livi thought as she watched them go. Lost where wild animals might be prowling. Or Indians.

  With dread whining through flesh and bone, Livi set out to search for Tad herself. She circled Martin's Station, pushing deeper and deeper into the woods. She fought her way through the underbrush, stumbled up hummocks and down ravines. She shouted Tad's name until her throat was raw.

  Pressing on into the deepening dark, Livi wished, just this once, that Reid Campbell was there. David had said that after living for a time with the Indians, Reid could track a snowflake over solid rock. That was the kind of skill she needed tonight—something sure and infallible.

  When her voice gave out, when it was too dark to see, Livi dragged herself back to her campsite to hope and wait. Reverend Lindenwood stopped by. Holding her hand in both of his, he bowed his head and entreated God to keep Tad safe. But what comforted Livi more than the reverend's prayer was his promise that searchers would go out at first light.

  She fussed over her daughter as they prepared for bed, washing her face and hands with lilac-scented soap, lingering as she brushed out Cissy's silken hair.

  "So where is Tad sleeping tonight?" the child asked as Livi tucked her in.

  Livi wished she knew. "I expect he's sleeping in the woods."

  "With the animals?"

  With the animals and the Indians.

  "A bear won't eat Tad, will it?"

  "Of course not. He has your father's rifle with him."

  "So when will he be back?"

  "Tomorrow." Livi spoke the word with conviction as she lay down beside her daughter. "Tomorrow," she whispered, not sure if she was reassuring Cissy or herself.

  Unable to asleep, Livi finally rose, wrapped herself in her cloak and went to sit by the fire. The scores of campfires she could see in the meadows around Martin's Station were like fireflies flickering in the dark, but they gave her no comfort. Nothing could help except seeing Tad, holding him—and shaking him until his teeth rattled.

  Around her, families had long since gathered their children, banked their fires, and said their good-nights. Around her families slept whole and safe. What had she done to deserve losing so much?

  A sob worked its way up her throat. Oh, David, please watch over Tad. After losing you, I couldn't bear—I couldn't bear to lose him, too. Watch over him, David, and bring him home to me.

  Sometimes in these last days, Livi felt as if she would turn and find David beside her. Sometimes she thought she heard his laughter in the wind. But tonight, she had no sense that David was here with her or heard her plea.

  The searchers went out at dawn, men from the pack train, strangers kind enough to help, and half a dozen from the station itself. Grim and determined, they nodded to her as they passed out of the encampment. And as she watched them go, she clung to her wavering conviction that they would bring Tad home.

  As the day went on around her, she kept Cissy close at hand. Newly cut wood replenished her fire. Food and tea appeared. Women came to sit with her.

  Hours passed, each one shriveling the precious kernel of optimism she hoarded deep inside. Then, at mid-afternoon came the sound of voices whooping off to the south. The women paused to listen, and Livi rose to her feet. When the shouting came again, she scooped Cissy up and hurried across the encampment, a flutter of hope unfurling inside her.

  The shouts grew louder as the men burst from the trees, their faces animated, flushed. And in their midst was a boy, tattered and fair-haired. Carrying his father's gun.

  Livi began to run, closing the distance between them. Tad battered into her, his sinewy arms closing around her and his sister. Holding them hard. Livi pulled him closer, knotting her fists in his clothes, burying her tear-wet face in her son's hair.

  Thank you, David. You heard me after all.

  Around them, the whole encampment celebrated, laughing and slapping each other on the back. Livi hung on as long as Tad would let her, but finally, he squirmed out of her embrace.

  "Did you sleep in a tree like the man Papa told us about?" Cissy wanted to know. "Were there bears in the woods?"

  Watching her son with possessive eyes, Livi let out her breath. It really was all right. Tad had been returned to her.

  Then on the heels of her relief bright crimson anger raged through her. Does Tad have any idea how terrified I've been or what he put all of them through?

  "Thadius Chesterton Talbot," Livi demanded, setting Cissy on her feet, "just where have you been?"

  Tad shrugged and looked away. "Lost, I guess."

  "Lost?" Livi breathed the word as if it were a curse. "Didn't you mark your trail the way your father taught you?" Even in her own ears her voice seemed shrill.

  "I guess I forgot."

  "God Almighty, Mrs. Talbot." George Willoughby spoke up. "I heard Dan'l Boone say he'd misplaced himself in these hills once or twice."

  Livi barely heard him. "You made these good people lose a whole day's travel."

  "We figured the horses could do with another day's rest," Joss Smiley put in.

  "And don't you realize the worry you caused?"

  A flush crept up Tad's jaw.

  "We're just glad the boy is safe," Reverend Lindenwood broke in.

  "I think you owe these folks an apology," she went on as if Lindenwood had not spoken, "for keeping them from their own business. You owe them your thanks for searching for you."

  Tad ducked his head. "I'm sorry you all lost a day's travel looking for me."

  "You're welcome, lad," Lem Stewart answered as if for all of them.

  "You're a game one—just like I told your ma." Turnip Carter grinned. "You'd have found your way back here soon enough."

  With another flurry of backslapping and mumbled good wishes, the families filtered back toward their campsites.

  Taking Cissy's hand, Livi turned toward their own. There was no question that Tad would follow.

  "I ought to cut a hickory switch," Livi threatened as they burned a path across the compound. "I ought to make you cut it yourself!"

  That had been her own father's brand of torture when she'd done something to draw his notice.

  But as they closed in on their own campsite, Livi became suddenly sure that she was going to cry. And if she did, Tad might sense her weakness, her terrible vulnerability.

  To convince herself she could do what she had to do, she caught the fabric of Tad's shirtsleeve and gav
e it a furious shake.

  "By going off hunting alone, you risked your life—and the lives of everyone who looked for you! What could you have been thinking?"

  "I'm sorry, Ma." Tad sounded contrite.

  In the moment it took for Livi to draw breath, she suddenly saw past her son's bravado. She saw that his lips were bitten raw, that the skin looked bruised beneath his eyes. Clearly he hadn't slept. He seemed truly sorry for what he'd done, disillusioned with his own prowess for the first time in days.

  "I really ought to tan your hide," Livi said. This time the words were caught in a sigh. "But it will wait until you've had a rest and something to eat."

  Tad nodded again. Though both of them knew Livi's threat was a bluff.

  * * *

  "You coming, Cissy?" Livi called out, savoring a long, last swallow of her tea. It was unusual for her daughter to lie abed, particularly on the day they would brave the Cumberland Gap.

  Livi washed and packed her mug away before shifting her gaze to the white limestone wall towering above them. Glowing with all the rich translucence of alabaster, the rock seemed to possess a magic, a fire, a promise that even Livi couldn't deny. It stirred excitement in her and something tentative and fragile that felt ever so slightly like hope. Far above, hidden beyond the majesty and mysticism of those rugged hills, lay the Promised Land—the gateway to Kentucky.

  "Hurry, Cissy!" Livi called a second time. "We need to strike the tent."

  For all her dreaminess, her made-up songs and imaginary companions, Cissy was an eager child, and Livi couldn't understand her dawdling today. But just as Livi was losing patience, the girl burst from between the tent flaps, hairbrush in hand.

  "Mama, braid my hair," she demanded.

  Livi wrapped the leftover hoecakes and stuffed them into her canvas bag before taking up the brush and ribbon. Gently she worked her way through the fall of rosy curls, amazed that some trick of heredity had given Cissy those ringlets when her own hair hung straight as a mason's plumb.

  "Haven't you and Cissy struck the tent yet?" Tad admonished, leading three of the horses to the edge of the campsite. "If this whole pack train has to wait for us, don't you blame me!"

  Livi gave a final tug on the ribbon that fastened the end of Cissy's braid and turned to help Tad with the packsaddles. They'd all been lagging a little this morning, she reflected, and began loading the last of their gear.

  The trail to the Cumberland Gap took them up the side of a deep ravine to Poor Valley Ridge. That ridge skirted Pinnacle Mountain, the last obstacle to their final assent. As one, the churchmen and their families stopped to stare as they rounded the final bend at the mountain's base and the Cumberland Gap came into view. The opening in the hills gaped broad and snaggle-toothed, the rugged white peak to the north towering above the rounded contours of the cliff to the south.

  Mindful of the danger of an Indian ambush in the narrow pass, Sam and George Willoughby went ahead, while the rest of the party stopped to gobble down a noon meal and water the horses. The brothers returned, exhilaration humming around them like a swarm of bees. Caught up in their excitement, the pack train set out again, laboring up the final slope.

  One by one, Livi's companions paused in the palm of the Cumberland Gap as if taking a moment to mark the true beginning of their lives in Kentucky. As the pack train snaked forward, Livi tensed with anticipation, craving the feeling of awe the others seemed to be experiencing, needing the reassurance that she'd made the right choice for her family and herself.

  Though she'd read her husband's journal and heard him describe this journey a hundred times, nothing had prepared her for the vista that lay before her when she reached the fabled swath of level ground. Mountains rose on every side, hulking, magisterial. The peaks crowded close, fighting to reach the scrap of tattered blue-gray sky. It was a wilderness of such scope that their party seemed a mere trickle of humanity in its midst.

  Livi paused in the hollow between the hills, waiting for some wondrous revelation, for a sense of belonging that called her home. But as far as she could see, this was no Utopia of lush fields and forests thick with game. It was not a land of plenty and of ease. What she saw from the heights of the Cumberland Gap was more of the harsh, broken country they'd been toiling through for days.

  Livi stared, desperate for reassurance. Desperate to find some sense of the new, sweet life David had promised her. Instead she felt betrayed.

  Even through the blaze of her own disillusionment, she recognized that David would have drawn strength from this endless sweep of earth and sky. Beside her, Tad's eyes blazed. Her daughter's face was flushed with excitement. Around her, the churchmen seemed enervated and renewed. This wild new world seemed to hold some wondrous secret she could not take in. That others sensed its power isolated her, pointed up some flaw she had no way to rectify, convinced her she was less than whole.

  Reid Campbell had seen the deficiency years ago, Livi suddenly remembered. And dared to tell her the truth.

  "Kentucky isn't the place for a woman like you," Reid had assured her. "It's miles of wilderness, of hills and hollows, of forests and wild animals. It's years of danger and backbreaking work, of hardship and loneliness."

  She'd always hated Reid for finding her wanting, hated him for believing that David could never reconcile the land and life he coveted with his love for her. Now she saw that Reid had known her—and this land—far better than her husband had.

  All Livi was able to see in this landscape was the obstacles to overcome. She couldn't see the promise even now. She had never been able to envision it. This hadn't been her dream.

  Then her moment was gone. As others of the party crowded up behind, Livi urged her horse through the fabled gateway and down the slope on the westward side. She rode in silence most of the afternoon, keeping pace with the other riders yet somehow apart. Cissy seemed to mirror her mother's mood, nodding in the circle of Livi's arms.

  They made camp in the valley near Yellow Creek. Her thoughts a-tangle, Livi went through the motions of pitching the tent and cooking dinner. Molly Baker and her girls came by just as Livi was packing the dishes away. But instead of going off to play with Ann and Verity, Cissy curled up in Livi's lap while the women talked.

  "Not feeling poorly, is she?" Molly asked.

  Livi felt her daughter's forehead with a practiced hand. Cissy was warmer than she would have liked.

  "You feeling all right, sugar?" she asked, stroking the girl's flushed face. As she did, Livi encountered a cluster of small red bumps beneath the drape of Cissy's hair and bent to examine them more closely.

  "What is it?" Molly asked.

  Livi turned to her friend with fear in her heart.

  "What is it?" Molly demanded, drawing aside the child's hair to see for herself. "Smallpox."

  "No!" But the denial wedged in Livi's throat.

  "It's smallpox." Molly came to her feet with a jerk.

  "It must be something else. How could Cissy have contracted smallpox?"

  "My brother died of smallpox. I'd know those blisters anywhere," she insisted.

  "It's not!"

  But Molly was already gathering up her girls and sweeping them out of the campsite. Out of harm's way.

  Livi watched Molly go, a tight, dry knot of fear coiling inside her.

  Breathing denials, Livi lifted her younger child in her arms and carried her into the tent. As she removed Cissy's clothes, she saw that the splotches marred the skin of Cissy's chest and back. More were rising under her arms and between her legs. Cissy whimpered as Livi swathed her in a nightdress and bundled her into bed.

  "This isn't smallpox." She whispered too low for her daughter to hear. "This can't be smallpox."

  "Ma?" Tad pushed aside the tent flaps and peered inside. "Is Cissy sick?"

  Livi rose and came out of the tent to speak to her son. "It's not anything," she assured him, her icy fingers clenching around his arm. "It's not what they think."

  "Smallpox." Even a boy
of twelve knew the danger.

  "It's not smallpox," she insisted, but she could see her fear mirrored in his eyes.

  "But, Ma, if it is—"

  "Mrs. Talbot?"

  It hadn't taken more than a couple of minutes for word of Cissy's illness to spread through the camp. Turning, Livi clamped her hands together and faced Reverend Lindenwood and the contingent of fellow travelers.

  "We heard that your daughter has been taken ill," Lindenwood said, "and, of course, we're concerned for her welfare. Is she—is she suffering from any complaint that might be contagious?"

  Livi swallowed. She didn't know how to answer him.

  "What the Reverend wants to know"—leave it to Hyram Boggs to come straight to the point—"is whether your daughter has smallpox."

  Livi fought the urge to weep.

  "Go sit with your sister," she instructed Tad, fighting for time to frame an answer. Tad nodded and went.

  "I don't know what complaint Cissy is suffering from," Livi finally said. "She's running a fever and there's a rash..."

  A flurry of voices smothered the rest of her words.

  "Is it smallpox?" someone demanded.

  The threat of tears undermined her credibility. "It could be any one of several things..."

  Reverend Lindenwood raised his hand for silence. "Is there anyone who can examine the child to be sure?"

  Another murmur passed through the crowd. No one wanted to expose himself to the dread disease.

  "I know smallpox when I see it," Turnip Carter's wife, Lila, finally said. "Lost my boy to it two years back."

  Lila Carter approached carrying herself with gravity, as if in offering to make this determination she bore tremendous weight. Livi recognized the pain in the older woman's eyes and understood only another mother could.

  Without a word, she took Lila into the tent and came to her knees beside her daughter's pallet. Murmuring reassurances, she lifted the blankets and Cissy's nightdress. There seemed to be more of the puckered blotches than before.

  "She been sick for long?" Lila asked.

  "I only noticed she was running a fever a while ago."

  "Has she been listless, tired?"

  Livi nodded.

  "For how long?"