Dorothy Garlock - [Wabash River] Read Online Free PDF Page A

to pay. Hull Dexter knows this isn’t the way to Vincennes.”
    “That dirty, low-down, bush-bottom warthog!” Liberty’s eyes dared him to contradict her. He ignored her outburst and looked away from her. Suddenly she disliked him intensely. “Is he a friend of yours?” she asked bitingly.
    “I know him.”
    “My brother-in-law, Hammond Perry, will settle with him. He’s expecting us.”
    “Libby! He ain’t doin’ no such thing.”
    Liberty’s face turned a fiery red, but she held her head proudly and faced her father.
    “Yes, he is, Papa. I sent word ahead with a regiment going cross-country.”
    “There ain’t no reason fer us to go on now, what with Jubal dyin’ ’n all. We can go back home where we belong ’n stop this here slitherin’ ’round. I jist knowed it would end up like this. I jist knowed me ’n Jubal’d die fightin’ the heathens ’n you ’n Amy’d be carried off. Ya ain’t ort a made me ’n Amy come, Libby. We ain’t ort a be wanderin’ round out here in the wilds like a chicken with its head cut off. The man said we’re just a few miles from the Ohio. We can get a boat ’n go back upriver. We can go home—”
    “We’re here, Papa. It’s too late to be placing blame, and I don’t have money to take us back upriver by boat. You didn’t have to come, and you can go back anytime you want to. You can work your way back home.” Liberty tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice and speak patiently, not daring to look at Farrway Quill lest he see her anger and embarrassment.
    “You’d like that, wouldn’t ya? You’d not have nobody to buck ya, nobody to remind ya of yore shortcomings. Ya could go fiddle faddlin’ all over, havin’ yore own sweet way till ya got yoreself ’n Amy took by the savages.”
    Liberty turned her back on the two men and stooped down to put another cover over Amy and the sleeping child. It bothered her, even after all these years, when her father whined and complained while in the company of others. It was, she supposed, an affront to his imagined manly superiority, that she, and her mother before her, were more capable of coping with the trials of everyday living than he was.
    “Guess ya ain’t no stranger to these woods.” Elija was talking again. “We’d sure be obliged if ya’d trail along with us. It’d beat walkin’ ’n carryin’ the youngun.”
    “I’m not going to Vincennes, or to Shawneetown.”
    Liberty turned and looked down at the man who had removed his hat and placed it on the ground beside him. His thick hair was lighter than she had at first thought it was—a light brown, and pulled straight back from a broad forehead.
    “How far are we from Shawneetown? My husband will die if he doesn’t get help soon.” Her blue eyes looked directly into his.
    “Do you mind if I take a look at him?” He got to his feet and waited. Liberty felt dwarfed beside him. He was extremely tall. His fringed buckskin shirt came down over his hips and was belted. There was a knife at his waist and a small ax was tucked into the back of his belt. His buckskins were clean, but smelled strongly of woodsmoke.
    “I’d be grateful for your help.”
    Farrway grasped the end of the wagon and hauled himself up. Liberty took a burning stick from the fire, brought it to the end of the wagon and held it aloft so he could see. He knelt down beside the pallet. The man’s breathing was an agonized sawing for breath. His eyes were deep sockets and his gray whiskered cheeks were sunken. He was small, and the thin hands that lay on his chest were slender, like a girl’s. What surprised Farrway was that Hammond Perry’s brother, this girl’s husband, looked as old, or older than her father.
    “Ma’am, he’s in a bad way,” he said gently. “The only thing I know to do is something I learned from the Indians. We can put him in a steam tent. It might help, but it might kill him, too. It’s a chance, if you want to take it.”
    “He’s going to