Home on stoney creek, p.1
Home on Stoney Creek, page 1
HOME ON STONEY CREEK
Wanda Luttrell
Published by Wanda Luttrell at Smashwords
Copyright 1995 by Wanda Luttrell
All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts for review purposes, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, except for brief quotations in reviews, without written permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction, based on the true experiences of many American colonists and pioneers. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.
First printing, 1995 by Chariot Victor Publishing, a division of Cook Communications, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80918; Cook Communications, Paris, Ontario; Kingsway Communications, Eastbourne, England
Cover illustration by Bill Farnsworth
Cover design by Mary Schluchter
Edited by Sue Reck
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
The Sarah’s Journey Series
In addition to Home on Stoney Creek, the Sarah’s Journey Series includes, in this order: Stranger in Williamsburg, Reunion in Kentucky, Whispers in Williamsburg, and Shadows on Stoney Creek. Be sure to read them all!
Dedication
For my son, John Bradley Luttrell, who has made my journey through life an adventure.
HOME ON STONEY CREEK
Chapter 1
Sarah sat up in bed and pushed back the feather quilt. She didn’t know what had awakened her. The house was so quiet now, she could hear the clock ticking on the mantel in the parlor below.
A quick glance round the familiar room showed nothing out of the ordinary. The moonlight fell coldly through the small window panes, making squares across the polished wooden floor. Sarah shivered. The heat from the rooms below, her long flannel gown, and the thick feather quilt had been enough to keep her warm these late April nights without a fire in the fireplace. It was chilly in the room now, though, and she snuggled back under the covers.
“There’s nothing so cozy as a thick, soft feather bed under a quilt stuffed with goose feathers,” she murmured drowsily.
Suddenly, the thought that never again would she sleep in this bed, in this room, in this house made her sit straight up once more. When daylight came, they were leaving this beloved Virginia farm for the unknown wilds of Kentucky. Sarah’s heart sank to the bottom of her stomach and lay there like a lump of cold oatmeal.
“Nate, you’ve not got the sense God gave a goose!” Pa’s shouted words came straight out of the fireplace.
Nate was home!
“Shhh! You’ll wake the children, Hiram!” Sarah heard Ma warn. Then the voices became a soft rumble, like the honeybees inside the beehives, and she couldn’t understand the words.
Sarah couldn’t wait to see Nate! But why was Pa so angry with him? Her oldest brother was the one Ma and Pa seemed to think could do no wrong. Nate worked hard. He was neat, Ma often said, frowning at Sarah’s blotted and squiggly letters. He went to church without complaining about the hard benches or the long sermons. He went to the well and the woodpile without being asked, Pa pointed out to Luke as he sat whittling on the last piece of wood from the wood box.
“Nathan’s so good, I expect him to sprout wings and fly off to heaven any minute!” Luke had muttered once. But Sarah believed Nate was all the things Ma and Pa said he was. And he was a good brother. He didn’t tease her about her freckles and her green cat’s eyes, like Luke did, and he didn’t pull her long brown braids. Little Jamie was fun to play with, but Nate always knew just what to say to make her feel better when one of the kittens died or when she had a falling out with her best friend, Martha.
I reckon I love Nate better than anybody in the whole colony of Virginia! Sarah thought as she eased out of the feather bed. She tried not to rustle the corn shuck mattress underneath or creak the tall wooden bedstead.
She tiptoed over to the black, empty fireplace and crouched down on the hearth. She placed her ear close to the opening to catch the words as they floated right up the chimney from the room below.
“...not a square mile in all England without its own representative in Parliament to help make the laws they live under!” Nate was saying. “But the American colonies are not allowed to send even one representative to Parliament, no matter how much we pay in taxes.”
“Maybe we need to send somebody to talk to King George....” Pa began.
“King George dances to Parliament’s tune like a puppet on a string,” Nate answered bitterly. “The king’s soldiers accuse us of crimes we haven’t committed so they can take away our possessions. Colonists are ordered to house and feed the redcoats, and aren’t paid for it, even though they treat us little better than dogs in the streets. Now Parliament says the Catholic religion is the only religion to be allowed in the western lands, and....”
“Surely you’re mistaken, Nate!” Pa gasped. “Freedom to worship God in our own way was one of the reasons we came to America.”
“I’m not mistaken, Pa. Parliament plans to set up a new group of colonies west of the mountains who will do exactly as they say. Then they will have the eastern colonies right where they want us. I tell you, before long we won’t be allowed to breathe without permission from the king’s governor, and then we’ll have to pay a tax on it!”
Sarah giggled before she could stop herself.
“That sounds like more nonsense from that ragtaggle bunch of rebels you’ve befriended,” Pa said. “I wouldn’t have sold off my best forty acres to send you to school in Williamsburg if I’d thought you’d be hobnobbing with ignoramuses! A handful of ragged colonists can’t whip the strongest, best-trained army in the world! England will put down this upstart rebellion in a matter of days, and those who took part in it will be shot or hanged for treason!”
Treason! Sarah felt the ugly word shiver down her spine.
“Pa,” Nate said quietly, “I believe with all my heart that God is leading these colonies to independence. If God be for us, the size of England’s army won’t make any more difference than did the size of the giant Goliath when God helped little David hit him between the eyes with a rock.”
Sarah strained to her Pa’s answer to Nate’s bold statement, but there didn’t seem to be any. Finally, Nate said, “I believe God is leading me to join the fight for the freedom of the American colonies.”
“Oh, Nathan, no!” Ma gasped.
“Son, wait!” Pa’s voice was pleading. Sarah had never heard Pa plead with anybody. “Come to Kentucky with us. We can make a new life there, a good life free of all this turmoil.”
“I tell you, we will never be free until we cut ourselves loose from England,” Nate insisted. “It may be that I will get to that new place in Kentucky someday. But, whatever happens, God go with you.”
“And with you,” Ma answered with a catch in her voice.
Sarah listened to her brother’s footsteps crossing the floor and to the quiet but final closing of the door behind him. Suddenly she was running—down the back stairs, out the kitchen door, down the path to the road—holding her nightgown out of the way of her flying bare feet.
“Nate! Nate!” she called. “Wait! Please wait for me!”
Nate leaned his gun against the fence and waited by the gate. Then he swung her up in his strong arms. “I wanted to say good-bye, little sister,” he said, “but I didn’t want to wake you up in the middle of the night when you’ve got such a long journey ahead of you tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to go to Kentucky!” Sarah cried. “And I don’t want you to go to war! Nate, you might be killed!” Tears flooded her eyes and spilled down her cheeks.
“There’s a fresh new wind of freedom blowing through these colonies, Sarah,” he said, wiping her tears away with his hand. “And, as surely as Moses heard God’s voice in the burning bush, I hear Him calling me in that wind to take my place in the fight for freedom.”
“Then let me go with you!” she begged. “I want to stay in Virginia. I want to feel that new wind on my face.”
Nate laughed and hugged her close, then set her down on her feet.
“That’s God’s wind, Sarah, and it will reach every corner of this land, even into Kentucky. It has a special call from God for everyone. Someday it will call your name....”
She threw her arms around her brother’s waist. “I can’t leave this place, Nate!” she said desperately. “I’ve been here all my life, in this same house for eleven years!”
“I was born here, too, and lived here nearly seventeen years. But God has a purpose for each of us, Sarah, and sometimes it takes us far from home.”
“But surely God’s purpose for me is something better than to go to that heathen wilderness Pa’s so set on taking us to!”
Nate ruffled her hair where it had pulled loose from her braids. “Your purpose right now, little sister, is to obey your mother and father. But someday, God willing, I will come for you. I don’t want you to grow up ignorant in the backwoods. Aunt Charity has a tutor for her girls. I’m sure she would be glad to have you join them. You’d love Williamsburg, Sarah!”
“I love you, Nate,” she whispered p
“And I love you, sweet little sister. Be a good girl, and remember, I will come for you when I can.”
Nate picked up his gun, walked through the gate, shut it behind him, and strode quickly down the road. At the bend, he turned and waved. Sarah waved back, and let the tears run unheeded down her cheeks and drop off her chin. Then Nate walked into the deep shadows under the trees and was swallowed by the blackness.
Chapter 2
Sarah’s bare feet and the hem of her skirt were wet with dew from the long meadow grass, and she could barely see for the tears that filled her eyes. They ran down her face, and fell onto the gray-striped fur of the cat she held tightly in her arms.
Instinctively, her feet followed the cold, damp path through the woods, along the shortcut she always took to Martha’s house. Any other time, she would have stopped to pick a bouquet of dainty bluebells, purple sweet Williams, and little yellow and white flowers that grew along the path. Today, they only reminded her that this was the last time she would see them beckoning from every sun-dappled spot. This was the last time she would walk this path to her best friend’s house.
She brushed away the tears and wiped her face on Tiger’s soft fur, recalling that dreadful evening a year ago when Daniel Boone and his friends had stopped by the farm and convinced Pa he should follow them to Kentucky. “We never got to the bluegrass region when you went with us before,” Mr. Boone had said, as he drew Pa a rough map. “It’s a rich, rolling land—a paradise on earth!”
Sarah had her doubts about that, but ever since that terrible night, Pa had talked about little else. She had prayed that Pa would change his mind, but God had not answered her prayers, she thought bitterly. Pa had sold their farm. They were going to Kentucky, and there was nothing she could do about it.
Her brother was as excited about it as Pa was, acting more like a four year old than a fourteen year old. Luke didn’t care where he lived, so long as he had his carving knife in his pocket and his big black-and-tan hound dog at his heels. Pa was letting Luke take Hunter. Sarah understood that the dog would help keep the cow and calf and the two pigs from straying off the trail, and he could warn them of prowling Indians or wild animals at night. She was glad they were taking Hunter. It just didn’t seem fair that she had to leave Tiger behind.
Sarah sank down on a fallen log at the edge of the woods, put the cat across her lap, and stroked his fur. Tiger closed his eyes and bean to purr contentedly, unaware that Pa had said his legs were too short and he was too old to keep up on the long, hard journey to Kentucky, not realizing that Sarah was delivering him to his new family.
She held up the big cat so she could look into his ringed yellow-green eyes, and he stared back at her with solemn dignity. She put her head against his. “Oh, Tiger,” she choked, “I wish I could take you with me!”
“He will have a good home with the Hutchinsons,” Ma had tried to comfort her. And Sarah knew she was right. It was just that ever since she had found him snuggled up against the old mother cat, before he even had his eyes open, Tiger had been her special pet. She just couldn’t bear to give him up. And she knew Tiger didn’t want a new home any more than she did. She had taken him over to Martha’s twice already, and he had come back home.
Lovingly, she traced a streak of sunlight across the cat’s gray fur. Suddenly she jumped up. The sun was climbing. She had sat here too long! Ma had cautioned her to hurry. Pa wanted to get an early start before the sun got too hot, and he would be angry if she dallied.
Sarah hurried down the path and burst out of the woods in front of the Hutchinson’s sprawling white house.
I can’t stand to say good-bye to Martha and Tiger! Sarah thought desperately. Then she blinked away the tears and swallowed the lump in her throat. It would be best to get it over with as quickly as possible, she decided, and knocked at the kitchen door.
Martha opened the door and looked out. Her brown eyes grew wide as she saw Sarah and Tiger. Then she burst into tears.
Sarah handed Martha the cat, hugged them both, and, a sob catching in her throat, fled back down the path to the woods. She couldn’t resist looking back, though, just before the path went into the trees.
Martha stood on her doorstep, holding Tiger. She waved a lonesome little wave, and Sarah waved back. Tiger struggled to get down. Sarah plunged blindly down the path, her sobs muffled by the thick silence of the woods.
“Come on, slowpoke!” Luke yelled when he saw her coming across the meadow behind the house. “Pa’s got everything loaded on Bess and Willie—even the chickens and the geese!”
Sarah stopped and wiped her eyes with the hem of her skirt. She wasn’t in the mood to hear Luke call her a crybaby.
“Hurry up, Sary girl!” Pa called as she came around the house. “We’re leaving, soon as I get this load secured under these deerskins.”
Pa couldn’t load one more thing on either of those horses! Sarah thought, looking at the crates, kettles, and odd-shaped bundles piled on the horses’ broad backs. She could see the spindles from Ma’s spinning wheel sticking up from one bundle, and Pa’s ax handle poking up from another.
“I’ve got to get Samantha and my shoes!” she called back. She ran into the house, pulled on her stockings and shoes, grabbed her rag doll by one arm, and ran out again.
Sarah stopped halfway down the stepping stones to the front gate and looked back at the dear little brick house with its neat flower-bordered paths, saying a silent good-bye. She felt tears stinging her eyes again and turned away, only to catch Ma blinking away tears of her own.
Ma had tried to make it sound like a good thing, this leaving home. “The farm land here is getting as scarce as hen’s teeth, and ours is about worn out,” she had said. “We can claim hundreds of acres of rich land in Kentucky just by clearing the trees and building a cabin.”
Now, as Ma quickly bent to rearrange a pile of things lying on her gray woolen shawl, Sarah suspected that Ma didn’t want to go any more than she did, that her cheerful words as she gave Aunt Charity her flowered china and Aunt Rose her harpsichord were all a pretense.
As Ma tied the corners of the shawl so that it formed a pack, Sarah glimpsed several small cloth bundles that held garden seeds, and under them the clock from the parlor mantel, wrapped in Ma’s white Sunday shawl.
“Make sure my feather quilts are covered by those deerskins, Hiram,” Ma called. “If it rains, we’ll be glad of dry covers!”
Pa tucked in the corner of a quilt, then gathered the family together for a sending-off prayer.
“Oh, Lord,” Pa began, “as you led the Israelites through the wilderness to their promised land, lead us safely to ours. We ask it in the name of our Savior, Amen.”
Sarah bowed her head, but she didn’t pray. She had prayed that they would not leave home, and they were going anyway.
“Let’s go!” Pa yelled, slapping the reins across old Willie’s back.
“Giddap!” Luke called to old Bess.
“Please carry Jamie a while, Sarah,” Ma said. “I’ll take him when you get tired.” She picked up the shawl bundle and started down the trail behind Pa and Luke.
Jamie gave Sarah a grin that showed his six teeth, and held up his little arms. Sarah picked him up and settled him astraddle one hip. Her baby brother was getting heavy now that he was a year and a half old, but she knew his legs were too short to keep up...just like Tiger’s. If only he would come yelling, “Meow! Meow!” as he always did when he thought she was going somewhere without him. If only she could pick him up, like Jamie, and carry him with her!
Sarah threw one last look back at the brick house nestled among its green fields and orchards, with the barns and outbuildings behind it. Again, she blinked away tears, and she started reluctantly down the trail behind Ma.
“Hossie! Hossie! Gid’up!” Jamie cried happily, enjoying his ride on Sarah’s hip.
Sarah knew the baby did not understand that they were leaving their home and would not be coming back. Would he even remember their cozy house here near Miller’s Forks, Virginia? Would any of them ever see it again?
