Boone's Lick

for all the big space, there were just so many forts, where the old-timers and the newcomers mixed and mingled.

I was anxious to get to one of the forts myself. I wanted to meet some of the famous mountain men--Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, and the like: the men Uncle Seth was always telling stories about.

That night I had a dream about Henry Clay, our mule that the Millers and the Tebbits had ski

but we never quite got to the fair. Somehow we missed it and ended up back in our old freight yard--already half the pens had been knocked down, and the cabin had begun to sag in.

69

I was dozing on deck when I had this dream-- the next thing I knew, Ma had hold of me and was trying to drag me under the shed. A wild storm had come up--the river was pitching the boat around like a chip. Lightning flashed like white fire and in the flash I saw Little Nicky, the mule, get thrown clear over the edge into the river. For a while the lightning was so bad that I kept my eyes squeezed shut, to protect my eyeballs.

Uncle Seth and Charlie Seven Days were struggling to keep any more of the animals from pitching overboard. While they were hanging on to the livestock the little shed blew clean away, into the river somewhere behind us. There was nothing we could do except huddle together and wait out the storm. At one point the boat gave such a lurch that baby Marcy popped out of Ma's arms--luckily Aunt Rosie caught her. Of course, Marcy was screaming her lungs out, but we could only hear her for a second, between thunderclaps. In my mind I was still half in my dream, but the rest of me was wet as a dog, and cold.

It must have been nearly dawn when the storm struck, because lightning was still flashing to the east when the sky began to get red with the sunrise. For a few minutes clouds and thunder and sun all mixed together, but then the thunder became only a faint rumble, off in the distance, and the sun came up, round and warm.

"Count up," Ma said. "Some of us might be missing."

"I don't see Seth," Aunt Rosie said. "I don't see that ski

But we hadn't lost him--he had floundered ashore somehow and came walking along the river-bank, leading Little Nicky by his lead rope. We hadn't lost Joe, the ski

"These are just the pleasures of travel, I guess," Uncle Seth said, when he climbed back on deck. We were all still soaking wet.

"If you think this is pleasure, then I'd say you're a fool," Ma said.

Sometimes she liked Uncle Seth's little jokes, and sometimes she didn't.

"But where is your old one?" Charlie asked, once he had his canoe safely back in place. "I don't see him."

Father Villy had been in the water, pulling with the mules, but he jumped back on deck quick enough, when he discovered we couldn't locate Granpa.

The fact was, Granpa Crackenthorpe was gone. There was not a trace of him to be seen.

"I should have tied him to something--I was so

scared for Marcy that I forgot him," Ma said, when it was clear that Granpa was gone. G.T. and Neva, neither of whom had ever liked Granpa, were bawling their heads off anyway.

70

"No, you don't want to tie somebody to a boat that's pitching," Uncle Seth said. He tried to put his arm around Ma but she shook him off. "A pitching boat can flip over, and then whoever's tied to it will be drownt for sure."

Ma didn't bother to answer him.

Of course, a storm that could pitch a full-grown mule overboard would have no trouble tossing a ski

Uncle Seth got back on Sally, and Charlie Seven Days untied his canoe.

Father Villy walked down one bank of the river crying, "Hubert! Hubert!"

at the top of his lungs, and then swam across and did the same on the other bank, all to no avail. No trace of Granpa was found.

I couldn't hold back the tears myself. Granpa Crackenthorpe had lived with us every day of my life. He wasn't especially agreeable, but on the other hand, there was no reason to stab him with a pocketknife, as G.T.

had once done.

Uncle Seth and Charlie and Father Villy searched the river nearly all that day. Ma didn't help and didn't look--she sat at the stern of the boat, dry-eyed, leaving Marcy to Aunt Rosie's care, except when she needed to nurse.

The boatmen grew impatient. Once they got their flimsy shed nailed back on they wanted to be on their way upriver, but Uncle Seth insisted we wait.

"If Hubert managed to get loose from that big pistol of his, then he would have been light as a leaf," Uncle Seth said. "He could be ten miles downstream, wandering around in the mud, cussing us all."

Ma didn't answer. None of us were hungry that night. The boatmen ate most of what was left of the turkeys and the deer.

3 WE searched downriver--all of us-- for another whole day, but we didn't find Granpa. The boatmen grew so surly that Uncle Seth raised a temper and threatened to shoot all of them.

"Learn a little patience!" he said, with the vein popping on his nose.

"I fault myself for this," Ma said. "I should left the bunch of you in Boone's Lick and gone looking for Dick myself."

"Mary, you've got a nursing baby," Uncle Set) reminded her. "You can't just go off and leave a nursing baby."

n

"I could--she's had about enough of the teat, Ma said. "Besides, there are na

Father Villy, like Ma, was cast into sadness by the loss of Granpa Crackenthorpe.

"Hubert survived the battle of the Bad Axe, which was so terrible that the Mississippi River ran red," Father Villy said. "Then a little freshet blew him away."

71

We were all willing to keep looking, but Ma shook her head.

"Time to give it up," she said--then she sat all day in the stern of the boat, alone with her thoughts.

The next morning the surface of the river was as smooth as if wind had never ruffled it. There was frost on the ropes we used to tie up the boat, and little crinkles of ice in the shallows along the shore. All day ducks came slanting in--sometimes there were a thousand or more of them on the river at once; their gabbling kept me awake and fear of storms kept G.T. awake. He had stopped worrying about bears and started worrying about dangerous clouds. Despite what Uncle Seth said about boats flipping over, G.T. tied himself to the railing every night, in a fearful mood.

After the fat doe, the turkeys, and the big catfish we all had high expectations for the hunt, but they were soon disappointed. Uncle Seth hunted much of the day, and Charlie Seven Days did too, but they brought home nothing. Charlie finally managed to snare a goose, but one goose didn't go far on a boat full of hungry people. Uncle Seth and Aunt Rosie went ashore in Westport and came back drunk, but Uncle Seth had managed to secure a

ten-gauge shotgun and some duck shot. After that he and Charlie would float off into the mists that covered the river just before dawn.

Sometimes they would catch a raft of ducks dozing together and kill thirty or forty of them with a single shot. We ate duck until we all got tired of the rubbery taste.