They made a brief effort to chop the boats out of the ice that morning. The boatmen stood along the gunwales with long, steel-tipped pikes and jabbed at the ice, piercing it and chipping away chunks all around the hulls. But by the time the hulls were floating free, the men were too exhausted to break channels ahead. The Clark men spelled them on the pikes then. But eventually the whole process became too obviously futile. An hour’s ice-breaking would move a boat only twenty-five feet. Even in the main channel, the ice was thick enough to support a man’s weight. The temperature, in the meantime, was dropping fast. The sky had cleared to a hard, bright blue, and the dry snow blew across the river ice in streamers.
“It’s the kind o’ cold that stays,” said John Clark. “I reckon these boats are here for quite a spell.”
“Then that means we are too, Pa,” said Edmund.
“Well, it could mean just that. But it needn’t.”
“What say ye, Pa?”
“Well, I don’t intend to make a permanent residence for my wife and daughters on a marooned shantyboat with a drunken fartbag for its admiral, that’s what I mean to say. We’ve got horses enough aboard here to carry the womenfolk. You boys and me, we could walk and lead ’em, and carry our necessaries on our backs. Pittsburgh’s only twenty-five miles.” He scratched his jaw and gazed down along the right bank. “Put two girls on a horse, that’ll free up a beast or two to carry valuables, victuals, some tools. Furniture and the like, why, we won’t need that. Greathouse can float it down to Pittsburgh when he gets his old scows freed up.” He sighed and stared downriver, looking resolute. “Maybe I was a fool t’ sell the wagons when I done. We were a-doin’ just fine till we hitched up with boats and river rats.”
Edmund smiled at his father’s resolve. “That’s true, but we’d no way o’ knowin’ she’d ice up so early in th’ season.”
“Well, this boat’s no fit place for a family to live. Yep, two ladies to a horse. Old Rose and Venus ought to ride. Rest o’ th’ Negroes can walk, like us.”
“So be it, Pa. Y’re the boss.”
John Clark chuckled. “Tell that t’ your ma,” he said. “Twas her idea we abandon ship.”
Greathouse grumbled a bit when John Clark announced his intent. But he agreed to deliver their bulk goods to them at Pittsburgh when the river thawed.
“If we find the Ohio open,” John Clark said, “we just may hire small boats to take us on down to Louisville. In that event, ye’d float our baggage on down there when you can come. How sayee?”
“So be it, Mr. Clark. I am sorry to see you set off, but I can’t say I blame ye. If I could leave all this and go to Pitt, why, that I would.”
“Mind, now, Mister Greathouse, take every care of our belongings. They might not be fancy, but they’re family things, most dear.”
“My word on’t. If my boats get down th’ river, so shall y’r household.”
T
HE ICE AROUND THE BOATS WAS STRONG ENOUGH NOW TO
support horses. Wide gangplanks were laid over the boat’s sides and secured so that they wouldn’t slip. William led and coaxed Flag over the precarious walk first, then the other horses followed over willingly. Soon all the Clark horses had been led across the ice to shore, and light baggage, selected carefully, was bundled and strapped onto the backs of two of the beasts. Lucy rode one of the saddle horses, with old Rose—who had never been on horseback in her long life—locked onto her with desperately hugging arms. Elizabeth rode the second saddle horse, with the Negro woman Venus sitting behind her. Mrs. Clark rode the third, mounted saddleless and astride like an Indian, with Fanny behind her. One of the Clark men led each saddle horse and carried his rifle in his free hand. York led the pack horses. The boatmen came down on shore and shook hands, and with the slaves following on foot, the procession started down the east bank of the Monongahela. It was midmorning. The snow was striped light blue with tree-trunk shadows. But the air was snapping cold and the sunlight so weak it could hardly be felt. Edmund led the way. The snow was to his knees. They found fairly level bottomlands for the first five miles.
Within two hours, each of the girls had remembered at least one item she had forgotten to bring with her from the boats. Each of these was an allegedly essential implement or priceless keepsake, without which the young women were certain they
could not live out the day. But there was no turning back, and so their laments soon died down. The entourage struggled quietly on through the snow. There was no talk now, as if the frozen grandeur of the rugged valley had intimidated them to silence. There was only the heavy breathing and grunting of the men as they high-stepped through the snow and flung one leg, then another, over some fallen log, the steamy snorting of the horses, the creak of baggage and loaded tack, a cough, now and then a whine of complaint or a sigh from a weary slave in the rear of the column, the occasional crack of a dead branch, sometimes a few notes of a hummed tune.
They came in early afternoon to a place where the river swung westward, cutting into a sheer bluff that rose in their path. Edmund stopped and studied the height, and the rest of the column came to a halt behind him. The rise was steep and thickly overgrown and doubtless was slick with snow and ice. The only passage appeared to be under it, on the river ice. He waved toward the river and led the animal that way. At the river’s edge, he handed up the reins and went out to check the ice. He stepped onto it, stamped, walked out farther, and sprang up and down on flexed knees. He brushed aside some snow, knelt, and poked at the ice with the point of his hunting knife. Finally he was satisfied. “It’ll hold, I reckon,” he said. “I ’spect we could go all the way down to Fort Pitt on this river, just like a highway. But,” he paused, “just to be prudent, you get down. While we’re on ice, we’ll walk the horses without your weight on ’em. Just to be safe and sure, eh, ladies?”
And so the womenfolk all dismounted and the horses were led down the river ice a few feet offshore from the bluff. The pack horses, heavier with their loads, were led over next, and when they had proven the strength of the ice, the women and slaves followed on foot, straggling singly or in pairs, picking their footing gingerly on the slick surface.
They passed three or four miles thus on the ice over the deep water, becoming more familiar and at ease until someone would slip and fall, then would get up and proceed again as if walking on eggs. The river began curving off to the right then, and there was a stretch of bottomland for some distance ahead, so the women mounted to ride again, their legs weary and shaky with the tension of ice-walking. Four miles farther on, the river looped again, under the steep shoulder of a mountain, and the party dismounted to walk for the next two miles. The cold intensified; the air seemed to sear their nostrils as they went along. The mountains on the west side of the river were high and steep,
and by midafternoon, the sky still crystalline blue, the sun disappeared behind a ridge, taking its hint of warmth with it.
But as the day grew colder, their faith in the thickness of the ice increased.
“Oh, thunder,” Elizabeth exclaimed later in the afternoon, breaking a long period of silent concentration, “I know what I left on the boat: my skates!”
There was a chorus of laughter and wails.
“Me too!”
“Oh, of all things!”
It was true. Every child in the Clark family had been given a pair of ice skates on his or her sixth birthday, skates John Clark had made for them in spare time at his small forge, and everybody in the family was a skillful skater.
“Aye,” Mrs. Clark exclaimed with a shivery laugh, “and with the extra pairs, we could’ve put one or two o’ the horses on skates, too.”
The whole family roared with laughter at the notion.
“And,” Fanny chimed in, “we’d all have been at Fort Pitt by now, we would!”
“Well, I reckon so,” exclaimed William. “By heaven, if we ain’t a vacant-headed family I never saw one!”
“L
ORD, THIS IS A MISERY
,”
GROANED
R
OSE, HUGGING
L
UCY
Clark from behind for warmth and support as their horse clopped monotonously along on the windswept ice.
It was late afternoon, the snow was in violet shadow, the sky was fading. The womenfolk had exhausted themselves mounting and dismounting, and now simply stayed on horseback whether crossing land or ice. Their bones ached with cold; their feet hung numb at the horses’ flanks. They had wrapped their faces in shawls. The men, leading the horses, were slump-shouldered with fatigue. Edmund knew of a cave in a bluff within a mile or two. He was pressing to get them to it before nightfall.
The column was long strung out now. Some of the Negroes were as much as a quarter of a mile behind, limping and moaning prayers, sometimes falling on the ice and then just sitting there lamenting, giving up. Cupid had taken the responsibility for the rest of the servants at first, and he frequently had retraced his steps to go back and harangue and haul at these poor souls until he’d gotten them back on their feet. But at last Cupid himself had run out of grit, and now was just stumbling along hugging his own misery to his bosom, ignoring his flagging brethren.
Mrs. Clark was riding the last horse now, with Fanny shivering
behind her. William had given his mother the reins and gone up the column to talk with his father.
She turned her head and glanced back at the straggling Negroes. She saw them strung out almost out of sight around the river bend, dark figures on the gray ice in the purpling twilight. She saw small objects lying on the ice near them and knew they had sunk so low in apathy that they were dropping their belongings. She saw Cupid weaving and stumbling along, paying them no heed.
“Got to go back and light some fire under those wretches,” she told Fanny. “Elsewise they’re just goin’ to sit down and perish.”
She tried to rein the plodding mare around, but she wouldn’t respond.
“C’mon, now,” she snapped, yanking the reins harder. The mare started; she began to pivot to the left, but lost her footing. Her hind hoof skidded from under her and she fell sideways onto her hindquarter. Mrs. Clark and her daughter both yelped as they tilted toward the hard ice.
The mare’s heavy fall broke the ice. Two cracks angled away toward the riverbank and then a third crack shot between them, and a three-cornered slab of ice tilted down under the struggling horse. Fanny screamed. The floundering mare whinnied and flailed with her forehooves, and more pieces of ice caved in. Mrs. Clark felt herself slide sideways off the animal, back into the frigid dark water, and heard Fanny’s scream end in a dreadful gulp. Mrs. Clark was twisting around to clutch a handful of her daughter’s clothing when her own head slipped under the shocking-cold water.
The shock was so stunning that she wanted to gasp her lungs full of air. But it would be water. She was almost paralyzed immediately, but her hands were trying to seek her daughter down in the airless current under the ice. Something powerful smashed against her hip and pressed her down; it was the panicked mare thrashing in the water.
Then something tugged down on her arm. She grabbed; it was a piece of cloth. Fanny’s dress. She held onto it with numbing fingers. The current was tugging at the weight in it.
Mrs. Clark opened her eyes to gray murkiness, to vague, large, moving shapes. She groped with her free hand for the surface. She could not tell which direction was up or which was down. She wanted to take the fatal inhalation. But she couldn’t. If she gave up, Fanny would die.
I didn’t expect the whole thing to end this way, she thought: Things shouldn’t end when they’re just starting …
W
ILLIAM HEARD THEIR OUTCRIES AND THE WHINNYING OF
the mare, and as he turned to look back he heard the sudden wails of the Negroes.
He saw the horse floundering, surrounded by breaking ice and churning water; he caught a glimpse of color disappearing into the water; his mother’s cloak. He turned to run back to the place but slipped and fell on his side. “Pa!” he was yelling as he scrambled back on his feet. “Hurry!” He was closest to the mishap, but a hundred yards or more from it, and he knew that mere seconds in the water and under the ice would mean the end of his mother and sister. An awful sense of helplessness filled his breast even as he ran; he seemed to be moving with a dreamlike slowness and, as in a dream, could not seem to make himself move faster.
Only the horse’s head and neck were out of the water. William threw himself forward when he was ten feet away, and sledded and crawled forward on his belly to the edge of the broken ice. He saw a swirl of cloth a few inches under the water and grabbed for it. He pulled. The weight pulled him. The current was strong. He tried to press the front of his body against the ice for traction, to hold the weighted garment until his father or someone could arrive, but it pulled and he was sliding. He would have to let go, or be pulled into the water.
He held on. If he let go now, he knew, his mother would be carried under the ice and that would be all. Fanny, he presumed, was already lost. He sobbed and held to the cloak, and finally, when he could hold himself in check no longer and slid over the broken edge into the water, he grabbed the horse’s bridle with his free hand.
The beast fought frantically against this new weight that was pulling it down. The water churned. William kept his head above water and gasped from the shock of the cold.
Now he could pull. He hauled at the wet cloth, drawing it toward him, lifting. His teeth were chattering and the cold seemed to be sapping all his strength at once, but he kept pulling and lifting, and suddenly his mother’s stricken face appeared above the water beside him; she immediately began drawing for breath with desperate rasping sounds. He released her cloak and cupped his hand behind her neck to keep her head up. She was trying to say something.
“Fanny … Fanny … Here …” She was pulling something and William realized then that she had a grip on Fanny’s clothing.
He guided his mother’s free hand to the horse’s bridle, and she clutched at it. He released her neck then and grabbed for the garment she held. He pulled. He groaned and pulled, vaguely aware of his father’s voice now nearby.