Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

Father raised his hand in greeting and touched the rim of his right ear, the common signal for conductors. Mr. Thompson gave the countersign and touched his ear also. “I saw that fellow Partridge from Keene this morning,” he said to us.

“Yes,” Father answered. “He and his friend, a man named Billingsly, they paid us a visit as well.”

Mr. Thompson took a long look at the wagon box. “Do you need help?”

“No.”

“Partridge and the bounty-hunter went on to the Negro settlement. You know, John, there’s plenty of folks hereabouts, folks like Partridge, who’d happily give aid and comfort to a slave-catcher for the beauty of a dollar or two.”

“Where might he light?” Father asked.

“Anybody local would tell the man to wait out to Wilmington Notch. So if I was you, I’d keep moving and moving fast when I got to the notch. It’ll be dark by then.”

“Thank you kindly,” Father said.

Mr. Thompson nodded and stepped aside. His cows had crossed the road and were making their slow way towards his barn. The sun had nearly set over the wooded hills west of Whiteface, and wide plum-colored streaks were spreading across the pale yellow sky. I snapped the reins, and we moved on towards the road that led out of North Elba and passed along the West Branch of the Au Sable, across the flat, marshy grasslands to where the river turned northeast.

Soon it was dark, with the nearly full moon flashing intermittently on our right behind the black silhouettes of the trees. Whiteface towered on our left, its long, pale scars brightly illuminated by the moonlight, and below us the glittering river, making a great noise, narrowed and passed over rocks and cascades as the mountains on either side converged at the notch. For several miles here the road was barely wide enough for a single wagon. On one side the land fell off precipitously to the river, while on the other a sheer rock face where not even shrubs grew rose towards high ledges and outcroppings that nearly blocked the sky.

We had just entered the notch, when Father ordered me to halt the wagon, and after I had done it, he got down and loosened the tarpaulin at the back and folded it over so that Lyman could see out. In a low voice, he said to Lyman, “If someone gives chase, Mister Epps, just fire away.” Then he climbed back up beside me, and we continued as before.

The darkened road turned and twisted, and I was obliged to hold the team to a walking pace. The track was narrow and sometimes sloped abruptly down to the edge of the water, then ascended a ways to cross above an overhanging cliff, until, forced by a wall of huge boulders from an ancient landslide, it switch-backed towards the river and descended to the rushing waters again. Day or night, this was a mighty dangerous place. Highwayman, slave-catcher, bounty-hunter — one man alone could stop a wagon from passing here and could keep it from turning back as well, simply by felling a tree or rolling a boulder down from the embankment above. At every turning I was sure we would suddenly be brought up short by an obstacle in the road and would be fired upon from the darkness. Father kept his rifle at the ready and said nothing. The sounds of the horses’ hooves were muffled by the roar of the water below, and I felt as if we were passing through a long, dark cave, when gradually I saw that we had emerged from the notch, for the road had straightened somewhat and the hills seemed to have parted and backed away. The light of the moon splashed across the tan backs of the horses; the noise of the river had diminished, and I could hear the comforting clop of the horses’ hooves again. It was then that I heard the rapid pounding of my heart, for I had grown considerably more alarmed by our passage through the notch, now that we were safely beyond, than when we were actually doing it. For a long time no one spoke, but after a while, when we were well clear of the notch and passing through the relatively flat valley of the Au Sable where it’s joined by the East Branch coming north from Keene, Father said, “I didn’t think Billingsly would want to go up against us alone. But the truth is, he could have done us some damage back there.”

We were safe now, on the high, more or less straight, northeasterly road to the village of Keesville and on to Port Kent. This was the other of the two roads into the Adirondack wilderness from Lake Champlain. The first was the toll road that we’d taken on our arrival from Westport, through Elizabethtown and Keene and the pass at Edmonds Lakes near our farm. This more northerly route, the old Military Road dating back to the days of the French and Indian wars, once you got through the Wilmington Notch, was wide enough in places for two wagons to pass and took you across the rolling hills and fertile farmlands alongside the now meandering Au Sable and Boquet Rivers directly to the shore of the vast lake. Our journey from here on was uneventful and sped by, as we passed darkened farms and settlements, sighting an occasional herd of deer grazing at the edge of a meadow or a fox darting into the brush beside the road, while the moon slowly ascended from behind us to its high point overhead and then began its descent towards the lake.

After crossing the swaying bridge over the falls at Keesville, we began to get glimpses of the lake now and then through the trees, until finally we came to the high, grassy head of land that forms the protective cove where Port Kent is located, and it was as if we had come to the edge of the sea. Father bade me to stop the wagon, and he got down and helped Lyman and our fugitives climb out of the wagon and stretch their limbs and enjoy the cool, fresh air off the lake. For a few moments, we stood about and rested and ate a portion of the food that Mary had packed for us. We did not speak much one to the other, but instead simply gazed at the beauty of the land and sky and water that lay before us.

The moon had streaked the dark waters with skeins of molten silver. Way in the east at the horizon, the velvety night sky was lit by the pale light of a false dawn, and from our place on the height of land overlooking the broad expanse of the lake, morning seemed imminent. The lake, one hundred four miles long from north to south, was at its widest here, more than twenty miles across to the state of Vermont. A cool breeze blew sharply over the choppy waters to land, and on the far side of the lake a starry sky hovered above the Vermont horizon like a deep blue curtain lit from below.

When it was time to move on, Lyman Epps and Mr. and Mrs. Cannon of Richmond, Virginia, climbed back into the wagon, and Father once again tied down the tarpaulin and came and joined me up front. We followed the road down from the headland to the shore and soon entered the village of Port Kent. We were headed for the boatyard owned and operated by the Quaker Solomon Keifer, whom we expected to show up at dawn to commence his day’s work there. The village was still mostly asleep, although here and there we saw a window lit by candles or an oil lamp inside. We passed the main dock and several stone warehouses, after which came a row of small boathouses, until we arrived at the last in the row, where we saw a small sign, Capt. S. I. Keifer, above the closed door facing the lane. Here I drew the wagon to a halt and jumped down and tied the horses to a hitching post. A narrow pier ran out a ways into the lake, where a wide-bottomed schooner was tied up — the last leg of our fugitives’ journey, their final means of transport to freedom.

A narrow wooden stairway led up from the shore to a crest of land above, where there were a number of houses and a church and meeting house, and Father immediately went that way, in search of Captain Keifer, while Lyman and I stayed with the wagon and our cargo. Feeling we were finally safe, I put my rifle down and untied the tarpaulin, and when I had done so, Lyman came and stood with me in the darkness, stretching his legs and rubbing his aching joints, which signs of discomfort caused me to beckon to Mr. and Mrs. Cannon to come out of the wagon. Slowly, first the man and then the woman emerged from the box and brought their bundles with them and regarded the unlikely scene with curiosity and some natural trepidation, for it must have looked to them that they were about to set off on an ocean-going voyage.