From Sea to Shining Sea Read Online Free

sat in that classroom with that bedamned tome open on my desk. I read that blamed first page twenty times, and I couldn’t tell Parson one hint o’ what it said! O’ course that earned me another lecture on what a good scholar Jonathan’d been. Ha, ha! But now look at us. Old Jonathan’s sitting in his clerk’s office, with pigeonholes full o’ deeds an’ all, and getting his wages for pokin’ ’round in dusty paper, but me, no scholar at all, I’m a-layin’ out land, and makin’ farms out o’ wilderness to sell to newcomers, and by Heaven, Pa, I’m worth twenty thousand pounds sterling in land if he’s worth five in cash, that smart scholar! Did I tell ye, Pa, that Higgins sold me his share of our place out on Grave Creek, the one you came and saw? And already I’ve had three generous offers on it, from gents comin’ down the Ohio. And hear this! I’ve engrossed land with a salt lick for ye. It’ll make y’ rich. Pa, I’ll say it again, that you’ve got to come out, move out and stay. Our fortune’s in Kaintuck. Virginia soil’s exhausted from growin’ tobacco, y’ know that. I pray y’ll bring the family out. We’ll be that country’s first and foremost family, I swear it. We’ll be in Kaintuck what Jeffersons are in Albemarle!”
    “Egod, George, how you can talk!” exclaimed John Clark, shaking his head. “I’m ready to mount up and ride!”
    “Ye saw the land! You know how fine it is!”
    John Clark groaned. “Must you tempt me by speakin’ on’t?”
    Sisters and brothers were turning their heads back and forth from one end of the table to the other. It was hard for anyone else to get a word said when George and his father were talking about Kaintuck. John Clark went on: “Aye, it’s fine. Never have I seen such soil. But son, things are all in question in this colony now, with King George and his acts, and a man dares not move till he knows what’s to come next. By what Parliament says, anyone west o’ the mountains is an outlaw, and what good’s the land claim of an outlaw? Ye say you’re worth twenty thousand quid in land out there? But the King forbids ye even
being
out there. How smart is that, I ask? My grant here’s secure, I know it. What sort o’ father would I be, taking my family out to dubious land? And where the red Indian still prevails, I might add? Aye, son, I saw the land in that valley, and I can’t get the picture of it out o’ my head, nor forget the feel of it ’twixt my fingers, any more than you can. Someday we’ll come. Not yet awhile. Here in the Old Dominion at least, I know where I stand. And a man with this size a family has to know where he stands.”
    “Let’s talk about my wedding,” Annie exclaimed. “If we’re totalk o’ something important to this family, let’s talk o’ what happens next month, on the twentieth of October! Who cares about some forest, out on the Ohio River, I mean, except the Indians who live there?”
    “Right!” cried George. “Your wedding! I want to know about it! Who comes? Who’s the music, I’d like to know? By Heaven, I’d like to know about this shivaree!”
    “No, huh uh,” Billy exclaimed. “Talk bout Jo jee wif Indians! Pwease!”
    “After a bit, Billy,” his mother said. “Hush now. The wedding’s important, and Georgie wants to hear about it, don’t ye, son?”
    “You heard me say so. Billy, after a while I’ll tell ye of the greatest Indian I ever saw, but first we hear of the wedding. Is that fair?”
    Billy nodded. Anything George wanted was what should be.
    “Fiddlers and pipers,” John Clark said. “Mr. Henry’s bringing ’em up from his father-in-law’s public house. That’s the music.”
    “Ah! Mister Henry’ll be here? I wish I
could
stay. I’d like to talk to that gadfly!” Patrick Henry was the Clark family’s lawyer. In the House of Burgesses he was a constant scold against King George’s policies, and his name was known out on the frontier, where disrespect