The White Pelt

James Annable

Description

In this coming-of-age story, a young man is confronted with the reality of good and evil, and the confusing emotions associated with a budding romance.
It is 1754 as Jamie Graham journeys home from wintering in the lands of Six Nations with his father and a family friend. When they walk into a dimly lit trading post one day, Jamie has no idea that an unintended collision with an English captain, Lord Mowbray, will have repercussions far beyond what he ever imagined.
As he is swept along on this pilgrimage into manhood, Jamie is taken from the social circles of Philadelphia to the western reaches of the frontier where he goes in search of the children taken captive by an Abenaki war party. As he is reluctantly drawn into the first major campaign of the war with the French, Jamie finds himself in the thick of the fighting on Braddock’s Road, experiencing firsthand England’s devastating defeat in the opening stages of the French and Indian war. When his journey reaches its climactic resolution in a small cabin near where his pilgrimage began, Jamie must face one final confrontation with Mowbray where both love and justice hang in the balance.
In this coming-of-age story set during the tumultuous beginning of the French and Indian war, a young man is confronted with the reality of good and evil, and the confusing emotions associated with a budding romance.

Sujets

• Historical
• Musket
• Historical novel
• Colonial
• Braddock
• Frontier
• Franklin
• Fort
• Mohawk
• Tomahawk
• Colonialisme
• William Penn
• Fiction
• Washington

Informations

• Publié par: LifeRich Publishing
• Date de parution: 30 juin 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781489748140
• Langue: English

Extrait

The WHITE PELT
 
 
 
 
JAMES ANNABLE
 
 
 
 
 
 
Copyright © 2023 James Annable.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
LifeRich Publishing is a registered trademark of The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.
 
LifeRich Publishing
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Bloomington, IN 47403
www.liferichpublishing.com
844-686-9607
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-4897-4685-6 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4897-4686-3 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-4897-4814-0 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023911022
 
LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 06/12/2023
CONTENTS
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1
 
“I T IS AWFULLY HARD TO kill a man, Jamie,” Pa told me that memorable chill-soaked evening, as spring was struggling into the new year of 1754.
An evening that is lodged in my memory, like a splinter embedded deeply into the palm of your hand, persistent, and painful. Because that spring evening was so unseasonably cold, we were attempting to warm ourselves by one of the few fires we would have that year on the trail home. It was not much of a fire, the wood stubbornly refusing to burn, its smoldering, eye-watering smokey entrails more of a stinging reproach than a comfort.
He was talking about the battered and beaten Delaware brave we’d seen that morning, still, it was hard for me to picture my pa having trouble doing anything he set his mind to. He was a big, burly, sandy hair Scot whose personality was even larger, and it seemed everything he did came easily for him. There was much about Pa that was a mystery. This thing of killing, this was something he’d never talked about.
Earlier that morning, we had broken camp at dawn as usual, headed for George Croghan’s post on Aughwick Creek to sell the beaver, fox, and other pelts we had traded and trapped that winter before making our way home, the trail becoming easier to follow the further east we traveled. Heading home, we had come across a small knot of Delaware off the side of the trail. The center of their attention was one of their young men who had been beaten so badly, I was sure he was dead. But as Pa spoke with the others in that party, the wounded youth unexpectedly moved his head to look at us, a frothy, gurgle moan greeting my stare. They had been at Croghans, when this young Delaware came to the defense of an Indian lass being abused by a soldier, and was beaten almost to death. It seemed a miracle that any human could survive such injuries. I have seen as bad or worse since that time, and marvel at how the human body can take such abuse and still live, but the face that morning was unrecognizable. A one-eyed, pulpy mess, now framed in a mass of bloody hair. I wanted to not look, yet found myself staring, appalled. And so the subject of killing came up between me and my pa.
Since my pa and Josephus had traded in these parts for years, they knew of some of the men in this small band of Delaware and offered to delay our journey in order to help them, a kindness and generosity not unusual out in these parts. We stayed with that band for well over a week, while Josephus, who had a knack for healing things, worked on doing what he could for the brave lad who had come so close to dying. It was a lucky thing for him we had come along when we did, as Josephus could do more than most when it came to knowing how to keep a wound from festering. Still, Pa hated to worry Ma, and we could tell that he was in a hurry to head home. Pa was always in a hurry. Josephus more than once would say to me, “Jamie, hurry is the great enemy to the soul. There is almost nothing that can be done well in a hurry.”
We had set up camp at dusk while traveling east on the Kittaning Path that climbed the hard, iron-cold Allegheny Mountains, going from the sharp-edged heights of pine and boulders and winding back down toward the gentle, softer hills of the Susquehanna River Valley in central Pennsylvania. We were coming from our northwest wintering in the lands of the Six Nations, the most taxing part of our journey now thankfully behind us. Pa, tired and eager to be home, uneasily shared his concern of the growing tension between the Ohio Company of Virginia, French trappers, and many of the native tribes we traded and wintered among. Politics that were confusing and uninteresting.
But every word was followed, feeling the pride of being a man who was old enough to consider and plan for potential danger, and grateful to have a father like Archibald Graham for my pa. Oh, to be more like him! Instead, it was my mother, Emma, who was a slight, dark-haired woman with large, black eyes, and a complexion so pale it was almost translucent, whom I favored. Strong and capable, she could out walk and outwork most men with a resilience unusual for a refined girl from the upper social circles of Philadelphia. She also had a keen eye, and through some quirk of fate, had unwittingly passed that blessing of eyesight along to me. Although I would have preferred to be a stout, well-muscled man like my pa, I could shoot and throw a hunting knife or hatchet with unerring aim, using either my right or left hand with equal success, which was an unusual thing for a person I discovered. God gave us two hands and I thought everyone could use them both equally well or poorly as may be the case. My eye would tell my hand where a thing ought to go and it somehow went there, whichever hand was doing the throwing. Pa called it a “rare fine gift,” so maybe it was God’s way of compensating me for being a slender youth of average height, and one who would never be big and imposing as he was.
As spring crept begrudgingly into the fertile Pennsylvania valleys, Pa, Josephus—a free black and my pa’s closest friend—and myself were on our way home, backpacking bulky bundles of an entire winter’s worth of trapped furs, now tired and huddled over a smoky pile of wet sticks pretending to be a fire. Pa and Josephus were as different as a trout is from a fox, with my pa being outgoing and talkative, constantly regaling us with endless stories of his native Scotland, while Josephus was quiet and content within himself, but missing nothing. I had just turned nineteen that winter, my third year wintering with Pa and Josephus as they trapped and traded to the west of John Fraser’s on the Allegheny and west of the Forks of the Ohio, where the Monongahela and the Susquehanna rivers came together. My nature was more like that of Josephus, being on the quiet side, and able to sit still and watchful for hours, something my pa would occasionally remark “made me a handy lad to have along hunting.”
We had been out for six months and were all eager to get home again where my ma and my twin sister Darby were waiting for us, having expected our return a week earlier. Pa knew they would be beside themselves with worry, but he and Josephus were never ones to overlook the needs of others.
Two days after leaving the Delaware band, we emerged on a warm day from the forest into more open land at the edge of a settlement on the Juniata River, called Aughwick, where George Croghan traded fairly with trappers like us. I carried with me, apart from our bundle, one fur I wouldn’t part with for any price. To my great good fortune, I had acquired a pure white fox pelt from an Abenaki who himself had won it in a bet from a French trapper up north. I thought of giving it to my sister Darby for a present, but it was so beautiful and rare, I was of two minds. Sometimes at night I would take it out and look at it, my imagination flying off to the far north lands it called home, and this beautiful pelt began to embody all of the magical and unseen things of that imaginary place. Looking at it, my mind drifted to the wildness that inhabits the invisible cracks and creases of life, reminding me that there were things both known and unknown in this world. Things we can see, and things we cannot. It came to symbolize for me a thing of goodness, beauty, and mystery in its soft white fur.
But I had time to sort through what I wanted to do with it. Except for my pelt, we planned to trade out our winter’s harvest of fur as quickly as possible, then load our supplies and head home, taking our canoes east on the Juniata to the Susquehanna before traveling overland to Philadelphia where Pa, Ma, Darby, and I had lived with my grandpa when my grandma had passed.
My favorite part of the homeward journey was canoeing down the Juniata River, so I was eager to finish our business with Mr. Croghan. I looked forward to the ease of ghosting downriver with the current, being swept along underneath the bright green of budding trees overhanging the river, carried past spring woodlands bedecked with pink-flowering mountain laurel, white dogwood, and purple redbud. Once we got to Conestoga, we planned to stay with Josephus for a night before joining the well-wor