Free How the West Was Won (1963) by Louis L'amour Page B

to the fire. I came up with Zeke about half a mile back.
    Sam's afraid they didn't get to shore, Eve said to them. Ma couldn't swim, and pa was sure to try and save her. He wouldn't be likely to give up. Here and there a star was visible now through the broken clouds. They gathered branches and worked to enlarge the lean-to. Zeke and Lilith had made it, so mightn't pa and ma?
    Supposin' they ... supposin' we don't find them, Zeke said. What are you figurin' to do?
    Lilith tossed her head defiantly. I am not goin' west, that's for sure. I never did want to go, and now there'd be nothing out there for me, nor nobody. Eve looked from one to the other, sitting very still and thinking that this was the end of something, the end of the family they had always been. First the farm had gone, and with it all they knew of home, of stability. And now their parents ... for in her heart she was sure.
    This was an end of all they had known, the beginning of all they had yet to learn.
    And Lilith? Ma had worried about Lilith, with her fancy notions, but Sam had been closer to Lilith than any of them had been, and he was not worried. She was young, but there was in her a kind of steel he recognized. Lilith would make her own way, and in that way she was as much a pioneer as any of them, perhaps more than any of them, for her way would be different. In each generation there are some who break with tradition, and she was such a one. Sam would continue to the West, Eve realized, for Sam had wanted to go, and had talked of it even before pa had become interested in the idea. He had said nothing to pa, but he had talked to Eve and Lilith about it ... always thinking that it would be he alone who went, not the family. Eve looked across the fire at Sam. You'd better lie down, Sam. You looked tired.
    He looked worse than tired, and for once he did not protest. He simply crawled deeper into the lean-to and curled into a ball. Eve opened the bundle of clothing they had found wrapped securely in the tarp and found a coat of pa's. With this she covered Sam, then spread an edge of the tarp it had been wrapped in over him, too. They all would have to share that tarp. The wind picked up, whispering in the leaves. Zeke turned and crawled in beside Sam, and she sat alone with Lilith.
    You think they're gone, don't you? Lilith asked.
    Yes.
    I do, too. Even if they were carried downstream pa would have found us by now from the fire's light.
    Lilith ... what are you going to do?
    The younger girl huddled under the blanket that had been wrapped in the tarp, drawing it around her shoulders. I don't know. All I can do is play that old accordion and sing a little, but I like people. I want to be where there are people ... where things are happening. And I want nice things, pretty things. Eve listened to the river. How many men, through how many ages, had sat by night listening to the sound of running water? How many had sat beside this very river? She remembered some man telling pa about the strange mounds in the Ohio country, huge artificial hills made for what purpose nobody knew, by a people far and away stranger than any she could imagine. Those very people might have sat here beside this river-the Mound Builders might have sat here, or Indians, or explorers ... no telling who.
    She lifted her eyes to the trees. They were huge old trees, and it would be a task to clear land here. Then she recalled a glimpse of a meadow she had seen that lay behind them ... only a glimpse, but a big meadow green with tall grass. Maybe no land would have to be cleared.
    It was a thing to consider.
    Miles away, Linus rose with the dawn and went to work on the canoe. It had taken more time than he had believed, for he had found another crack, at first unnoticed, and had gone back to the woods for another section of bark. By the time he found the exact piece of bark that satisfied him he had also forced himself to admit that he was stalling.
    There was nothing about the island that