“Well, stop worrying.  There’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Maybe not,” said Abe gloomily, “but I’m mighty glad there aren’t any slaves in Indiana.”

Allen stayed on in New Orleans for several days to sell his cargo.  It brought a good price.  He then sold his flatboat, which would be broken up and used for lumber.  Flatboats could not travel upstream.  He and Abe would either have to walk back to Indiana, or they could take a steamboat.

“We’d better not walk, carrying all this money,” said Allen.  “Pretty lonely country going home.  We might get robbed.”

The steamboat trip was a piece of good fortune that Abe had not expected.  He enjoyed talking with the other passengers.  The speed at which they traveled seemed a miracle.  It had taken the boys a month to make the trip downstream by flatboat.  They were returning upstream in little more than a week.  They were standing together by the rail when the cabins of Rockport, perched on a high wooded bluff, came into view.

“It sure was good of your pa to give me this chance,” said Abe.  “I’ve seen some sights I wish I hadn’t, but the trip has done me good.  Sort of stretched my eyes and ears!  Stretched me all over—­inside, I mean.”  He laughed.  “I don’t need any stretching on the outside.”

Allen looked at his tall friend.  They had been together most of the time.  They had talked with the same people, visited the same places, seen the same sights.  Already Allen was beginning to forget them.  Now that he was almost home, it was as if he had never been away.  But Abe seemed different.  Somehow he had changed.

“I can’t figure it out,” Allen told him.  “You don’t seem the same.”

“Maybe I’m not,” said Abe.  “I keep thinking about some of the things I saw.”

13

[Illustration]

The Lincolns were leaving Pigeon Creek.  One day a letter had arrived from John Hanks, a cousin, who had gone to Illinois to live.  The soil was richer there, the letter said.  Why didn’t Tom come, too, and bring his family?  He would find it easier to make a living.  Even the name of the river near John’s home had a pleasant sound.  It was called the Sangamon—­an Indian word meaning “plenty to eat.”

“We’re going,” Tom decided.  “I’m going to sell this farm and buy another.  Do you want to come with us, Abe?”

Two years had passed since Abe’s return from New Orleans.  Two years of hard work.  Two years of looking forward to his next birthday.  He was nearly twenty-one and could leave home if he wanted to.

“Well, Pa—­” he hesitated.

Sarah was watching him, waiting for his answer.

“I’ll come with you,” said Abe.  “I’ll stay long enough to help you get the new farm started.”

There were thirteen people in the Lincoln party:  Tom and Sarah, Abe and Johnny, Betsy and Dennis Hanks who had been married for several years, Mathilda and her husband, and two sets of children.  They made the journey in three big wagons, traveling over frozen roads and crossing icy streams.  After two weeks they came to John Hanks’ home on the prairies of Illinois.  He made them welcome, then took them to see the place that he had selected for their farm.  In the cold winter light it looked almost as desolate as Pigeon Creek had looked fourteen years before.  Tom Lincoln was beginning all over again.