This time he had more help.  John Hanks had a great pile of logs split and ready to be used for their new cabin.  Abe was now able to do a man’s work.  After the cabin was finished, he split enough rails to build a fence around the farm.  Some of the new neighbors hired him to split logs for them.

The following spring, he was offered other work that he liked much better.  A man named Denton Offut was building a flatboat, which he planned to float down the Illinois River to the Mississippi and on to New Orleans.  He hired Abe to help with the cargo.  The two young men became friends.  When Abe returned home after the long voyage, he had news for Sarah.

“Ma,” he said, “Denton is fixing to start a store up in New Salem.  That’s a village on the Sangamon River.  He wants me to be his clerk.”

Sarah said nothing for a moment.  If Abe went away to stay, the cabin would seem mighty lonesome.  She would miss him terribly.  But she wanted him to do whatever was best for him.

“Mr. Offut said he’d pay me fifteen dollars a month,” Abe added.

That was more money than he had ever earned, thought Sarah.  And now that he was over twenty-one, he could keep his wages for himself.  “I reckon you’ll be leaving soon,” she said aloud.

“Yes, Ma, I will.”  Telling her was harder than Abe had expected.  “It is high time that I start out on my own.”

Sarah set to work to get his clothes ready.  He was wearing his only pair of jeans, and there wasn’t much else for him to take.  She washed his shirts and the extra pair of socks that she had knit for him.  He wrapped these up in a big cloth and tied the bundle to the end of a long stick.  The next morning he was up early.  After he told the rest of the family good-by, Sarah walked with him to the gate.

Abe thrust the stick with his bundle over his shoulder.  He had looked forward to starting out on his own—­and now he was scared.  Almost as scared as he had felt on that cold winter afternoon when his new mother had first arrived in Pigeon Creek.  Because she had believed in him, he had started believing in himself.  Her faith in him was still shining in her eyes as she looked up at him and tried to smile.

He gave her a quick hug and hurried down the path.

It was a long, long walk to New Salem, where Abe arrived on a hot summer day in 1831.  This village, on a high bluff overlooking the Sangamon River, was bigger than Gentryville, bigger even than Rockport.  As he wandered up and down the one street, bordered on both sides by a row of neat log houses, he counted more than twenty-five buildings.  There were several stores, and he could see the mill down by the river.

[Illustration]

He pushed his way through a crowd that had gathered before one of the houses.  A worried-looking man, about ten years older than Abe, sat behind a table on the little porch.  He was writing in a big book.