It was the Fourth of July and the good people of Springtown, Pennsylvania, had chosen to have a celebration despite how badly the nation was faring in its war with the British. Kit had traveled to the Springtown Fair with his mother Kate, his sister Hannah Louise, and Hannah’s two daughters. Thirteen-year-old Penelope loosely held Kit’s right hand while eight-year-old Esther Rose kept a tight grip on his left. The girls took after Grandmother Kate with their yellowgold hair and skin the color of freshly poured cream. Penelope, who gently pulled free of his grasp, was the independent one and obviously more interested in a fourteen-year-old boy who was standing alongside his father in the limner’s tent. Esther Rose, however, was riveted to the paintings surrounding her as the limner, with a decided flair for the dramatic, uncovered yet another of his battle scenes, this one a horde of Choctaw braves swarming over a keelboat stranded on a bar in the Mississippi. The boatmen were putting up a valiant fight but were hopelessly outnumbered and doomed.
