Follow the River (23 page)

What if they find the knife under her blanket? Mary thought. God, they’ll watch us like buzzards if they do.

LaPlante asked something of Otter Girl, and she merely cocked her head and raised her eyebrows in innocent ignorance.

LaPlante moved around the camp in agitation, looking everywhere, turning things over with his foot. Now he was going toward the lean-to where the old woman’s bedding was.

“Mister,” Mary called. “Look by the cooking pots yonder. We were there cutting arrowleaf yesterday. Like as not it’s right there on the ground.”

“Ah, je me souviens,” he muttered, and went toward the kettles. Goulart went back to his walnuts. Mrs. Stumf was trying to go, as unobtrusively as her big form would allow, toward her bedding. She moved with such exaggerated stealth that anyone seeing her would have known she was up to something devious, so Mary went to distract Goulart’s attention. He looked up suddenly when he saw the elusive object of his desires approaching him. She smiled.

“For a favor,” she said, holding out the tomahawk he had given her for blazing trees. “This is dull. It don’ cut very well. But it’s a good head f’r crackin’ walnuts. What say y’ to trade f’r the day? Why, maybe y’ could sharpen this’n up f’r me while I’m gone. That’d be a nice favor.” She tried to keep her voice pleasant but natural and not to glance at Ghetel. Inside she was quaking.

A cocky smile slowly established itself on Goulart’s face, which had been sullen ever since he had awakened this morning to find Mary gone from his side. Obviously he now thought Mary was just being a
coquette
. “But of course, chere Madame!” he said gallantly, and gave her his tomahawk and took hers.

“Oh, thankee. Try that one on a walnut … it’s nice and heavy …”

As he bent to place a walnut, Mary saw Ghetel sneaking toward the cookpots. The old woman dropped the knife on
the ash-covered ground, stepped back and then walked about stooping as if searching the ground.

“Here, M’shoo!” Ghetel bellowed gaily, and when LaPlante looked her way she stooped and picked the knife up from where she had dropped it and held it up for him. He broke into smiles and went to her and took it, making pleased noises in his sinuses. Mary’s heartbeat slowed and she had to hold her breath to keep from sighing out loud.

That was enough. She had a feeling that if they did not leave immediately, something else like this was going to come up and prevent them. “Mrs. Stumf,” she said cheerfully, hoping not too cheerfully, “what say y’ to goin’ after that hickory grove we seen yonder …” She pointed southward. “…  and I saw lots of sassafras. Mr. Goulart gimme a tommyhock sharp enough to cut sassafras root with!”

“ ’Eyyy! Gut!” Ghetel exclaimed, perhaps a little too eagerly.

“Well, then, let’s be about it,” Mary said. Her voice sounded strained and unnatural to her; her heartbeat seemed to be forcing all the air out of her lungs, and she hoped the Indians and Frenchmen would not notice the strain in her voice; surely they would sense that something was happening. She went, as usual, to roll up her blanket and sling it over her shoulder. Ghetel did the same. LaPlante and Goulart were still whacking away at walnuts, and most of the Indian men were playing their game or maintaining their guns.

Now, Mary thought. Just turn your back on it and go. Don’t go look at the baby; y’ll get all upset and they’ll suspect something. Don’t look at the baby!

But she went to look at the baby. There was no such thing as not going to look at the baby.

Fortunately, it was asleep. Its eyes were shut. Otter Girl sat beside it mending a moccasin, chewing the leather to soften it until she could ease the point of a bone needle into it and draw a rawhide thong through. She looked up, a smile of utter contentment on her round, bronze face. Mary knelt by the infant, her back to the Otter Girl. She lowered her face as close as she could without touching the baby and awakening
it. Just an inch from it. She inhaled the baby smell and suddenly her heart clenched mightily and the baby’s dark little eyelashes and tiny features blurred beyond a flood of tears and Mary’s arms ached to grab up the little living bundle and run with it, run all the way back to Draper’s Meadows without stopping.

Her hot tears were dropping on the baby’s forehead and would awaken it; little frowns were disturbing its face and its little beak of an upper lip sucked in the soft red lower lip. Mary couldn’t stop herself. She kissed the little mouth and then, with anguish that surely would kill her, she rose to her feet and stumbled, tearblinded, to the edge of the camp, her lungs quaking for release, her throat clamped to hold down the awful wail of despair that was trying to erupt. The old woman, who was the only one in the camp to see her livid, contorted face, was so stricken by its agony that she too had to force back a wail of misery.

Oh dear God help me!
Mary’s heart felt the way her loins had felt when the baby was being born. But ten times worse. Ten times ten times ten times worse.
Oh dear God help me! HELP ME! HELP ME!

They were far into the woods before she could see or hear or feel anything, and what she became aware of first was the old woman’s strong arm across her back helping her along, all but carrying her. She stopped her on a slope covered with tan dead leaves among gigantic beech and poplar trunks. She knelt and pulled her down and muffled her face with her blanket and started patting her back. “Now,” she said. “Dey cannot hear you now. Cry up! Do it!”

It was an hour before Mary could get up and go on. She was empty and weak, even as bad as she had been on the day when they had taken Tommy and Georgie away from her.

She stood leaning against Ghetel, who was still patting her lightly on the back. “I thought I’d got myself ready for this,” Mary strangled.

“Who could?” the old woman replied. “We could still go back.”

“No. Don’t even say it.”

They wandered in no particular direction at first, barking trees with the tomahawk to leave a confusing trail. Then they came to a small clear brook and stepped into it barefoot, carrying their shoes, and went westward toward the O-y-o. The water was very cold.

After a mile the brook wandered into the salt valley and emptied into the salt creek, some distance below the camp. They waded to its other shore, dresses pulled up waist-high, then walked in the odorous muck at the creek’s edge, the creek water dissolving their footprints as they stepped out of them. The sunlight was pale and the air had a chilly edge. Most of the foliage on the slopes nearby was still green, but a dry, yellowing green, and here and there were boughs and crowns of red and purple foliage.

“Ach. The riffer.”

It opened up before them, ablaze with mirrored afternoon sunlight. The creek deepened and they had to climb out onto its bank to make the last hundred yards to the river. They stood and looked at it for a moment only. Its damp flowed around them on a breeze.

“So now?” Ghetel whispered.

Mary looked up the east bank of the O-y-o and dipped her head. Her sight was still fuzzy with tears and her eyes were red. She felt as if the first step would take the little strength left in her. “Along here,” she said. “For a long, long way.” She sighed, stooped to put on her shoes, then picked up the blanket and tomahawk and they started walking through the reeds and shrubbery, watching a few paces ahead for snakes. Long blades of grass whispered around their ragged skirts and slashed at their bare shins. The reflected sunlight from the river was hot on the left side of their faces. Huge dragonflies hovered and drifted away. The foliage of cottonwoods and willows and locusts shivered and hushed in the river breeze alongside their way. Birds rose, dipped, shrilled, skimmed close over the water. Mary looked at them now and then and gradually began to think of freedom. Through the deep lonely misery of her soul the thought came to her that for the first time in more than two months she was not a captive of
the Indians—not a slave. Her legs overcame their heavy reluctance and began to like this walking.

She heard the old woman’s heavy breathing and crashing, thumping footsteps behind her, and an occasional Dutchy oath.

“Step light, Ghetel. We must go far as we can afore night.”

Mary felt a curious, soaring sensation in her breast as she said this.

It was a feeling strangely like happiness.

She was on her way to Will.

Just before sunset a towering line of grim clouds crawled up from the southwest. Thunder grumbled, lightning flickered on the horizon, and as the clouds climbed, a blast of damp air shivered the surface of the river and turned the leaves of the forest white side up. Soon the thunderheads dominated the whole sky above the river; they came gliding across, their undersides lowering and dragging gray veils of rain under them. Birds and insects fell silent.

In the moment of stillness as the rainfall came sweeping toward them across the river, Mary heard, or rather, felt, the stroke of a distant gunshot on the charged air. She stopped and raised a hand, and Ghetel almost blundered over her. They stood and listened for a moment, and she thought she detected another, then another, and one or two that were dubious because they were lost in the muttering of thunder.

“Eh?” Ghetel queried.

“Don’t rightly know,” Mary said. The reports had seemed to come from the direction of the camp. “Not hunting, surely, afore a storm like now.” Were they killing the baby? Not likely with a lot of gunshots, she decided. “No, I’d reckon they think we’re lost, and’re tryin’ to signal us the way back.” It seemed the best explanation, and Mary smiled with a cunning satisfation.

And then the sting of blown rain peppered them and hissed up the shore and into the trees.

“Ach! Nah!” Ghetel complained.

“No, it’s good,” Mary exclaimed. “Come. With this, we’ll leave no trail f’r ’em to pick up come morning! They’ll just
think a bear got us, or lightnin’ or sump’n, an’ won’t even try t’ find us, I’ll wager!” She was almost running now, feeling free, and cleansed of the degradation of her bondage by this pelting torrent. She could hear Ghetel huffing and slogging along behind her, muttering:

“Bears! Lightnink? Ach!” The forest and river turned white and the sky cracked open along a tortuous blue-white seam for an instant; a tree flashed and exploded a few yards ahead and a bolt of noise felled Mary to her knees. The tree smoked and a strange, fresh, exhilarating smell came through the air. Mary got to her feet again as the echoes of the bolt dwindled across the river.

“Lightnink
will!
” the old woman wailed.

They were drenched by the time the rain had passed and the thunder bumped away in the east. It was too dark by then to continue safely along the unknown terrain of the shore. The wool of their blankets was heavy with water, and their sodden dresses hung cold on their skin. Mary estimated they had come perhaps five miles since reaching the river. Now they had stopped in the dripping, dribbling gloom, the warmth of their exertions evaporated at once and their empty stomachs gave them no warmth. Mary remembered then that in the anxiety of the morning they had eaten nothing. It promised to be a grim and shivery night, and despite their exhaustion they likely would get no sleep at all.

They peered and groped until they found a level and relatively well-drained place under a natural bower, where the old leaves of the past years had drifted. They stood facing each other and twisted their blankets between them to squeeze out the water, then draped the blankets over themselves and squatted beside each other for a moment. Mary’s teeth chattered and she trembled from end to end. Even the primitive salt camp seemed cozy and luxurious compared with this. “We’ve a hard night ahead, I fear. I’m sorry. We’ll do as best we can, eh? Come daybreak we’ll find us some nuts or pawpaws or sump’n, eh?”

“Take,” Ghetel said.

“Eh?”

The old woman reached for Mary’s hand and put something cold and mushy in it. She explained, “It vas bread, til the rain. I get it before we leaf.”

They ate the pasty mass. Mary could taste hickory nuts and acorn meal in it with the corn. It was delicious. She licked her fingers and felt a degree warmer inside.

They shook and trembled in their wet blankets for an hour, listening to the flow of the river and the dripping foliage, the whippoorwills and crickets and each other’s sighs. Mary was so wretched she could hardly even think of the absence of her baby.

“May-ry,” the old woman croaked.

“Aye?”

“Come.”

And when they lay body to body, even the damp blankets could not entirely douse the warmth they gave each other, and eventually they slept through a night they had expected to be sleepless.

Something was happening.

Mary was jolted out of sleep by her own heartbeat, by the sound of rustling in the leaves mere inches from her head. The old widow was moving, rising, cautiously, lifting the blanket. Mary opened her eyes in the green dimness and groped for the tomahawk. But before she could gather herself to move, Ghetel surged behind her, grunted, dragged the blanket off and scrambled in the leafy thicket. Something scurried away through rustling leaves and the old woman expelled a breathy oath.

Heart walloping, Mary turned to see the widow on all fours, staring into the underbrush. The blanket hung from her hips and entangled her feet. Mary had to swallow her heart before she could ask what had happened.

“Almost got a meat for breakfast,” sighed the old woman. “Almost in mine hands! Ach, for a gun!”

“We’d dare not shoot one if we had it. What kind of animal?”

They were both kneeling on the bottom blanket and the old woman was extricating herself from the clinging grasp of the other. She did not know what the animal was called, she said, but her efforts to describe it convinced Mary that she had nearly grabbed either a racoon or a gray fox, which had been sniffing curiously at them while they slept. “Then y’ ought to thank heaven it got away,” Mary exclaimed. “Such beasties as them would ’a’ chawed y’r arm up ’fore I could ’a’ put the tommyhawk on ’im! I swear, Ghetel, that appetite o’ your’n will be the death of us!”