Heart of the Wilderness (11 page)

“You’d better tether Oscar,” her grandfather said when she returned, breathless and carrying a small bundle under her arm.

Kendra hated to tie her dog. All the sled dogs were tied about the clearing, but Oscar did not like to be tethered. Kendra lifted her eyes to her grandfather and pleaded silently.

“What if he runs off?” he asked in answer to her unasked petition.

“He won’t,” she dared to promise.

She turned to Oscar and pointed to the porch where he often lay in the sun. “Stay,” she said firmly.

Oscar crossed to the porch and lay down, but a whine of protest lifted his sides and seemed to be reflected in the shadowing of his eyes.

“Stay,” Kendra said again as she stepped from the bank into the loaded canoe.

It was wonderful to feel the gentle rock and sway of the canoe as they glided over the swift flowing water. Up and around the sharp bend they went, and Kendra could picture again the sight of the beaver fighting for its life against the trap that held it. Though the picture still made her feel sick inside, she pushed it firmly from her. It was a way of life. Acceptable. Ugly—and painful—but acceptable.

She let her glance fall to the pile of carefully wrapped pelts. The returning canoe would bear flour and salt and coffee and yard goods and all the other supplies they so desperately needed for survival. Kendra sighed deeply and reached out a hand to let it trail in the cool stream.

They passed by the Indian village, and Kendra nodded greetings to the children who played about the bank. She recognized a few of them by name. Nonie had provided the information on the few trips they had made together to the little settlement. But George did not like Kendra to spend much of her time with the other children. He feared that if she learned more of their ways, she would have even greater difficulty when she had to go back to the city for her education.

George had been putting off sending Kendra out. He knew that it had to be done. He knew that he had waited longer than he should have. But she was doing well. She could read almost anything he handed her—with understanding. And she was quicker at working out sums than many of the adults he knew. Still, she did need to go out. Back to the city. She needed to learn about her own culture. Her own people. She needed to learn the social graces that would identify her as civilized. He knew that. But it was so hard to let her go. To think of the long days without her about the cabin.

George rested the paddle for a moment and let the small craft drift as he studied the face of his grandchild. She was doing fine—wasn’t she? She was happy. Content. Nonie was caring for her. Nonie with all of her ridiculous scare stories. He did hope that she had stopped feeding the child all the nonsense about ghosts and wandering spirits. He had talked to her about it on more than one occasion. Kendra hadn’t brought the tales to him of late. Did that mean they had stopped—or had Kendra chosen not to discuss them with him anymore?

Kendra felt his eyes upon her and lifted her head to look at him. The green eyes were so large and intense. The small oval face so much like his Mary’s. He could not hide the love—the pain—that he was feeling inside. He forced a smile to crinkle the corners of his eyes, make his mustache twitch at the sides of his mouth. “Happy?” he asked simply.

Kendra nodded. She was happy. Totally at peace with herself and her world. She tilted her head and listened for the return call of the whiskey jack, then nodded again.

“Except for poor Oscar,” she said to her grandfather. “I wish he could have come. He hates to stay alone.”

“He has all the other dogs for company,” her grandfather answered.

“But he doesn’t want the dogs for company,” argued Kendra. “He wants us. He thinks he’s people.”

George threw back his head and laughed good-naturedly. It was the first time Kendra had heard him laugh so generously for a long time. A smile played about her lips, and before long she felt a little giggle rising in her own throat.

From then on the trip became a shared delight. They chatted and laughed and teased each other as they had not done for a long time. Both of them enjoyed it. It was a breaking of silence. A bonding together. A release from a thought prison that had held back full communication.

We need to do this more often,
thought George.
She needs to be able to talk and laugh. She is not silent by nature. She should not be forced into that mold. She needs to talk and to be free to share her feelings. She needs to be with me more. Be less with Nonie.

And George decided that he would find ways to integrate the child more into his style of living.

Chapter Nine

Fire

There were visitors at the fort. The trader’s brother and sister-in-law had come from a city somewhere to visit him in his “wilderness.”

Kendra tried not to stare at them, but she could not help feeling interested. As her grandfather accepted a cup of hospitality, the trader’s thick bitter coffee, Kendra sat on a pile of furs and listened to the conversation and studied the faces before her.

“Your granddaughter?” Kendra heard the visiting woman ask. “How nice.” Then she turned to Kendra and gave her a big smile.

“How long has she been with you?” the woman asked.

George had to stop and do some calculating. “Past four years now. Almost five,” he answered, surprising even himself at the time that had quickly passed.

The woman cast another glance at the slight young girl in her simple shirt and buckskins. Her blond braids were in sharp contrast to her tanned cheeks.

“ ’Course she goes out every winter,” speculated the woman.

“Oh no,” George said quickly. “She has been with me the whole time.”

The woman’s eyes showed her surprise. She did not hold back but spoke her mind quickly. “Where does she get her schooling?”

It was more than a question. It was an accusation.

“I teach her,” George answered, his voice getting deeper with his need to defend the circumstance.

“But—” began the woman.

“And I dare say she can read better for her age than any of those city kids,” he went on, tempted to call Kendra to him to show off her ability. He did not do so. He felt it would be unfair to the child to drag her into their little dispute.

The lady cast another glance at Kendra and seemed to concede the point. Then she licked her lips, doubt still showing in her eyes. “What about her religious training?” she challenged further.

George stirred uncomfortably. He put no stock in religious training, whether one was raised in the wilderness or the middle of the city. Did he dare to speak his feelings to the woman before him? Would he take the stand of an infidel in front of the whole trading post? If he did, how might it affect the future of Kendra?

He swallowed the words he wished to say and replied simply, “You think the wilderness has no God?”

The woman nodded in silent agreement. She could not argue that point. She saw the work of God everywhere she looked in this wide, open, beautiful country.

The subject was dropped, the coffee finished, and the bartering begun.

“I have something I would like to give you,” the woman said, approaching Kendra as her grandfather was loading the canoe for their return trip.

In her outstretched hand she held a silver chain, and on the chain was a strange, delicate figure.

“What is it?” asked Kendra.

“The cross,” said the woman. “You wear it about your neck—like this.”

She placed the necklace around Kendra’s neck and fastened it securely.

“Is it an amulet?” asked Kendra.

“A—a what? No—no nothing like that. We don’t wear it like a—like a charm. We wear it simply as a—a remembrance.”

“Oh-h,” said Kendra. But she had no idea what the woman was talking about.

“You are a very pretty girl,” went on the woman, reaching out to stroke the blond head of hair. She smiled. “And rather intriguing too. A young Scot in Indian dress. You make quite a picture.”

Kendra did not fully understand the words. She had no idea what the woman was carrying on about.

“Are you a Scot?” Kendra asked. She knew the woman was not Indian.

“Oh no.” The woman chuckled merrily. “I’m German,” she said.

Kendra supposed that the words should mean something to her— but they did not. She had nothing with which to identify them. So she tucked the word away for future reference and studied the woman carefully.

She looked kind. Her eyes were clear and direct. Her mouth curled easily into a smile. She was neat and pleasing. Her body looked strong and sturdy. Kendra concluded that it must be fine to be German.

George McMannus was approaching. The woman stepped back and smiled at Kendra again.

“Perhaps we will see you again sometime,” she said pleasantly.

Kendra nodded, then turned to follow her grandfather to the canoe. Her fingers reached up to feel the cross that dangled from the chain around her neck. It was a pretty thing. Shiny and simple. Kendra had never had anything like it before. She was anxious to show it to her grandfather.

The two pushed off in the canoe for their return up the river. Papa Mac was much too busy easing the canoe out into the stream and around all the other canoes that bobbed up and down on their moorings to be distracted by Kendra’s new possession.

Kendra watched, noticing how skillful he was with the paddle and subconsciously noting how to handle the oar with the most efficiency.

When they had waved for the last time to the group clustered at the water’s edge and the canoe dipped behind the first bend in the river, Kendra sat back and relaxed. It was all paddling upstream now, but her grandfather had made the trip many times and seemed not to tire as the paddle dipped rhythmically into the cool, clear stream, thrusting them ever forward against the pull of the current.

“Look what the lady gave me,” Kendra finally said, her fingers still on the silver cross.

“What lady?” he asked absently, not even glancing up at her. He was intent on easing their way around an outcropping of rock in the stream bed.

“The German lady,” said Kendra. “The one visiting the post.”

But before her grandfather could even respond, Kendra changed the topic with, “What’s a German?”

His eyes still on the rocks as he steered the canoe carefully through the maze, he replied, “A race of people. They come from Germany.”

“Where’s Germany?” asked Kendra.

A frown furrowed his brow. He had been priding himself on Kendra’s advanced education. But the truth of the matter was there was so much that he wasn’t teaching her. So much that he couldn’t teach her. She needed lessons in geography. In history. In social studies. He didn’t have the time or the ability to teach her what she needed to know. No—he would have to send her out. It wasn’t fair to the child to keep her from school.

Deeply troubled, he sighed. He did not wish to spoil their time together by bringing up the subject. When they had spoken of it before, Kendra had always begged for a bit more time. But now—? The woman had been quite right, though it galled him that she had dared to question him on the raising of his granddaughter. But she was right. Kendra needed to go to school.

He would keep her with him throughout the summer, but he would write a few letters and when the fall arrived again, he would take her to the city.

“Where’d you get that?”

For a moment Kendra was puzzled by her grandfather’s question. They sat at their evening meal together, Oscar stretched out on the floor beside Kendra’s chair. Then Kendra noticed that his eyes were studying the chain with the lovely silver cross attached hanging around her neck.

“The woman gave it to me,” Kendra explained, eyes shining.

“What woman?”

“The German woman—at the post.” Kendra fingered the cross and lifted it so that she and her grandfather could get a better look. “She brought it to me when I was waiting for you to put everything in the canoe. She said it’s a cross.”

“I am well aware of what it is,” he responded, but he didn’t sound pleased or excited about Kendra’s gift.

She looked at him, not understanding the gruffness in his voice.