Into the Wilderness (15 page)

"Again,"
he said, and he traded the rifle for one freshly loaded and cocked. "He
must tire of ducking soon, the bloody great monster."

"That's
the spirit!" called Billy Kirby gleefully.

With
a sense of dread, Elizabeth turned and caught Hawkeye's gaze. Nervously, she
beckoned him toward her. Nathaniel and Hawkeye came away from the shooting
stand to where Elizabeth stood near the bonfire.

"Please,"
Elizabeth said. "Won't one of you have another try?"

"Elizabeth,
it's just sport," Nathaniel said kindly. "Let your brother have his
fun."

Julian
had missed again, and he turned to the crowd. "This next shot will be the
one, I feel it. Anyone care to lay odds?"

Hawkeye
and Nathaniel exchanged glances.

"I've
got a shilling here for a gentleman who would be willing to champion me,"
she said in a voice as calm as she could manage. Elizabeth felt as though
Hawkeye were looking straight through her, into the panic curling into a fist
in her stomach.

"Why,
that would be me," said Hawkeye. He turned toward the shooting stand,
where Julian was in the process of negotiating the borrowing of yet another
rifle. "Hold up there, Billy Kirby, letting one man have all the fun. I've
got a shilling here and I claim a shot. I got a lady to champion myself."

The
crowd closed around Hawkeye, who took up his place at the shooting stand and
set to checking his rifle. Elizabeth felt Nathaniel's questioning gaze settle
on her face.

"Can
he make the shot?"

"Don't
want your brother and this turkey on familiar terms, it seems," he said
dryly.

"I'm
determined to keep my brother solvent," she corrected him in a low voice.
"But if he starts in again waging bets, I may not be able to."

Julian
stood to Hawkeye's side, eyes narrowed, as the older man took aim. There were
hectic splashes of color on his cheeks, his eyes narrow but flashing
nonetheless.

"He
has trouble staying away from the betting tables?"

"You
could say that." Elizabeth nodded. "He had to be bought out of
debtors' prison and put directly on the boat to New—York."

Nathaniel's
frown put a crease between his eyes; Elizabeth was taken with a strong urge to
run a finger down that crease to the point between his brows, to smooth it
away. The urge to touch him was surprisingly strong, so she wound her fingers
in her skirts once again, and she met his gaze as evenly as she could.

"But
surely the judge can cope with your brother's gambling debts," he said
quietly.

Elizabeth
forced herself to look up into Nathaniel's face. "I'm sorry to disappoint
you," she said. "But my father is cash poor. That's why there's this
great hurry to marry me off. A better loan guarantee than a daughter with
property is hard to come by." She knew she sounded bitter, and that she
was telling too much, offering too much. She knew too that he would take what
she offered. She wanted him to.

Hawkeye
fired; the crowd was silent for a fraction of a second, and then began to shout
in triumph.

In
the weeks after Christmas, Elizabeth began to dream of Nathaniel, so that she
grew both anxious before she fell asleep, and reluctant to wake in the morning.
While the rising sun touched the frost on her windows and shattered into
rainbows, she would lie half conscious in the warm nest of her covers and
relive what she had dreamt, blushing and slightly breathless, confused and
strangely discontent. She might pretend, in the day, that Nathaniel had not
tried to kiss her, or that his interest was unimportant, an aberration, but at
night her dreaming self took that almost—kiss and spawned from it a multitude
of dream kisses, of growing warmth and intensity.

So
Elizabeth began her days with a lecture. She would comb her hair out before the
mirror and chide herself for a silly, weak, foolish creature. Every morning she
was determined to make a new start in the name of reason and good sense. But
still she caught herself staring at the curve of her lower lip. This lack of
self—control soon began to wear on her usual placid good humor; Elizabeth went
down to breakfast in a contrary mood.

The
first of the new year came, and she was without a place to hold school. Her
father refrained from pointing out to her that she had failed in the resolution
she had put forth so forcefully at the first dinner in Paradise. Julian would
not have been so sensitive as to spare her from teasing, if she had not had his
behavior at the turkey shoot to hold over his head.

He
had been avoiding Elizabeth since that event. At that moment when Hawkeye had
killed the bird, Julian had sent her one sharp look and then stalked away
toward home, leaving a surprised and worried Katherine Witherspoon behind. The
other men had thought it was just bad sportsmanship on Julian's part, but
Elizabeth had seen the old fever springing up in her brother, the compulsion
which had cost him his fortune. She thanked Providence once again that they
were so far from a real city where he might find other men as fond of cards and
as careless with their resources.

To
keep her mind off the delays in her plans and—although she did not voice it to
herself so clearly—Nathaniel, Elizabeth spent her mornings organizing a work
space in her room, putting her books in order, and writing teaching outlines.
After lunch she would go for walks, if it wasn't snowing too hard; she made it
her business to visit the children in the village and speak to their parents,
hoping to get them used to her presence and accepting of the idea of her school
before too long. She came to know many of the villagers well enough to talk to
them comfortably. Martha Southern, a shy young woman married to a man old
enough to be her father, especially sought out Elizabeth's friendship and
encouraged her to come to the village. Martha had a daughter whom she wanted to
send to Elizabeth's school, and a son who would soon be old enough.

Elizabeth
found that she had most of her time to herself and this was a great relief. Her
father was often out on his errands, and Julian went down to the village where
he had got into the habit of sitting with the farmers and other men who spent
odd moments in the trading post or in the tavern that adjoined it.

In
the third week of the new year, Galileo made a trip to pick up the trunks which
had traveled up the Hudson behind them, and stopped in Johnstown for the post
on his way home. Elizabeth came down to breakfast to find letters from her aunt
Merriweather and her cousins, but more importantly, her school supplies. She
immediately set to unpacking the texts and materials she had bought in such a
spirit of hopefulness in England. There were grammars and composition books,
volumes of essays and histories, philosophy and math. She was a little shocked
now at how poorly she had anticipated the needs of the children of a place like
Paradise, but Elizabeth refused to be shaken in her resolve. She spent a good
part of the morning making plans and notes to herself and constructing a letter
to aunt Merriweather in which she requested another shipment of more basic
texts, more writing materials, a large supply of ink, horn tablets, and after
some consideration, storybooks, fairy tales, and mythologies.

She
wanted to engage the children and not alienate their parents, and she spent a
good amount of time pacing back and forth in the study while she chewed
thoughtfully on the end of her quill. So deeply was she entrenched in her
thoughts that she started at the knock on the door.

Hannah
Bonner stood framed against the snowy landscape in her winter cloak. The
fur—lined hood was pulled high over her dark hair, framing her glowing face,
her teeth flashing white against the bronze skin flushed into deeper shades by
the cold. She smiled brightly at Elizabeth and curtsied.

"I've
come to fetch you home to eat turkey," she said by way of greeting.
"Grandfather says it's high time."

Confronted
with this logic, Elizabeth could see no recourse but to change her boots and
go. She resolved firmly not to check her hair, or change anything about her
appearance. Then she stopped in the kitchen to tell Curiosity where she was
going, and she saw with some vexation that her agitation was not lost on the
housekeeper.

Curiosity
raised one eyebrow, pursed her lips, and set Daisy to wrapping things and
putting them in a basket for the Bonners.

"Won't
do to go up Hidden Wolf empty—handed," she said, and sent Elizabeth on her
way without further commentary, but with a knowing look that made her feel
Hannah's age instead of her own.

* * *

Elizabeth
had seen Nathaniel, outside her dreams, exactly four times since the turkey
shoot on Christmas Day. Twice he had been too far away to greet, driving the
oxen he borrowed from her father to drag logs out of the forest. Once he had
come to the house to speak with the judge about building supplies and she had
not known he was in the house until she saw him on his way out.

It
was at that point that it became clear to Elizabeth that the whole conversation
in the dark woods had been a lark, a game: Nathaniel did not dwell on it, nor
on her. Then she saw him, accidentally, for the fourth time.

She
had been walking down to the village and heard the cry of a hawk; looking into
the forest, she had seen Nathaniel standing in a grove of pine with his axe in
his hands, and his eyes fixed on her. Startled, Elizabeth had stood very still.
Then he just disappeared into the forest, as if he had never been there.

Elizabeth
did not know what to make of it. He was watching her. Perhaps he had been
watching her for days. For weeks. There was no good explanation for it; she pushed
away impatiently the images and thoughts that worked their way to the surface,
refusing to consider them. But they came to her unbidden, in her dreams.

And
there was no escaping word of Nathaniel. Daily reports on how much timber he
had hauled and the ongoing preparations for the building of her schoolhouse
came to the dinner table. While she was tempted to retire before Richard Todd's
evening visit, her curiosity always won out, and she ended up sitting with the
men, a book in her lap, waiting for him to volunteer details about Nathaniel's
progress without the necessity of asking.

Now
Hannah walked quickly, glancing back once and again at Elizabeth as if to
assess her endurance. She had her grandfather's easy way about her, talkative
without being repetitive or tedious, and before they were even through the
village and on the path up the first inclines of Hidden Wolf Mountain,
Elizabeth had heard about every other child in the village who would be at her
school.

"What
about you, then?" she asked at the first opportunity. "Will you come
and see what I can teach you?"

"I
can read," Hannah offered. "And do sums, and write a fair hand, and I
know how to sew, and I can spin and weave, and do some beadwork, though I ain't
very good yet at it. And I know where things grow—" She stopped and
pointed to a set of tracks in the snow. "Moose," she said, clearly
surprised. "And see." She pointed farther. "Otter and my father
are tracking him."

Elizabeth
stared for a moment but couldn't make out much more than jumble of footsteps in
the snow.

"Who
is Otter?"

"My
uncle. His Kahnyen’keháka name is Tawine—Otter, because of the way he swims. In
the north, the Catholics call him Benjamin."

"What's
your Indian name?"

"They
call me Squirrel but my skin name is Used—to—Be—Two."

Elizabeth
wondered about this strange name, but waited to see if the girl would supply an
explanation without prompting.

Hannah
pointed out the tracks of a fox, and spots where boneset and wild plum grew
thick in the summer. Then she glanced at Elizabeth, and seemed to consider.

"My
twin died at birth. So, my mother's people say that I am half of what I might
have been."

It
seemed to Elizabeth very important that she make the right response here, but
what that might be was a mystery.

"I'm
afraid I have a lot to learn," she started, slowly. "I don't really
understand very much about the Kahnyen’keháka—" She paused, not sure of
the pronunciation but loath to use the term
Mohawk,
as the child seemed to avoid it. Hannah grinned at her attempt, and Elizabeth
went on, somewhat more at ease. "Or the Mahicans, or how they are
related."

"The
Mahicans ain't Six Nations," Hannah supplied, trying to be helpful, but
making things all the more unclear. "They lived to the east, mostly below
the lake."

"They
live here now, with the Kahnyen’keháka?"

"No,"
said Hannah simply. "They are all gone now, or most of them. In the
wars."

"We
have things to learn from each other, then," Elizabeth said. "We
should have stories at school about your people, but I don't know enough to
tell them."

Hannah
smiled, but she was not to be drawn into a promise about coming to Elizabeth's
school.

"Grandmother
doesn't think much of your kind of schooling," the little girl said,
perhaps a little apologetically. "She says the white men don't seem any the
smarter for it."