Into the Wilderness (53 page)

Elizabeth
turned back to the house and after a few yards Runs-from-Bears fell into step
beside her. She heard the splash on the canoe as it entered the river, but she
never looked back.

The
most remarkable thing about Runs-from-Bears, Elizabeth came to believe, was not
the contrast between his ferocious appearance and his dry good humor, but his
willingness to talk. She had been very quiet on the first day because it seemed
appropriate to be silent in the infinity of these forests, unlike anything she
had ever experienced or imagined. And she had thought that Bears would have
little to say to her; she was shy of him, and worried that she wouldn't be able
to meet his expectations.

And
when they had finally made camp, Elizabeth had not really wanted conversation,
tired as she was. It was then, sitting before the little fire and turning the
cleaned possum on its spit of green wood, that she had found out that
Runs-from-Bears was almost as curious about her as she was about him and that
he had things to teach her.

By
the second day on the trail to the northwest, Elizabeth had begun to like him
very much, and to learn how much she didn't know. The business of staying alive
in the bush was serious and exhausting but also absorbing. With his guidance,
she had managed the rudiment aries of cleaning small game and fish. Struggling
with a possum—an animal she found almost too ugly to eat or the skinning of a
rabbit, she was very thankful that there wasn't time for him to go after bigger
animals.

Rabbits
were the quickest game, but she soon learned that while they were available in
abundance, they were also too lean to sustain people who walked hard all day
long. Bears addressed this problem with a supply of rendered bear fat, which he
squeezed from a skin directly into his mouth. Elizabeth could watch him do
this, but she was not so hungry that she could manage it herself. The corncake,
dry now and requiring much chewing, was filled with nuts and she hoped these
would meet her needs for the time being. It was certainly true that she was hungrier
than she had ever been in her life.

Elizabeth
learned to strip kindling with her fingers from a birch trunk, locate deadwood,
and although she was terribly slow at it, to start a fire with flint and iron.
Above all other things, Elizabeth was learning to see in the woods:
Runs-from-Bears pointed out wolf and deer and panther scat, beaver dams and
lodges, old abandoned duck nests appropriated by mice, the way that squirrels
scattered refuse on the ground beneath the trees they favored, raccoon tracks like
the imprint of the human hand, how to tell otter from fisher prints, and the
alternating pattern of the black bear's track. They skirted a thicket of
hawthorn and he stopped to show her the way a shrike had impaled a small mole
on a long thorn. She thought she would be very hungry indeed before she
resorted to stealing the shrike's dinner, but she didn't say this to Bears.

Sitting
in the early morning with her food, Elizabeth looked at the stretches of white
cedar lining the shore of the little lake where they had camped and she saw
that deer had been foraging there, shearing off the underside of the foliage in
straight lines that aunt Merriweather's gardeners would have been proud of.
Interspersed with the cedar were ragged spruce branches hanging low. She asked
Runs-from-Bears about this.

"Deer
don't care much for spruce," he agreed. He said this once in
Kahnyen’keháka and then repeated it in English.

This
was the fourth full day out of Saratoga, and deep in the bush. They were eating
the last of the corncake and dried berries, but Bears thought they would get to
Robbie MacLachlan's by midday, and he didn't seem concerned about their lack of
provisions. Elizabeth watched Bears eat, more neatly and fastidiously than she
could manage without fork or spoon. There wasn't a wasted movement to the
process, and he seemed to take little pleasure in it. His eyes scanned the bush
as he chewed. Elizabeth knew that he was seeing things that she couldn't even
imagine.

She
was looking forward to Robbie MacLachlan, although she barely dared admit this
to herself. Only four days walking and she was tired to the bone, and gritty,
and she feared that she smelled. Much of her exposed skin was itchy with welts;
she had learned, finally, what Nathaniel meant with his threats of the black
fly although Bears told her they weren't bad this year. He certainly seemed to
suffer less from them than she did. Mrs. Schuyler had given her a home remedy,
but thus far Elizabeth had resisted the pungent ointment.

The
early morning sun shone on Bears' hair so that it cast out blue—black tones.
The tattoo that stretched over his cheekbones to meet on the bridge of his nose
seemed to shine in the same shades of blue, standing out in relief against his
skin, deep bronze and scattered with the evidence of a hard—won battle with the
pox. Looking at him now, Elizabeth realized that his tattoos were not an
abstract design of fanned lines, as she had thought, but identical to the
tracks he had pointed out that a black bear had left on smooth tree bark.

"Does
tattooing hurt?"

"Hen'en."
Yes, of course
.

Then
why do you do it?"

Bears
touched his cheekbone with one finger. "The pain is important."

Elizabeth
had the idea that she was slowly coming to see the way Bears thought. She
wasn't surprised, now, to hear him accept the pain as a natural and necessary
thing, instead of denying it. She decided to keep this to think about on the
trail, when she would have long hours to consider it carefully. Something to
keep her mind off Nathaniel.
 

"Do
you think much about Many-Doves ?"

He
inclined his head at her. "As much as you think of Nathaniel."

"Why
do you call him Nathaniel, and not by his Kahnyen’keháka name?"

"I
call him what he is. Right now he is Nathaniel."

Elizabeth
thought about that in silence for a while.

"Why
do the Kahnyen’keháka call Nathaniel Okwaho—rowakeka?"

"Wolf—Running—Fast,"
translated Bears.

"Hen'en,
ohnahò:ten' karihòni'?"
Yes, but for what reason?

He
blinked solemnly, which, she had slowly come to understand, was an indication
that he would reply to her question with a question. "What do you know of
the wolf?" he asked.

Elizabeth
knew very little of wolves, she realized, and she admitted this openly.

"Wolf
is a hunter," said Bears. "But most of all, Wolf never hunts alone.
The pack is the most important thing, and he hunts for the pack and with
it."

"But
Falling—Day told me he had another name."

"Deseroken.
She gave him this name, Between—Two—Lives, when he came to live in her long
house that winter when he took her daughter to wife. But before that he was
Wolf—Running—Fast. He would tell you this," Bears concluded. "If you
asked him."

"But
he's not here, and you are."

He
nodded, satisfied with this logic.

"You
make me work very hard for the answers to my questions," Elizabeth pointed
out.

"You
ask many questions," Bears said. "Quid pro quo."

She
could not suppress a laugh, to hear Runs-from-Bears switch from Kahnyen’keháka
to Latin. He pursed his mouth at her. "You are surprised."

"Hen'en."
She wiped her brow with her kerchief. "I forget sometimes that you have
had European schooling as well. You do not let it show, normally."
Suddenly encouraged by the turn in the conversation, Elizabeth found herself
asking a question which had long bothered her.

"Why,"
She sought the right wording, and then moved forward cautiously. "Why is
your head not shaved?"

She
had surprised him, something that did not often happen.

"We
are not at war," he said. Then, seeing that she didn't understand, he
raised his hands to his own head, and grasped his hair at the crown, a handful,
twisting it up and away. Although he more and more often spoke Kahnyen’keháka
to her, he said this in English.

"A
warrior who takes my life honorably in battle takes my scalp back to his
people, as proof of his skill and bravery. I would do the same to him. I have
done the same, but not often. I was very young in the last wars. Now there is
no fighting here. If I were to go north to Stone—Splitter or west"—he
gestured with his chin—"to join Little—Turtle, then I would shave my head
again and dare my enemies to take my scalp lock

He
was watching her, his eyes hooded. “You are thinking we are savages, and in
need of civilization."

"No,"
said Elizabeth. "I am hoping that you never have to shave your head
again."

"Hmm,"
said Bears, and she saw that she had surprised him again.
"Toka'nonwa."
Maybe
. He rose. "We have about six hours to
walk, Looks—Hard, and we'd best get going."

* * *

Her
legs were still quite stiff, but Bears kept a steady pace that did not tax her
overmuch. And Elizabeth enjoyed the walking. Her pack contained primarily her
own things and some of the dwindling provisions; for the first part of the day,
at least, it did not seem heavy to her. It helped to have the freedom to move.
She wore the shirt—like overdress and leggings that Many-Doves had lent her,
nonsensically it seemed, with her own shift underneath them. Her hair was
plaited now and tied with a strip of rawhide, and the end swung with the rhythm
of her walking at the small of her back. Tucked into a wide belt was a knife in
a beaded sheath which Bears had taught her how to sharpen on the first day.
Thus far she had used it only for cleaning game, but it was good to have it
anyway. In a little purse she carried a sharpening stone, a tinderbox, and a
small store of buckshot sewn into elongated linen capsules.

She
was still wearing Many-Doves moccasins, and she was very glad of them.
Elizabeth wondered how she would ever wear her own shoes again, or even her
beloved boots with their elegant little heels and fine needlework. She thought
much of Paradise, particularly of her students, and of Hannah, who was her
daughter now. It would have been a wonderful idea, to have a daughter, if it
hadn't been for Richard Todd. He had managed to steal this joy from her, and
Elizabeth resented it deeply.

What
was so very frightening about this was not the memory of Richard's hateful
smile when he claimed Hannah as his own child, but the complete lack of emotion
from Nathaniel. No mortification or surprise or anger. Things Elizabeth would
have expected, even if—and this was an unwelcome thought—Richard's claim were
true. She told herself, as she had already a hundred times, that it did no good
to contemplate his incredible declarations until she could talk to Nathaniel
about all of it. She wondered with considerable discomfort if Nathaniel might
have told her more of Sarah, and of Sarah and Richard, if she had been willing
to listen when he tried to talk to her about his first marriage. She could not
help thinking that he should have told her, anyway. They began climbing again,
through the woods on a path that Elizabeth could barely discern, although Bears
showed no hesitation at all. Above their heads a woodpecker drilled in the soft
wood of a cedar above a clinging mass of orchid like flowers with brilliant
crimson stripes. There were birds all around, busy with their nests. She had
found out that many of them did not have Kahnyen’keháka names and so she had
stopped asking, satisfying herself with observing their habits and making up
names of her own. So engrossed was she at the sight of a porcupine perched up
high and stripping buds from a maple tree that she did not notice that Bears
had stopped dead in his tracks.

He
swung his rifle around and up in a fluid gesture. Elizabeth had barely picked
out the buck grazing upwind from them when the shot sounded and the animal
leapt wildly into the air and then fell.

"Robbie
will be glad of the meat," he said by way of explanation. The birdsong had
stopped, replaced by the echoing of the gunshot.

* * *

They
walked into Robbie's camp a few hours later, although Elizabeth did not realize
that they had done so until Bears had hefted the small buck over his shoulders
and dropped it to the ground.

But
it was a homestead, of a sort. There was a small natural clearing, sunlit, and
surrounded by stands of birch and maple. The woods as far as she could see were
completely clear of underbrush; she had come to recognize the significance of
this, the difference between tended forest and bush. Off to one side there was
a deep fire pit, lined with rocks and well used, with a trivet on one end and a
spit on the other. On two sides of this open hearth there were logs at a
comfortable distance. One of them, the one that faced away from the mountain
and looked down the trail, had a shiny spot in its middle. The cabin itself she
had not seen at all at first glance, because it was built into the side of the
mountain. It was not so much a cabin as a lean—to, stripped logs weathered into
the color of granite, with a roof of evergreen boughs over bark. There was one
small window, just an opening in the wall with propped—up shutter. It was a
tidy place; the walls were hung with snowshoes and traps at regular intervals.