Into the Wilderness (6 page)

Hawkeye
shrugged. "I don't deny the timing's bad. But there's some things can't be
ignored, and that woman is one of them. You best keep your wits about you, or
Todd will beat you to it."

They
were silent for a while as they scrambled up a steep slope, urging the horse
along behind.

"Can't
see a woman like that scraping hide and hoeing corn," Nathaniel said.

"True
enough. But there's others to do that work. She's a schoolteacher."

Hawkeye
said this last in a respectful tone. It was something Nathaniel had never
understood about his father, his willingness to believe absolute good of any
schoolteacher—until evidence to the contrary came to the front.

"Well,
say for a minute she decides she's interested and I make her an offer. The
judge wouldn't like it. Nor her brother," said Nathaniel.

Pausing
to catch his breath, Hawkeye turned to look out over the village tucked into
the elbow of the mountain. The evening was coming fast; long shadows of
deepening dark blue moved down over the forest, reaching over the snowy fields
to curl fingers around the scattered cabins and barns. Half Moon
Lake
glittered softly in the last of the evening light
like a silver hand mirror thrown down carelessly on a rumpled white coverlet.

"Her
daddy is white," Hawkeye said quietly, as if he and his son were not; as
if they were of a different universe. "He thinks he owns the sky. The sky
won't give him much of an argument, but that daughter of his will. He don't
know what's coming his way." He shook his head and grinned. "That's a
strong—willed woman, Nathaniel, and some men would run in the other direction.
Richard Todd will, when he figures her out."

"Not
if she brings the mountain to the match, he wouldn't run. Not if she had two
heads and a tail."

Hawkeye
drew up suddenly, a hand to his chin. "Aye, you're right. But if she's
half as smart as I think she is—and set against marriage to boot—she won't let
herself be auctioned off like that. And" Hawkeye grinned now, his face a
mass of wrinkles—"it weren't Richard Todd she was starin' at with her eyes
all shiny, every opportunity."

Nathaniel
inclined his head but said nothing.

"Your
ma was strong—willed like her." Hawkeye paused again, and when he spoke
there was a loss in his voice that Nathaniel knew well. "You won't be
sorry for it, in the long run. Although she'll tire you out in the chase."

"I
haven't made up my mind to take up the chase."

"You
tell yourself that," Hawkeye said, laughing softly. "See if you can
make it stick. I don't think you can.

Although
she went to bed dispirited and unhappy about the possibility that her plans
might be met with her father's reluctance rather than his help and goodwill,
Elizabeth
awoke on
Christmas Eve morning refreshed and with her resolve restored. It was very
early, the sun just coming up over the mountains, and the deep cold of the
night had not yet begun to loosen; nevertheless Elizabeth could not stay in her
bed, so she washed and shivered her way into her clothes, and ran down the
steps to the kitchen.

Standing
in the doorway, she was greeted by a blast of warm air from the hearth where a
crowd of pots hung from a complex assortment of cranes and trivets. The whole
room glowed with the reflected firelight in copper and pewter swaying from
hooks in the ceiling beams. Against the far wall, baskets of flax and carded
wool waited by a spinning wheel, and next to that a young girl worked a loom with
the quick and automatic motions of the practiced weaver.

Another
young woman stood at a rough wooden table peeling potatoes while Curiosity
kneaded dough, her dark skin dusty with flour to the elbows. She looked up to
see
Elizabeth
standing there and grinned.

"An
early riser! Yes, I knew it, an early riser. You must be hungry. Breakfast
won't be for a while yet but come sit down and Daisy here will do her best.
Daisy is my second oldest. Daisy! Say g'd day to Miss Elizabeth. Over there
that's my Polly on the loom. And that there is Manny, just on his way out now
to see to the firewood, weren't you, sweet thing?"

Manny
was a strapping youth with a wide grin, but
Elizabeth
barely got a good look at him
before he disappeared at his mother's bidding. She turned her attention to
Daisy, who smiled at
Elizabeth
without a bit of shyness. She was slightly built but wiry, not quite so dark as
her mother, but with a great abundance of hair tucked up into her cap. On one
cheek there was a red birthmark in the shape of a flower, and
Elizabeth
realized that this must be the
source of her name.

Daisy
wiped her hands on her apron while she considered
Elizabeth
.

"Biscuits
and honey, that should tide you over. And fresh milk."

"That
sounds lovely,"
Elizabeth
said, "but I would like to take a walk first—"

"A
walk in this cold weather before you have good food in you?" Curiosity
shook her head.

Uncertain,
Elizabeth
glanced out the window. It had begun to snow, and the sky was leaden.

"
Paradise
ain't going no place, before you have some
breakfast," Curiosity stated, and in response Daisy began to butter
biscuits.

There
was a high stool at the table and
Elizabeth
took it, waiting for Curiosity to protest that she should eat in the dining
room, but there was no such complaint; Curiosity went back to her bread dough
and Daisy to her potatoes. The rhythmic thump of the loom made a nice
counterpoint to the steady hiss of the fire in the hearth.

The
biscuits were delicious and the milk was fresh;
Elizabeth
realized suddenly that she was very
hungry indeed and she worked her way through the plate quickly. Her appetite
and appreciation were not lost on Curiosity, who set her dough to rise and
poured
Elizabeth
more milk.
Elizabeth
thought of asking Curiosity to sit and eat with her, but she realized that the
older woman had probably been up for hours and had eaten long ago, and that she
had many hours of work ahead before she would find time to sit down again.
Elizabeth
was thinking
about Curiosity when a back door opened in a flurry of snow and Galileo came
in, stamping and whooshing with the cold.

"My
Lord!" he said, dumping his load of firewood onto the hearth. "But
what a weather. Good morning, Miss Elizabeth!"

Elizabeth
returned his greeting but he had already turned to address his wife.

"And
I suppose you still need those supplies, and I suppose I still have to hitch
the team and go down to the village in this snow." He shook his head.

"And
I suppose snow is nothing new and I suppose it's Christmas Eve and I suppose
you don't want me serving up beans and pickled cabbage for dinner, do
you?" Curiosity answered in staccato. But they were grinning at each
other, and Daisy did not seem in the least perturbed, so
Elizabeth
assumed that this tone was an
everyday one.

"Are
you going into town?" she asked Galileo. "May I come along?" She
had already slipped down from her stool. "Please do wait, it will only
take me a minute."

It
barely seemed worth the effort of hitching the team, for the sleigh brought
them into the village in just a few minutes.
Elizabeth
wished that she had walked, for the
village fairly flew by: scattered cabins, the church of raw wood, its windows
shuttered and the little steeple without a bell. The parsonage stood off to the
right, a somewhat finer building of board and shingle rather than logs, but
small and with only a few window sashes. To the far left, a finer house of
field stone and brick; no doubt it belonged to the doctor. There were a
smokehouse, stables, and black smithy She noted, although she tried not to, that
each cabin had a dooryard cluttered with stacked wood, farm tools, and dark icy
patches where dishwater had been tossed. Here and there laundry had been hung
out and shirts and trousers and sheets seemed to be standing sentry, frozen
into awkward contortions. There were few people to see: outside a cabin of
squared logs a woman wrapped in shawls drew water at a stone well, an old
raccoon cap on her head and a baby strapped to her chest with a leather belt.
Down at the edge of Half Moon Lake, surrounded with tree stumps like beard
stubble, there were men out on the ice fishing with nets. Boys pushed a ball
with long sticks, shouting and tussling.

Elizabeth
was
both relieved and disappointed: relieved to see people carrying on with normal
lives such as she had known in
England
,
and disappointed that everything was so familiar. The village was, if anything,
shabby, and the buildings, while solid, were plain. The trading post was a log
building like the rest but with a long, deep porch, empty now, and tiny glass windows
on either side of the door. There was nothing picturesque about
Paradise
. It was hewn too rawly from the forest, it sat
too awkwardly on the shores of the lake.

What a terrible prig you are
, she
sniffed at herself.
You'll have to do
better than that, my girl, if you intend to teach school here.

Watching
Galileo tie the team to the hitching post,
Elizabeth
realized with a start that the
people in this place would have children, and that she must convince them to
send those children to her school. And more, there was no way to be introduced
to them, except to do it herself. She had never in her life taken up a
conversation with a person to whom she had not been properly and formally
introduced, with the exception of servants and shop clerks. Almost paralyzed
with worry, she watched as Galileo solved her problem by stepping into the room
behind her and calling out: "Good morning. This here is Miss Elizabeth
Middleton, the judge's girl."

Elizabeth
tried hard to keep up with the hands that were thrust at her, the questions and
good wishes. Confronted with the friendly curiosity of a roomful of people,
Elizabeth was ashamed of herself for her less—than—generous thoughts about the
village.

A
woman of substantial height and breadth pushed easily through the small crowd
to grasp
Elizabeth
by both shoulders and peer into her face.
Elizabeth
tried not to pull away from this unusual form of greeting, and focused instead
on a pair of curious blue eyes on either side of a nose so small and dainty
that it seemed it had somehow wandered onto the wrong face.

"Well,
aren't we glad to see you!" she said for the fourth or fifth time, shaking
Elizabeth
a
bit. "Aren't we all!"

Then
she stood back and inclined her head hard to the right."You'll have caught
not a single name in all this commotion. I'm Anna Hauptmann. This was my
husband's trading post until he took the putrid sore throat and died. Lost my
three oldest, too. That was four year ago and I been running things ever since.
Do some farming, as we all do here. D'you like cheese? You'll want to try mine,
it's worth the trouble, if I do say so myself who shouldn't. My folks come over
from the
Palatinate
back during King George's
war. That's my father over there. Däta!" She shouted so loudly at an old
man asleep in front of the hearth that
Elizabeth
jumped.

"Däta,
pass auf. No, don't you bother yourself about niceties, Miz Middleton, he's a
solid sleeper, is Pa. Däta!"

This
time the whole room jumped, but the bony shoulders of the old man hunched over
his clay pipe continued their gentle rise and fall without a tremor.

"Miz
Hauptmann—" Galileo called softly, and just as quickly as she had claimed
Elizabeth's attention, Anna turned away and fought her way behind the counter
between barrels and boxes. With a little fold of concentration on her forehead
she began to gather things together in response to Galileo's polite and
low—voiced requests.

There
was a lot to look at: the ceilings were hung with hardware of every kind from
stirrups to a plow, barrels and boxes piled everywhere. On one wall a profusion
of hand—painted signs crowded together, and
Elizabeth
looked them over with great wonder
and amusement.
Trust in the LORD your GOD
,
read a prominent one, surpassed in size only by
wonder Full is the MERCY of the Savior
, surrounded by more earthly
sentiments:
No Papper Notes but Pigs Took
in Trade; 1 lb. = $3 & 50 NY; Good Strong Vinegar; No Cofee Til Spring;
Turlington's Balsam of Life and Daffy's Elixer in Stock Permanent.
And a
very large one done in severest black letters:
NO spitting and that means YOU!
In English, Dutch, German, and
French.
Elizabeth
marveled at the translation of both the meaning and the sentiment.