Then There Were Five (7 page)

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd…”

“Why, there's another one!” cried Mona triumphantly. “There's another one, and I wasn't even looking for it.”

Willy Sloper spoiled it though. At that moment he came around the corner of the house with a sack of laying mash over his shoulder.

“Hello there, Mona,” said he. “Is it hot enough for you?”

CHAPTER IV

The Arrowhead

Wednesday was a beautiful day. The kind of day that is so clear that there is a blue edge to everything. The sun shining on the breakfast table turned the honey into such dazzling gold that one could hardly look at it. It even tasted golden. It tasted of summertime and sun and clover. It was a lovely thing to eat.

Mona kept yawning and staring out the window. She had a rose stuck in her hair, and it looked pretty.

“This is a special day,” she said. “People ought to use it only for doing special things. I know what I'm going to do. I'm going up into the tree house and write a play; and after that I'm going to bake an angel cake without anyone helping me, and after
that
—well, I'll probably wash my hair.”

“Building up to an anticlimax, all right,” said Rush. “Randy and I really are going to do something special but it's a secret. What are you going to do, Oliver?”

“Fish,” replied Oliver, scraping his egg.

“Need you ask?” Mona said. “He hasn't done anything else for the last ten days. But I suppose fishing is still the most important thing he knows about.”

After breakfast Randy and Rush made a picnic lunch. Rush's sandwiches were massive untidy things, drippy with mayonnaise, and with pieces of lettuce hanging out like fringe, but Randy always preferred them to her own. They stuffed hard-boiled eggs, and took some milk in a thermos bottle. More than enough of everything for three people.

They rode recklessly down the road on their bicycles. The morning-lighted valley streamed past them, glittering, blazing with dew, alive with the sound of birds. Rush coasted down a hill with his arms folded and his feet on the handlebars; heaven knows why he didn't break his neck. Randy did nothing so dangerous; she had her mind on the picnic lunch in her basket. She was singing at the top of her lungs:

“Speed, bonny boat, like a bird on the wing

Over the sea to Skye!”

Oh, what a day! Randy had the feeling that if she just concentrated and pumped hard enough, her bicycle would take off, leave the earth entirely, and go soaring up into that dazzling sky. All too soon they came to Oren Meeker's crooked mailbox. It was in shadow; the trees hung still above the road, and suddenly they heard no birds.

Randy got off her bicycle. “It's kind of scary,” she said, just as she had the first time they went up this road.

“Maybe it's because we know what kind of person lives here,” Rush said.

They were quiet, wheeling their bikes up the hilly road. Wet timothy slapped against their overalled legs, and their sneakers were dark with dew, and sprinkled with grass pollen.

“I hope he's gone,” Randy remarked nervously.

“Mental telepathy,” said Rush. “I was just hoping the same thing.”

“Maybe we ought to kind of hide in the bushes for a little while,” suggested Randy, in a cowardly way. “One of us could go and reconnoiter.” Rush gave her a cold, sideways look. “You mean
I
could go and reconnoiter. Thank you, no. Don't be a sissy, Miranda.”

“Why,
I'm
not being a sissy,” said Randy untruthfully. “I'm only being, you know, practical.”

But it was all right, after all. They came up over the hill at last, and there lay Meeker's farm, desolate as ever, with no one in sight except Mark, who was cutting down yellow dock with a sickle.

As before, the great dogs sprang up from nowhere, and came flying toward them, all teeth and matted fur. Randy cowered behind Rush, who, if he did not cower, at least shielded himself behind his bike.

Mark shouted at the dogs, and they gave up the chase reluctantly; still sniffing at the Melendys and growling soft, crooning growls low down in their throats.

“Gee, I was afraid maybe you couldn't come,” said Mark, flinging down the sickle and coming toward them smiling with delight.

“Has—uh—has Mr. Meeker gone?” Randy couldn't help asking.

“Oh, sure, 'bout an hour ago he went. Don't you worry; he won't be home till after dark.”

“My sister is something of a sissy,” Rush explained. “She's okay in other ways, though.”

“What would you folks like to do first?” asked Mark, falling easily into the role of host.

“Arrowheads!” said Rush.

“Quarry!” said Randy.

“Why not both?” offered Mark. “You kids got your bathing suits?”

“Certainly,” said Randy. “Right in my handlebar basket under the lunch. Lunch for all of us,” she added hastily.

“You didn't need to bother about me.” Mark looked proud. “Some days I don't even bother to eat dinner at all. I forget about it.”

“Well, you shouldn't. Not while you're growing,” said Randy severely.

“Listen to Grandma,” jeered Rush. “The voice of experience!”

“She's probably right,” said Mark peaceably. “Come on, let's get going.”

They followed him past the decrepit barn with its odorous pigpen, up through a lean pasture with thistles sticking out of it, and then under a fence and into the woods on the hillside. As they climbed, the undergrowth became more and more matted and difficult. Blackberry canes and prickly ash were bound together with wild grapevines, clematis, and bittersweet. Fallen trees lay in ambush, their branches lifted like antlers. If the three children hadn't been wearing blue jeans their legs would have been scratched and torn to ribbons.

They did not talk much, the going was too difficult; they panted, and struggled, and ripped their way through the wilderness. Randy kept getting her hair caught on thorns, and Rush had a tear in his shirt.

Moths came fluttering up into the light, and so, unfortunately, did large, famished mosquitoes. But the children didn't mind any of it, there were so many interesting things to see: a wasp's nest like a big silver pear, a tree stump trimmed with fungus the color of tangerine peel. They saw a live walking stick, and some tiny orange lizards (efts, Mark said), and an owl sitting dazed on a branch. Between the damp, shaded roots of the trees there were mosses: cup moss and sealing wax; and on the boulders flat lichens were pressed in faded gray rosettes. They saw red toadstools, and yellow, and speckled, and flocks of little silver ones all crowded together. In the middle of a small clearing stood a solitary, exquisite white one, with a lining of palest pink.

“That's an amanita,” Mark said almost in a whisper. “The destroying angel, they call it. One bite of that and you die in agony.”

“Gee whiz,” said Randy.

“You know a lot about things in the woods. Names and all,” said Rush. “I wish you'd teach me some of them.”

Mark was pleased. “I bet I don't pronounce 'em right, though. Sometimes when we go to Carthage I get a chance to go to the liberry; and Miss Schmidlapp, our teacher in school, told us about some of these things, and Oren's wife taught me a lot. But I still don't know more than a tiny little bit.”

Finally they came out of the woods.

Just below the crest of the hill there was a barren stratum of sandstone, pitted with cliff swallows' caves, holes and pockmarks.

“Look out for snakes,” Mark said. “There's rattlers around here.” Seeing Randy's face, he added hastily, “But they're only puny ones, and awful shy besides.”

Nevertheless Randy, and even Rush, stepped a little gingerly for the next five or ten minutes. After that they forgot about snakes.

The sandstone pockets were fascinating to explore. In some they found tiny paw prints, gnawed chokecherry pits, every evidence of small housekeeping but no sight of the housekeepers. In others, the highest ones, there were swallows' nests, many of them empty, since it was late in the season, but a few occupied by wide-mouthed fledglings or groups of eggs. Above, in the bright air, the parent swallows swooped in knife-sharp arcs and cried in fury and alarm.

“Let's leave the poor things alone,” Mark said. “The arrowheads I found were mostly down below this cliff. Down among the loose rocks and sand that have chipped off during the years.”

The spare grass was dry and scratchy there, and sandburs grew among the rubble. The mounting sun became stronger; it beat against the rocks. Drops of sweat rolled down Randy's forehead and dropped off, but she didn't mind. Poking with a stick among the pebbles and rocks she was as happy as an old gypsy on a trash heap.

And it was Randy who found the first arrowhead. The only one that day.

In a pleasant daze of heat and mild fatigue, she had been moving slowly along, not even poking, droning a tune without any words, and thinking about the sandwiches in the lunch basket. And suddenly there it was. Just lying there between the vervain flowers, sharp and definite as though printed on the rock. Randy had the feeling that she had been looking at it for several seconds without seeing it, and for a moment, now, she just stared at it without saying anything. Had she discovered a pigeonblood ruby, an amulet in the shape of Osiris, the diamond ring of an Infanta, she could not have been more stunned with joy.

When she spoke it was very quietly.

“I found one. I found an arrowhead. Gee whiz.”

“Good for you!” said Mark.

“Swell!” said Rush.

They hurried over to see. There it lay in the palm of her hand, clear-cut and shining. It felt cool against her skin, and in the sunlight it glittered like sugar.

“White flint, and a beauty,” Mark said. “A good-sized one, too.”

“Golly, that's neat, Ran.” Rush was nearly as pleased as she. “Come on, kids, let's see if we can't find some more.”

He and Mark returned to their poking and prodding, but not Randy. She did not wish to cloud the moment by further searching. Two arrowheads would have been less perfect than one. She sat on a patch of ground that was free from sandburs and looked at her treasure. She gazed at it glittering on the palm of her hand. She tried it against the blue denim of her overalled leg; it looked fine there, too. Then she placed it on the ground, glanced away, turned back again casually, pretending to see it for the first time. The shock of delight was nearly as good as the first.

She tried to imagine the Indian who had carved this pointed stone to tip his arrow. She pictured him first as an old chief, with a face like a dried apricot, a full war bonnet, a feather cloak, and a name like Great Laughing Paw. She could see him, too, as a redskin boy of about Rush's age, with dark, long hair and white teeth. A future chief. The Hiawatha type. But the picture she preferred was that of a maiden, a beautiful creature of about twelve, dressed entirely in white doeskin, with a single white feather in her hair. Little Birch Bark, or Lone Swan, something like that: an adventurous spirit who refused to sit at home weaving and cooking with the other squaws; who wandered, instead, white as a wraith by the edge of the lake at night, carrying her bow and arrow and singing a strange, haunting melody— At this point Randy sighed. It would be a poor huntress, for heaven's sake, who stalked her prey singing at the top of her lungs; besides, there wasn't any lake for miles around. Randy was shamefacedly aware that Little Birch Bark's place was on the cover of sheet music, or on a drugstore calendar, and not in the history of this valley.

“What kind of Indians lived around here, Mark?” she called.

“The tough ones. The Iroquois. They're s'posed to have had a battle here in this valley a long time ago. That's how come all the arrowheads.”

Great Laughing Paw, Hiawatha, and Little Birch Bark all melted away forever. Instead, a newcomer emerged in Randy's mind: a stranger with a savage, hawk-nosed face and paint-striped cheeks. Someone who wore only a loin-cloth and moccasins, and whose hair stood up in a narrow crescent over his cropped skull. She could imagine him moving through the woods, all in one piece like an animal, noiseless, intent, never aimless. She could not imagine him smiling. Randy looked at the arrowhead with new respect. She was glad that this was all she need ever know of its creator.

“I'm hot,” said Rush, hurling himself down on the ground, and at once hurling himself upright again with a bellow that would have done credit to the bloodiest Iroquois. “Jeepers! Sandburs!” He came limping over to Randy and stood pathetically while she picked them out of his trouser legs and sneakers.

“Burs I could do without,” said he. “Also gravel roads when I'm barefoot. Also thistles (except that they look okay); also stinging jellyfish, beetles, splinters, and all hot-tasting things like horseradish. Quick, Ran, you name some things you could do without. No deep thoughts, you know, just troublesome everyday things you don't like.”