Now, Mary thought. Just turn your back on it and go. Don’t go look at the baby; y’ll get all upset and they’ll suspect something. Don’t look at the baby!
But she went to look at the baby. There was no such thing as not going to look at the baby.
Fortunately, it was asleep. Its eyes were shut. Otter Girl sat beside it mending a moccasin, chewing the leather to soften it until she could ease the point of a bone needle into it and draw a rawhide thong through. She looked up, a smile of utter contentment on her round, bronze face. Mary knelt by the infant, her back to the Otter Girl. She lowered her face as close as she could without touching the baby and awakening it. Just an inch from it. She inhaled the baby smell and suddenly her heart clenched mightily and the baby’s dark little eyelashes and tiny features blurred beyond a flood of tears and Mary’s arms ached to grab up the little living bundle and run with it, run all the way back to Draper’s Meadows without stopping.
Her hot tears were dropping on the baby’s forehead and would awaken it; little frowns were disturbing its face and its little beak of an upper lip sucked in the soft red lower lip. Mary couldn’t stop herself. She kissed the little mouth and then, with anguish that surely would kill her, she rose to her feet and stumbled, tearblinded, to the edge of the camp, her lungs quaking for release, her throat clamped to hold down the awful wail of despair that was trying to erupt. The old woman, who was the only one in the camp to see her livid, contorted face, was so stricken by its agony that she too had to force back a wail of misery.
Oh dear God help me! Mary’s heart felt the way her loins had felt when the baby was being born. But ten times worse. Ten times ten times ten times worse. Oh dear God help me! HELP ME! HELP ME!
They were far into the woods before she could see or hear or feel anything, and what she became aware of first was the old woman’s strong arm across her back helping her along, all but carrying her. She stopped her on a slope covered with tan dead leaves among gigantic beech and poplar trunks. She knelt and pulled her down and muffled her face with her blanket and started patting her back. “Now,” she said. “Dey cannot hear you now. Cry up! Do it!”
It was an hour before Mary could get up and go on. She was empty and weak, even as bad as she had been on the day when they had taken Tommy and Georgie away from her.
She stood leaning against Ghetel, who was still patting her lightly on the back. “I thought I’d got myself ready for this,” Mary strangled.
“Who could?” the old woman replied. “We could still go back.”
“No. Don’t even say it.”
They wandered in no particular direction at first, barking trees with the tomahawk to leave a confusing trail. Then they came to a small clear brook and stepped into it barefoot, carrying their shoes, and went westward toward the O-y-o. The water was very cold.
After a mile the brook wandered into the salt valley and emptied into the salt creek, some distance below the camp. They waded to its other shore, dresses pulled up waist-high, then walked in the odorous muck at the creek’s edge, the creek water dissolving their footprints as they stepped out of them. The sunlight was pale and the air had a chilly edge. Most of the foliage on the slopes nearby was still green, but a dry, yellowing green, and here and there were boughs and crowns of red and purple foliage.
“Ach. The riffer.”
It opened up before them, ablaze with mirrored afternoon sunlight. The creek deepened and they had to climb out onto its bank to make the last hundred yards to the river. They stood and looked at it for a moment only. Its damp flowed around them on a breeze.
“So now?” Ghetel whispered.
Mary looked up the east bank of the O-y-o and dipped her head. Her sight was still fuzzy with tears and her eyes were red. She felt as if the first step would take the little strength left in her. “Along here,” she said. “For a long, long way.” She sighed, stooped to put on her shoes, then picked up the blanket and tomahawk and they started walking through the reeds and shrubbery, watching a few paces ahead for snakes. Long blades of grass whispered around their ragged skirts and slashed at their bare shins. The reflected sunlight from the river was hot on the left side of their faces. Huge dragonflies hovered and drifted away. The foliage of cottonwoods and willows and locusts shivered and hushed in the river breeze alongside their way. Birds rose, dipped, shrilled, skimmed close over the water. Mary looked at them now and then and gradually began to think of freedom. Through the deep lonely misery of her soul the thought came to her that for the first time in more than two months she was not a captive of the Indians—not a slave. Her legs overcame their heavy reluctance and began to like this walking.
She heard the old woman’s heavy breathing and crashing, thumping footsteps behind her, and an occasional Dutchy oath.
“Step light, Ghetel. We must go far as we can afore night.”
Mary felt a curious, soaring sensation in her breast as she said this.
It was a feeling strangely like happiness.
She was on her way to Will.
Just before sunset a towering line of grim clouds crawled up from the southwest. Thunder grumbled, lightning flickered on the horizon, and as the clouds climbed, a blast of damp air shivered the surface of the river and turned the leaves of the forest white side up. Soon the thunderheads dominated the whole sky above the river; they came gliding across, their undersides lowering and dragging gray veils of rain under them. Birds and insects fell silent.
In the moment of stillness as the rainfall came sweeping toward them across the river, Mary heard, or rather, felt, the stroke of a distant gunshot on the charged air. She stopped and raised a hand, and Ghetel almost blundered over her. They stood and listened for a moment, and she thought she detected another, then another, and one or two that were dubious because they were lost in the muttering of thunder.
“Eh?” Ghetel queried.
“Don’t rightly know,” Mary said. The reports had seemed to come from the direction of the camp. “Not hunting, surely, afore a storm like now.” Were they killing the baby? Not likely with a lot of gunshots, she decided. “No, I’d reckon they think we’re lost, and’re tryin’ to signal us the way back.” It seemed the best explanation, and Mary smiled with a cunning satisfation.
And then the sting of blown rain peppered them and hissed up the shore and into the trees.
“Ach! Nah!” Ghetel complained.
“No, it’s good,” Mary exclaimed. “Come. With this, we’ll leave no trail f’r ’em to pick up come morning! They’ll just think a bear got us, or lightnin’ or sump’n, an’ won’t even try t’ find us, I’ll wager!” She was almost running now, feeling free, and cleansed of the degradation of her bondage by this pelting torrent. She could hear Ghetel huffing and slogging along behind her, muttering:
“Bears! Lightnink? Ach!” The forest and river turned white and the sky cracked open along a tortuous blue-white seam for an instant; a tree flashed and exploded a few yards ahead and a bolt of noise felled Mary to her knees. The tree smoked and a strange, fresh, exhilarating smell came through the air. Mary got to her feet again as the echoes of the bolt dwindled across the river.
“Lightnink will!” the old woman wailed.
They were drenched by the time the rain had passed and the thunder bumped away in the east. It was too dark by then to continue safely along the unknown terrain of the shore. The wool of their blankets was heavy with water, and their sodden dresses hung cold on their skin. Mary estimated they had come perhaps five miles since reaching the river. Now they had stopped in the dripping, dribbling gloom, the warmth of their exertions evaporated at once and their empty stomachs gave them no warmth. Mary remembered then that in the anxiety of the morning they had eaten nothing. It promised to be a grim and shivery night, and despite their exhaustion they likely would get no sleep at all.
They peered and groped until they found a level and relatively well-drained place under a natural bower, where the old leaves of the past years had drifted. They stood faci
ng each other and twisted their blankets between them to squeeze out the water, then draped the blankets over themselves and squatted beside each other for a moment. Mary’s teeth chattered and she trembled from end to end. Even the primitive salt camp seemed cozy and luxurious compared with this. “We’ve a hard night ahead, I fear. I’m sorry. We’ll do as best we can, eh? Come daybreak we’ll find us some nuts or pawpaws or sump’n, eh?”
“Take,” Ghetel said.
“Eh?”
The old woman reached for Mary’s hand and put something cold and mushy in it. She explained, “It vas bread, til the rain. I get it before we leaf.”
They ate the pasty mass. Mary could taste hickory nuts and acorn meal in it with the corn. It was delicious. She licked her fingers and felt a degree warmer inside.
They shook and trembled in their wet blankets for an hour, listening to the flow of the river and the dripping foliage, the whippoorwills and crickets and each other’s sighs. Mary was so wretched she could hardly even think of the absence of her baby.
“May-ry,” the old woman croaked.
“Aye?”
“Come.”
And when they lay body to body, even the damp blankets could not entirely douse the warmth they gave each other, and eventually they slept through a night they had expected to be sleepless.
CHAPTER
11
Something was happening.
Mary was jolted out of sleep by her own heartbeat, by the sound of rustling in the leaves mere inches from her head. The old widow was moving, rising, cautiously, lifting the blanket. Mary opened her eyes in the green dimness and groped for the tomahawk. But before she could gather herself to move, Ghetel surged behind her, grunted, dragged the blanket off and scrambled in the leafy thicket. Something scurried away through rustling leaves and the old woman expelled a breathy oath.
Heart walloping, Mary turned to see the widow on all fours, staring into the underbrush. The blanket hung from her hips and entangled her feet. Mary had to swallow her heart before she could ask what had happened.
“Almost got a meat for breakfast,” sighed the old woman. “Almost in mine hands! Ach, for a gun!”
“We’d dare not shoot one if we had it. What kind of animal?”
They were both kneeling on the bottom blanket and the old woman was extricating herself from the clinging grasp of the other. She did not know what the animal was called, she said, but her efforts to describe it convinced Mary that she had nearly grabbed either a racoon or a gray fox, which had been sniffing curiously at them while they slept. “Then y’ ought to thank heaven it got away,” Mary exclaimed. “Such beasties as them would ’a’ chawed y’r arm up ’fore I could ’a’ put the tommyhawk on ’im! I swear, Ghetel, that appetite o’ your’n will be the death of us!”
Ghetel seemed to understand now, and perhaps was relieved that the animal had escaped her clutches. “But I do like breakfast,” she growled as they moved out of the thicket to the river bank, their blankets draped over their shoulders like capes.
They eventually did find a breakfast. Veering straight north inland to save distance at a place where the river elbowed, they found not only a good fall of hickory nuts, but a pair of paw-paw trees, small but heavily laden. They shook down all the firm yellow-green fruits they could dislodge, and bound them up in a blanket to bring along. On the ground under the trees they found a dozen that had fallen and turned brown with ripeness and gave up a heavy, sweet smell. They opened these eagerly and dredged out the soft, sweet yellow pulp with their fingers, moaning with pleasure as they worked it over their tongues and sucked it off the big brown seeds and swallowed it. In a few minutes they were full and sticky, and permeated with the cloying odor of the stuff. They washed their hands and faces at a cold brook and struck out to regain the bank of the O-y-o, bringing the paw-paw aroma with them.
The day was overcast and the ground remained soft from the night’s rain. Mary looked over her shoulder constantly as they moved along. Even though she was certain the rain had destroyed their traces near the camp, she knew they were leaving a spoor that would be easy to follow if the Indians had chanced onto it this morning.
They rested on a stone ledge at the riverside early in the afternoon, breaking and munching hickory nuts. Mary’s breasts ached for the baby’s lips, and to keep from thinking about it, she talked optimistically about their progress, and about their wisdom in leaving the salt camp. “We’d not ha’ got away from the Shawnee town,” she mused aloud. “All those people. And dogs. No dogs at the salt camp, thanks be t’ God.
“But the best on’t is, we’re on th’ right side o’ the river. I don’t know how ever we’d ha’ crossed it, short of stealin’ a canoe. And I f’r one deem the heathens handier at stealin’ than bein’ stole from.”
Late that afternoon as they labored eastward along the bank of the O-y-o, Mary recognized on the opposite shore the mouth of the river that Goulart had called … she searched her memory for the French word, but remembered only that it mean “the stony river” and that the Indians called it the Miami-zuh. She recalled that they had passed it in the afternoon of their last day coming down, and thus reckoned that she and Ghetel had walked some fifteen or twenty miles up the O-y-o valley in this first full day of their liberation. Fifteen or twenty miles, she thought. It sounded good; they had done well indeed. But then she remembered all the days of coming down on horseback from Draper’s Meadows—the month of days—when they had made perhaps fifteen or twenty miles a day mounted, and then the four swift days by canoe from the Shawnee Town to the salt creek; and suddenly the distance they had struggled today seemed but a tiny first step on the long way home. Why, they would have to walk this far every day for a month and a half or two months to get home! And this O-y-o valley, strenuous though it was, was gentle by comparison with the terrain they would meet along the New River through the Alleghenies.
But come now, she told herself. Y’ll do no good thinkin’ discouragements o’ this sort! A day is a day, and y’ll take each as it comes. If’t requires two months o’ days, that’s little enough t’ trade f’r a lifetime back among y’r own!
They were famished by nightfall, and ate three more of the paw-paws apiece. Their blankets had dried during the day, and the evening was mild, so they did not have to huddle together for warmth. Each rolled up in her own blanket—redolent of paw-paw now, almost sickeningly so—and lay in her private hopes and fears in the creaking, hushing, owl-hooting darkness above the murmuring river, letting the burning aches in her legs and back subside into an aching torpor of the flesh, then into numbness, and slid off into a sleep haunted by space and uncertainty.
They foraged for almost an hour the next morning, staying within sight of the river, but found nothing they recognized as edible. They had several pounds of paw-paws left, but by now their senses were so permeated by their over-sweet odor that the thought of eating one was nauseating. Ghetel wanted to range further inland, up the slopes into high ground where nut trees might be found, and Mary had to persuade her that their primary purpose was to cover distance upriver. Ghetel came along, a bit grimly; evidently she had meant it when she said she appreciated breakfast.
They slogged along through brushy bottomlands, wading small creeks and marshes, climbing slopes on all fours, struggling through brambles that ripped their tattered skirts and drew blood from their legs; by early afternoon they were gasping for breath and slapping at huge brown flies whose bites were fierce as bee-stings, and were so famished that the paw-paws were delectable again.
And suddenly, after perhaps twelve miles, they emerged from a densely wooded downslope to find their way blocked by the mouth of a river that flowed into the O-y-o. Mary remembered this one. The word for buffalo. This was the river Goulart had pointed out to her as the Buffalo River. It was far too wide and apparently too deep to try to cross here. Ghetel’s face drooped in dismay and she sat down abruptly on the ground in a slumping posture of defeat, sweat dripping off the end of her sh
apeless nose. Mary looked at her and knew how she felt. But she had, of course, already considered such detours as this. “Eh, well,” she said with a wan and unconvincing smile, and pointed up the bank of the tributary with her tomahawk, “let’s us jus’ stroll up this side a stretch till we find a fordin’ place.” Mrs. Stumf just sat and gazed, slowly shaking her head. Mary feared that if she sat there musing on it too long, she might consider turning back to the relative comfort and security of the salt camp. So she grabbed her hand and, with false gaiety, tugged at her until the old woman sighed and got to her feet. Mary sang softly as they went along:
O ten times te–en times ten a–way,
But I’ll be ho–ome a–gain …
But they spent the rest of that evening and all the next day going up the shore of the tributary, farther and farther from their guideway the O-y-o. It was depressing in the extreme to be struggling five, ten, maybe twenty miles, for all they knew, only for the purpose of returning to a point a stone’s throw away from where they had stood. It was almost as disheartening as going backwards. But there was nothing for it but to do this; neither of them could swim.
They were exhausted, hungry, scratched and bruised when, late on their fourth day out of the salt camp, they came to a riffle that indicated a shallows. The branches of trees almost met over the river here, producing such a deep green gloom that they were unwilling to try a crossing before the next morning—especially in their spent condition. They piled leaves between two parallel fallen logs and spread their blankets. They went down to the river’s edge and forced themselves to eat the rest of their paw-paws, which by now were so ripe and familiar as to be almost revolting. And the steady diet of paw-paws and more paw-paws and nothing else had given them both a severe flux. Ghetel got up and stepped a few feet away, squatted with the hem of her skirt drawn up around her waist and discharged her bowels into the leaves with a loud gushing, spurting noise and came back with a distasteful expression on her face. A few minutes later Mary felt the call and went away to do the same. She did not like this. It was her experience that the flux had a weakening effect, and they would need all the strength they could maintain.
Follow the River Page 18
