The New Land

by The New Land (retail) (epub)

  Johann came over and embraced Christiane. “Never in Hesse could we own land like this.”

  Walther began to cry and reached for his mother. She brushed a dark fly from his arm. It left a red spot on his skin while he continued to cry. Johann rubbed the spot. “Walther Overstreet,” he said, “say hello to your new neighbors, the flies. The Indians keep them off by smearing their skin with bear fat. Would you like that?” He swept up the little boy, who began to giggle. “Yes, yes, Walther says! Bear fat for everyone!”

  “No, Johann,” Christiane said, wrinkling her nose, “not if you wish to come inside Mayflower Hof.”

  PART II

  1755

  †

  CHAPTER ONE

  †

  Stepping out of his cabin with his new wooden bucket, Fritz Bauer was thinking about Armstrong, the trader from Boston. That villain, to Fritz’s knowledge, had never given anyone at Broad Bay a fair price. Robert McDonnell talked about inviting another trader to come to the settlement, but it hadn’t happened and probably wouldn’t. Armstrong must have a deal with General Waldo, maybe with Leichter.

  Three skinny chickens and a skinnier rooster fluttered out of Fritz’s path, flapping and squawking. Ursula aimed to breed them up to a flock of respectable size, but the quarrelsome rooster—also acquired from Armstrong—didn’t seem up to the task. After bidding the birds good morning, Fritz paused to gaze at his farmstead.

  He never tired of this view, especially in these cool mornings of early summer, when all was promise. New shoots of squash and cabbage showed through the raw dirt in five orderly rows. Potatoes flourished here, just as he predicted. Some might be ready in a month. Fat bumblebees hovered over a mayflower vine. Sigrid, only eight, tended the plants every morning, taking pride in their progress. They were flourishing. She had Fritz’s knack for growing things.

  He smiled to see Johann already out in the next field, working an iron bar under the edge of a large stone he had started on two days before. Johann called it the kaiser rock, swearing that he would remove it or die trying.

  Even though Johann preferred carpentry, his pride drove him to claw every rock out of his field, stacking them on the half-built stone fence between their farms. Fritz had contributed stones from his field, perhaps half as many as Johann had. For Johann, every stone on his land was a personal insult. Fritz waved when his friend took a rest. “I’ll come over after I milk the cow,” Fritz called. “We’ll go at it together.”

  Johann waved back, then returned to his unequal task. Johann’s rifle leaned against a smaller rock. He was always reminding Fritz to take his musket with him, even on his own land. There was war now with the French and their Indian allies. If Fritz loaded the musket with buckshot, Johann urged, he wouldn’t even need to aim it. Fritz didn’t argue with Johann, but he didn’t much see the point. He wasn’t going to stop an Indian raiding party with a single shot.

  Fritz was glad he had moved his family next to the Oberstrasses—the Overstreets, he corrected himself. Broad Bay was growing, even though disease took some every year. Fifty more families had landed since Fritz and the others staggered ashore. Johann was a generous neighbor, always willing to pitch in and help. Not a man of high spirits and jokes, to be sure, but capable and true. And their women took pleasure in each other’s company. Women grew lonely in Broad Bay, on the edge of this new land, especially when the men were away hunting or trading. Ursula and Christiane were like sisters, sharing chores and children—three for Christiane now, and the Bauers’ two girls. Fritz still hoped for a son. There was time for that.

  Fritz heard the faint ring of a cowbell. The breeze ruffled the leaves on the trees. Fritz’s milk cow stood in the pasture, beyond Sigrid’s vegetable patch. She must have jostled her bell. Speaking in a soothing voice, Fritz approached the cow and stroked her soft muzzle. Armstrong, to be fair, had not cheated him on the cow. She was healthy and a good producer. He dropped to one knee and positioned the bucket.

  The pasture could support more animals than the cow, but they couldn’t afford swine yet, or sheep, and certainly not a horse. He wasn’t so sure about ever getting sheep. They graze so heavily that they can spoil the land. A dozen tree stumps taunted him from the south side of the pasture, as did four piles of wood stacked there. More work. He would have to rent Reiser’s ox to pull the stumps, also to haul the wood to the river. From there, he could use Johann’s boat to bring the wood to the villain Armstrong. The trader would claim much of Fritz’s profit, but there was nothing to do about it.

  As he rose with the bucket of fresh milk, Fritz heard the bell again. It came from the woods. It was probably one of the pigs belonging to the family on the other side of these woods, toward Broad Bay. Heilman’s swine were always getting into other people’s property, tearing up fields and raising havoc. With six children including two sets of twins, the Heilmans struggled to keep track of anything, especially their livestock.

  Fritz set down the bucket and covered it with a cloth. He smiled to see Johann stretched out almost parallel to the ground, straining every muscle against the kaiser rock. They’d try to move it together, or maybe Fritz could persuade his friend to leave the kaiser on his throne. Not likely, Fritz knew.

  The bell rang again, more faintly. The animal must be moving into the woods. Johann stepped slowly into the trees. He didn’t want to spook the animal and drive her farther away. He called out gently and heard the bell again. Yes, she was over to his left, toward the Heilman farm.

  * * * * * *

  Johann, panting, let go of the iron bar, leaving it wedged at a sharp angle. He looked over to the next farm. This would be an excellent moment for Fritz to come help with this damned rock. Johann was prepared to admit it. He couldn’t budge it by himself.

  He couldn’t see Fritz. Ursula was walking stiffly toward their cow. Johann knew that walk. It wasn’t going to be good for Fritz, who must have wandered off, no doubt looking at a flower or a bird with colored feathers. Dear Fritz, with the heart of a poet. Whenever one of Fritz’s spells of dreaminess and curiosity exasperated Ursula, he would croon to her, “Oh, liebe Ursula,” to a tune of his own devising. He always coaxed a smile from her. Johann envied that gift, which had won his friend such a fine wife. Johann had never been so good at winning smiles from girls.

  Since Fritz wasn’t going to arrive any time soon, Johann walked around the stone, looking for an angle he hadn’t tried. The blasted thing was squarely in the middle of the second garden he had planned for Mayflower Hof, which needed to be ready in about two weeks. Which meant he had to solve this problem now.

  After two circuits around the rock, he decided to split some wood. Fritz might not arrive for hours. After dinner, Johann could work at his carpentry shed. He loved the summer days, how the light stretched on and on. He could get so much done while Walther and Hanna and Richard, the baby, played, and Christiane knitted.

  “Johann.” Ursula’s voice came to him. “Have you seen Fritz? He left the milk.” She lifted the bucket in illustration.

  Johann shook his head. “I’m waiting for him to help me. Didn’t seem to be planning anything else, but you know Fritz.”

  Ursula looked back to the woods. “It’s been too long, even for him.”

  “Maybe he saw something to hunt?”

  She shielded her eyes. “His gun’s over there.” She pointed at the cabin.

  Johann reached for his rifle and called to Christiane. When she came to the door, towheaded Richard in her arms, he said he was off to find Fritz. A quick flash of concern passed over her face, then she smiled at Ursula. “Bring the girls over, and your sewing,” she called. “The children are wild today. They need friends.” Johann pointed to Fritz’s musket and said to Ursula, “Keep that with you, all right?”

  Ursula looked flustered. “I’ve never fired it.”

  “Christiane knows how. Stay near the cabins.”

  In the woods, Johann found a faint path where the pine needles looked to be scuffed every f
ew feet. He crouched and held his palm over the ground to focus his eyes in the shade. He couldn’t make out footprints. Someone might have walked here, toward the Heilman farm. It could have been recent. That was logical. Maybe Fritz had business with Heilman. Johann moved forward quietly, staying low. A tingle of danger tensed his shoulders, something more than the alertness he always felt in the forest. Ursula was right. Something was wrong.

  After a hundred paces, about halfway to Heilman’s, Johann tensed. Blood pounded in his eardrums. The forest floor painted the scene. Many feet had dug into it here. Feet had slid and pushed and stomped in a struggle. A scrap of buckskin hung on a low branch of a half-grown tree. It wasn’t Fritz’s. He was wearing linen. The Penobscots wore buckskin. Johann’s eyes shifted to a dark spot on the forest floor. He touched it with a finger. Sticky. He smelled it. Blood. He drove the idea of scalping from his mind.

  He followed the signs. Broken branches and scuffed ground shouted the story. Something was dragged to the river by men who made no effort to conceal their path.

  Trying to be quiet, Johann hurried to the shore. Breaking out of the trees, he saw no trace of this terrible party of men. His boat sat upstream, to the right. Voices in German carried from the Heilman farm. Penobscots sometimes knew French, occasionally some English. Never German. The sun to his left was up almost to the crest of the trees, mocking him in its ordinariness. Just another morning.

  Johann cursed himself as he hurried to Heilman’s. He knew Fritz wouldn’t be there, but he had to be sure. He had seen Fritz, what, less than an hour before? Fritz had called to him, then walked away a bit. Johann should have reminded him to bring his gun, reminded him to be on his guard. Fritz needed reminding. If Fritz had a reason to go into the forest, why hadn’t he come back for his musket first? Why hadn’t he asked Johann to go with him? How could this happen with Johann right there?

  Johann shook his head and clenched his teeth. He’d never had any trouble with whether he was his brother’s keeper. He knew he was, certainly with Fritz. And the savages took him right from under Johann’s nose. Fritz was in an Indian canoe now, either a corpse about to sink into the river or a captive on his way to Canada. Terror would spread through Broad Bay.

  When Johann reached the Heilman farm, three children and two adults were in frantic pursuit of a hog that had escaped from a dilapidated pen. “Johann,” Karl Heilman shouted, “head him off! Drive him back to us!”

  Johann waved his arms at the snub-nosed brute, herding him toward his owners. Two younger children, laughing and shouting, put their arms around the pig and held him, then grabbed the rope around his neck. The animal looked strong enough to escape their grasp easily, but he seemed to have had enough freedom. The children tugged him back toward the pen and his next meal.

  It took only a moment to learn that Fritz hadn’t been there, nor had anyone seen Indians. Karl Heilman, short and thickly built, turned to his oldest son, a ten-year-old wearing breeches that had fit him two years ago and his father’s shirt, which billowed in the breeze. “Run to the settlement,” the father said. “Tell Herr Leichter that Indians have captured Herr Bauer. Tell him we need men to search. Herr Overstreet and I will start.”

  The boy, his eyes wide, turned to Johann, who nodded.

  “Go,” the father said. “Then hurry back and stay with your mother.” Heilman looked at Johann. “We’re not likely to find him, you know.” Johann just looked at him. “Right, then. I’ll get my musket.”

  “Meet me at my boat.”

  Trotting back toward Mayflower Hof, Johann fought the empty feeling and the rage. He was already missing his friend. How was Johann going to say to Ursula the things he would have to say? Johann had known that Fritz was no fighter, yet he persuaded Fritz to move his family to this more vulnerable place. A worse thought was gnawing at him. Could this be the Penobscots’ retribution for Johann’s killing of the man he caught stealing from his trap? Or God’s retribution? That was long ago. Years ago. But the Indians don’t forget. Nor does God.

  CHAPTER TWO

  †

  When Johann pushed the boat into the current, the children were quiet. The bow sliced into the water with a soft sound. The somber end-of-day light matched the grief hanging over them, cancelling the joy the children usually felt over a boat trip. Ursula’s sorrow was enough to sadden them all.

  For two days, while the men looked upriver for Fritz, Ursula and her girls had stayed with Christiane. Ursula had prayed and bitten her lip. Her eyes leaked tears only a few times. She held grimly to the hope that the searchers would find Fritz, or he would walk out of the woods unhurt, maybe confused, explaining that he had gotten lost. She would be angry at first, she knew that, but soon they would laugh about it.

  On the second night, Johann returned alone. Christiane and Ursula were on the bed with the baby, their backs against the planked cabin wall. The four older children grouped around the table Johann had built only that winter. Seven pairs of eyes looked at him. He didn’t have to speak. He took off his hat and dropped his head.

  Ursula broke then. Her wordless cries filled the night. The children wailed along with her. Christiane, baby Richard in her arms, hugged her friend. Johann knelt to gather the others. He made low noises, pulling them into his arms. Sigrid broke free and ran out into the night.

  Johann hurried to the door, pulling the smaller ones with him. Sigrid had stopped, sobbing, a few paces away. He called her name. When he called her a second time, she rushed past him and flung herself on Ursula. The other children followed. Johann sat on the bench at the table and closed his eyes. It was knowing but not knowing. Fritz wouldn’t come back, they knew that now, but they had no idea what had happened to him.

  The searchers had little chance of overtaking the raiding party. The Penobscots had a head start, their canoes were swift, and the rivershore and woods provided endless concealment. Johann and Heilman had worked up the east side, looking for evidence of a boat having been pulled from the water. When Leichter and three others caught up in canoes, they scoured the western shore. At the portage around the falls, the signs of human traffic were too many and too jumbled to tell them anything. Above the falls, they put in and kept on looking into the night. Every hour that passed took Fritz farther away. If he was alive. Johann had argued to keep going upriver on the second day, but the others insisted on turning back. Their families were exposed to raiding parties too.

  Neighbors, mostly on foot, came by Mayflower Hof through the next day. They brought food and small things. They offered to pray. Ursula wouldn’t see them, so Johann intercepted them outside the cabin. He received the gifts and listened to their words. He thanked them for their prayers. They told him that Leichter had called a meeting that evening before sunset. He knew he had to go. They all would go.

  More than two hundred men, women, and children clustered in the clearing before General Waldo’s fenced compound, which stood where the shelter had been in their first winter. Not since the early days had Johann seen so many together. Anxious faces turned to the Overstreets and the Bauers.

  Only the two oldest children walked on their own. Each of the younger ones, made shy by the sadness and the large gathering, nestled in a parent’s arm, face against a parent’s neck. The crowd opened so they could pass to the front. Some offered words, reached out to touch an arm, to make eye contact, nod.

  Leichter, followed by a red-jacketed British army captain, stepped through the gate in the wooden palisade that circled the compound. It was a rude structure, though by far the largest in Broad Bay, and commanded the river landing. Because the general spent little time in the settlement, Leichter was its most frequent resident. Sometimes Armstrong the trader stayed there. Leichter was dressed for work—leather breeches, leather vest, loose shirt. His face was grim. The captain’s uniform was smudged and sweat-stained. The two men stood until the crowd fell silent.

  “You all know why we’re here,” Leichter started, speaking German for once. “First, I would ask
Herr Nungesser to lead us in a prayer for the safety of Friedrich Bauer.”

  Nungesser’s voice came from the right side of the crowd as heads inclined to the ground. “We pray for the return of our brother Fritz, that you take him into your special care,” he said. He opened his bible to a marked page and peered at it in the failing light. “We call on the words of Genesis, that the Lord may watch between me and thee, brother Fritz, when we are absent one from another. We beseech thee, Lord, to look over our brother, and that You bring comfort to his family, as the psalm says, because when we cry out to the Lord in our affliction, He responds tenderly. While our troubles may not go away, His loving response to our prayers can help us face them with renewed strength. Amen.”

  “Herr Nungesser,” Leichter said after a short pause, “if you would step up here. Please translate what I say for everyone.” The agent switched to English. “The first thing I wish to say is that we will continue to seek Fritz Bauer. There will always be hope. We know of captives who have been recovered months and years later.” His voice carried conviction, but few in the crowd had any hope. “This is Captain August Shaw, who commands at Fort St. Georges. For the last year we have been on the border of the war between Britain and France, but now we are part of that war.”

  The soldier took a step forward. With his uniform and his soldier’s posture, he looked like a race different from the weary settlers in tired work clothes. Holding his hat in one hand, he paused for Nungesser’s translation after each sentence or two. Shaw related that in the last month, Indian raiding parties had struck coastal settlements, attacking lone settlers. “They won’t meet us in open battle,” he said, “so they look for people who are isolated, who they can capture or kill. Sometimes the settlers get away. Sometimes they become captives in New France. Sometimes they’re killed.”

  While Nungesser translated, Johann thought how Fritz wasn’t really alone when he was taken. He and Ursula had been nearby, though useless. The captain resumed. “Their cowardly tactics include preying on farmers in their fields and luring people into the woods, so no one should go alone into the forest.” More translation. “The more exposed you are, the farther you are from other settlers, the greater your risk.” Johann could sense Christiane stiffening. Hanna wiggled in his arms. He was holding her too tightly.