by Sara Donati
“They all went into the bush,” he repeated. “And not a man jack of ’em come out again. Nor the gold. Now, this is where the story gets peculiar, like.” Axel nursed his pipe once again, staring now at Julian, who had moved up close and sat at attention.
“Jack Lingo was in the bush that day up to no good. Stole more beaver than he ever trapped hisself, they say, and I ain’t gonna disagree. Lazy, you know. Said to me once he spent years paddling the fur route up from Montreal to Grand Portage and back again, and didn’t see he should have to work no more. So.”
There was a crackling from the fire as Axel paused to light his pipe. Elizabeth felt her brother’s attention on her and she turned to him, one eyebrow raised, meeting his curiosity and suspicion full on. Julian yawned. He might want her to think him bored, but Julian could not hide his intense interest in this story.
“The mistake Jack Lingo made that day was, he stole from a man smarter than him. Chingachgook was in the bush, you see. Don’t know what Lingo was thinking, trying to steal from Chingachgook, but I guess he weren’t thinking much at all. So here’s what you got: Jack Lingo decides that Chingachgook don’t need his canoe no more, and he climbs in and paddles off. He’s on his way out of the bush, when he runs into a river of blood. Them Frenchies, cut up bad. Scalps gone, other parts, too.” Axel glanced at Elizabeth and cleared his throat. “But the chest was there. Why? Dunno. Maybe they was coming back for it later. Maybe they was just interested in the scalps and never bothered to look inside.
“Now Old Jack wasn’t a complete fool, not him. He got a look in that chest and saw what was there, and he knew sure enough what to do.” Axel turned suddenly to Elizabeth.
“What would you do, now, missy?”
The question took Elizabeth by surprise. She sat up, considered.
“Load the strongbox in the canoe and take off,” supplied Julian before she could answer.
“Ja, that’s just about what Jack wanted to do, but just then Chingachgook caught up with him. Now.” He tapped his pipe against his knee. “There ain’t no worse crime in the bush than stealing. And there weren’t no tougher man in the bush than Chingachgook.”
Elizabeth thought of the old man up at Hidden Wolf, his kind smile, and she tried to imagine him in his prime.
“… so now Jack’s got Chingachgook in front of him and Chingachgook’s canoe behind him, and the chest between them. What did he do?”
“He ran like the devil,” muttered Jed McGarrity.
“Like the devil!” echoed Axel with a little laugh. “Ja, like the devil hisself! And it must have been the devil who looked out after him that day, because he got away. Any other day, Chingachgook would have killed him.”
“So what happened to the strongbox and the gold?” asked Julian, when it was clear that the old man had told all of the story he considered worth telling.
“Well, now,” said Axel, wiping his watery eyes with a dingy handkerchief. “That’s the question, ain’t it?”
“What do you think happened to it?” Elizabeth asked quietly.
Axel shook his head. “This is what I know,” he said. “Chingachgook ain’t a stupid man, and he ain’t a rich one, neither. Unless he been sitting on that gold all these years, he ain’t got it. Me, I think he ain’t got it. Jack Lingo thinks otherwise, he been spending all this time trying to get Chingachgook to give him a share. Note now, missy, I ain’t said a fair share. Lingo never much understood that particular word, in any language.”
Julian had a preoccupied look. “Where is this Jack Lingo?”
“Why, I thought that would be naked as a peeled egg,” said Axel. “He’s in the bush. Looking for the spot where Chingachgook hid the gold. Some say it’s up there on Hidden Wolf. Ain’t that so, Dr. Todd?”
Elizabeth looked up with a start to find Richard standing not ten steps away. There was a look on his face she wasn’t familiar with, the blue eyes narrowed and steely above the bright red-gold of his beard. In the past month Elizabeth had avoided the topic of Hidden Wolf with Richard, and the look on his face made her glad she had done so.
“That’s what they say,” Richard said finally, his eyes coming to settle, heavily, on Elizabeth.
“Your beau has come to see you home, sister,” said Julian, reaching for his coat. “I’ll come along as chaperon.”
“Beau?” said Axel, sitting up straighter and grinning. “I guess I ain’t the only one with a story to tell, then.”
“My brother speaks out of turn,” Elizabeth said with a sharp look to Julian.
Richard seemed to come suddenly awake. He gave Elizabeth a grim little smile. “Does he?”
Anna had been watching the exchange quite eagerly. “Now, you men,” she interjected, handing Elizabeth a wrapped parcel of handkerchiefs. “Don’t make the schoolteacher blush. A lady ain’t supposed to be too clear on matters such as these.” She stood back and looked Elizabeth over as if she were a daughter in need of comfort and protection rather than a woman almost thirty, just a few years younger than herself. “It was good to have you come by and I hope you’ll come again soon to talk when the menfolk ain’t quite so troublesome.”
“Thank you,” Elizabeth said. “I’d like that.” And she was surprised to note that she was not just being polite, that she meant it. Anna’s straightforwardness was welcome to her after so many weeks of playacting.
Suddenly Elizabeth remembered something and she turned to Richard.
“I thought you were leaving for Johnstown today.”
“Hitty Cameron had her pains start,” said Richard. “And by the time she was safely delivered, it was too late to set out.”
“Is that so?” asked Anna eagerly. “Has she got a girl or a boy?”
“A fine, healthy son,” said Richard with a nod.
“Hitty Cameron?” Elizabeth was still having trouble sorting out the villagers. “Has she married one of Archie Cunningham’s sons?”
“Well, now,” said Anna easily. “She ain’t exactly anybody’s wife just yet, but I expect that she and Noah will go to housekeeping now that they’ve got a boy.”
“Oh,” said Elizabeth, flustered. She had heard of this local habit of starting a family before marriage, but it was a difficult one to come to grips with.
“Very well for Hitty,” said Julian impatiently, trying to urge Elizabeth toward the door. “But it’s time for my tea now and I’m afraid I’m not willing to wait any longer. Are you two coming along or not?”
“Go on ahead,” Richard said, before Elizabeth could answer. “I will see your sister home.”
Julian raised an eyebrow in question at Elizabeth, and she gave him a reluctant nod. He shrugged his shoulders and took his leave from the men at the hearth. “I’ll be back to hear more about that gold,” he called to Axel with a flourish, and the door fell shut behind him.
“Is there anything I may bring you from Johnstown?” Richard asked when he had settled Elizabeth into his sleigh and tucked the lap robes around her.
“Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?” she asked, surprised.
“No, but it will do for a start. And do I need a reason to talk to you?” he asked, clucking to the chestnut geldings to set them on their way.
Elizabeth had quickly realized that the hardest part of her role in the current affair was not missing Nathaniel, but coping with Richard. His possessiveness was a trial she had not really anticipated. She felt his gaze on her now, a sidelong glance of paternalistic condescension which marked her his asset, his almost-wife. Sometimes it was more than she could bear.
“I suppose not,” she said tightly.
“Miz Elizabeth!” called a young voice, and Elizabeth smiled and waved at Peter Dubonnet, the youngest of her schoolboys. She was surprised to see him salute her with an axe; he was a slight child, and she wouldn’t have thought him strong enough to be effective at splitting kindling. But a half-filled wicker basket stood to one side and he turned back to it as the sleigh moved on. In the classroom Peter had
the serious demeanor of a child with too much responsibility, and Elizabeth wondered where Claude Dubonnet kept himself while his son chopped wood.
“There might be mail waiting in Johnstown,” Richard was saying, and Elizabeth turned back to the conversation at hand.
“I suppose there might be,” she agreed.
“Perhaps word from your aunt Merriweather.”
“Yes,” said Elizabeth, now more distinctly uncomfortable. “Perhaps. Will you be disappointed if there is none?”
Immediately Elizabeth regretted this question. She dared not look at Richard, and so she looked instead at the way the softened snow puckered and fell in on itself over Henry Smythe’s fallow cornfields.
“I am a patient man,” Richard said finally.
“I see that you are,” Elizabeth said. “If I may make an observation, you are also a stubborn one.”
He shrugged a bit, as if to concede this point. Irritated, Elizabeth decided to have her way just this once with Richard, and risk the possibility of putting him off.
“When are you going to tell me about your childhood?” she said to him. “You seem to always evade the subject.”
“The way you are evading the subject of my proposal?”
“We have discussed your proposal at length, on a number of occasions,” retorted Elizabeth. “You have yet to tell me anything about your childhood.”
“You’re mighty interested in stories today,” Richard said, clearly put out.
“Do you mean Jack Lingo?” Elizabeth said.
He grunted.
“It was an interesting story, but it has nothing to do with the matter at hand.”
“There’s nothing to tell,” Richard said stiffly.
“Between strangers, perhaps not,” Elizabeth said, just as stiffly. She wondered herself why she was being so insistent about this, why it seemed so important to get Richard to talk about his time with the Mohawk.
“Are we to be strangers no longer, then?” Richard asked in a voice which struck Elizabeth as toneless and, at the same time, vaguely threatening.
The sleigh track entered a narrow place where the river negotiated between a steep hillside and a wall of rock, so that the path bordered directly on the water, rushing high now with icy runoff from the mountain. Just beyond the turning, Elizabeth knew, her father’s house would come into view. But right here they were not visible from the house or from the village. With considerable discomfort Elizabeth watched as Richard brought the sleigh to a halt.
This is what my curiosity reaps, she thought to herself grimly. For weeks now she had managed to avoid this kind of encounter with Richard, but there was nowhere to go, no excuse to be made.
“Elizabeth.”
She met his gaze with a raised eyebrow.
“Do you believe that your aunt will give her blessing to the match between us?”
Elizabeth called up an image of aunt Merriweather. She was a kind but sometimes rash woman of strong opinions, and one of those opinions was that a woman without considerable resources of her own was better off married. Love was not a staple of aunt Merriweather’s philosophy, and she would not know what to make of Nathaniel. Richard, on the other hand, would be a more familiar kind of creature to her in spite of his unconventional childhood.
“I really don’t know,” said Elizabeth finally.
“Will you go against her wishes if she does not support your plans to marry?”
What a fortuitous formulation, Elizabeth thought. At least in answering this I can look him straight in the eye. “If I feel that it is in my best interest to marry, I will do so, even if my aunt does not agree.”
“And have you decided whether it is in your best interest?” He was leaning toward her now, not with a look that was passionate, but with the focused demeanor of a man who knew how to do a job, and was determined not to cut corners.
“Perhaps,” Elizabeth said, willing her voice to be steady, but knowing that it creaked a bit. She put out her hand against Richard’s shoulder in a clear attempt to stop him, but he caught it in his own and brought it up to his mouth. Elizabeth snatched it away with a little indrawn breath.
“I’m a patient man, Elizabeth,” Richard said, his brow folded in a line which said just the opposite. “But I’m not a fool.”
Elizabeth experienced a most inopportune and almost irrepressible urge to giggle. She bit the inside of her cheek hard, trying to focus her thoughts and bring herself to reason. It was imperative that she remain calm and friendly and also crucial that she find a formulation which would reach him. And quickly.
“Your advances are most inappropriate, Richard,” she said in a tone she hoped was sweet, but feared was sharp. “Have you no respect for my good name?”
Relieved, Elizabeth saw him draw up at this. He was already sitting back, a surprised but not completely dissatisfied look on his face, when the rock face began to slide.
At first there was a sharp crack like the sound of a branch snapping under a load of snow, followed by a rustling. A shower of pebbles and ice fell over them, and before it was clear to Elizabeth what was happening, the horses had begun to rear. With a muttered oath, Richard reached for the reins but they slipped away from him and over the lip of the dashboard. A large spar of rock fell just then, and Elizabeth saw it bounce off the back of one horse and strike the next.
“Hold tight!” he bellowed, lunging after the reins as the sleigh lurched and then began to fly forward, rocking madly from side to side.
Numbly, Elizabeth did as she was told. She braced her feet and fixed her hands on the dashboard. The wind ripped her hood from her head and she felt a spattering of wet snow across her cheek and mouth. The air seemed suddenly very cold, and it was hard to breathe in spite of the great wind in her face. The horses careened around the corner, setting the sleigh tipping for a brief and terrifying moment on one set of runners.
Then the path straightened out and the sleigh slammed down once again with a jolt, the runners screeching. Richard was leaning out over the backs of the geldings, shouting to them, but they raced on, great gouts of ice and mush hurtling up from their hooves.
Elizabeth closed her eyes and tried to remember a prayer, any prayer, but none came to her, and it was more terrifying to be blind to the dangers than to watch them.
When she opened her eyes, Nathaniel was running toward them. Numbly, she realized that he must have been hunting, for he came leaping downhill, racing on an angle to intercept the team.
Richard was raging at the horses. There was just a split second for Elizabeth to note to herself, quite insanely, that she was finally seeing that part of Dr. Todd which he kept so carefully hidden from her, when Nathaniel launched himself at the team, grabbing the bridle and pulling the horses to a stop with his own weight.
For a moment the only sound was the rough belling of the dogs, who settled at a single sharp word from Nathaniel. The whole episode had lasted only seconds, Elizabeth was sure, but she felt as though a century had passed.
Slowly, almost majestically, Richard rose from the sleigh and pointed a finger in Nathaniel’s direction. Elizabeth saw that it trembled slightly, and she looked up, alarmed, to see that Richard fought for his breath, his chest heaving. His color was choleric, and his voice wavered.
“This was your doing!”
“Richard!” Shocked, Elizabeth reached up a hand to touch his arm. From the corner of her eye she watched Nathaniel take this in; she sensed rather than saw him stiffen.
“I believe Nathaniel deserves our thanks,” she said, withdrawing her hand.
“He deserves a beating,” bellowed Richard in response.
“He saved our lives!” Elizabeth shot back at him.
“He tried to kill us,” Richard corrected her without taking his eyes from Nathaniel.
“If you can’t get a hold of your team,” Nathaniel said, “then at least get a hold of yourself, man.”
Beside Elizabeth, Richard stilled suddenly in a way which was more frightening t
han any shouting. Elizabeth sent a beseeching look to Nathaniel.
“Please—” she began, and then faltered. Please, she wanted to say, please stop this, I’m frightened. Please. Come here and let me look at you. A glance passed between them, and Elizabeth saw Nathaniel call himself to order, the tension leaving his jaw slowly.
“I heard the shot,” Richard said, his fists balled at his side.
“Shot?” asked Elizabeth, incredulous. “What shot?”
“Somebody shot at the rock face,” Richard spat out without even looking at her. “Nathaniel shot at the rock face to make it slide,” he corrected himself.
“That’s a damn fool thing to say,” responded Nathaniel in a strangely reasonable tone. “And once you calm down and think it over, you’ll see that for yourself. Now,” he continued, touching his cap in deference to Elizabeth. He let his gaze shift over her face one beat too long. “I’m glad I could be of help and I’ll be on my way again.” He whistled to the dogs, and without another word to them, he slipped into the woods.
With a sinking feeling, Elizabeth watched him go. She knew she should look away, that Richard was watching, but it was impossible. She could not. In the confusion of the past few minutes, she realized, he had not once used her name.
“He did that,” Richard said darkly, out of the sleigh now and checking the harnesses, locating the reins. “He did that on purpose.”
Elizabeth’s heart had begun to slow its pace, but now it picked up again. Richard was looking at her with such a dark scowl, his brow drawn down into a sharp vee. He knows, she thought numbly. He knows. She looked into the woods where Nathaniel had disappeared and wished him back. She had not been afraid of Richard when he seemed intent on kissing her, but she was afraid now.
“I’m sure you’re mistaken,” she said, finally.
But Richard wasn’t looking at Elizabeth; in fact, he seemed to have forgotten her. “Of course he did it, of course. He’d do anything to keep me from getting to Hidden Wolf.”
Elizabeth shut her mouth and focused her gaze on her own hands, folded into a tight knot in her lap.
