Calico Bush

by Rachel Field

  She awoke with a dull ache in her head and a body so stiff it was all she could do to keep from crying out as she painfully climbed from the dark cabin into the brightness above. The sun stood high overhead, and the sea was so smooth and blue it seemed impossible it could ever have buffeted the Isabella B. so fiercely. But all about were signs of that struggle. Part of the forward railing was gone. One of the hencoops and more than half the precious household goods had been washed away. Dolly Sargent sat in the midst of the younger children, mourning the loss of her possessions in no uncertain terms, while her husband reminded her that it was a mercy they hadn’t all followed them to the bottom.

  “You’d best be thankful we saved three o’ the sheep,” Caleb told her with pride. “But for Maggie an’ me there wouldn’t be so much as a snag o’ wool left.”

  “An’ what good are sheep to me without a spinning wheel?” she answered him shortly, turning one of the quilts the better to dry it in the sun.

  But for all her fault-finding, Dolly Sargent was easy with her Bound-out Girl that day. She set her no tasks beyond looking out for the children and even gave her a bit of tallow to rub on a great bruise that had risen on her forehead. Already it was turning a deep purple, a sight which seemed to gratify Caleb.

  “My,” he said, “but you’re easy battered. Guess I’m tough’s a bear, or I’d be black an’ blue all over.”

  “Oh, hush up,” his uncle Ira told him good-naturedly. “Whatever it was struck her warn’t no feather.”

  There being only enough milk for the baby and the two younger children, besides some hardtack, the men set about finding other food.

  “What would you say to a taste of Marblehead turkey?” suggested Captain Hunt. “Wind’s light enough to spare two hands from the ropes.”

  Marguerite looked her amazement at these words, and Ira smiled as he and Caleb brought out hooks and lines. Even the twins were less ignorant of such matters than she. They soon explained to her that it was codfish they were after, not wild fowl. With some hoarded bits of dried fish for bait, they cast their lines over the side, and soon several speckled cod and a haddock or two were flopping under foot.

  Meantime Joel Sargent had rekindled a fire in the old iron kettle, sacrificing a stick or two of wood from the broken hencoop which he had been drying in the sun. It took him a good while to whittle off shavings and to get these alight with his flint and steel, but as last it was blazing well and Dolly’s spider heating in readiness. Caleb was an old hand at cleaning fish, and soon they were ready to eat.

  “Nothin’ tastier ’n a cod fresh out o’ water,” said the Captain as he finished his and tossed the backbone overboard, “an’ if I’d a piece o’ hot johnnycake besides, I wouldn’t swap with King George himself.”

  But Dolly Sargent felt otherwise. “Half-raw cod an’ no salt to season ’em ain’t my idea of a proper meal,” she told him.

  “Cook ’em in sea water next time an’ see if they’re more to your fancy, Dolly,” laughed Ira.

  “We’ll boil you down some brine soon’s we get ashore,” her husband comforted her. “Or maybe there’s some o’ the sheep’s salt I can get at below.”

  Marguerite could not relish hers, feeling still too spent and weak from the night’s storm.

  About sunset Captain Hunt steered the Isabella B. close to shore—a steep coastline of jagged rock with thick-set evergreen trees growing down to the cliff’s edge. Against the clear pale yellow of the sky the trees appeared very wild and tattered, like gaunt hosts in an endless procession.

  “Never see so many trees in all my born days,” said Becky as the children crowded to the rail.

  “You’re goin’ to see a heap more ’fore long,” the Captain told them.

  Dolly Sargent said nothing to this, but Marguerite noticed that she drew her cloak closer about her. It was only when they passed by a small clearing with three or four houses in it that she showed any signs of interest.

  “Those folks are cookin’ supper,” she said. “I can tell by the chimney smoke.”

  It was true. All the chimneys had straight gray threads of smoke rising from them, and in the scallop of a harbor several boats were moored. The sea was quiet as they passed. In the stillness a dog’s bark came to them quite clearly.

  That night they cast over the Isabella B.’s anchor and lay till daylight off a high promontory. Cape Elizabeth, Captain Hunt had called it, cheering them with the assurance that next morning they would reach Falmouth. All their spirits rose at this, especially Dolly Sargent’s. She was almost gay as she doled out the hasty pudding she had stirred up from their rather water-soaked cornmeal. Ira joked with her as they ate.

  “I expect you’ll be a rare treat to those folks in Falmouth, Dolly,” he said. “I doubt they’ve seen a bonnet like yours before.”

  “Or ever will again likely,” she answered, pinching at the stitched cloth of its brim. “That wettin’ took out what gimp it had. Still, I’m thankful to have one at all after last night.”

  Marguerite could hear them as she sat in the dimness of the cabin, rocking Debby to sleep in the little wooden cradle which had miraculously escaped the fate of the other pieces of furniture. Since there was no one by to hear or chide her for using the French words, she sang the refrain of a lullaby she had learned of Grand’mère long ago.

  Do, do, l’enfant do,

  L’enfant dormira bientôt.

  Do, do, l’enfant do,

  L’enfant dormira tantôt.

  Next morning, with sunrise scarcely faded out of the sky, they were tacking between wooded islands, very green and pleasant with a farm or two set in clearings on the larger ones. The Captain was in familiar waters here, having come several seasons back for fishing, but he was too busy picking his course and giving orders for shifting sail to answer Dolly’s questions about names and inhabitants. At last they could make out Falmouth, its houses scattered along a wide harbor of smooth water where a number of fishing smacks and a half-dozen larger vessels rode at anchor.

  “Not near so many houses as I thought,” remarked Caleb, squinting his eyes to blue slits the better to see.

  “Marblehead was lots bigger,” said Susan.

  “Well, it looks good to me,” their mother told them. “I’m fair hankerin’ to go ashore.”

  “They’ve got a church steeple anyhow,” Becky pointed out.

  “Yes, and a battery,” cried Caleb. “See the cannon on top!”

  “That’s the fort I’ve heard tell of,” explained Ira as he hurried by on his way to shorten sail. “They need to keep a sharp watch out for French an’ Injuns.”

  “Hear that, Maggie!” crowed Caleb with a grimace. “Maybe they’ll fire at you.”

  “No, no,” shrilled Jacob, clinging to Marguerite’s skirts in sudden terror. “Not shoot Maggie!”

  “There, there,” put in Dolly Sargent. “Quit your crying, Jacob. They’ll not do any shooting if folks behave theirselves. ’Tis only Injuns and the wicked French in Canada they’re after.”

  Marguerite’s cheeks flushed under their sea tan. She reached down and took Jacob’s hand in hers. This was not the first time she had heard such words about her people, and it was not to be the last. They left a soreness round her heart which persisted in spite of the warmth of the child’s clinging fingers and the quick chatter of the little girls.

  “I would they were not at war,” she thought. “Why must they fight each other all these miles away in a new land?”

  But already the men were casting anchor and making the dory ready to swing over the side. Some little distance from the town they could see a slope of green meadowland going down to a salt inlet. Blue flags grew by the water’s edge, and a number of cattle were feeding, their backs tawny in the sun.

  “I’ll warrant it’s good pasturage there,” Joel Sargent said. “’Twould be better to land the stock to graze, but I doubt we could haul ’em aboard again.”

  “No, we’d a time hoisting ’em from the raft in Marb
lehead,” Ira reminded him. “Put Caleb and the young ones ashore there. He can cut enough grass to last the rest o’ the voyage while we make for the port.”

  This was agreed upon, though the twins complained bitterly that they were not to see Falmouth, and Caleb looked his disgust at being consigned to the company of Marguerite and the children. The dory was stoutly made, fashioned for rough weather. It had once been painted a deep yellow, and there was a mast and a sail which could be hoisted, besides two pairs of heavy oars between wooden pins. These Ira and his brother pulled, while Caleb sat astern and worked another as rudder. Marguerite watched the men bend to their oars from her place in the bows with the children, who cried out in high spirits at each dash of salt spray on their faces. And so the dory grated on a strip of pebble beach, and they came ashore.

  “I got plenty o’ chores to keep me busy,” Caleb said importantly as he swung the sickle he had brought to cut the grass. “So you young ones stay with Maggie and don’t come mucklin’ me.”

  Grass felt cool and soft to their feet after the hot boards of the Isabella B., and farther up from the water wild strawberries grew in abundance. Marguerite had never seen them so thick and red, and not even those that the market women at home brought to sell in their shallow baskets had ever tasted so sweet. The children filled their hands and mouths. Little Jacob’s and Patty’s lips were soon scarlet-smeared, but the twins helped Marguerite to fill a small splint basket she had fetched along. She showed them how to line it first with flat green leaves as Grand’mère had taught her. They made a great to-do about the berries they dropped in, but more went into their own mouths.

  “Ah,” sighed Marguerite, “but they are sweet. As good to smell as to eat. Already my fingertips are delicious.”

  “I guess Caleb’ll want this whole basketful hisself,” remarked Susan, looking towards the lower part of the meadow, where they could see him at work. “He’ll be that hungry after cutting the grass.”

  “Well, he’ll not get these, shall he, Maggie?” Becky broke in. “I lot on havin’ some for my supper.”

  “Then you’d best drop in more,” cautioned Marguerite. “I doubt you’ve put in twenty all told.”

  When the basket was filled they went to rest by a clump of birch and spruce. The twins had brought along Jerusha, their corncob doll, and Marguerite showed them how to fashion a fine green dress for her from two large leaves, with daisy heads stuck in for a pattern.

  “I’d admire to have one such myself,” declared Becky, “of green cloth with white posies all over.”

  “Ma says we’re lucky to get plain holland or bunting,” Susan reminded her, “but maybe when we’re old enough to marry we’ll have sprigged calico.”

  “I wore printed dresses in France,” Marguerite told them. She seldom spoke of such things with the others about, but here with the children she felt more at ease. “Yes,” she went on, her dark eyes shining with remembrance, “in summer there was one with small green vines on yellow stuff, and in winter a brown challis with little roses and marguerites. We chose it because of my name, only you call them daisies instead.”

  “Ma says she won’t call you by no such Frenchified name,” Susan pointed out.

  “Oh, duck your head, quick!” broke in Becky, as a dragon-fly went over them, its wings a shimmer of blue and silver in the sun.

  “But why?” Marguerite asked of them as the children all ducked with little excited cries. “Why do you do that?”

  “It’s the Devil’s Darning Needle,” piped up Jacob, burying his round head in her lap. “Oh—oh, mustn’t let it get you.”

  “Now it’s gone,” Marguerite reassured them. “Come, let’s gather more flowers to make ourselves wreaths.”

  But they had hardly sallied forth into the meadow again before they heard a great barking. Something quick and yellow was moving towards them through the grass. In another moment a half-grown dog with a wagging tail and eager red tongue was in their midst.

  “Chien, chien!” cried Marguerite delightedly as he jumped up to lick her hand.

  He was all friendliness and affection, running from child to child, but always returning to Marguerite as if her touch pleased him most.

  “Wonder who he belongs to?” the twins asked of each other. “Watching the cattle, most likely.”

  “I wish he was our dog,” said Patty, and Jacob nodded solemnly and held firmly to the fur about its neck as if he would never let go.

  Suddenly they were aware of someone coming toward them—a tall man in rough clothes with a musket over his shoulder. He moved swiftly, with a strange quietness. It struck Marguerite as curious that he did not hail them till he was very near.

  “Whose young ones be you?” he asked shortly, in such a stern voice that the two younger children, clung to Marguerite’s skirts, and the twins regarded him with scared blue eyes.

  “We are from the vessel—yonder,” Marguerite answered politely, pointing to the Isabella B. anchored off the point. “We have come here for grass and berries.”

  “Strangers, eh?” The man looked somewhat less forbidding as he rested his arms on his musket and regarded their little group curiously. “Where do you hail from?”

  “We came from Marblehead,” Susan told him, having gained her voice once more.

  “But we’re bound up that-a-way,” Becky added, waving her arm to the line of shore beyond the harbor and houses.

  “Oh, you be, eh?” the man still regarded them intently. “Where’s your folks?”

  “They went to the town,” the twins told him, “but our brother’s down there cuttin’ grass.”

  “Guess I’d best have a word with him,” said the man, and under his breath he added. “Might’s well know what they’re in for now, ’fore there’s any scalps lost.”

  They moved towards the shore in a little procession, the children ahead with the dog at their heels and the stranger last of all, musket on shoulder.

  “That your dog?” said Jacob at last, summoning all his courage.

  “No,” said the man shortly. “Must have followed me.”

  Caleb saw them coming a long way off and left the grass he was stacking into bundles to join them. He and the man drew apart a little, but Marguerite could hear bits of what they said. Her heart seemed to stand stock-still within her as she listened, and though the sun was in mid-heaven and beating hot on her head and shoulders, she turned cold at the words.

  “’Tain’t deemed safe for young ones to be out alone in these parts,” the stranger was saying. “I’m here now to guard the cattle. Injuns! Why, these woods are full of ’em. Ain’t hardly a week but they’re up to their devilments.”

  “You mean they make raids, and kill folks round here?” Caleb asked, and Marguerite thought his eyes grew uneasy as he put the question.

  “That they do. We’ve the stockade and fort now, so they dassent attack the town same’s they used to, but let anyone go abroad and his scalp’s not safe. Four men and a guard plowing in sight of the town were killed last month, and a man named Pomeroy settled farther up this tidewater was shot down at his own door coming in from milking and his wife and children carried into captivity.”

  Marguerite stood in the sunny grass with the children about her and listened. His words made a queer drumming in her ears, but she went on weaving daisies into the wreath she had begun for Patty.

  “Guess your folks ain’t heard tell much ’bout Injuns up in Marblehead to leave a parcel of young ones off here without a musket among you.”

  “I can fire a musket,” Caleb spoke up. “Trouble is, I haven’t got one yet, but I’d make out—some way.”

  “That’s what the folks thought down Sheepscot way last fall when they went gathering nuts. A whole party of ’em—and not five got back alive! Even the islands ain’t much safer ’n the mainland. Three cows and six sheep they killed on Great Chebeague a little while back. For spite they done it, an’ left ’em half-burned on the beach. No, boy, there’s no tellin’ who they’ll fire
on next, and it ain’t only old folks’ scalps they’ve got strung to their belts.”

  After a while their visitor turned to go back to his lookout place in the fork of a tree higher up, promising to keep his eye on them till the dory should come. The children stood about in a scared little group, and even Caleb seemed strangely subdued by what he had heard. But the yellow dog did not follow.

  “He wants to stay along of us,” said Becky, but it was Jacob who ran after the man, tugging at his free hand and pointing eagerly.

  “You can keep him for all of me,” they heard him answer the child. “He’s been hanging round the fort these many days.”

  The children were jubilant. Even Caleb and Marguerite felt less troubled by what they had heard as they watched him running to fetch back the stick Jacob threw.

  “Maybe they’ll not let us keep him,” suggested the practical Susan. “Dogs do eat a lot, Ma says.”

  “He can have some of my supper every night,” declared Jacob, with Patty eagerly adding offers of hers.

  Caleb had said nothing, but Marguerite noticed that he gave the dog’s head a pat as he went off to finish the grass bundles. This she felt to be an unspoken sign that he was on their side.

  “He’d ought to have a name,” Becky reminded them.

  This was a matter for serious consideration. They were still discussing it when the dory came in sight with Joel Sargent and Ira pulling hard at the oars. The children fairly tumbled over one another to reach it first as the men brought it up on the beach. Soon there was an incoherent babble about dogs, Injuns, and a man with a musket. Marguerite stayed a little apart, the dog at her heels as if he too knew himself to be an outsider. The touch of his muzzle pressed in her hand was good to feel. It was a comfort to hear he was to be accepted.

  “Well, bring him along then,” their father had answered the children’s pleas. “He may come in handy scarin’ off Injuns. But if he don’t behave, over he goes, mind you.”