Calico Bush

by Rachel Field

  That night, although they ate heartily of fresh food from Falmouth and the wild strawberries were sweet to taste, there was little talk and cheer aboard the Isabella B. Dolly Sargent had greeted her children with a rare show of affection, and Marguerite guessed that what they had heard from the man with the musket was already known to her.

  After the younger ones were asleep talk and questioning began. No doubt as to what was uppermost in all their minds now. Marguerite listened with the dog’s head resting on her knee, and a chill came on her as she heard.

  “Comin’ home from church they were”—Ira was repeating some tale—“when the Injuns begun firin’ at ’em from behind trees. Only one got back to give the alarm, an’ he crawled to the garrison half shot to pieces.”

  “Pesky lot, Injuns are,” Captain Hunt went on. “Ain’t had much trouble for ’most ten years; lived real peaceable but for small pilferin’s. An’ now they’ve broke out again. It’s these here Tarratines that’s makin’ the mischief. They’re worse ’n Penobscots or Passamaquoddies long’s the French pay ’em a bounty on every English scalp they can show.”

  “An’ that’s where we’re a-headin’, Joe!” Dolly’s voice broke in sharp and anxious. “Right into their own country. You heard what they told us.”

  “Now don’t you go belie’vin’ all you hear,” her husband tried to soothe her.

  “But I saw those thirty Injun scalps with my own eyes,” she reminded him. “You saw ’em, too, hangin’ on poles by the fort. Ten more they needed, they said, to even up with the white ones taken this last twelvemonth. An’ that ain’t takin’ account of the women an’ children carried off to Canada. That’s what I’m the most feared of, Joe. I’ll not dast to let the children out of my sight.”

  “Other folks have raised young ones in such places afore this,” he answered. “I put all I’ve got into takin’ over that claim an’ I mean to hold it, so keep your courage up an’ we’ll make out.”

  “I’ll be needing a musket of my own, Pa,” Caleb spoke up.

  With morning the dread lifted somewhat. It was impossible to be so fearful with the water smooth as a polished blue floor and every new headland they skirted a fine green adventure. Always the trees were more straight and pointed, pressing closer to the rocky headlands and deeply indented coves and tidewater inlets. Island followed upon island, bristling with untouched spruce for the most part, though occasionally boasting a farm and a cleared field or two.

  “Got more islands ’n folks hereabouts,” observed Becky.

  “Yes,” her mother agreed, “seems if we’d passed a hundred since mornin’.”

  Some the Captain knew by name from his charts and previous voyages. There was Monhegan, which he showed them that afternoon—a dark, humped shape rising several miles out to sea. There, he said, was the finest fishing anywhere save off the Banks. It was even said that the Norsemen had known it years before other white men sailed along the coast. A small group of fishermen and their families lived there in the shelter of a nearly landlocked harbor. In summer they did quite a trade in dried fish with coasting vessels.

  Towards sunset they sighted another large island some miles out. Isle au Haut, the Captain called it, explaining that it had been so named by the French. Once again Marguerite quickened to the sound, though Caleb grew scornful.

  “Ain’t there enough English ones,” he complained, “without their puttin’ on Frenchified airs?”

  Marguerite sighed. But for once the Captain was on her side.

  “I always hold it’s bad luck to change a name,” he said, “whether ’tis an island’s or a vessel’s. There was good Frenchmen in these parts, same’s bad. Yonder a ways is Castine, named for some Baron or other that settled it years ago. He built him a fort there an’ a town they said it was a wonder to see in the wilderness. Took him an Injun wife he did, too, an’ carried her back home to France with him when the English drove him out under the Treaty.”

  “An’ a mercy it was they did,” remarked Dolly. “Such goin’s on! I’d think shame to tell of them if I was you.” And she gave Captain Hunt a severe headshake.

  “Well, he kept peace with the Injuns at any rate. Warn’t no such raids an’ scalpin’s while he was round.”

  Marguerite dared not show her pleasure in what she had heard, but long after the talk had changed to other matters she treasured the Captain’s words. These savages could not all be so terrible if a Baron of France had taken one for his wife. Of that she felt certain.

  That night they anchored in the lee of several small islands. Less than another day, if the wind held, and they would reach their own point; but it was a difficult course to pick, the Captain said.

  “My, but it’ll seem good to sleep under a roof again,” said Dolly. “I only hope that house you took over with the claim is built foursquare an’ solid.”

  “He allowed ’twas of the best pine boards anywheres about, Flint did,” her husband assured her, “an’ tree-nailed. I made sure of that ’fore I bought him out.”

  But they slept aboard the Isabella B. the next night as well, for fog came down from the east, in a thick gray wall.

  “Nothin’ for it but to set,” Captain Hunt had announced when they woke to find themselves shut in fast. “Even if there was wind enough for me to edge along I wouldn’t risk gettin’ up on one of these ledges. No, Penobscot Bay’s no place for that without you know every island and point in it.”

  It was tiresome waiting there in the chill grayish light. When they went below, the little cabin was filled to overflowing, and if they stayed above the damp gathered in drops on their hair and faces. Clothes clung clammily, and the Isabella B. dripped from stem to stern. Marguerite sat huddled in the opening of the hatch, her feet tucked under her for warmth and her fingers busy with knitting. She and Dolly Sargent were already turning the wool into stockings and mittens against cold weather. Marguerite was able with her needles. The four bone sticks moved swiftly though the fingers that held them felt stiff with the chill. Jacob and Patty sat below her on the next step, little drops forming on their short fair hair. Caleb was learning to box the compass under Captain Hunt’s direction. They could hear him repeating the points over and over in a singsong that seemed almost a part of the water slapping at the vessel’s sides and the creaking of boards and anchor ropes. “No’ No’ East,” he was droning. “East No’ East; East So’ East; So’ So’ East.”

  A gull flew overhead with a shrill cry, so low they could see its orange feet flattened against a white body, and the bright, restlessly moving eyes.

  “Sea gulls lookin’ out for fish,” remarked Ira as he came by. “Likely we’d best do the same.”

  “They are wise birds,” Marguerite answered, more at her ease as she always was with him. “They need not say ‘No’ No’ East’ to know where they are going.”

  Ira laughed so that his teeth showed strong and white in his sunburned face.

  “Yes,” he said, “there’s times a bird has it easier ’n folks, for all their learnin’.”

  The men made another catch of cod and haddock, Dolly Sargent cooking them over a fire in the iron kettle round which the children gathered for comfort. Pumpkin, as the dog had been christened because of his color, hung about, catching such scraps as were tossed him. In those two days he had become one of them. His every move and look belonged to the pattern of this adventure in which each of them there had a part.

  “He’s got the softest tongue,” Becky said as the dog licked her hand.

  “Yes,” added Susan. “An’ that’s a queer thing. Uncle Ira, what for have dogs got smooth tongues and cats rough ones?”

  “If I knew the answer to that I’d be wiser ’n the Man in the Wilderness,” he told her. “Do you recollect that old rhyme they used to say to us back home, Joe?

  The Man in the Wilderness says to me,

  “How many strawberries grow in the sea?”

  I answered him as I thought good—

  “As many red herrings
as grow in the wood!”

  “Trust you to remember the foolish sayin’s an’ forget the rest,” returned Joel Sargent with a shrug.

  But the children repeated the rhyme after Ira till they knew it by heart, and Marguerite stored it away as a treasure in her mind.

  By midmorning of the next day the sun burned off the fog and they could continue on, though with the wind still easterly they made slower progress and must keep closer to shore. Still the children were in good spirits again, watching each new island and rocky promontory, and Joel Sargent seemed possessed of a new vigor as they approached their goal.

  There was still a hint of fog in the air and a far white bank on the horizon, and then suddenly, as Marguerite stood at the wooden rail, her eyes shaded against the brightness, a miracle of mountains came out of the sea. Like dim, blue monsters swimming away from land they loomed to the northeast directly over the Isabella B.’s blunt bow. The rich green and tawny browns of the nearby shores only served to make the apparition more strange and unearthly. Marguerite caught her breath, and her heartbeats quickened to the sight.

  “Mount Desert,” she heard Captain Hunt explaining. “See, there ’tis on the chart.”

  “I-s-l-e d-e-s M-o-n-t-s” Caleb was spelling out, “D-é-s-e-r-t-s. Queer kind of a name for such a great island.”

  “A Frenchman, Champlain, that first sailed up this way charted it so on his maps,” the Captain explained, “account of the hills bein’ so high from the water and bare on top. Look ’most as blue as indigo they do, today, but if you was to sail up close you’d see they warn’t. I’ve cruised along there. It’s a sightly place.”

  “We’ll see ’em from our point,” Joel told Dolly with pride. “I recollect he told me that, Flint did. He said we’d find no finer prospect all up an’ down the coast.”

  Marguerite was glad that Caleb was not by to see the tears that stood in her eyes. The mountains had been blue and beautiful enough before, but now that she knew them by name they would be different to her. She felt sure that Grand’mère and Oncle Pierre would feel easier about her if they could know this, that there still remained a French name to bear her company in this strange, thickly wooded country of islands and rocky shores.

  But points nearer at hand soon engaged the Sargent family’s attention. Ira and Caleb did the Captain’s bidding in the matter of shifting sail and shortening or letting out the ropes, while Joel eagerly compared each headland and island they passed with the rough chart where his own claim had been marked. A queer tenseness was on them all. Even the animals seemed to sense this, turning their heads shoreward and sniffing alertly.

  “Only a couple more headlands to pass an’ we’ll see it,” Joel said to the little group about him. “It’s all same as it’s written here. There’s Old Horse Ledges to the east of us, an’ that little pair they call The Sisters, an’ the bigger one beyond is Sunday Island. Folks by the name of Jordan have settled there. I can just make out the clearin’ an’ house. They’ll be our nearest neighbors, I guess.”

  “Smoke’s comin’ out of their chimney,” Susan pointed out presently.

  “Praise be for that,” said Dolly Sargent, hugging the baby closer.

  Marguerite saw that her cheeks were flushed with excitement and that she had pushed her bonnet back from her forehead the better to see. Jacob and Patty pressed close, their hands reaching for hers.

  “Look over that-a-way, Maggie,” Patty said, “an’ watch for our house.”

  “Our house that-a-way,” Jacob repeated after her, pointing to the thickly wooded point ahead.

  “There’ll be a cove an’ a good landin’ beach,” Joel was saying, “with one side spruce woods an’ the clearin’ on the other. Yes, the house looks to be on the far side, set maybe a hundred an’ fifty yards up from the water line. You’ll see.”

  No one aboard spoke as the Isabella B. nosed her way round that last point. Surf made a soft thundering below dark cliffs, and a sea gull started up crying from a weedy ledge. That was all.

  Marguerite’s heart was beating hard under the waist of her holland dress. Her fingers tightened about the children’s hands as they all three pressed close to the rail. Then, suddenly, she felt a queer numbness. There were the cove and the strip of pebble beach even as he had said, with the woods on one side and the cleared piece on the other; there was even a worn line of path going up from the water to the place where the house should have stood. But the house itself was missing. Empty and solitary, the patch of open green spread before them in the late afternoon light.

  No one spoke for a full minute. Joel Sargent stared dully before him, the chart limp between his fingers. Caleb and Ira stood rooted in their places, and Dolly’s eyes were almost as wide as the children’s.

  Jacob was the first to break the silence. “Where is it?” he cried out shrilly. “Where’s our house?”

  “The Lord knows,” his mother answered him, and her voice shook.

  Marguerite was never to forget the next few hours or the despair that settled on them all, more chill and heavy than the fog which had closed round their boat the day before. Dolly’s broad face was drawn into new lines of trouble; Joel Sargent’s looked grim as granite under his sunburn, and even Ira had no word of cheer for the scared children and Marguerite as he landed them in the second boatload. The sun was slipping behind the ranks of crowding spruces, but still they lingered in a woebegone little group about the blackened ruins of a cellar at the head of the path.

  “Here’s where ’twas,” Joel kept repeating, as if that somehow made a difference. “There’s part of the chimney, made from stones lugged up from the beach, same’s Flint said.”

  “Don’t talk to me of him,” Dolly broke out bitterly. “He tricked you into takin’ this claim. I mistrusted there was no good in it, else why would he be leaving? But you wouldn’t listen to reason, an’ now look where you’ve brought us—not even a roof over our heads!”

  “I’ll raise another one for you, Dolly,” Joel answered her. “You an’ the young ones shan’t want for one long’s there’s trees an’ axes to fell ’em with.”

  Before she could answer him there came a hail from the water. Two men in a dory were rowing into the cove. Pumpkin ran barking toward them, and the others hurried after. Marguerite came last with Debby in her arms and the younger children at her skirts. One of the strangers was gray-haired and stooping, the other about Ira’s age with a powerful body and a square, dark face. They were speaking to the rest. Marguerite could tell it was something grave and important even before she drew near enough to hear. While she was still some yards away she distinctly caught the word “Injun.”

  These two were Seth Jordan and his son Ethan from Sunday Island, and the news they brought was in no way cheering. Raids by the Tarratines to the eastward and Canada had been more frequent and disastrous of late. It was for this that Flint and several other families had quit their claims for less dangerous parts. No, they explained, the house had been standing when Flint went, but the Indians had soon burned it to the ground. They had kept up a queer sort of powwow there for days that spring, killing two settlers and frightening all the others into taking refuge with the Jordans on Sunday Island. Flint had not been entirely open and aboveboard with Joel Sargent, they admitted. It was a risky business settling anywhere along the coast, but that point of land was notorious. There was something queer and sinister about it. The Indians held it in very peculiar regard. It must in some way be connected with their religion, for every year in the late spring they had appeared in hordes, ugly and resentful of the white men’s intrusion.

  “There was a man hereabouts who’d been captive in Canada and knew some of their language told us about it,” Ethan explained. “He said ’twas called ‘Passageewakeag’ or some-such soundin’ name that meant ‘the place of ghosts or spirits.’ That’s why it maddens ’em to have settlers on it.”

  “Yes, it’s got a bad name, that land has,” the older Jordan put in. “I’d be the last to grudge he
lpin’ newcomers out, but it’s courtin’ trouble to settle here. Take the islands now—there’s still a plenty round about to be had for the squattin’.”

  “I want no island.” Joel Sargent’s mouth was set. “This here’s my claim, an’ here I mean to stay, Injuns or no Injuns.”

  “’Tain’t just you that’ll be in danger,” Jordan reminded him. “Remember the rest of us don’t hanker to lose our scalps.”

  They talked of other matters after that, but a queer stiffness was on them all, as if even then Indians lurked behind the nearer trees of the clearing. When they turned to go back to their dory Seth Jordan spoke pleasantly to Dolly.

  “My Aunt Hepsa lives along of us over to the Island,” he told her. “She’s past seventy, but smart’s a whip. She’ll be proud to have you pay her a visit.”

  So once again the Sargent family piled aboard the Isabella B. for the night. There was talk and discussion between the men and Dolly for many more hours. But Marguerite was too spent with the events of the day to pay much heed. She watched the light deepen into darkness over the water, straining her eyes to see that line of far hills as long as possible. Strange how they had laid hold of her, those hills with their French name and rugged shapes. It was heartening to see them next morning when she climbed up from the cabin, and though she smiled at her own folly, she hailed them in inward “Bonjour.”

  Already the men were at work in the woods higher up from shore. Here the trees were taller and of a proper size for building. Joel Sargent and Ira were busy with their axes and cross-saws, and even Captain Hunt and Caleb had been pressed into service. Their voices and the sound of ax blows came clearly over the water. After a while they returned to the vessel to rest and eat a meal of hasty pudding. They were too tired to talk much, and Joel Sargent still wore the grim expression of the day before so that none of the children dared approach him. After they had eaten, plans were discussed for getting the animals ashore. The simplest way, they all agreed, was to dump them over the side and let them swim in.