Bride of the Wilderness

by Charles McCarry

  Philippe could not see the wolf dogs. Indians and captives fled through the trees below. He whistled. The surviving mongrel dashed to the edge of the river, barking, head cocked. Philippe pulled his knife from its sheath, chopped off a chunk of beef, and threw it at the mongrel, who caught it in midair and bolted it down, then barked for more.

  Philippe whistled again, louder. The wolf dogs appeared. He cut off more beef, throwing it to them and talking to them, drawing them nearer. All at once they spotted the big slabs of meat on the ice and fell on them, woofing happily as they had done when they leaped on the Abenakis’ moose.

  Philippe unslung his rifle and checked the priming. The dogs were beneath him, close to the trunk of the maple. He could not get one of them in his sights, so he ran farther out onto the thick limb. He stood up, bracing his back against a higher limb so that the recoil of the jaeger would not knock him out of the tree, and put the blade of the sight between the heaving shoulders of the middle dog.

  He pulled back the hammer, inhaled, and began to squeeze the trigger. The rattle of a woodpecker sounded in the darkness. The dogs lifted their heads. Philippe had heard this signal before, by the lake where the Abenakis had killed the moose.

  Out of the corner of his eye he saw the ragged red muzzle blast of a musket being fired. The hammer fell on the flint of Philippe’s jaeger rifle and the priming began to burn. A shower of buckshot struck the branches of the maple. The dogs pushed themselves off the meat with their front legs and sped into the woods. An instant later, Philippe’s bullet, perfectly aimed, slapped harmlessly into the beef where one of the wolf dogs had been feeding a moment before.

  Talks in His Dreams, hidden in another tree, did not see Hawkes until his musket went off. Then, looking down, he saw the huge Englishman with his musket still to his shoulder. Talks in His Dreams launched an arrow. It struck Hawkes in the right shoulder, at the base of the neck. He staggered forward a step, reached back to feel the arrow sticking out of his flesh, and turned around.

  His eyes searched the trees for the man who had shot him. Talks in His Dreams had already fitted another arrow to his bow. He launched it, striking Hawkes on the left side of his chest, just above the nipple.

  Talks in His Dreams waited for the Englishman to fall dead in his tracks from this heart wound. But the man did not even stagger. With one arrow sticking out of his neck and another protruding from his chest, he began deliberately to reload his musket.

  The ghost dogs came back almost in the same instant. They leaped on the big man and licked his face. He spoke to them and they followed him, frisking and whining, as he ran off through the trees with a long, powerful stride, with the two flint-headed arrows still buried in his body.

  Talks in His Dreams, moving with great caution, followed the ghost tracks for a little while. They looked like ordinary dog tracks and snowshoe tracks, except that they were larger. There was no blood on the snow from the arrow wounds.

  14

  At first light, Father Nicolas came down from the waterfall to bury the dead, and then he went across the ice to baptize Betsy’s child. Betsy refused the sacrament, shaking her head violently, and when the Jesuit fell to his knees and began to pray in Latin, she covered the baby’s ears with her hands. Father Nicolas, thinking that she was suffering from an ignorant Protestant fear of the church’s universal tongue, pulled her hands away and spoke to her in his foggily accented English.

  “A little water, a little oil, a prayer, and your child’s soul will be safe,” he said. “If she dies she will not wander for all eternity in limbo, never knowing God. Don’t you want your child to love Christ?”

  “No,” Betsy said.

  Again Father Nicolas thought that she misunderstood his words or his intentions, or both. How, otherwise, could she make such an answer to such a question? “It is not a Catholic trick I’m playing,” he said patiently. “Think of the child. There is very little time, and so much danger.”

  “No.”

  Betsy’s impiety frightened him. Even as she denied Our Lord she was suckling her newborn daughter, tenderly touching the child’s plump cheek with the tip of her finger. Giving birth had made her plain face beautiful. It shone with love for her baby.

  Father Nicolas turned to Fanny. “There are great dangers ahead,” he said. “Who will protect her now that Dancing Beaver has been killed? If the child dies unbaptized, it cannot know God.”

  “She understands,” Fanny said.

  “Does she? The others say that she’s mad.”

  “Father, believe me, she’s not mad.”

  While the Europeans talked, Used to be Bear had been sitting in the snow, removing the bark from a pile of willow switches. Now he bent the bright yellow wood into a papoose frame, tying it with rawhide thongs and attaching straps so that Betsy could carry it on her back.

  When he was finished, he plucked the fur hat off Rose’s head, ripped out the stitching, and tied it onto the frame as a coverlet. Rose gasped, feeling her hair with both hands for the missing hat while she watched with unbelieving eyes as the Indian reduced this fashionable object that she had loved so much to a rough pelt. Used to be Bear hung the finished papoose frame on the ridgepole of the lean-to, then crawled inside and gazed into the baby’s face. When he came back outside, he spoke in Abenaki for several minutes.

  “Used to be Bear has decided to be this child’s father,” Father Nicolas explained in French. “He doesn’t know yet what her name is.”

  Betsy had long ago decided to name her daughter Solitude, and after the others went away she baptized her in snow, repeating the words connected to the ritual of the Church of England as best she remembered them and speaking the names of the baby’s dead brothers and sisters—Enos, Seth, Adam, Raymond, Elizabeth, Martha—as the snow melted on Solitude’s forehead.

  The sun had only just risen. It burned weakly beyond the bowl of the clouds, giving little light. The morning had a cottony quality, soft and dim, and the air was heavy and much warmer than before. Philippe, who had been standing among the trees on the bank, moved; Fanny saw him for the first time. He dressed like an Indian, he was as still as an Indian.

  “Mother and child are well?” he said.

  “I am looking for some food for them,” she said.

  Philippe leaped down, kicking snow onto the ice, and handed Fanny his musket. It was heavier than she expected it to be.

  “Rest the butt on the ice,” Philippe said. Crouching, he probed the ashes with a bayonet. After a moment he stood up and offered Fanny a chunk of charred meat on the point of the blade.

  There was humor in his face, interest in his eyes. He had a fresh wound on his face—a small reddened puncture on the left cheekbone with a black streak under the skin. Fanny had seen wounds like this one before.

  “That’s buckshot in your face,” she said. “It should be removed. It’s quite close to the eye.”

  “Is it?” Philippe said. “Then I am lucky to be able to see you. Here is your roast beef.”

  Fanny took the chunk of meat, which was warm to the touch and covered with ashes.

  Two young Abenakis, scouts from the rear guard, came into sight, running. They were dragging a third Indian behind them on a shield, leaving a broad smear of blood in the ice.

  Philippe did not move—Abenakis were pouring out of the woods to meet the scouts—but waited, erect and expressionless once again, for them to come to him.

  The scouts came straight to him and told him what had happened. They had been attacked during the night by an English column that marched onto the rear guard as they slept on the ice four or five miles downriver.

  Half a dozen Abenakis had been beaten to death with musket butts or stomped to death by a mob of bellowing farmers. The rest had escaped by fleeing across the snow; these three were merely the first to arrive.

  Philippe asked the same two questions as before: did the English have snowshoes? were they sending out scouts? The Abenakis replied that most of the enemy still had no sn
owshoes of their own, but they had the snowshoes of the dead Abenakis. But this new enemy force was much larger than the rescue column Philippe had ambushed the day before.

  Reinforced with men from Alamoth and other settlements along the Connecticut, it numbered at least two hundred men. The English were less than an hour away, and they were singing as they advanced up the river, something the Abenakis had never known them to do before.

  “Singing?” Philippe said. This information seemed to disturb him more than anything else he had heard.

  The Abenakis left. He turned around. Fanny was standing behind him with the chunk of beef in her hands. He frowned and bit his lip.

  “Can she walk?” he asked, lifting his chin to indicate Betsy’s lean-to on the other bank of the river.

  “She’s very weak. Why not leave her, if the English are coming?”

  “The Abenakis wouldn’t permit that.”

  “But you can order it.”

  “No. She belongs to them.”

  “Belongs to them?”

  Philippe did not argue. “Used to be Bear has decided to be the child’s father,” he said. “You had better do what you can to prepare your friend for her journey.”

  Abenakis were hurrying among the trees, dragging captives toward the ice and forming up into parties of half a dozen, usually with two Indians for every captive. The sleds, the beef, anything that could not be carried by a person running, were abandoned.

  Philippe was upending the two small cannon into the hole in the ice, leaping back after he let them go to avoid the splash. Indians streamed past him as he worked.

  By sundown, unless the English were marching faster than the scouts thought, these scores of people would have disappeared into the wilderness, scattered among the dozens of small tributaries of the Connecticut and the Pocumtuck.

  Rose came out of the woods with Used to be Bear. He had tied a cord around her waist and was pulling her along behind him as they came straight across the river toward the lean-to. Father Nicolas trotted along behind them, accompanied by Talks in His Dreams, two other Abenakis, the Clum girls, and another woman who carried a child in her arms.

  The Jesuit led them to the lean-to. He fell to his knees at the entrance.

  “I beg you to reconsider,” he said to Betsy. “Many will leave their bones in this forest.”

  Betsy covered Solitude’s head and shielded her from the priest with her body.

  Father Nicolas rose to his feet and blessed Fanny.

  “I will try to find you,” he said, “but the forest is vast. If it seems that the worst is happening, you must baptize the child. Touch its head with water, make the sign of the cross, and say, ‘I baptize thee in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’ A soul is in your hands, my child.”

  Fanny said nothing. Talks in His Dreams was already dogtrotting toward the mouth of the Pocumtuck with his captives strung out before him. Father Nicolas ran after them.

  Used to be Bear pulled the lean-to apart over Betsy’s head. He made the sign for run. Fanny helped Betsy to her feet. She was warmly dressed now in the extra clothes Talks in His Dreams had brought to Fanny.

  Solitude slept in her papoose frame. Fanny slung the frame onto her own back. Betsy uttered a cry and lunged for the child.

  “It’s all right,” Fanny said. “I’ll walk just ahead of you so you can see her.”

  Betsy nodded, her eyes fixed on Solitude. She seemed to be far more tired now than she had been earlier. Fanny gave her some of the charred beef, tearing off the dry stringy meat with her fingers and putting it into the other woman’s mouth. Betsy was too exhausted even to chew.

  “Betsy,” Fanny said. “Try. It will give you strength.”

  Betsy looked at her dully. Fanny gave her water. It dribbled down her chin. Fanny took her face between her hands.

  “Think of the child,” she said.

  There was no more expression in Betsy’s eyes than before. Fanny picked up the half-chewed meat that Betsy had coughed onto the snow, and put it back into her mouth. Betsy chewed, gesturing to Fanny to turn around so that she could see the baby.

  Betsy staggered forward a few steps, then lost her balance. Fanny caught her, nearly falling herself and shaking the baby in its frame. The child whimpered.

  Philippe came across the ice, carrying his jaeger rifle and a sack filled with beef.

  Fanny said, “Look. How can she travel?”

  Philippe did not reply. Fanny turned to Used to be Bear and started to make signs.

  “No, don’t do that,” Philippe said sharply.

  Fanny stopped with her hands uplifted.

  “If you tell him what you just told me, he’ll kill her,” Philippe said. “Also the child.”

  “You would do nothing to prevent that?”

  “I’d have to kill him. He does not understand mercy.”

  Fanny took Betsy by the arm and tugged gently. Betsy took a step and fell. Fanny crouched, keeping her back straight so that the baby would not slip, and helped her up. She took two more steps and fell again.

  Used to be Bear watched. Fanny tried to get Betsy up again, but she was a limp weight, too heavy to lift.

  Used to be Bear strode over the snow—Fanny felt rather than saw him coming up behind her, a big body displacing snow and air and light. Putting all her strength into the effort, she got Betsy onto her hands and knees. Philippe seized her beneath the arms and set her on her feet.

  Used to be Bear was holding the ridgepole of the lean-to in his hands. He gave one end to Fanny and the other end to Rose. Then he wrapped Betsy’s fingers around the middle of the pole, made some signs, and walked away.

  The women followed. Betsy grew steadier with each step. When they entered the mouth of the Pocumtuck, threading their way among the rocks that rose above the ice, Used to be Bear broke into a dogtrot. Fanny, who held the leading end of the pole, began to run too. Rose picked up the pace, and soon Betsy was running, her shocked eyed fixed on Solitude’s face as it bobbed along in front of her.

  The Pocumtuck, a fast-running river that cuts through steep, heavily forested country, makes a deep loop to the south before it turns to the west and north again. After the first mile, Philippe caught up with Used to be Bear and talked to him. Used to be Bear swerved into a small stream that joined the river from the north. Following the course of this brook involved a hard uphill run, and after another mile it ended in a spring.

  Used to be Bear paused long enough to put on his snowshoes, then plunged into the woods. The women, with Philippe bringing up the rear in silence, followed along. It was far more difficult to move through the trees on snowshoes using the pole than to run on the open, smooth surface of the ice, and Betsy fell.

  Philippe lifted her to her feet, then drew a map in the snow, showing the half-circle of the river and their route across the diameter.

  “Much shorter,” he said, whispering. “And there’s a hill just here from which we can look back.”

  The silence was very deep. Fanny wondered how it was possible that there were two hundred English soldiers and nearly that many Indians and captives all around them in this soundless waste.

  Rose said, “Ssshhh, I can hear them singing.”

  Nobody else could hear the music. But minutes later, when Betsy fell again and there was a quiet moment undisturbed by panting and the swish of the snowshoes, Fanny heard the English too, a bass chorus marching up the valley, and even recognized the tune, John Blow’s “Arms, arms, arms,” with its thudding succession of low E’s.

  But it was Rose whose ears and eyes and nose were made for the place in which she found herself. She saw, heard, and smelled things that no Indian could have detected. She pointed out an owl in a pine to Used to be Bear, and because this astonished him, showed him other things as well—a rabbit by a thicket, a gray lynx with brown spots on its back lying on the gray limb of a beech among dead brown leaves. He grunted each time.

  Betsy moved forward like a sleepwalker, holding
on to the pole. She nursed the baby twice and drank the water that Fanny gave her.

  Near the end of the day, she took a bad fall, tumbling down the side of a steep ravine, and could not get up again. She was not injured, just exhausted. The baby began to cry. Used to be Bear plunged through the snow and lifted the baby out of its frame. With his hand clapped over Solitude’s mouth, he scrambled down into the ravine and handed her to Betsy. She put the baby to her breast and fell asleep while it nursed.

  The ravine, a long open place, was shielded to the north by a high ledge of gray rock that rose ten feet or so above the snow. A few snowflakes were beginning to fall, the same big flakes that had buried the whole countryside a few days before.

  Fanny pointed at Betsy, asleep in the snow. “She can’t go any further,” she said.

  Philippe got out his knife. “Then we must cut balsam boughs,” he said.

  While they worked, Used to be Bear dug out the snow along the ledge to create two shelters roofed with boughs. Fanny and Philippe, working together, lined the floors and walls with more balsam boughs.

  Meanwhile, Rose wandered through the clearing, turning her head from side to side like a doe. Used to be Bear did not try to make her work, but from time to time he stopped what he was doing and watched her, as if she possessed some mysterious spirit that he was trying to understand.

  By now Betsy and the baby were nearly buried in fresh snow. Fanny helped them into the shelter. After wiping away the snow, she looked for signs of hemorrhage in Betsy; there were none. Fanny offered Betsy some beef, but she did not have the strength to chew.

  “All right,” Fanny said.

  She chewed up a mouthful of beef, spat it into her palm, and fed it to Betsy on her fingertip, just as Two Suns had given Squirrel her ration of grease.

  It was warm in the shelter, dug deep in the hardened snow. Betsy and the baby fell asleep again.

  15

  Outside, it was snowing even harder than before. The balsam roof of the shelter was already covered and all but invisible. Neither of the men was anywhere in sight, but Fanny saw Rose standing a few paces away in the falling snow. She wore her fur-lined cloak with the hood pulled up over her head. She had scrubbed the paint off her skin. Her face glowed inside its frame of fur.