The Way Lies North

by Jean Rae Baxter

  “What’s our last name?”

  “Smith?”

  “Too common.”

  “Cutler?”

  She tried it out. “Joe Cutler. Tom Cutler. Good names. Now, what are we doing in the backwoods?”

  “Butler’s Rangers burned us out, so we’re on our way to Schenectady to join the Rebel army.”

  “We won’t get much sympathy if we happen upon a Loyalist family.”

  “No chance of that. I know every safe house the length of the Mohawk River, and there are none around here.”

  Charlotte pulled in her belt. Although she had drunk all the water she could swallow, hoping to convince her stomach that it was full, it growled in protest through most of the night.

  At dawn Charlotte and Nick left their canoe hidden in brush near the riverbank and headed along a rough track that was more than a path, but hardly fit to be called a road. They skirted half a dozen woodcutters’ shacks before coming to a log cabin that stood beside an acre of unploughed land. Tree stumps still in the ground showed how recently the field had been cleared. A sow with half a dozen piglets rooted around the stumps, while a swaybacked white horse in a paddock fenced with split logs nodded its head over the top rail. At the edge of the woods, a single cow grazed.

  The cabin had one window set to the right of the door. The window had real glass — not oiled buckskin like most backwoods shacks. From the cabin came the mouth-watering aroma of baking bread.

  Charlotte and Nick sat hunched in bushes where they could watch the cabin without being seen. A woman in a faded blue gown carried out a basin of water, which she dumped on the ground, and then went back inside. Charlotte heard children laughing. After a time, three small girls came out. The tallest, about five years old, had a grey kitten in her arms. She set it down on the packed earth outside the door. The children dragged a tiny piece of wood the size of a mouse in front of the kitten’s nose. They laughed at the kitten’s jerky, stiff-legged pounces as it attacked the stick.

  “No sign of a man around here,” said Charlotte.

  “Probably away in the army. That explains why the field hasn’t been planted.”

  “There’s a horse,” said Charlotte, “so likely there’s a plough.”

  Nick nodded. “That woman could use a couple of farm hands.” He stood up. “I’ll do the talking. The less you say, the less chance you’ll give yourself away.”

  Walk like a boy, Charlotte reminded herself as she followed Nick to the door. Act like a boy. And don’t talk.

  At the strangers’ approach, the children dashed inside, abandoning the kitten, which mewed piteously to find itself alone. Charlotte ignored it, because that’s what a boy would do.

  The woman came to the door carrying a rifle.

  “What do you want?”

  “Work,” said Nick. “I reckon you could use some help ploughing and planting. I’m Joe Cutler and this is my brother Tom. We’re on our way to Schenectady to join General Washington’s army. Our folks had a homestead further up river until Butler’s Rangers burned us out.”

  The woman frowned. “I got no money to pay you.”

  “We’ll work for food. We’ve eaten nothing since yesterday morning.”

  “Under the cabin there’s five bushels of seed potatoes that should have been planted days ago. I was waiting for my brother to give me a hand. He’ll be here by and by, when his own planting’s done.” She lowered the rifle barrel. “My name is Molly Dow.”

  “Mrs. Dow, we’ll get your potatoes into the ground this very day,” said Nick.

  “It’s a bargain, then.” She set the rifle behind the door. “If you haven’t eaten since yesterday, you need a slice of bread and a glass of milk to start you off. After you’re done planting, I’ll feed you a proper meal and pack you something to take along.” She started to close the door, and then added, “The plough’s in the shed.”

  The shed was a lean-to against the back wall of the cabin. As Charlotte stepped around the piles of cow, pig and horse manure, she realized that it also served as a barn.

  By the time Nick and Charlotte had pulled out the plough and dragged the bushels of seed potatoes from under the cabin, Mrs. Dow had two slabs of buttered bread sprinkled with maple sugar and two glasses of milk set out on the front step.

  “One day’s work will do it,” said Nick between bites. “Then we can rest for a bit and be on our way after dark. From here on, we have to travel at night.”

  He ploughed; she planted. The seed potatoes were wrinkled and soft, with sprouts like pale, ghostly fingers. Charlotte handled them tenderly, careful not to snap the tender shoots as she set them in the ground.

  Now and then Mrs. Dow walked to the edge of the field and watched them work. The little girls brought water, the eldest carrying a jug and each of the younger ones a tin cup.

  By mid-afternoon, the job was done. As Nick and Charlotte put away the plough and tools, the smell of boiling turnips drifted through the chinks in the wall between the shed and the house. Charlotte began to worry. Out of doors, it was easy to pretend that she was a boy. Indoors, sitting at a table, would be a different matter. If they asked politely, maybe Mrs. Dow would let them eat outside. It would have to be Nick who asked.

  “Nick,” she began, “do you suppose …”

  “Food’s ready!” Mrs. Dow opened the door and called them in. It was too late to ask. Charlotte followed Nick inside.

  “Sit down.”

  Charlotte took her place at the trestle table across from Nick. The cabin was simple, with no trace of decoration on the log walls. In the stone fireplace, a slow fire kept the cook pot simmering. “Potato soup,” the woman said, “with wild leeks for a bit of flavour.” She ladled out two bowlfuls.

  “Smells good,” said Nick.

  Charlotte spooned soup into her mouth as fast as she could, partly because she was ravenous and partly because she wouldn’t be expected to talk as long as she was eating.

  Mrs. Dow refilled their soup bowls, and then set down a dish of steaming mashed turnips and a platter of sliced ham.

  Charlotte piled turnips onto her plate. Now this was real food! As she stuffed herself, she began to relax. By the time the meal was over, she felt right at home.

  Nick stood up. “Thank you,” he said as he pushed in his chair.

  Charlotte stood up too. Automatically she stacked the dirty dishes, placing Nick’s plate upon her own, and was about to set the soup bowls on top when she caught the warning look in Nick’s eye. He knit his brow; he shook his head.

  Too late. Mrs. Dow’s eyebrows shot up half an inch. Her piercing eyes studied Charlotte from head to foot, lingering on her bosom.

  “Men don’t clear the table,” she said coldly as she took the dishes from Charlotte’s hands. She carried the dishes across the room, set them in the dry sink, and picked up a package that was wrapped in paper and tied with string. Then she turned to face Nick.

  “I don’t want any trouble. The two of you better get on your way before her pa comes around searching. Clear out fast, and I’ll forget I saw either one of you. Here’s the food I promised, packed up and ready.”

  Nick took the package from Mrs. Dow. “Thank you. We’re truly grateful.”

  On their way back to the canoe, Nick was beaming.

  “What in heaven’s name was she talking about?” Charlotte asked.

  “Why, she thinks that we’re runaway lovers. And she’s afraid that your father is on his way to shoot me and drag you back.”

  “I’m sorry, Nick. I did try to act like a boy.”

  “But it couldn’t be better! She’s promised to tell no one that she saw us. The truth never entered her head.”

  At the edge of the woods Nick halted, set down the package of food, and took Charlotte in his arms.

  “Stop!” she said. “Mrs. Dow may be watching.”

  “I hope she is,” he said, and kissed Charlotte on the mouth.

  They walked back to the canoe with an arm around each other’s
waist.

  “All’s well that ends well,” said Nick.

  “Aren’t you saying that a bit too soon?”

  “All’s well that ends well.” But it had not ended yet, Charlotte reflected as she lay on the grass looking up at the tangle of leaves just above her head. In fact, the most important part of their mission lay ahead.

  Tonight they would paddle downstream with the current to help them. By dawn they would reach Fort Hunter. All day tomorrow they would hide, waiting for dark. And then they would make their way through the ravine to the path up the hillside that led to the Hoopers’ farm.

  Tomorrow night was so close! After all the months of waiting and all the days of travelling, it was almost here.

  By the day after tomorrow, they would be heading north again with the legal papers, the family Bible and the silver tea set in the bottom of the canoe. Then would be soon enough to say, “All’s well that ends well.”

  Nick lay propped upon his elbows, watching the river.

  “What are you staring at?” she asked.

  “People going by.”

  “Is there danger?”

  “Not for us.”

  She sat up and peered through the bushes. A flat-bottomed boat was moving slowly upstream, rowed by two men and two women. An old lady dressed in black — black bonnet, black shawl, black gown — sat on a kitchen chair amidst neatly stacked furniture, looking like a tragic queen upon a rickety throne. She held a small child on her lap. Half a dozen other children perched on tables or leaned over the gunwales with their fingers trailing in the water. In the bow sat a brown dog, facing straight ahead like a prow ornament.

  “Loyalists,” Charlotte whispered. “They look like two families travelling together. I wonder where they’re going.”

  “Probably Carleton Island,” said Nick, “but they’ll never make it with all that furniture. Whatever possessed them to bring it?”

  “It’s hard to leave things behind.” She thought of all the things that her family had left. Big things, like the kitchen table, and small things like the sampler she had made when she was twelve. At least she would still have the silver tea set that her grandparents had brought from England. All her life, it had stood on the sideboard at her home in Fort Hunter. Someday it would have a place in the home that she and Nick would build together, and she would treasure it as her link to the past.

  “I left everything behind,” Nick murmured.

  She squeezed his arm. “You still have me.”

  With his eyes still fixed on the boat as it laboured up the river, he laid his hand on hers. “That I do, and I’ll never let you go.”

  The hills that rimmed the Mohawk Valley loomed against the darkening sky when Nick and Charlotte set out again. They paddled past woods and fields and scattered settlements. The river gleamed with a soft, deep light.

  After an hour, they came to a place where stone chimneys silhouetted against the sky showed where houses had been.

  “Nick, where are we?”

  “Stanwix.”

  Stanwix. Yes. Mrs. Platto, Mrs. Vankleek, and Mrs. Weegar had lived there. Perhaps at this very moment the canoe was passing the ruins of their homes.

  The river bore them south, past Oriskany, where Brant’s Iroquois force and Butler’s Rangers had killed hundreds of Rebels in an ambush, and past Canajoharie, where Charlotte and her parents had hidden in the Cobmans’ root cellar. The name of every town and village rang a bell in her mind.

  By daybreak they were almost home. Charlotte watched for familiar landmarks, but saw few. The gristmill where Papa used to take his grain should have been on the right bank. It wasn’t there. Only the huge millwheel remained, turning round and round. Water dripping from its spokes sparkled in the rays of the rising sun.

  They passed Herkimer’s place — that cheapskate Herkimer, who wouldn’t buy Papa’s pigs and cattle because he was waiting to pick them up cheap as soon as they were confiscated. Herkimer had refused to take sides, but sitting on the fence had not helped him. His barn was gone and only the chimney remained of his house.

  The current bore the canoe smoothly along. Above the trees, she saw the steeple of John Stuart’s church — her own parish church where she and her brothers had been baptized and where she had expected to be married, as her parents had been.

  She felt like weeping as the canoe glided past the familiar places of her childhood. She had never expected to see them again. The end of this journey would be her final good-bye.

  Chapter twenty

  They went ashore near the mouth of the little creek that wound its way through the ravine behind the Hoopers’ farm. This was as far as they could travel by canoe. The last mile of their journey would be on foot, at night.

  After dragging the canoe into a dense thicket near the water’s edge, they covered it with leafy boughs. Now the long day stretched before them, and they had nothing to do but wait. Charlotte unwrapped the food that Mrs. Dow had packed. Biscuits and sliced ham.

  “Hungry?” she asked.

  “Like a horse.”

  She split open a couple of biscuits, one for each of them, and stuffed a piece of ham inside.

  “That’s not enough.”

  “We need to save some for the way back,” she protested, but gave him another biscuit.

  When he had finished eating, Nick folded his blanket like a pillow, laid his head upon it, and closed his eyes. Within minutes, his regular breathing told her that he was asleep. He was lucky always to fall asleep so easily.

  Swallows skimmed the water. Cicadas rasped and trilled. A breeze riffled the leaves overhead. Nick slumbered on. An ant marched across his forehead; Charlotte flicked it off with her fingernail. The skin of Nick’s nose was peeling where it had been sunburned. His eyelashes and eyebrows were almost white. Why hadn’t she rubbed walnut stain into his eyebrows? She should have thought of that. Nick’s eyelids twitched. Probably he was dreaming. She wished he would wake up. It was lonely to be awake all by herself.

  Maybe if she lay down and snuggled close and matched her breathing to his, she could relax enough to fall asleep. She might as well try. Inhale, she told herself. Exhale. Don’t think about anything. Just breathe like Nick. Steadily, softly she breathed in and breathed out. Gradually her tension melted; drowsiness overcame her, and she slept.

  When Charlotte opened her eyes, the angle of the sun told her that it was late afternoon. Nick, already awake, sat with his head cocked to one side as if he were listening to something.

  “What do you hear?” she asked.

  “Just birds.”

  She sat up, and he put his arm around her.

  “Charlotte, how will you feel when you see your old home?”

  “Probably homesick. Definitely angry. I’ve thought about it many times, and I’m still not sure. I once daydreamed that I walked up to the kitchen door, pressed the latch, and swung the door wide open.”

  “And then what did you see?”

  “A whole family of squatters eating at our kitchen table. The sight made me so furious that I grabbed a broom and swept them out of the house.” She laughed. “I wish it could be that easy.”

  Nick did not laugh.

  “Someday,” he said, “when the war is over, I want to go back for a visit. It bothers me that I never explained to my father why I changed sides. I want to tell him it wasn’t the idea of liberty that I hated. It was the killing.”

  “My father wondered if you were a Quaker.”

  “I thought about joining the Quakers, but I don’t like the way they control each other’s lives. Freedom is important to me.”

  “So you became a courier … for the British.”

  “Yes, for the British.” He paused for a moment. “Do you want to know the whole truth? I was looking for you. Every mission I went on, I asked about you. At every fort that took in Loyalist refugees, I looked for your name in the register.” His arm tightened around her shoulders. “I could think of no better way to search for you.”


  “If you told your father that, do you think he would understand?”

  “I reckon not. I’d still be a turncoat in his eyes.”

  Charlotte sighed, knowing that in the eyes of some, Nick would carry that stain for the rest of his life.

  While the evening shadows lengthened, they lay propped upon their elbows watching minnows slide in and out among the reeds. The smell of mud and decaying vegetation was in her nostrils. She felt the warmth of Nick’s shoulder pressing hers.

  “Are you nervous?” she asked.

  “No. Whenever I’m on a mission, I concentrate on what I have to do one step at a time. I don’t let myself worry about the next step until the previous one is completed. That’s my method for staying calm.” He sat up. “Step one tonight is to eat.”

  Charlotte brought out the food, but there was not enough saliva in her mouth to moisten a single crumb of biscuit.

  “You must eat,” he said.

  “Afterwards.”

  “There won’t be time afterwards.”

  She watching him munch his ham and biscuit as if this were a picnic. Then she packed away the food.

  After the sun had set, the booming and croaking of the frogs began. “They’re loud tonight,” Nick said. “The frogs will cover any noise we make.”

  “Is it time to start?”

  Nick nodded. He fetched his rifle, the spade, and the two hemp sacks from the canoe. They tied the sacks around their waists. He handed the spade to Charlotte and picked up his rifle.

  “If all goes well, we’ll be back here in less than two hours. But if something goes wrong, you come here and hide.”

  “By myself?”

  “Yes.”

  “What will you do?”

  “If people come after us, I’ll make a big noise so they’ll follow me. I know how to lead them on a false chase. When it’s safe, I’ll join you at the canoe.”

  “I don’t want us to be separated.”

  “We won’t be. Nothing’s going to go wrong.”

  “Nick, I’m so afraid of losing you.”

  “Haven’t I told you that I’ll never let you go?”