Arundel (15 page)

Manatqua looked uncomfortable. “He knew. He knew, even, of the letter that the officer carried. All things, he said, were known to him and to the white chief in Quebec.”

My father smiled pityingly at Manatqua; then sadly turned his eyes to the red men who sat before him. “Brothers,” he said, “listen to me. The words of the French captain were foolish words. He is a foolish man, without sense. He spoke foolishly to you, and he behaved foolishly to me. Judge, yourselves, of his foolishness. Not long since he came unheralded to my inn; and such was his folly that he held us in contempt, as being ignorant folk. His tongue wagged like that of Kwe-moo the loon, until all of us were in a rage at the foolishness of his speech.

“Among us was a rash man, such as you have among you. When the Frenchman taunted him, the rash one rose up and threw him in the mud of the creek.”

The Abenakis laughed and slapped themselves; for it pleases them to see others thrown in the mud.

“Brothers, continue to listen,” said my father. “Having eight braves with him, the Frenchman attacked an unarmed man and stole his daughter, my son’s friend. We pursued him, my son and I, to bring back the daughter. We fought him, and came within a whisker of wiping him out. Now he complains to you that the attack was unjust.

“Is it unfair for my son and me to attack nine warriors? If this is unfair, then I am a giant, as great as the great lord Glooskap!

“The Frenchman lied to you about this, Brothers! He lied to you about what the white chief in Quebec would do for you. To-day, in Quebec, there is a French chief, Vaudreuil. He, too, is a foolish man, for he is dishonest, and steals the food from the mouths of his children. His white children do not grow in numbers, as do those of the white father in England. We do not need to look on the shoulder blade of a wildcat to know what must happen in Quebec. In a few moons, though I do not know how many, the children of the white father in England will push the French chief into the sea, and there will be no French chief in Quebec. Because I am your friend I advise you that nothing be done to arouse the anger of the children of the white father in England. In numbers they will be like the salmon that come up out of the sea in Amusswikizoos, the moon of fish-catching.

“And now listen to one more word, my brothers. I go north; for it is something that must be done. Soon I shall return. If your beaver skins are saved for me, and otter skins, especially sea otter, I will buy them from you, taking Manatqua to Arundel to receive money and goods in exchange. I will pay you double the price paid by the traders of the Massachusetts Company.

“For beaver I will pay you eight shillings a pound, or two knives; or one tomahawk for two pounds, a shirt for four pounds, a pair of pantaloons for five pounds, a blanket for ten pounds, a musket for twenty pounds, and other things in proportion. These are good prices. They are the prices I pay my Abenaki brothers from Ossipee; and since the winter is before you, there is time for you to take many skins in addition to those you sell to me. These others you can sell to the company or to Clark and Lake, and so will not arouse their anger. Brothers, I have finished.”

My father sat down, and there was silence in the council house while the braves counted on their fingers. After Manatqua had felt his scalp-lock, he rose pompously and burst into an oration, in which he made the usual hullabaloo about land that had been stolen from the Abenakis, and about the bravery of their brothers the French, and about the bravery of the Abenakis, along with several pointed references to his own bravery and his skill as a hunter, after which he spoke bitterly about white men who lie to their Abenaki brothers and thus forfeit fraternal rights.

He closed by declaring the words of the white brother from the south to be honorable and wise. He had no doubt his braves would consent to send their beaver skins to Arundel. He himself, even, would return with the white brother and bring back paint and muskets and shirts to comfort his people during the coming snows.

These words were received with such yells of pleasure that my eardrums rang; and immediately there was preparation for a feast and a dance.

The mist that rises from the Kennebec in the autumn is one that bites into the bones; therefore the squaws built fires on the unpaved street between the houses, so that we could sit along them on either side. Mats of rushes were brought from the cabins to give us seats. Over the fires were hung pots, hominy in one and trouts in another and venison in a third. On iron plates they made pone, which the squaws make thin and crisp out of corn, first crushing the corn on a large rock with a small rock.

After the feast had been cleared away, the braves danced the Beaver Dance, which is danced only in the autumn before they go to hunt the beaver.

Hanging from their belts, when they danced, the braves wore beaver skins; and bound around their heads were dried flags, while in their hands they carried sticks of white birch, which they clattered in unison. The squaws, seated in a long row between the fires and the dancers, beat on drums with gourds filled with dried peas, thus making the noise of water trickling over the beaver dam; and to imitate the sound of the beaver slapping the water with his tail, they slapped themselves violently on the thighs.

Around the dancers circled two
m’téoulins,
wearing wolverine skins hanging from their heads. These, said Hobomok, represented Lox, the Indian devil, a mischievous animal. They played tricks on the dancers and the squaws, clown-like, so that I laughed until my head hurt. Hobomok said they were not as skillful in their merrymaking as they might have been. The
m’téoulins
of the Norridgewocks, he declared, had lost their skill at
m’téoulin
because of the many years that the tribe had asked help from Father Rale’s God instead of depending on reliable
m’téoulins.
His own father, he said, was a great merrymaker; if I should see him taking the part of Lox in the Beaver Dance, I would ache all over from laughing.

I have since noticed, however, that Hobomok was critical of all
m’téoulin
except his father’s and his own, and I have had occasion to think that if it had not been for his loyalty he would even have carped at his father’s magic.

Manatqua went with us to our cabins after the dance, fingering his scalp-lock, and asked my father whether it would be possible for him to have two heads of hair from Boston, one black and one vermilion. My father told him he would arrange for the two scalps, and would even, if he wished it, get him one that would be spotted like the skin of a young fawn, or ringed in circles of different colors, which was only permitted to chiefs of the most important station. Later my father told me that he would not offer so much as a chipmunk skin for the life of any brave who attempted to prevent Manatqua from accompanying him back to Arundel.

The squaws gave us hominy and pone at daybreak the next morning; for hunting parties were already starting upstream with the intention of swinging northwestward from the Kennebec onto the Carrabasset and into a country full of beaver. By sun-up we had carried around the falls; nor did we mind when cold gray clouds shut down on us, for the river became rougher and the carries longer and more frequent, and we had little opportunity to become chilled.

Ten leagues we made the first day; and Hobomok, running ahead of the canoe at the carries, killed twelve partridges and a raccoon for supper. We camped that night by the brook at the foot of the sugar-loaf mountain, where the Kennebec turns off to the eastward; and to the westward lies the twelve-mile carry that leads to Dead River. We lay on spruce boughs with a fire at our feet, all of us close together. There was a spit of snow in the air, and a dank chill that bit into us. When we untangled ourselves the next morning there was a glare in our eyes; for the first snow of the year clung to the pines, and flakes were still falling.

We lost no time getting our lines in the water. Hobomok pounced on the trouts as we threw them on the bank behind us, stripped them with his thumb, spitted them on a maple wand, and hung them by the fire.

We traveled fast over the carry, with dry moccasins; for the snow had not penetrated beneath the towering pines.

While the day was yet young we dropped our canoe into Bog Brook and pushed down it to the black and sluggish current of Dead River. That river, the west branch of the Kennebec, winds like a serpent in the direction of the distant place that every traveler to Quebec most deeply dreads—the Height of Land.

Toward noon we reached a high point that thrust itself into Dead River from the north, so that the river makes a half-circle around it. Here, the snow having stopped, we landed to build a fire and eat warm food. As was his habit, my father raised his head slowly above the level of the high ground, hoping to surprise a deer or moose. Then, to my consternation, he yelled horribly, leaped up the bank, and dashed across the flat land beyond.

Following him up, I saw, against a growth of pines at the back edge of the open point, an Indian youth, long and scrawny, naked except for a belt cloth and moccasins, clinging to the neck of a young buck and striving to drive a knife into its throat. The buck leaped and pitched. While I watched and primed my musket the arm of the Indian youth slipped from the buck’s neck, and he fell. A hoof slashed down across his side, and as if by magic the trampled snow around him was crimson with blood. The buck reared again. My father shouted and waved his arms, having covered less than half the distance.

Knowing the hoofs of a deer are sharp as a scalping knife, I shot at its shoulder before it could slash a second time. By good fortune the ball struck its shoulder blade, and it fell down across the boy. My father cut its throat and pulled it off the Indian, who was Hobomok’s age or thereabouts. We took him under the arms and dragged him to dry ground under a clump of spruces.

VIII

N
ATAWAMMET
skinned the deer, Hobomok built a fire, and Woromquid and I cut spruce branches for a bed. My father brought blankets, and needles from his pack to sew up the gash in the Indian’s side. We bandaged the wound with sheets of the green moss that grows on dead logs. He was thin and weak, and his moccasins were in tatters, showing he had come far. Also, in spite of his thinness, his paunch was swollen, so we knew he had eaten little in a long time.

My father took the liver from the deer, wrapping it in a strip of fat and roasting it on a stick over the fire, after which he fed a little to the Indian. We prepared our own dinner, and then my father fed him a little more, but only a little, so he might not sicken. He fell asleep; and when he awoke, my father fed him again before asking who he was and from where he had come.

Natanis, he said, was his name. We understood little he said at first; but soon his speech became clearer to us. He was from the town of St. Francis, on the St. Francis River, above Quebec. Although his grandfather had been an Abenaki from the Pennacook tribe on the Merrimac River, his words had a French twist because of his tribe’s association with French priests and traders.

During the last moon, he said, the English general on Lake Champlain had sent two English officers to the town of St. Francis with gifts, thinking they might be allowed to pass through to Quebec. The braves of St. Francis, however, had seized the officers and taken them to Montreal and delivered them to the French. As a result the English general had been angry, and so had sent Rogers’ Rangers, two hundred of them, to destroy the town.

The Rangers, he said, had fallen on the town just before dawn, after marching a vast distance at high speed, killed his people by the hundreds and destroyed the town. His father had been killed, and his mother and a brother. Another brother and a sister had been captured and carried away by the Rangers. Those who escaped had fled into the woods and down the St. Francis to the St. Lawrence. He himself, he said, had reached the St. Lawrence wearing only his moccasins and his belt cloth, and unarmed. He had continued down the river, thinking to cross to Quebec where he might find friends among the Abenakis who were helping to defend it; but he had found the Canadians in a panic, fleeing and hiding and rushing up the river in small boats, so he dared not cross.

“In a panic?” my father asked. “What were they in a panic about?”

“Because Montcalm was dead,” said Natanis, “and the French army had fled across the St. Charles, away from the city, and Wolfe had taken Quebec.”

My father got up with a glum face and walked rapidly back to the canoe. I followed, not knowing what had got into him. He hoisted his pack to the shore and rummaged in it until he found his flask of rum.

“Stevie,” he said, “rum’s a curse, and you know I hate the stuff. Keep away from rum, Stevie, because there’s more hell in a gallon of it than the devil could pack into a hogshead. Still and all, Stevie, there’s times you’ve got to do something violent or bust, and this is one of ’em.”

He held up the flask, and I could see it was full. “Here’s to Wolfe,” he said. “He’s a great man. He did something there was only one chance in a million of doing. Here’s to Wolfe, the man that took Quebec!”

He tilted up the flask and there was a gurgling like rainwater pouring into our hogshead at Arundel during a thunderstorm.

When he took the flask from his lips, he screamed violently, after which he passed it to me.

“You know how I feel about it, Stevie. Don’t ever drink more than you have to; and be moderate about it, or you’ll make a fool of yourself. And don’t ever say I countenanced it, Stevie. But I suppose some day you’ll take a drink, like everybody else; so go ahead and take a suck of this. Then all your life you can say you took your first drink to red-headed James Wolfe for taking Quebec. That’s as good a reason as you’ll ever have for taking one.”