Arundel (16 page)

So I took a little drink. It made me gag and I have never liked rum since that day, though I have had my share of it to stave off the cold.

My father put the flask back in his pack and looked thoughtfully at me. “I ought to have another! I ought to drink the whole flaskful and then swallow the flask! Think what it means, Stevie! No more Frenchmen to bother us! No more war! No more rotten English generals, like Braddock and Abercrombie and Loudon and the rest of ’em, to lead our men into ambushes and get ’em slaughtered for nothing! No more damned Indian raids! When your ma wants to walk over and see the neighbors she can do so without being afraid one of those red devils from St. Francis will stick a hatchet in her.

“I’m against it, Stevie, but I’m going to take a little drink to your ma, God bless her!”

He got out the flask again and took a small drink without screaming, after which we walked back to where Natanis lay beside the fire, and found all four of the Indians pretending not to have heard my father’s scream.

My father gave Natanis a slice of liver and patted him on the shoulder. “Your talk is good. Tell more, and say whether you saw the French captain Guerlac, who traveled with a small girl and a band of your brothers from St. Francis.”

Natanis corrected my father. “De Sabrevois; not Guerlac. A celebrated seigneur and captain, traveling with the small girl, his sister, and wounded in the cheek and ear from fighting a strong detachment of Bostonnais troops and defeating them with his few braves.”

To hear Mary spoken of, even, stirred me as though a hand had squeezed the blood from my heart.

My father nudged me to make no sign. “That is the man,” he said. “Where did you meet him?”

But like all Indians, Natanis could not leap about in his tale, but must tell it in order, like my mother telling what she was doing and thinking when she saw a mouse run across the floor.

He said he had no fire until, in a brook, he found a striped water snake. With the snake skin he made a string for the twirling of a fire bow and got fire, after which he hunted along brooks for trouts to tickle with his fingers, and in this way got a little to eat, but not much, for the trouts were small, the large ones having gone down into the St. Lawrence. The nights, he said, were cold, so when he came suddenly on a black bear he tried to kill it with a club made from the root of a birch tree, so that he might take its skin; but the club broke and the bear got away. He could have skinned the bear, he said, with a chipped flint, which makes a better skinning tool than a knife, since it cuts more readily.

He tried to beg a knife from a Canadian whose cabin was on the bank of the river; but the Canadian, in a state of excitement over the fall of Quebec, fired at him with a musket and set a dog on him, at which Natanis fled, fearing the dog might rob him even of his belt cloth.

After that he would not approach any cabin for help, but kept on to the cove where the Chaudière flows into the St. Lawrence, intending to ascend the Chaudière until he came to the settlements of the Southern Abenakis, or to autumn hunting parties from the Kennebec.

At the mouth of the Chaudière he saw a camp of Indians, and, on joining them, found they were Guerlac’s six braves.

“Six?” my father asked. “I thought there were eight.”

“There had been eight,” said Natanis, “but one, Eneas, had been struck by an arrow so that he had difficulty in sitting, and another, Sabatis, had been hit in the shoulder; and these two had been left behind with a canoe at the Chain of Ponds, so the others might travel faster without them.”

The six Indians, Natanis said, had agreed to take Guerlac and Mary down the river that night, hiding by day and pressing on when darkness fell, until they should encounter a French vessel, or until Guerlac should find means of getting back to France.

“For,” Natanis explained, “the French captain wished to settle his affairs in France and place his sister in a convent, and so could not run the risk of falling into the hands of the English, who sometimes kill prisoners and eat babies.”

“Who told you that?” my father asked sharply.

“De Sabrevois,” Natanis said, “but it is also something that has been said by all Frenchmen since the English prisoners were killed at Fort William Henry.”

“A tale for frightening children,” my father said. “We will charge Guerlac for it when the day of reckoning comes. Get on with your story, my son; and remember that we, who saved you from the buck and give you this food, would also be called English by your French friend.”

Natanis, who was quick-witted, smiled and nodded, and received a small piece of liver at my father’s hands.

He had asked the braves for a knife and a blanket, he said, and they had given him a knife, but would not give him a blanket because they had cut pieces from their own to make a dress for the little girl. He had lain by their fire that night and watched them, when it became dark, set off down the St. Lawrence. In the morning he had pressed on, fearful that Rangers or Wolfe’s troops might pursue him, pushed up the Chaudière to Lake Megantic, and in three days crossed the Height of Land, traveling rapidly to keep warm, and living on next to nothing—a few small trouts, a porcupine, thorn apples, partridge berries.

He said he could not find Sabatis and Eneas at the Chain of Ponds, and since he felt less strong he dared not stop. Along Dead River he jumped the same deer three times; therefore, since there was the smell of snow in the air, he set out to run it down, knowing that with snow on the ground, he could tire it out provided his own strength held.

He ran it all day. That night a light snow fell; so at dawn the next day he jumped it once more and kept close on its heels. At last it rested too long, and he caught it as we came up. Lacking the strength to hold it fast, he would have been cut to pieces save for us.

Having told his tale, he smiled confidingly at my father and asked for more liver, which my father gave him, saying that it was the best of all meats to give him back his blood, provided he took it in moderation.

Natawammet, Woromquid, and Hobomok, hunkered down around the deerskin, which they were scraping and rubbing with ashes, spoke admiringly to Natanis for what he had done; for to run down a deer without the help of snowshoes and deep snow is a great feat, only to be accomplished by a skillful hunter. He deserved admiration; for I have never known an Abenaki or any other Indian whose knowledge of the forest was as great as his.

To learn that Mary had been taken away where we could not follow, and where I could not know what was happening to her, filled me with a feeling of heavy emptiness, as though my stomach had been replaced by a bag of bullets.

My father knew how I felt. “Stevie,” he said, “you want to remember to-day isn’t everything. That’s what Abenakis can’t remember, and that’s why they’re Indians; why they haven’t a chance with white men. There’s to-morrow coming, to-morrows aplenty, and we’ll find Mary on one of ’em, and Guerlac too, if we want to find him. That’s sure, Stevie, because whatever you want, you generally get, if you want it hard enough.”

I didn’t say anything; only snuffled.

“Now Stevie,” my father said, “your ma’s waiting for us, and Cynthia and the rest of the girls; and there’s Ranger and Eunice hanging around the back door, same as always; and we’ll get back just as quick as we can, only we might as well pick up a few beaver skins, so to help get your ma a piece of silk from Boston, or some kind of flummery.

“There’s another thing, Stevie, and that’s this Natanis. It seems to me he isn’t what you’d call wallering in blessings. I guess things don’t look any better to him than they do to you, and maybe they don’t look so good. You got a ma and a dog and your sisters and a good house to go home to, but he hasn’t got anybody or any place. It’s only a few days ago they killed his pa and his ma and his brother, and burned down his house. He’s pretty near starved to death, and a good deal banged up. If you ask me, he probably feels worse about it than you do about Mary. I don’t rightly know how these Indian boys do their thinking; but I know a little something about the squaws, Stevie, and they can’t be much different; so it’s my guess he lies awake at night and feels awful bad over the way things turned out.”

My father walked me down toward the canoe. “This boy Natanis has done a lot for us: more than you realize. He’s saved us a terrible trip—one I wouldn’t have considered taking if it hadn’t been that I’d promised you, Stevie, and of course you’ve always got to keep your promises.

“I figure we owe him something, you and me, and it’s kind of up to us to pay it. Besides, he’s a good boy. I should judge he’s the best Indian boy we’ve seen in a long time; and we’ve seen some good ones. You notice he didn’t brag about traveling three days without much food and then running down a deer. If Manatqua had done that he’d have quit hunting for the rest of his life and just sat around talking about himself. The others would have fed him, of course, to keep him from talking, at least while he ate.

“It won’t do you any harm to have this Natanis for a friend, Stevie; so if you’d feel like it we could stay here a few days and kind of keep him company and build him a cabin and get him started, and maybe pick up a few beaver skins for your ma, and have a good time doing it.”

He stopped at the edge of the bank and looked out over the sunny bend in Dead River, and the meadows beyond, to the hulking sides of Dead River Mountain—the one they now call Mount Bigelow—that seemed to block our homeward path. Its pines were frosted green in the afternoon sun, and the maples at its base were as red as the vermilion face paint of a brave, with the yellow flames of the birches licking through the red. From the point we could see both up river and down, for the river made a sharp turn around it; and in both directions the black water was broken by the circles made by feeding fish. Far off we saw the broad arrowheads made by swimming minks or otters; and a cow moose with a calf came out of the brush, well upstream, and pawed through the thin snow for fodder.

“It’s as pretty a spot as you’d want,” my father said. “The King himself couldn’t get a nicer place for a hunting cabin if he ordered it special. You could probably learn a lot from this Natanis, too; but if you wouldn’t choose to stay here that long we can figure out something else.”

We went back to Natanis. My father gave him more liver and told him to go to sleep, and said at night he could have a large piece, and the next day we might even kill a moose and let him eat all of it.

Natanis grinned and went to sleep, whereupon my father set me to staking out the cabin at the back part of the meadow, on a knoll and near a spring, so located that anyone coming to it must walk for some distance across the meadow, exposing himself to those inside.

Natawammet and Woromquid overturned the canoe and rested it on stakes, raising a lean-to of spruce boughs against it, with sides of boughs at each end, so that we had an excellent shelter, open to a fire in front. By sundown the logs were cut; so venison was hung before the fire to broil, and Hobomok made birch-bark plates and a birch-bark bowl for melting sweetened bear’s fat.

Natanis looked enviously at our venison when we ate; but my father held him to his liver, explaining to him meanwhile the thoughts that were in his mind.

“My son,” he said, “you have given us useful information. Therefore I will repay our debt in what manner I can, as well as with advice. You have come here to a good hunting ground, rich in beavers, otters, fish, deer, and everything needful, open to the sun, and safe for many years from people who might wish to steal your land. If you desire to go farther south, I will take you to Norridgewock or to Swan Island, where there are many Abenakis; but I advise you to remain here. In the south your people are more closely pressed each year by the white people, whose ways are different. The beavers and the deer daily become more timid, and go farther into the forests, where they are harder to find. Here the beavers and the deer are unfrightened. I advise you to remain here in the cabin we build; and I also advise Natawammet and Woromquid to remain through the winter, trapping beavers and otters with you. Nowhere near the Androscoggin can they find as many pelts. Thus you will not be lonely. When the snows melt, the three of you will be rich in skins, and I will buy them at such prices that you will be able to have fine muskets and traps and shirts and pantaloons, and knives and kettles and tomahawks such as you never saw before. Also the cabin will remain here, so that nobody will occupy the land in your absence; and Natanis can return to it after he has sold his skins. We will build a canoe, and leave powder and shot, knives and hatchets, arrowheads and bowstrings. Everything that can be spared, we will leave; and in the spring you can repay with skins. Think about this and then speak your mind.”

“Father,” Natanis said, “I will stay. I am grateful.”

My father waved his hand as if to signify there was no cause for gratitude, and looked at Natawammet and Woromquid. Before they could answer Hobomok spoke, folding his hands comfortably over his stomach. “I, too, will stay. The fish in the river are salmon.”

“That is good information,” my father said, “but you will go home to your father and learn to be a great
m’téoulin,
with a scream that will paralyze all who hear it, as should be the case with good
m’téoulins.
I would like you to stay, to confound your father, who predicted all of us would come back together, and also so you might become less fat. Remember my words, Hobomok, and become thin. It is hard to believe in the magic of a fat man.”