Arundel (34 page)

“Well, I’m a—I’m a sculpin!” Cap muttered.

Jacataqua couldn’t keep her hands off Phoebe’s cat’s eyes and brass-studded belt and the rest of her odd belongings, so I left them for Hobomok, and found Natawammet squatting with him on the sunny side of the hatch, looking little different than I remembered him. His throat was scrawnier and his knees showed signs of wear. I was glad to see them; and from the tone of their voices when they called me “Brother,” they were equally glad to see me.

Rabomis, they told me, was dead, having pitched from a canoe in the Five Mile Ripples and broken her neck against a rock. Jacataqua had been made sachem in her stead because she was known and liked in all the adjoining settlements, and received many favors from white men. Woromquid had set off for Quebec two years before with three Assagunticooks, and none of them had ever been heard of again. All of the Norridgewocks had gone to St. Francis and Beçancour to live, and most of the Swan Islanders too, for the settlements had pressed so close around them that there was game for only a small number.

With the turning of the tide Phoebe left us, declaring she couldn’t lose the favoring wind. We sent two men with her, to ride through the Chops on the sloop and make sure she came to no harm. Beyond the Chops I knew the wind would take her safe to Arundel.

I watched her at the tiller, fingering her cat’s eyes and squinting into the west, little more than a shadow larger than on the day when she fastened my hunting shirt to her father’s cabin; and I wondered what it was that Nathaniel Tracy had seen in her. I was reminded, too, to ask Cap, some day, what possessed him to want to put his sweaty paws on her.

Fearful of what cussedness Cap might inflict on my friends because of his dislike for Indians, I consulted Hobomok, saying it might be well to tranquillize Cap by showing him something he couldn’t understand. Also I said I had heard Hobomok had become a skilled
m’téoulin,
able to walk ankle deep in rock and scream terribly.

I have never learned why these two things—screaming and seeming to walk ankle deep in hard earth or rock—are the signs of a great
m’téoulin
among the Abenakis; but it is so and always has been so. There is no trick about the screaming, which a
m’téoulin
practises in remote places, starting when a young man, so that in time he is able to scream fearfully, in a manner beyond the comprehension of those who have never heard the scream of a
m’téoulin.
About the walking there is a trick, though I have never learned it; nor have I understood why it should so fill the Abenakis with amazement and terror. When a
m’téoulin
walks thus his feet appear to sink deep into the ground, as though he walked in the soft sand at the bend of a tide river; and I have heard it said that the footprints of a powerful
m’téoulin
are often found sunk deep in stone.

When I invited Cap to smoke a pipe in Hobomok’s cabin, he protested that he would not smoke with a dirty bug-eater, especially since the tobacco would be mixed with rat’s fur and stink-bush leaves; but I told him that even though what he said were true, which it was not, we had been sent to make ourselves useful, and this was a part of it.

We entered behind Hobomok, who took a pipe from a shelf at the far end of the cabin, filled it, and gave it to me while Cap looked on, grumbling. Then he turned from us without a word and left the cabin.

“Now what ails this ill-begotten bug-eater?” Cap asked; but in that moment Hobomok rejoined us. He seemed to swell and tower upward toward the roof, and his face was hideous. He took three short steps toward us, dragging his legs like a man wallowing through a snowdrift. I could feel Cap, breathing hard, fumbling at his waist for his knife. Before he could reach it, a convulsion swept Hobomok’s face and body. His eyes bulged, and from his contorted mouth came a shriek so piercing and so awful that, although I had prepared myself, it came against me like a clammy hand, drawing frozen fingers along my spine, and piercing my ears like knitting needles.

Then he turned from us and went out. I looked at Cap, and found him staring glassy-eyed at the door, his hands and his mouth half open. I had heard my father say that when a good
m’téoulin
screamed unexpectedly in a room, no person in that room could move. Perhaps the strange walk of the
m’téoulin,
followed suddenly by his scream, first holds and then numbs the attention of those who hear him. It may be that which happens to a hen when a boy holds her beak against a board, draws with a piece of charcoal a long straight line from the tip of the beak outward along the plank, and presses her head against it. The hen remains there, helpless and unmoving; and so, too, did Cap stand until I shook him. During the remainder of the time we were together he called no Indian either lousy or ill-begotten until he had first looked over his shoulder to see whether he was overheard.

What with the vagueness of Colonel Arnold’s orders, and General Washington’s mislike for Indians, and the low opinion both those officers held concerning my thoughts on bateaux, I scarce knew what to do. I considered myself handy with a paddle; but I could no more navigate the upper Kennebec without Indians who knew the waters and the country than I could visit Boston without breeches. The Kennebec country is wild: more tumbled and torn than can be imagined by any man who has not struggled through it. Therefore I decided I would do for Colonel Arnold what I would do for myself.

Leaving Cap at Swan Island to get information from the women and make sure they made proper buckskin garments for Arnold, I set off up the Androscoggin with Natawammet to ask help from Paul Higgins and his Assagunticooks—the assistance he had promised months before.

From the start we seemed doomed to disappointment; for we paddled into a northeaster that drove buckets of water down the front of our shirts; and when we came to the falls of the Androscoggin, where Paul Higgins’s people had always pitched their wigwams, we found nothing but a piece of bark wedged in a cleft stick, and on it a drawing showing that the town had been removed to the southern end of Cobosseecontee Pond, which lies between the Androscoggin and the Kennebec.

When we had labored on to Cobosseecontee and around its winding shores until we had come to the Abenaki camp, we found only women and boys and old men. We smoked a pipe with the old men and learned that Reuben Colburn had paddled in from Gardiners-town and persuaded Paul Higgins to travel to Cambridge with his warriors and offer his services to Washington. Higgins, they said, had at first refused, saying he had promised his help to me; whereupon Colburn had told him, and rightly, too, I thought, that he would obtain more credit by going to Cambridge himself, since any orders I might give would also come from the great chief in Cambridge.

As a result of this, Natawammet and I sat down with them on the shores of Cobosseecontee to shoot deer and ducks and await Paul Higgins’s return; for knowing General Washington’s opinion of Indians, I suspicioned that Higgins might be received in Cambridge without overmuch courtesy, and that unless I did something about it, his help might be withheld when we needed it most.

On the afternoon of our third day of waiting we had returned from across the pond with two bucks and were skinning them on the shore, surrounded by gabbling squaws and noisy boys, when a silence fell, and the women scuttled off into the bushes like so many chickens at sight of a hawk overhead. I looked up to see Paul Higgins, in leggins and belt cloth, standing silently on the bank with his hands on his hips, glowering at me instead of leaping down to thump me on the back in his accustomed manner. Behind him were a score of Abenakis, all gloomy. Thus I knew I had been correct in my suspicions. I made a to-do over him, dwelling on the feast we would have with the venison and raccoon fat I had got while awaiting him, and going at once for the mirrors, awls, and scissors I had brought as gifts—gifts Paul needed. It had been long since he had trimmed his hair or beard. He looked more like a walking juniper bush than a man.

I liked Paul Higgins, despite the sneers of his white neighbors who pretended to find fault with him because he was overly free with his wives, marrying a squaw one year and putting her aside after the lapse of three or four years. I noticed, though, there was little complaint from the squaws; and I had reason to believe the white men who were bitterest against him would have done the same, if marriage customs among us were as lenient as those of the Abenakis.

Having been taken by the Indians when small, he had few of the white man’s evil habits, being neither foulmouthed over nothing, nor a drunkard, nor given to spreading malicious reports concerning his neighbors. For that matter, there was little of the white man about him. He was browned by exposure to the sun, and spoke with the softness of the Abenakis instead of with the nasal rasp of our own people.

At all events, I took pleasure in his company; and knowing this, he bore no grudge against me for his misfortunes, so we feasted harmoniously together.

He spoke bitterly of his journey to Cambridge. With him, he said, had gone nineteen of his braves, as well as Swashan, a sachem from St. Francis who had come to offer his help against the English. When they were admitted to the presence of Washington, he said, he had spoken quickly and to the point, saying they had lived at peace with their neighbors for many years; and now having been told the freedom of the land was at stake, they offered themselves to assist in preserving it.

“When the great chief had heard us,” Paul said, “he thanked us in fine words, and told us if there was need for our services he would send a message. Then he let my braves come away without food or drink or presents. Yet I know he is sending an army against Quebec. If there is no need for us now, there is no need for us ever. We resent this, my brothers and I. It sits ill on us to be held in such low esteem.”

For my ears he added angrily, in English, “Let ’em go to hell in their own way!”

I couldn’t blame Paul for his anger, knowing how I would have felt if I had offered my services and had them put aside in this manner; neither, knowing a few of the difficulties of the road to Quebec, could I let him be lost to us if I could hold him. I had liefer try to sing under water than speak in public, but I knew I must make the attempt, so I got perspiringly to my feet.

“Brothers,” I said, “many years ago I heard my father speak of war to the white chief who will lead this army against Quebec. In this talk he said the Abenaki method of making war was better than the white man’s method, and that white men, in making war, perpetually sought excuses to follow stupid counsels.

“Brothers, Washington is a great chief, just and fearless, but he has taken bad advice. He has taken the counsel of men who pretend to know the river Kennebec and its ways, but do not know it. They have told him to use bateaux instead of canoes. I have said to him, Brothers, that canoes are better than bateaux, but the advice he has had seems better than mine, so he must follow it. Now this cannot be changed; but it’s not my business to weep because bateaux are being used. My business is to go in a bateau.

“Another thing, Brothers: many years ago the great chief was traitorously used by Western Indians. This is something I mention without pleasure, but I do it so you may know I speak the truth, as my father spoke it to your fathers. The great chief doesn’t know the Abenakis of the Kennebec and the Androscoggin as I know them and as my father knew them. I ask my brothers if it wouldn’t be better to find some way of letting this knowledge be known to all the world, rather than to sulk like children because the great chief thinks all red men are like the red dogs of the West.”

With this I sat down, quaking internally and hoping the St. Francis chief, Swashan, would be silent, but fearing he wouldn’t because his conscience was too vulnerable.