MacFarlane's Ridge (15 page)

“One night, it began to snow on the moors, and old Gabby found himself soaked through to his bones with the cold. His feet were near frozen in their old ragged boots, and he hoped and prayed he’d find some shelter soon. As he made his way down a hillside, he stumbled over something hard. Thinkin’ it was a log, and not wanting the next traveler to topple over it as he had, Gabby took it upon himself to move the log out of the road. But it wasna a log at all. ‘Twas a body.”

Cam heard Ian’s quick intake of breath. She opened one eye surreptitiously and noticed Rob making the sign of the cross over his chest.

“Old Gabby McNab was frightened to be sure, and was about to run away. Then he noticed that the body was finely dressed, as a merchant would be, and was wearing a pair of fine leather boots, with a ruff of fur about the top. Gabby thought about his own frozen feet, and said to himself,
Well, if anyone is to stumble across the fellow, who would know if he were wearing boots when he died or not?
So Gabby hoisted the dead man’s legs up, and began to try to pull off the boots.”

Click click, clickety click, went the knitting needles. Cam shivered, despite herself. The wind was picking up outside, and the clapboard walls of the house creaked occasionally.

“Try as he might, he couldna pull the man’s boots off, because of course the merchant had been laying there a while and the boots were frozen to his feet. Then a wicked thought came to old Gabby, and he opened up his wee bag o’ tools. He pulled out his little saw, and greedy as he was, sawed the man’s legs off just above the boots! He took the boots – feet and all, mind ye – and rolled them up in a sack and tucked them under his arm.

“Now, off in the distance a ways, he saw a light, and made his way there in a hurry, for the snow was now blowing about even more fiercely. Gabby knocked on the door, and a farmer answered. The farmer looked at dirty old Gabby, and said,
Ye canna sleep in my house, for you are a filthy old tinker, but ye may bed in my barn amongst the kine in the hay.
Gabby took the man’s offer, and made himself a nest of hay in the barn. But before he laid down for the night, he unwrapped the fine leather boots and placed them up under one o’ the farmer’s cows, thinking that the heat from the cow’s body would thaw the feet out so that he could wear the boots in the morning.”

Click, click, click-click-click.

“When the sun rose the next morning, old Gabby looked at the boots, and sure enough, they were thawed out. He could see the bloody feet inside them, and being a bit of a joker, he wrapped the feet up in his old ragged boots, and placed them in front of the cow. Then, wicked old Gabby smeared a bit of the blood on the cow’s mouth as she chewed her hay. Gabby, wearing his new leather boots, hid himself away, and when the farmer came out in the morning, well, ye can imagine the shock he must’ve felt!

Rob nudged Ian. “As if a cow would gobble up a man down to his feet, aye?”

“Wheesht!” snapped Mollie. “Now, the farmer and his wife were very upset, for the cow was the only one that gave them milk, and they were afraid that if people heard she had eaten a traveler that the cow would be killed. So they took the bloody feet, wrapped in the rags, and buried them under a rowan tree. That night, as the farmer and his wife sat down to dinner, old Gabby in his fine new fur-trimmed boots crept out of his hiding spot and stood under the rowan tree. He placed his pipes to his lips and began to play, a haunting and strange tune, and the farmer and his wife looked out the window and saw old Gabby there! Thinking it was a ghost, they screamed and ran out of the house and over a hill, and they were never heard from again.

“Now, Gabby thought this a mighty fine joke, and so he went into the house and sat at the table, where he found the farm couple’s dinner all laid out. He ate as much as he could, cheese and meat and soup, and more whiskey than Gabby McNab could drink. Finally, having had his fill, he laid down in the farmer’s bed to sleep. But then, he heard a knock at the door.”

“Ooh,” said Ian. “This is my favorite part!”

“Be quiet,” grumbled his brother. “Let Mollie tell it, aye?”

“And when Gabby answered the door, there was a small man standing there, looking very cold and damp. He looked at Gabby and said,
Can I have a wee bit of hospitality? Perhaps a bed for the night and a dram o’ whiskey?
Gabby, thinking of his own recent good fortune, said,
Come on in, then, poor fellow, and warm your feet by the fire.

“And then the man looked up at him and began to laugh, a deep hollow laugh that sent chills down old Gabby McNab’s spine.
I’d like that very much,
said the man,
but as ye can see, I dinna have any
.”

Cam’s eyes popped wide open. It was more than a little while before she could fall asleep that night.

December 14, 1775 –

I have spent the past weeks teaching Miss Clark how to do things she seems to take for granted. I located some dress patterns, and she has become proficient enough to make herself two new skirts, although she continues to wear Ian’s shirts, which she claims are “nice and roomy.” Ian and Rob are building a new cabin further up the ridge, and are gone almost every day. When they return at night, their clothes are frequently torn and dirty, and Miss Clark has spent a good deal of time mending. I suspect that, being from a city, she is used to a more disposable lifestyle.

However, she has learned how to prepare meat for Storage in the smokehouse, and once again the rich smell of ham permeates the house. For some reason she still cannot bring herself to slaughter and clean the pigs, though, and leaves that to me. She has gone out every morning to milk Ian’s cows, and has assigned several of them rather odd names. I have taught her how to churn butter, and though her first attempts were Most Disastrous, after a
while she managed to produce a substance that was at least edible. She has also learned how to bake bread.

I believe there are still a few things to which she is having trouble adjusting. Many nights she is too tired to go down to the cellar and bathe, and she complains when she finds herself going a few days at a time without washing. Also, when I took her aside and showed her where the supply of cotton sanitary rags were kept, she visibly cringed. As if women don’t have the monthlies in Charleston! She has an odd little brush which she insists on using on her teeth every morning and night, and I have some soda which she says she finds effective for scrubbing out her mouth. She does have remarkably nice teeth for a woman of thirty-two. Perhaps I shall begin using her little blue brush as well.

Cam discovered that there was a lot of work to do on a farm, and it seemed that a good deal of the projects fell to the women, because Ian and Robert were always off doing something else.

“Now, first ye must make the lye,” announced Mollie, leading Cam out to one of the woodsheds. “You’ll have not done this before, aye?”

Cam shook her head, and Mollie clucked her tongue at her.

“Well, tis no’ difficult, it just takes a wee bit of time, and it stinks something terrible, ye ken?”

Mollie pointed to a barrel, and Cam peered inside it. The bottom had been removed and replaced with a flat stone that had a groove chiseled into it. The stone, in turn, rested upon a small pile of rocks. As Cam watched, Mollie placed a layer of straw and small sticks in the bottom of the barrel.

“Now, we must add the ashes.”

Cam was amazed by Mollie’s physical strength as she hauled a large pot to the barrel, and dumped in a heavy layer of wood ash atop the straw. A gray cloud floated up out of the barrel’s open top, and Cam sneezed heartily.

“Watch ye dinna get any in your eye. Burns like the devil, it does.”

Mollie and Cam spent the morning slowly pouring pitchers of water over the ashes, until a thick brownish liquid seeped out of the bottom of the barrel, through the groove in the stone, and into a heavy clay jug that Mollie had placed beneath. While Cam continued to pour water into the barrel, Mollie set up a large kettle outside and built a fire.

“This is for rendering the tallow, ye ken?”

“Tallow?” asked Cam blankly.

“Aye, fat from the cows. We save it for a few months, boil it up with some water, and then make soap with it.”

Cam stifled a gagging noise. She had become fond of the cows, despite her earlier trepidations, and hated the thought of one of them being melted down for soap. Although, she supposed, the cow probably didn’t mind by this point.

The smell of the boiling tallow was enough to send Cam to the nearest bushes to be sick. Mollie let the process continue throughout the day, and when she went to serve dinner, Cam had to force herself to eat. The odor was still noticeable inside the walls of the house, and Cam had to content herself with eating only biscuits for supper. The idea of consuming beef while that smell invaded her nostrils was horrifying.

By the next morning, the tallow had cooled and was floating on the top of the kettle in a gelatinous yellow glob. Mollie instructed Cam to skim it off and place it in another large kettle.

“This is disgusting,” she muttered.

Mollie overheard. “Aye, well, think of trying to bathe without it, if ye find a wee bit of fat so foul, then.”

They added the lye from the woodshed to the tallow, and set the kettle to boiling again. By the end of the day, a frothy, gooey mass was floating at the top. Cam peered into the kettle doubtfully.

“How do you make it hard, so you can chop it up into bars?” she asked.

“Aha!” smiled Mollie. “That’s the trick, aye? You add some salt to it and it’ll firm up as nice as ye please.”

Cam frowned. “I thought salt was hard to come by.”

“Hard to – oh, I ken what ye mean. Aye, tis very dear but I’ve been saving some pennies here and there, and I had one of the Kerr boys fetch me a sack of it when he went into town last time.” She scooped a large quantity of salt into the kettle. Cam noticed it was in large chunks, rather than the fine-grained table salt she was accustomed to.

“And now,” said Mollie with a flourish, “the scent!”

“Scent? It’s got a scent, Mollie.”

“Aye, but no’ a very good one, as ye said yourself. Bayberry.” Mollie strode back to the house, disappeared into the small storage room over the hot spring, and came back with a clump of dried leaves.

“Here ye are, then. Strip the leaves off the wee twigs, grind them up real fine between your fingers, like this, and sprinkle them into the soap. I’ll stir.”

Soon they had a large slab of soap floating on the top of the kettle, and Mollie lifted it out gingerly with a big wooden paddle.

“Now what do you do with it?”

Mollie smiled. “I wrap it in cloth, and then you can chop of a wee bit whenever ye wish to bathe. Simple enough, aye?”

Simple? It had taken them two full days just to make soap, and Cam couldn’t think of it as simple at all. It seemed like a lot of work just for a few chunks of lumpy soap.

Then again, it was better than not having any soap at all.

When Ian reminded her that Christmas was just a few days away, Cam promptly got to work. She sewed new shirts for both Ian and Rob, and for Hamish she made a stuffed dog out of some old stockings that were beyond repair. She wasn’t sure what to give Mollie, but then found some dried lavender in the storeroom and stitched together a pretty sachet with a scrap of lace around it. She noticed that Mollie spent a lot of time writing in her journal when she had a moment of free time. Cam desperately wanted to peek at it and see if anything had changed since she had seen it in Haver Springs, but she couldn’t bring herself to violate Mollie’s trust that way.

On the morning of Christmas Eve, 1775, Cam was returning from the barn with a pail of milk. Although it was still cold, much of the snow had disappeared. Some of the milk sloshed over the top of the bucket – Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana had been most cooperative this morning – and as Cam steadied herself she noticed a figure on horseback coming up the path. The rider looked a bit lopsided.

“Hallo the house!” called a voice.

“Hallo the rider!” replied Rob, who had emerged from the farmhouse. He glanced at Cam and her bucket. “That’ll be Tom Kerr.”

Tom fumbled his way down from the horse, and Cam realized that he was missing an arm. He bowed his head to her.

“Pleasure to meet you, lass. Ian and Rob had told me they had a young lady visitor, but they didna’ bother to mention how pretty she was!” He winked at her, and she couldn’t help but laugh. Tom reminded her of Alice’s husband, Hal.

“And a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Kerr,” she said politely.

“Nae, its just Tom.” He studied her appraisingly. “Ye should stop in and visit with my Sally. She’d like another woman to talk to.”

Rob snorted. “Come, Tom, ye know ye’re just asking her to come by so you can parade her out in front of all of those sons of yours.”

“Aye,” Tom winked, “tis true. Other than Alan and Dougal, they’re all sorely in need of wives!”

“Well, she’s a wee bit too old for any of your lads.”

Cam couldn’t believe what she was hearing. They were talking about her as if she wasn’t even there. “Excuse me,” she put in.