Drums Along the Mohawk (70 page)

What a thing it was, this delicious revival in her mind of all those early days. Sleighing down the frozen river to the barracks by Hudson Village. Or driving out to the flats at sundown.… No, no, it was better to remember coming to this place and building the house together, and Barney being dumbfounded because a chimney could not be laid up in a day.…

She did not hear the muffled tramp of the German Flats militia going along the Kingsroad—sixty frightened men with orders to proceed as far as the falls for the night and wait there with a scout out to the north in case Sir John’s Indian forces broke loose from his army.

She was thinking of Indians though, and the way Barney would not let them in the house, because they smelled so beasty it spoiled his taste for claret for three days.… He could even taste it in the cottage cheese the evening one had slept beside the kitchen fire.…

That reminded Mrs. McKlennar that the past was not hers to recapture. She realized that she was sleeping in the kitchen and that the house was bare of people and that she was alone, and it was dark.

No, not alone. Somebody was walking in the next room. Somebody being very cautious. Somebody carrying a firebrand. Two people, she could tell it now, carrying torches. The pine smoke scent came in to her, aromatic, bitter, clearing her head. The light was coming down the hall. Suddenly it occurred to her that the detail Gustin Schimmel had apologized about had never turned up. These could not be they. The detail must long since have got to Eldridge’s. Sir John was in the valley.

The door opened slowly and an Indian wobbled into the room. He was slightly tipsy, having just found and emptied a brandy flask, but not so tipsy as his companion. He held the torch over his head with one hand, and clutched a mass of clothing and blankets and a green glass bottle in the other, and the light flared down on his shaven head with its startled scalplock dangling a broken feather. His face was painted black with liverish yellow spots and a white stripe that went down his nose and over his mouth and chin, as though his face had been put together by an inexperienced cabinetmaker. He was very hot, and he smelled not only of himself, but of the bear grease all over him that had turned rancid in the heat and wet. And he stared at the old lady in her bed as if she were the great snake demon of Niagara Falls.

“What do you mean by coming into my house?” demanded Mrs. McKlennar.

She had sat up very straight in the bed with her wool jacket over her shoulders and her cap awry. Her long nose was sniffing. She was thinking of the cottage cheese. Barney.

The Indian’s jaw dropped. He was not used to being talked at so. And though he did not understand English, his companion said he did.

“Owigo,” he said softly. “Come quick.”

Owigo was a squattish individual with white circles painted round his eyes. He hit the doorjamb with his shoulder and dropped both muskets and spun round till he was facing the bed.

“Speak English,” grunted the first Indian.

“Bellyache bad,” were the first words Owigo thought of, and he said them.

“Something worse than that will happen to you, my lad,” Mrs. McKlennar said grimly. “You talk English. Well, what have you got to say for yourself? Coming into my house like this!”

Owigo teetered into what he thought was dignified politeness.

“How,” he said after a pause.

“What are you doing in my house?” repeated Mrs. McKlennar, drawing herself a little more rigidly erect.

Enlightenment traced a devious course through the Indian’s fuddled brain.

“Ho. Set house on fire. Burn quick. All burning there.” He waved his hand, a wide gesture that embraced the universe.

For a moment Mrs. McKlennar stared at the two. It was true. She could hear the fire now, she could see the faint light on the floor beyond the open door. These drunken, beastly, good-for-nothing, stinking fools! All the Irish in her blazed.

Her lips parted to a stream of invective that might have silenced even Barney. It certainly silenced the Indians. They were appalled. They recognized virtuous outrage when they saw it, and they did not know what to do.

“Burning my own house with me in it!” cried Mrs. McKlennar. “You ought to be whipped. If my husband were here he’d have the hides off your backs clean down to your heels.”

“Yes, yes,” apologized Owigo anxiously. “You get out quick, you catch on fire.”

It was true enough. The very door smelled hot. Already little fingers of flame pointed round the edge and were withdrawn.

But Mrs. McKlennar would not move.

“I’ll not,” she said. “I’m not a well woman. I can’t sleep outdoors on a cold night like this.”

The slowly seeping intelligence in Owigo’s eyes was transmuted into words. He explained to his puzzled companion what the white lady had said. The companion looked worried. He replied in Seneca.

“Friend Sonojowauga say,” explained Owigo, “you get’m out quick. Burn bad. Burn very bad.”

Mrs. McKlennar said then, “If I’m to get out of this house, you’ll have to move my bed out for me.” She tapped the bed and
pointed to the door. Sonojowauga understood the gesture while Owigo was still trying to get the sentence translated in his mind.

He grunted. Then Owigo said, “Yes. Fetch it out. Sure, fine.”

“Don’t look at me while I get up,” said Mrs. McKlennar, mastering a slight shiver. She rose and donned a coat.

“Now,” she said severely, “you hurry up.”

Willingly they caught up the bed and ran it to the door.

“On its side,” said Mrs. McKlennar, “like this. And don’t scratch it, you careless lazy beast.”

“Make quick,” panted Owigo.

They blundered through the door and set the bed up in the yard beside the barn, and hurried back for the bedclothes; by then the kitchen was ablaze. Mrs. McKlennar shrieked at them.

“Don’t touch my sheets with your filthy hands; I’ll carry them myself.”

They escorted her, nonetheless, and watched her with mystified faces while she made the bed. Then she got into it.

“Go away, now,” she said. “And don’t ever come near me again.”

Owigo smiled ingratiatingly. “Burn fine.”

“Get away,” said Mrs. McKlennar. “Quick. I don’t like you two. You are very bad.”

Owigo looked dismayed. He had done everything. His face was sorrowful. Seeing his friend so, Sonojowauga made his face look sorrowful too.

“We go,” said Owigo. They gathered up their muskets and trooped off into the woods, one behind the other, feeling very bad, and still a little drunk.

Mrs. McKlennar looked after them, then she returned her gaze to the house, and watched it burn. The red light covered her in the maple bed, showing her long face very quiet. Her eyelids blinked against the light as she sat there, backed against the pillows, and after a few minutes, slow, heavy, silent tears began
to drop over her lined cheeks. She lay down in the bed, with her back to the house, but she could not keep the light away. She did not then think of Lana. Her heart was breaking with the destruction of her house. For three years it had escaped the destructives. Now at last two drunken Indians had set it off.

An hour after she had lain down, Lana had wakened, and after a single glance around her had sprung up in terror. The baby lay sound asleep, but Gilly was gone. She called, but as she started down through the sumacs she had a view across the valley.

In the late afternoon sunlight, for one instant, between two groves of trees, she saw a party of men, proceeding at a trot that was unmistakable. Indians were in the valley.

She stopped with Gilly’s name frozen on her lips, overwhelmed with the bitter knowledge of her own criminal foolishness. It was well that she did. Following the fences along the Kingsroad she saw two Indians, painted on chest and face, one red, one black, and Lana realized that they could not have missed the house. They were turning up to it. Utterly helpless, she watched them pad softly onto the porch and nose their way inside like two inquisitive dogs. It was too late to see what had happened in the house. No shooting had greeted the Indians. The six men must have gone.

Not only must they have deserted her for some incredible reason; they must have taken Mrs. McKlennar with them. There was just one thing Lana could think of to do. To hide the baby first in Joe Boleo’s hide-hole, then to search out Gilly without calling.

It took her several moments to find the hide-hole from this new direction; but as soon as she did, she lowered the baby into it and wrapped him in her coat. He slept like an angel. Lana pulled herself out of the hole, leaving the baby in darkness on
the hemlock twigs, praying that he would continue to sleep. Her heart fluttered as she stole out on hands and knees, listening for any tread that might be heard among the sumacs. There was none. The valley was quiet save for the western wind that drew across the hill with its inevitable booming force.

Carefully and furtively Lana began creeping down towards the house. She kept her head low to the ground, seeking through the stems of the sumacs for a sign of Gilly. She understood now how much like forest trees those stems must look to a baby. She went all along the lower edge of the sumac growth, hoping to intercept him if there were yet time, stopping every little way to listen for a hostile sound, forcing her terror to be calm, her eyes to search through every opening in the brush.

The Indians in the house, if they still were there, were being remarkably quiet. She had now covered all the lower part of the slope and begun to crawl upward once more. She wondered if she could risk a call. She was torn with the desire to stand up and shout to Gilly and anxiety for what was happening to the baby in the hide-hole. If he woke up now and screamed he would be heard, even over the wind, far beyond the house.

The sticky branches of the sumac catching in her hair dragged it loose from the pins. It fell forward over her face, impeding her sight. It was hard enough to see anyway, for the sun was well down. The sky, when she glanced up at it, looked as if it promised cold. She began to fear the night now, almost as much as the Indians. If she did not find Gilly before darkness came, she felt that she would never find him.

The desire to weep was one more thing to struggle against; she felt that if she could lie down on her face and sob and make a noise she would find help. But she did not dare to. Even as the tears streamed helplessly from her eyes, she put her hands and knees out to feel for dry sticks, moving them out of her path with
the instinct that hunted creatures have of destruction beyond every leaf.…

Her heart was bitter, even bitter against Gil for having left her so. If he loved her truly, he would surely know that she was in trouble. He would come to find her. But she knew that Gil would not come, and that the trouble she was in was entirely of her own making. She started to pray as she went on and on with her nearly insensate patience, forcing her eyes to search ahead through the increasing darkness. And then she heard it. The thin voice. For one dreadful moment she listened—afraid that it was Joey.

But it came more clearly.

“Ma, Ma.” He had learned to say “Ma” that summer. He said it so distinctly.

She governed her tired senses, compelling them to a sane judgment of the direction of the voice. Yes, up the slope. Near the little cleared space where they had sat down. He had found his way back to it.

She risked a cry, soft and urgent and clear, “Ma’s coming. Hush.” It was so dark now that it didn’t matter. She stood up and ran, blundering through the bushes, scratched and whipped, to see his little dark shape standing up all alone in the exact centre of the open space.

She caught him in her arms.

“Ma’s boy,” she whispered. “Hush, hush.”

He whimpered a little and settled himself snugly against her breast, and she began to feel her way in the direction of the hide-hole and was surprised at the ease with which she located it. She perched the boy on the edge of the hole and lowered herself cautiously in case the baby had moved. Then she stretched up her hands and took the boy down. She sat down with a child in either arm. She did not cry. She kept dry-eyed, alert, in the dark little hole, straining for any sound that might mean danger.

The glow against the sumac leaves visible through the hole first told her that the McKlennar house was burning. She risked one glance above the hole, standing up and peering over the tree trunk. The wind was tearing flames in banners from the roof. She had a glimpse of the two Indians carrying the bed and then Mrs. McKlennar following with the bedding. She could not understand it.

She lingered till the bed had been set down and the old lady ensconced. She saw the Indians depart. And she wondered if she could go down and tell Mrs. McKlennar to come back to the hide-hole. But the babies kept her. Joey was beginning to whine. He would wake up and want his food. Gilly was hungry too. Lana’s head swam. What on earth had happened?

Mrs. McKlennar had lain down in the bed. Was she sick? Too sick to move? But she had followed the bed out there.

Suddenly her eyes were caught by the shape of a man, stooping down among the sumacs, well away to her right. She dropped inside the hide-hole. At the same moment Joey let out his first bawl. He had a voice like a calf when he was hungry. She fumbled frantically in the dark for his mouth and pressed her hand on it. She felt his instantaneous convulsion of protest, arms flying, legs kicking, as he tried to get his breath. Gilly started to whimper. “Hush,” she whispered. With her free hand she tore at her short gown, ripping it in two, baring her breasts. “Oh God. If my milk doesn’t come now!” She huddled Joey up to her and withdrew her hand and pressed his little face towards her. She felt him start to yell, then his surprised jaws clamped on her breast so hard she almost cried out. And then the reassuring pressure beginning.

Gilly was starting softly to cry now. Cold and hungry as he was, the smell of milk was too much for him. He would not hush. She pulled him towards her too and let his face rest against the free breast and left it to him whether he would accept it. They
had worked so hard to wean him. But when, fumblingly, he touched the breast, her heart welled over.