Arundel

by Kenneth Roberts

  Natawammet said ruefully he could not stay unless my father would stop at Swan Island and persuade his wife to join him at Dead River; but Woromquid said he would remain, since his wife had recently left his wigwam and returned to her parents, and he wanted never to see another woman, or at any rate not until spring. My father said he would attend to Natawammet’s wife, sending her back by a hunting party, and arranging to have her carry an additional musket for Natanis, together with such blankets, moccasins, and leggins as would be needed during the winter.

  Hobomok caught salmon for us in the morning, fine fish that will saw off one’s finger if it becomes looped by the line; and these Natanis was allowed to eat, provided he ate often, and not much at any one time. I feared there would be no more salmon left in the river after we had been gone a week; for he ate as a mill eats corn.

  In the afternoon Natanis hobbled painfully into the forest with me, looking first, like all good hunters, at the spot where he had jumped on the deer, so to see how he might have done it better. He carried my father’s hunting bow with him, and soon he sat on a stump and made a peculiar noise with his lips against the back of his hand, a sort of muffled squeak. A raccoon came out from behind a stump and looked at him. He tried to draw the arrow, but could not because of his side.

  With each passing day Natanis grew stronger, eating until I feared he might explode, and even hanging a piece of venison above his head at night so he might wake and eat it. To this, however, my father put a stop after a porcupine came clattering in to look for the meat while we were all asleep, and stumbled over my father, leaving a dozen quills in his leg.

  While my father, Woromquid, and Natawammet labored at a birch canoe, Natanis went into the woods with Hobomok and me, hunting for beavers and otters, and for linden trees for snares and medicines.

  Never, in the woods, have I seen a person as skilled in the ways of Nature. To him the forest was as full of signs as the roads of Falmouth. The tops of pines, he said, incline toward the east; the largest number of limbs grow on the south sides of the trees; moss grows toward the roots on their northwest sides; a red moon is a sign of wind, and a pale moon a sign of snow or rain. Whatever he saw, he remembered: the spots where certain red squirrels habitually sit to eat pine cones; branches on which night herons roost; trees favored by partridges; marks on rocks; oddly shaped limbs on trees. When he had seen one of these things he recognized it instantly again, even though he approached it from another side; so he was never lost in the woods, but could always return the way he came.

  He declared that animals and birds conversed with each other, and that he could talk with them; and I think this was so. He was silent as a shadow when he hunted, taking care where he placed each foot, and looking around him before he stirred. Yet sometimes he found it necessary to move quickly, so that noise was unavoidable; and when he wished to do this, or to signal to one of us, he would talk to the crows. This he would do by cawing a few times like a crow, and suddenly changing the note of his caw, so that it dropped into a hoarse lower key. Instantly a crow would come from somewhere, cawing at the top of its lungs, whereupon Natanis would repeat his hoarse call. Then more crows would come from a distance to circle the trees under which he stood, all of them hawing and cawing. While this went on, Natanis said, it was possible to walk carelessly, even in leaves or dried twigs; for animals near by would think the noise was caused by two crows on the ground engaged in combat over a she-crow. Those overhead, he declared, were urging the lady crow to leave her two ruffianly friends and come away with them.

  He said the bluejay was the tattle-tale of the forest and told everything he could see. The bluejay had one call, he said, that meant “Here comes a hunter,” and another that meant “Here comes a wolverine,” and another that meant “Here comes a hawk”; and Natanis could give these calls.

  He said that when a rabbit was in pain it called to other animals for help. This call, he said, was the squeak he made by pressing his lips to the inside of his clenched fist and sucking sharply. Whenever he did it, an animal came to look: either an apprehensive rabbit; or a squirrel cursing and flirting its tail; or a wildcat or a mink or a wolverine, licking its lips hopefully at the thought of the troubled rabbit.

  The greatest talkers, he declared, were squirrels and partridges. By listening carefully to a squirrel one could tell whether he was jeering at a wildcat, a fox, a hawk or a man. Also, with practice, one could speak with partridges, telling them when to stop feeding and watch for danger, when to run for shelter, when to fly, and when they could safely come out of hiding and resume feeding.

  Even the beavers, he said, though the dumbest of all animals, making no sound except by slapping the water with their tails, converse together by means of odors; and to that end the female beaver has two sets of glands from which come different smells. One set Natanis called bark glands, and the other oil glands. By mixing the juices of these glands he was able to call beavers to his traps, which he made out of logs delicately held up by fibres from the linden tree, so that they fell at a touch.

  When we hunted, he took exception to Hobomok’s carelessness in the woods. It was no use grumbling at me, he said. White men are more impatient than red men, unwilling to crouch motionless for hours in order to obtain food; averse to hunting without garments, so to avoid noisy contact with branches; scornful of eating no fish previous to a hunt, so there might be less odor for animals to detect—of eating, in fact, almost nothing on the day before, so the senses might be keener and the desire for game greater. Everywhere in the woods, he said, there is game fleeing before a hunter; so that for every animal the hunter sees, there are ten that see him.

  He talked with me often about Mary; for seemingly his eyes understood not only the forest signs, but also my heart and that which was near it. Each day he would tell how the pieces of blanket had been fastened together to make her dress; how her hair, because of catching on twigs at the carries, had been hacked close to her head with a hunting knife; how her worn-out shoes had been replaced by rawhide moccasins and leggins; how her face and hands had been scratched by branches; how she would not sit at her food with De Sabrevois, but wandered about with venison in her hand, examining Natanis and thrusting out her tongue at De Sabrevois when he ordered her to be still. These tales made me both sad and happy; I couldn’t hear them often enough.

  “The French captain has known the forest and cannot stay across the sea,” Natanis said. “He must come back. When the time arrives we can go together to see him, if my brother wishes.” This he often repeated, seeing that I did wish it.

  At the end of a week we had done what we could for Natanis, his side being healed enough to leave off the bandage. The cabin was finished, a roomy cabin with a fireplace and a chimney of sticks coated with mud, and the chinks between the logs stuffed with moss. The wind was west, sharp but pleasant, with a feel peculiar to our Northern woods in autumn: one that makes children squeal like colts and run aimlessly about, leaping from elation. The air was bright and clear, so that every leaf and pine needle on the mountain, almost, stood out sharp to our eyes. Since our work was done, my father said, we must go. Within ten minutes our few belongings were wrapped in our blankets and we sat in the canoe, my father in the stern, Hobomok in the bow, waiting for Natanis to make a bundle of six beaver skins and two otter skins.

  I had left him my musket; and my father had given him his kettle and bullet mold and our spare knitted shirts and stockings, and all our powder and ball except enough to get us home; also fish hooks and lines, as well as arrowheads and bowstrings, smoked venison, ducks’ breasts and sweetened bear fat.

  Natanis laid his bundle in the canoe, then reached out and touched my father and me on the arm. “I give these poor skins,” he said. “You have given me life and many riches. For me this is a good exchange, and I shall remember.” He pushed the canoe into the stream. “In the spring,” he added, “we shall talk together again in your house.”

  “Come in Muskoskikizoos, the moo
n in which we catch young seals,” my father said. “Thus you’ll escape mosquitoes and black flies. You can bring Natawammet and Woromquid to get the new muskets I promised them.”

  They shouted and waved as we slipped down the river in the bright sun. They looked small and lonely on the high bank with the vast expanse of dark forest and rolling mountains beyond them; and when the first bend in the river hid them from us I knew from the feeling of loss in my own heart that their memories of us would be fond and lasting.

  Through the bright morning we bent back and forth with Dead River Mountain clinging at our shoulders, lost it as we turned off at Bog Brook, and took trout at noon from the east pond on the twelve-mile carry.

  We camped that night at the mouth of the Carrabasset; and early the next morning, before the mist was off the river, we came to Norridgewock, where Manatqua gave us hot hominy.

  My father, eager to be gone, made short work of loading beaver and otter skins; and so precipitately was Manatqua hustled into the canoe that he lacked fresh pitch for his scalp-lock, and traveled with it all askew.

  So we came again to the settlements through the red and yellow flames of the maples, passing the houses built by Dr. Gardiner for those who settled on his lands, and the wharves at the mouth of the Cobosseecontee where Dr. Gardiner’s people take sturgeons in the spring of the year for shipment to England in hogsheads; and my father said we should come in the spring to eat sturgeon eggs, they being the most delicious of foods, as the Abenakis well know.

  Opposite Pownalborough, where Dr. Gardiner had given land to German settlers, good farmers but stubborn beyond belief, we met the smell of the sea from Merrymeeting Bay, and with it a black topsail schooner, running upstream.

  Seeing us, she rounded into the wind and dropped jib and anchor; so my father ran alongside. The name on her stern was Black Duck, New Haven.

  Four men stood at the rail. One was swarthy, chunky, blue-eyed and young, with tremendous broad shoulders, and wearing a bright tasseled cap like a stocking and a gay blanket coat belted at the waist with a sash, such as Canadians wear in winter.

  “Good day to you, Captain,” he said to my father. His eyes flicked to Manatqua, who was attempting to straighten his scalp-lock. “I see,” he added, “that scalps are barely holding their own this morning.”

  “Yes, sir,” my father said, “and from the indications there’ll be a falling off before night.”

  The swarthy young man nodded, widening his eyes like a dog that has caught sight of a cat. “Captain,” he asked, “could you spare me a little information?”

  My father considered, studying the young man and the schooner. “Why, yes, sir. I can spare some; and I’ll trade it for a little trip in your schooner, if it so happens you’re going back to sea again.”

  “Aha!” said the young man. “A trader! Well, I’ll trade if I can get good value. What way might you be going, Captain?”

  “I might be going to Arundel, seven leagues or so south of Falmouth.”

  “Hm! And would you be bargaining for the transport of your crew and cargo as well?”

  “I would.”

  “I think,” the young man said, “I should look at your wares. They’ll have to be good to pay for such a trip.”

  “I’ll give you a sample,” my father said. “Wolfe took Quebec!”

  If he expected to astonish his hearers he was disappointed, for the swarthy young man and his companions merely nodded.

  “You knew it!” my father cried. “I’ve stocked the wrong goods!”

  The young man seemed sympathetic. “Where’d you get your news, sir?”

  “On Dead River, sir, from a St. Francis Indian whose town was destroyed by Rogers’ Rangers.”

  “There’s information! Where the devil is Dead River?”

  “Will this information apply on my passage?” my father asked.

  The young man laughed, a brilliant laugh that lengthened his face oddly, giving him the appearance of slenderness, height, fairness, instead of breadth and shortness and swarthiness. “Tell me where Dr. Sylvester Gardiner lives, and I’ll carry you to Arundel for four otter skins.”

  “Hell,” my father said courteously, “I’d rather swim than pay four otter skins for such a trip. It’s worth no more than the information you seek. I’ll give you that for nothing. Gardiner’s holding lies on the west side of the river where the wharves run out at the mouth of Cobosseecontee stream. He’ll be in Boston at this time of year. From your masthead you can see Gardinerstown.”

  The young man seized the ratlines on the inside and went up them hand over hand, not moving his feet: as quick and agile as the monkeys that Spanish sailors carry. At the top he swung his leg over, and in a second was clinging to the mast, smiling down at us. “From here?” he asked, and looked upriver. He seemed to slip, caught himself, swung under the ratlines, and dropped to the deck as light as a squirrel, looking at us as though to say: “You couldn’t do that!” and I wouldn’t have sworn we could.

  “I’ll have a shot at it,” he said. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll take you to Arundel, and you can pay me what you think it’s worth.”

  An older man with a chin whisker made some sort of protest, in which I caught the word “dirty.”

  “We’ve been a month in the woods,” my father said quickly. “Tomorrow we’ll be cleaner than you are.”

  The young man paid no attention to my father, but rounded on the chin-whiskered man with a face suddenly dark as a blackamoor’s, and puffy, as though rage surged knobbily to his cheeks. His voice was startlingly shrill. “This schooner’s under charter to my employers! I take whom I please and go where I please. Hoist your jib and anchor and get under way!”

  He turned to my father again, his face lightening and lengthening extraordinarily. “What’s your name, sir, and where’ll I pick you up to-morrow when I drop down on the early tide?”

  “Steven Nason, sir; innkeeper and trader, of Arundel. We’ll lie off the southern tip of Swan Island.”

  The jib slid up and the schooner’s head payed off.

  “To whom am I indebted, sir?” my father called.

  The young man, gay in his white coat striped with blue on the sleeves and skirt, waved to us “Benedict Arnold of Norwich, Connecticut, sir, newly come from Quebec.” The schooner slipped off upriver as smoothly as her namesake.

  My father bent to his paddle, chuckling. “That boy’s a trader, Stevie. That was good trading you listened to, and your pa sort of out-traded him.”

  IX

  I HAVE often wished we could have left Natanis a day earlier or a day later, so that I might have escaped a store of grief at a far distant period; but it may be that by doing so we would have encountered other and greater evils than the Reverend Ezekiel Hook.

  There was an odd silence among the waiting Swan Islanders when we came down to the tip of the island and pushed through the guzzle; then Hobomok shouted that we had left Natawammet and Woromquid in a place of countless beavers, and that the sachem of the Norridgewocks was escorting us home. Thereupon there was a bedlam of whooping and firing of muskets, and the entire encampment rushed down the slope of the headland to welcome us. When Rabomis sought to take my father by the shoulders, he held her off, saying he would talk to nobody until the two of us had gone into the sweat house and freed ourselves of pitch and grime.

  The m’téoulin ordered squaws to heat stones for us; and he himself led us to his cabin. On the way we saw a white man in rusty black garb standing alone on the ridge, looking sourly at us as though our talk and laughter had something unrighteous about it. This man, Rabomis said, was an exhorter sent from Boston to talk to settlers who had no meeting houses, and to lead the Abenakis to follow the white man’s Great Spirit, if they did not already do so. That afternoon, she said, he had paddled over from Pownalborough and spoken to them. They held a council, she said, and now the m’téoulin, being an orator, would reply. Since she interpreted badly, she begged my father to interpret.

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nbsp; My father said he wanted nothing to do with it; and we went on with the m’téoulin, who brought with him a kettle full of water in which herbs were steeping. This we took into the sweat house, a small wigwam at the edge of the river. Two squaws put in hot stones; then left us clean moccasins and blankets, and carried away our clothes to be washed and our leather shirts to be scoured with sand.

  My father trickled the water on the stones, and a sweet-smelling steam arose, so that perspiration poured from us. In this stifling place we stayed fifteen minutes, after which we jumped in the icy-cold river, and came out feeling strong and elated: ready, my father said, to ride a bob-cat.

  We cut each other’s hair, and my father was scraping bristles from his chin when the m’téoulin came in to say the white man wished my father, in the name of his Great Spirit, to interpret the words of the council.

  I could see my father was reluctant; and if I had known what would come of it I would have gone back into the sweat house and stayed until the stones grew cold. But I could not know, nor could the m’téoulin with all his knowledge of magic; so we wrapped our blankets around us and went to the council house. The minister Hook eyed us disapprovingly, making me feel undressed, like a person driven from his home by a fire in the dead of night.

  Hook was thin and hunched, so that he looked like a heron waiting for a fish. The skin over his forehead was tight and glossy, as though it might easily burst. He said to my father, in a harsh voice, that he had told the red men, earlier in the day, how he had been sent by the great missionary society of Boston, not to get away their lands or goods, but to instruct them in worshipping the Great Spirit. There was only one religion, and unless they embraced it, they could not be happy. They had lived in errors and darkness all their lives, and he had come to save them. Other Abenakis were awaiting the decision of their older brothers on Swan Island, so if they had objections to the true religion he wished to hear them.