She committed the patterns to memory and draped the quilt over the bench as she had seen it the night Uncle Jacob went missing. On the day of his burial, she had found it on the ground and had assumed she had knocked it down in her haste, but gazing at it now, she wondered if the runaway named Sam had done so. Perhaps her father was right and he had let the horse lead him there before continuing north. Perhaps her father was right about Sam in other matters.
Dorothea shook off the thought and focused on the five unusual blocks Uncle Jacob had sketched. The star in the center of the quilt, with its longest point directed to the upper left corner, had seemed off-kilter and strange to her before, but now that she understood the quilt’s true purpose, the design resembled a compass rose pointing to the northwest. Since the Four Brothers were depicted in the upper left corner of the outermost border of Delectable Mountains blocks, and since the real mountains lay northwest of the farm, Dorothea surmised that the fugitives were supposed to bear in that direction.
She studied the quilt one last time and left it behind in the sugar camp, regretting the necessity. She would have liked to bring it along in case she had neglected an important detail in the patterns, but she could not afford to be seen using the quilt as a map. Uncle Jacob’s compass was a reassuring weight in her pocket as she made her way through the maple grove, her footsteps muffled by the thin layer of snow covering the fallen leaves. Her father had insisted she take the compass, though she had argued she probably would not need one, since the fugitives did not and had to be able to follow the quilt regardless. Now she was glad he had insisted.
At the last moment her father had also urged her to travel on horseback rather than walk. Mr. Wright had told them stations were ideally no more than ten miles apart, a long day’s walk even in fair weather. Dorothea had been tempted, but Uncle Jacob would have assumed the runaways would travel on foot. The landmarks might be so subtle that she would miss them if she rode. So she packed food and dry stockings in her coat pockets, hoped the stationmaster would allow her to spend the night by his fire, and prayed the journey would not be long.
An old worm fence marked the boundary between Uncle Jacob’s land and his neighbor’s, zigzagging off in both directions and disappearing into the trees. Dorothea lifted her skirts and climbed over it, glancing up through the bare-limbed trees for the position of the sky to be sure she still headed northwest. She considered checking the compass when, with a sudden flash of insight, she halted and peered over her shoulder at the fence. It resembled a crooked ladder on its side, or the quilt block she had inadvertently encouraged her uncle to redraft.
She hesitated, uncertain. The fence did seem to run almost due north, the logical direction for a runaway slave to go, but if she were mistaken, she could find herself wandering far from the correct route until nightfall with no shelter from the cold. “Any wrong choice will have the same consequences,” she said aloud. The air seemed colder when she stood still, so she approached the fence and rested her hand upon it. She had to keep moving; she had to choose.
The crooked ladder block lay in the ring of blocks encircling the central compass rose. If the center indicated the beginning of the route, the crooked ladder clue, which could indeed depict a worm fence, would be the second clue, the first landmark.
Lacking any reason to choose otherwise and unable to conceive of anything that would resemble Uncle Jacob’s sketch more than the fence, Dorothea decided to follow it north. She quickly dismissed the troubling thought that the fence snaked off to the south as well as to the north, and that even if she had found the right landmark, she might be traveling in the wrong direction.
Twenty minutes later, she emerged from the maple grove at the bottom of a low slope that rose to the west. She followed the fence to the top, from where she looked out over acres of old cornstalks sticking up through the snow. A house, barn, and three smaller outbuildings sat at the far edge of the fields. Dorothea searched her memory for the name of the family. “Wheeler,” she murmured. They had eleven children and had sent only the youngest boys to her school. She was not sure how they would feel about her trespassing on their land, or what excuse she might invent for her presence there.
Walking would be easier on the open ground on the Wheelers’ side of the fence, but she quickly climbed back to the eastern side and concealed herself in the woods. She could still glimpse the fence through the tree trunks as she made her way north, but she feared she might miss the next landmark entirely. The next concentric square of Delectable Mountains blocks contained a patch that resembled a narrow braid stretching from left to right on a slight angle. She assumed that was the next block pattern to interpret since it followed the sequence moving outward from the center.
Her dress caught on a tree branch; she tried to pull free but stopped at the sound of fabric tearing. She stopped to untangle herself, wishing Uncle Jacob had been more explicit despite the need for secrecy. It was a wonder Uncle Jacob’s runaways had not given up and returned to the sugar camp for better directions.
She continued, stumbling through the underbrush with the worm fence six paces to her left. She passed the Wheelers’ house and barn. In the distance, she heard a dog bark, but she did not see it nor any sign of the home’s inhabitants, save a thin trace of smoke curling from the chimney.
The corner post of the fence appeared. Dorothea paused to catch her breath, regarding it with misgivings. The fence continued west along the road directly in front of the Wheeler farm. Anyone walking alongside it could easily be spotted from the house or barn.
Uncle Jacob surely would not have sent the runaways so close to an unknown household. She considered, for a moment, that the Wheeler farm might be the next station, but she could not be more than two miles from the sugar camp and had three clues yet to follow. She held perfectly still and listened for the sound of horses on the road, but heard only the wind in the trees. Reassured of her solitude, she made her way stealthily through the woods, drawing closer to the corner fence post. Suddenly she tripped over a low depression in the ground; naked branches scratched at her face as she stumbled and struck her shoulder on the rough trunk of an oak. Instinctively she pressed her lips together to hold back a cry of pain. She quickly regained her footing but had to pause to collect herself. Her shoulder ached. She rubbed it with a mittened hand and searched the ground for the obstruction. It was not a hole, as she had assumed, but a narrow patch where the undergrowth had been worn away to bare earth.
With the tip of her boot she cleared away fallen leaves from one end of the patch. When she found more worn ground, she eagerly looked up and detected an indistinct path winding to the northeast for a few yards before it disappeared into the forest. It was an old Indian trail, abandoned for decades—or perhaps not entirely abandoned. The path did lie along the same angle as the next block in the Sugar Camp Quilt, and the braid appearance could be meant to evoke an association with Indians.
Dorothea concealed the part of the path she had uncovered and set off to the northeast. The trail that had seemed all but invisible until she knew what to look for widened slightly a quarter mile east of the Wheeler farm, wide enough for a horse and rider. Years ago, Dorothea and Jonathan had explored old Indian trails that crossed Thrift Farm, and they had followed one all the way from Widow’s Pining to the foothills of the Appalachians at the southern end of the Elm Creek Valley. Such trails laced the valley; European settlers had widened some into roads, but most remained overgrown and forgotten. Pennsylvania remained difficult to traverse despite the rise of towns such as Creek’s Crossing. Most easterners traveling to points west still preferred the water routes to the south along the Maryland and Virginia border rather than the national roads through Pennsylvania’s mountains. Mr. Wright had said that the rugged terrain of the Elm Creek Valley had compelled weary fugitives to find easier routes to the north, but as slavecatchers increased their patrols along the more well-traveled crossings, more runaways would be forced into their valley.
The
sun rose higher in the sky as Dorothea followed the Indian trail through the woods. It was past its peak when she finally had to stop to rest and eat. Her shoulder still hurt where she had slammed it against the tree; her hands were cold, but not numb. Her feet were cold inside the work boots she had borrowed from her mother, but they were dry, and the three pairs of socks she wore would hold off frostbite.
Dorothea saved half of the bread, cheese, and meat for later and sated her thirst with a handful of snow. She shivered from the cold but took another mouthful before pulling her muffler over her mouth and nose and continuing on.
Another hour passed, or so Dorothea guessed. She had meant to note how long the journey took, but the passage of time had become a blur of weariness and cold and the glare of sunlight on snow. Her feet ached in the overlarge boots; despite the three pairs of socks, a blister had formed on her left heel, and cold had crept into her bones. Her hand, nose, and feet steadily grew colder until they became numb. She longed to stop somewhere to warm herself, but the woods surrounded her. There was no place to go, and she could not be certain that home was closer than her destination.
Runaways could not turn back. She pressed on.
She should have taken the horse, she thought as she floundered through a thick patch of underbrush. Once she lost the trail, but found it again. The next block in the sequence was the one that resembled the curves of the Fool’s Puzzle block. The Indian trail must eventually cross another path, perhaps a circuitous or hilly road. She shook off the anxieties that had been growing ever since she left the familiarity of the worm fence. She told herself she would recognize the next landmark when she saw it.
Another hour passed, or perhaps more. She stopped to rest on a fallen tree, to remove her boots and rub feeling back into her toes. The temperature had steadily dropped as the sun descended in the sky. It could be no more than midafternoon, but she was as fatigued as if she had walked from dawn until sunset. Wave after wave of weariness overcame her as she sat rubbing and pinching her feet. They tingled a bit and she could still move her toes, but she yawned as she tried to work sensation back into them, great, enormous yawns. Her hands moved ever slower.
She woke with a jolt as her hip struck the ground. Dazed, for a moment she did not understand what had happened. When she did she yanked on her stockings and boots and laced them, shivering from fear as much as from cold. She had dozed off and fallen from her seat on the log. If she had not, she might have slept until she froze to death.
Fright sped her footsteps. The trail grew more difficult to discern as the forest thinned and shadows stretched out longer and longer. The trees grew more sparse, the path all but invisible. Disbelieving, she came to a halt as the trail ended. She must have missed the road. The Indian trail surely would have crossed it. She turned slowly in a circle, heart sinking. She would have to retrace her steps and look more carefully. But how far off the route had she wandered? How many needless miles and hours had she added to her journey?
Fighting despair, she closed her eyes and whispered a prayer for courage. Uncle Jacob expected fugitive slaves to make this journey, men and women and even children who had not that morning left the comfort of their home and family, who could not expect a cordial welcome at any farm in the valley. Unless her uncle was a fool, he had known that the people following the symbols in his quilt would be tired, hungry, frightened—and possibly pursued. He would not have made the quilt so difficult to follow. Unless she believed her uncle to be a fool, she would have to trust the message he had left behind.
With her eyes closed, she heard the wind blow through the trees. The few dried leaves still clinging to the trees rustled. Bare boughs squeaked as they scraped against each other. Behind it all, she heard another sound: a gentle, almost musical burbling.
Her eyes flew open and she hurried toward the sound. She recognized it now: the trickling of water. The curving road she sought was a stream, shallow and rocky, nearly frozen over.
She looked down upon it from the snowy bank, laughing aloud from relief even as tears sprang to her eyes. She had found it, she was sure of it, but this was only the third of four landmarks. She could not endure another walk as long as the Indian trail to reach the fourth.
She took a deep breath and gave only one quick, worried glance to the sun nearly touching the horizon. The creek flowed to the east, but instead of following the current, she chose west and hurried on.
She should have started out from home earlier. She should have taken the horse. She should have let her father go instead. Her feet slipped on snow-covered pebbles as she hurried to beat the sunset. The last symbol in the quilt, a square in the upper left corner between the last ring of Delectable Mountains blocks and the saw-tooth border, was the most cryptic of all. While piecing it, she had noted the similarities to the Spiderweb block, with its eight slender triangles meeting at a point in the center, but the bases of the triangles were made of narrow rectangles. Surely she could not be looking for something as transient as a spiderweb.
Racing the fading light, she reached the origin of the stream, a broad, fast-flowing creek—not Elm Creek, she was sure, but one that ran from the northwest between cultivated fields. On the other side of the creek was a road, and beyond that, a banked barn and farmhouse. Her hopes rose, and she forgot for a moment the cold and the dull ache of her hands and feet. Though she might not reach the end of her journey before nightfall, she would not freeze to death. Unlike the fugitives for whom the Sugar Camp Quilt had been created, she could seek shelter at one of the farmhouses.
Newly energized, she quickened her pace. Scattered houses appeared more frequently until she was sure she had reached the outskirts of a town. A wagon passed on the road on the opposite shore, but if the driver regarded her curiously, he could not surely consider her behavior suspicious.
Then, suddenly, the sound of the creek altered. She rounded a bend and gasped. Another wagon and a man on foot passed on the road, but she barely noticed them.
Up ahead, turning steadily in the fading light, was the water wheel of a mill. Just beyond it were a bridge and the gray-board buildings of a town.
Relief flooded her. In moments she had reached the road and hastened across the bridge. The sun was nearly gone by the time she pounded on the door of the millhouse, heedless of any passersby who might wonder at her urgency.
The door opened, and a woman with piercing eyes and streaks of white in her dark hair regarded her with concern. “What is it, my dear?”
The moment had come and Dorothea knew not what to say. “I—I’m Jacob Kuehner’s niece.”
The woman did not hesitate. “Come in. Come in at once and warm yourself.”
Muffling a sob, Dorothea stumbled inside.
THE WOMAN SHUT the door and guided Dorothea to a seat by the fire. Dorothea fumbled with her wraps, her eyes tearing from the sudden warmth and light. Her hands were stiff and useless. The woman swiftly removed Dorothea’s muffler and coat, then knelt to remove her boots and stockings. Dorothea began to shiver, shaking so uncontrollably that she could not have spoken even if she could have summoned enough strength for words. Within moments the woman placed a cup of hot tea in her hands, and, once assured Dorothea was thoroughly cold but not frostbitten, began to scold her.
“I cannot imagine what your uncle was thinking, sending you out so late and in such cold,” she said, using a long-handled hook to pull the iron arm of the kettle crane out of the fireplace.
“He didn’t send me.” Dorothea drank deeply of the tea, her shaking hands rattling the cup against her teeth. “He is dead.”
“I see.” The woman stirred the kettle, tasted its contents, and swung the arm back into the fireplace. The aroma of beef stew made Dorothea’s head swim and mouth water. “The last passenger told us so, but I had hoped he was mistaken.”
Passenger. “You mean Sam. He did come here.”
“Yes, riding your uncle’s horse. She’s in our barn.” The woman set out plates and spoons on a wooden table
in the center of the room. “You will ride her home, of course, but not tonight. You’ll spend the night here.”
“Thank you.” Dorothea glanced around the large room for a sign of the runaway, but her hostess was not that careless. “Is Sam still here?”
“He continued on north the day after he arrived.” The woman gave her a searching look. “We had snow that day. He should have remained with us until the storm passed, but he was terrified to have northerners as well as slavecatchers pursue him. He feared he would be blamed for your uncle’s death.”
Dorothea thought of her father’s suspicions. “Very few know Sam was present when my uncle died. Only one voiced any concern.”
“You will have to set that one straight, then. Sam had nothing to do with it.”
“Did he tell you what happened?”
“Sounds like an apoplexy, the way Sam described it. He was hidden in the wagon beneath a tarpaulin when the wagon lurched and left the road. Sam peeked out and saw your uncle slumped over in the wagon seat, still holding the reins. He drove the wagon right off the path and into a river—some tributary of the Juniata, I suppose.”
“It was Elm Creek,” said Dorothea softly, picturing the scene. Uncle Jacob must not have died instantly after all. She wondered if he had lived long enough to realize what was happening to him.
“That horse of his is a capable creature. She didn’t buck or panic when the wagon overturned, but waited patiently for someone to unhitch her.” The woman set a loaf of bread and a ball of butter on the table. “Your uncle wasn’t breathing, nor did his heart beat. Sam spied a cabin and considered asking for help there, but instead he took the horse and gave it its lead home.”
“He was wise not to knock on the door of that cabin. The man within would have turned him over to the next band of slavecatchers to pass through the valley.”
Elm Creek Quilts [07] The Sugar Camp Quilt Page 16