Not once had I talked to Daniel Long since that catastrophic day in January, mostly because I’d been bedridden and so sick (and, yes, humbled, humiliated, and intent on hiding) that I’d missed meeting and social gatherings. I hadn’t helped make up the party that saw off the three Weldses. Except for Gideon, none of the Winters had. Though I won the award for being the sickest, we’d all shared some degree of the cold and thought it best not to give our ailment to the pending pioneers. By the time I’d recovered, Daniel had departed to visit his relatives up north. He still hadn’t returned. I wasn’t sure if he even knew I was leaving.
Now I felt his absence, in the last minutes of hugs and kisses, tears and reminders. I would have liked to have said good-bye to him. To apologize. Things remained terribly undone between us, like an unfinished seam, with loose threads dangling everywhere.
Gid and I set out across the packed snow, our bells jingling through the gray air. How incongruous the cheerful music sounded. So at odds with our sadness, our shuddering breaths, our wept good-byes.
* * *
“I’m bored.”
Gideon touched the air with his whip. The sled lurched forward. He flashed me a warning glance. “Don’t say that. You’ll invite bad luck.”
Balancing on my lap, the dog licked my neck.
I liked our new pet. Her eyes, the prettiest girl eyes I’d ever seen, gazed at me worshipfully. I rewarded her adoration with a stroke down her back. She whined in pleasure. “Everyone should appreciate me as much as you do, Fancy.”
My brother snorted.
“So, Gid, tell me: Where are the gorges we need to circle? The avalanches we have to outpace? The peculiar species of bear that doesn’t sleep through the winter but preys year-round on unsuspecting travelers?”
“If we slide into a ditch, I’m blaming you.”
“That’s extremely unlikely.” On this first day, civilization still favored us, and though the roads we followed might have troubled our trip if this had been springtime, the year’s ample snowfall had filled the ruts. Plus, the snow wardens of New England clearly revered their jobs. They’d made recent use of their giant rollers to pack and grade the snow, not only along the main stretches but even under the newfangled covers we encountered over two of the bridges. In short, we moved at a spanking pace. “At this rate, we’ll make it to the Genesee Valley by nightfall.”
Gideon laughed. “Not quite.”
For a while, we slid along in companionable silence. The sky, the shade of pristine blue only a winter day can deliver, permitted a bold sun to cull diamonds out of the snow-carpeted fields. Icicles fringed hemlock boughs, and every so often a wind triggered a silent explosion of snow in a tree, spewing loose a weighty cloud of white from a top branch. The accumulation’s plunge caused the lower limbs’ snow to follow suit.
“How are you feeling?”
I half smiled at Gid’s formal tone. My entire family had performed a tiptoe dance around me for the last month and a half, exercising the kind of wariness one employed with the mad and dangerously unpredictable. But my favorite brother had been especially cautious. Perhaps he knew, better than the others, what that January day had cost me.
I didn’t want his sympathy. Straightening, I answered briskly, “Absolutely fine. Like a dandelion seed.”
“In this weather?”
“Yes. I’ve slipped away, and I’m soaring toward no-man’s-land.”
“Few-men’s-land.”
I nodded. “Bob and Ed probably have their cabin up by now. And of course there’s Rachel”—I gave him a sidelong glance—“the love of your life.”
His smile slipped. “Too bad it’s such a lonely love.” He shrugged. “She likes you better than me.”
“We’re singing chums.” I scratched Fancy behind the ears. Her tail swept my lap. “None of them even know I’m coming.” The family hadn’t advertised my leaving. Most likely, our parents had hoped I might change my mind.
The last encounter with Daniel Long, like an oft-told, terrible tale, replayed in my head. I cringed. There was no changing my mind. I couldn’t.
“A dandelion seed,” I sighed, running my thumbs over Fancy’s silky head. “Unfettered.” I wished. Oh, how I wished it were so.
“Beautifully free.”
I smiled slightly. He didn’t know it yet, but I was about to get even freer.
* * *
We happened upon a rude camp close to a trickle of a stream and decided to stop there for the night. A hovel slumped against a hill, the way a mouth without teeth caves into the head. The breeze combed snow from the roof into an airy curl, and a gray oilcloth flapped in the doorway.
The cabin was eerie.
But I refused to become Faint-Hearted Harriet. I grabbed the foot stove and followed Fancy inside. It took a moment for my snow-dazzled eyes to adjust to the dimness. A crumbling fireplace occupied a wall, and the lingering scent of burned wood suggested others had sojourned here recently.
Gideon arranged a handful of kindling on the hearth. “Peddlers probably use the place.” He peered around. “It’ll do.”
Making camp was like playing: Our supper of bread and molasses became a picnic, and the hut, without chinking or a decent door, might as well have been a snow fort. But my brother and I barely exchanged a word. As soon as we finished feeding and watering the oxen, we stretched out by the fire. Gid fell asleep immediately. I shivered under my blankets for a long time.
Middleton seemed many worlds away. Daniel, even farther.
* * *
When I awoke, I was alone, with not even the dog around to keep me company. The room, soft with dawn and silent, made me want to go back to sleep.
However, I had work to do. After counting out a minute of blissful heat, I threw off the blankets and opened the satchel I’d carried in the previous night to use as a pillow. I emptied its contents and listened carefully.
Nothing. Gideon must have gone to the stream.
I smiled, thinking about the shocker that would greet him upon his return.
First, the scissors.
* * *
Gideon was talking before he even pulled aside the oilcloth. “Come take a peek at these tracks on the bank with me, Harry.” Light, wind, snow, and brother entered the hut all at once. “Could be a wolf’s, though we never see them anymore back ho—” He screamed.
Oh, the look on his face.
I doubled over with laughter, and Fancy shot around me, panting, tail wagging, ready to join in on the fun. When I straightened to execute the jaunty bow I’d practiced, just one glimpse of my brother’s expression, how his eyes bulged as if ready to pop out of his head and how his mouth remained open in a silent howl of horror, toppled me into another spell of the whoops. “Gid, Gid, Gid,” I gasped through my laughter. Swiping at the tears on my cheeks, I managed, “You scream just like Grace does when she spots a—a—mouse!” I imitated his reaction and slapped my hands against my thighs and shook with more laughter.
He finally snapped his mouth shut. As soon as I’d quieted to a soft tee-heeing, he said curtly, “I scream just like a girl, and you look just like a boy. Good. God. You are seriously dicked in the nob.”
“Well, if folks saw me now, most would assume I was dicked somewhere.”
“Harry. That’s disgusting. And you’re…” He primly pursed his lips.
“A boy.”
“Insane.”
“Free!”
“Unhinged.” He waved a hand to indicate my person. “Fix this.”
“I don’t want to. Besides, my hair’s gone.”
“Your hair. Your pretty yellow hair,” he moaned. “I’d better take you back home.” He ran his hands over his face and gripped his darker (and now longer-than-mine) locks. “Mama’s going to kill me.”
A little uneasiness unfurled. I’d known he’d be stunned. I hadn’t expected him to be tragic. “I’m not going home.”
“How—where—when…” He thrust his hands toward my apparel and fluttered anot
her wave.
I proudly patted my front. “I made them when I was sick. The girls had to cover my chores. The house was empty. Not even Betsy suspected.” I spun around with my arms outstretched. “What do you think?”
“No boy would twirl like that,” he answered darkly.
I gazed down at myself in satisfaction. The coat of butternut-colored wool, short and snug, fit precisely over my perfectly tailored linen shirt. I’d bound my breasts, and a heavy tow-cloth vest hid any remaining hint of femininity.
But the pantaloons: They were the best part of my revolutionary regalia. They absolutely liberated my legs. I could climb a stone wall, leap across a stream, hang upside down from a tree, even, if given the chance, ride astride a horse, without experiencing the tiniest bit of encumbrance, the least threat to my modesty. Until now, I’d never realized how symbolic a woman’s clothing was: the skirt that twisted around the legs and slowed her down, the hampering, cramping style of her boots, the way fashion dictated just enough exposure of the arms and neck to leave the skin perpetually chilled. Women’s clothing was a punishment, a trap.
My new clothes emancipated me. Indeed, for the first time since that disastrous last afternoon with Daniel Long, I experienced a swell of hope. Maybe my future wouldn’t be entirely dismal after all.
Gideon pointed at my feet accusingly. “Those are mine.”
“They were. What do you care? They don’t fit you anymore.” I’d uncovered the boots in the woodshed and polished them clean. Shoes were hard to come by, but since Gid was the youngest boy, no one had inherited his outgrown boots.
But he did care. I could tell. He looked positively mulish, standing there with his arms akimbo. “How am I supposed to explain what happened to Harriet?”
“That’s the beauty of this situation, Gid. You don’t have to explain a thing. Not a single Welds is expecting your sister to arrive with you.” I shrugged and conceded, “Of course, they might recognize me.” Especially Rachel. But I could depend on my pal to keep quiet.
“Wouldn’t count on it,” he said flatly.
I grinned. “It’s a convincing disguise, isn’t it?”
“Frighteningly. Still, it won’t work at the Hubers’.”
I stared at him blankly. “The who?”
“The Hubers. Promised Mama we’d stop in Londonbury to pay her old pal a visit. Sally Huber’s a great one for letter writing. You can bet she’ll mention Gid and the Mystery Boy in her next one.”
I shrugged. “So I’ll change back to a girl for the visit.”
“Ah. And grow out your hair?”
I tackled my scalp with some furious scratching. “Lice. Had to chop it.”
He grimaced. “Lovely.” After a moment, he said, “I don’t know how I’ll explain this to the Weldses—my accompanying a perfect stranger into the wilderness.”
“I’ll be an orphan you discovered, stranded by the road after my poor family was beset by bandits.”
He smiled humorlessly. “Oh, sure: because with that beaming face of yours and that chipper prance, you definitely strike a person as a deeply grieving orphan. Please. Not even Ed would fall for that one.”
I snickered. He had a point. I didn’t want to have to act depressed, especially when, after weeks and weeks of being out of sorts, at times quite desperately sad, I was finally feeling happy. “Then I’m a foundling, currently on the run, having escaped my indentured apprenticeship to an evil silversmith with a brutally heavy hand. You rescued me from homelessness and certain starvation. Now I’m your loyal servant.”
He didn’t comment on my story, just shook his head. Finally, but very slowly, as if residual shock were hindering his speech, he said, “I hardly recognize you. You look like a stranger. This isn’t right, Harry.”
I bit my lip. Gid was usually easy to bully. I crouched to pet Fancy and, after a moment of quick thinking, suggested mildly, “You know, this situation might actually work better for us. First off, I can help in ways I couldn’t as a girl: clearing, building, and planting right alongside you.”
“I need someone cooking, washing, and cleaning.”
“I can do that, too. And you won’t have to worry about me so much on this trip. A woman you’d need to protect. But who’s going to bother a gawky boy? If a storm threatens and we’re forced to seek tavern accommodations, no one will question if we’re really brother and sister. Let’s be honest here, Gid: I can’t imagine a more brotherly brother than you, but we don’t share blood, and we certainly don’t look a thing alike. Instead of stirring doubt and difficult questions, we’ll just be two boys set on adventure. In fact, if you decide to linger in the barroom to gather news on roads and conditions, I won’t even have to wait in the room for you, worried some seedy blackguard is going to break in and get bold with me. I can just join you.” And perhaps try my hand at faro. And perhaps even sample a bit of the gin my parents had always forbidden me to try.
He gave me a dry look. “You don’t have whiskers, Harry. I doubt the tavern keeper will permit you to get drunk.” He rubbed the fuzz on his chin.
“Then I’ll just sit there quietly and listen, like a good boy.”
“A scrawny bean of a boy. You look about thirteen.”
“See! You can finally be older than me.” It had always perturbed Gid that I surpassed him in age by a month. Granted, I’d used my elder’s status our entire lives to lay first claim to all sorts of privileges.
His face brightened. “So you’ll listen and obey? You’ll act as befits a young subordinate? You’ll mind my rules and orders?”
“Don’t get carried away.”
He smiled. “Maybe it could work. What should I call you?”
I frowned. My nickname would suffice, since Harry already tagged plenty of males, but its connection to my true self would surely stir even the dull Welds brothers’ suspicions. I shrugged. “You decide.”
“Freddy.”
“Freddy?” I hated that name. “Can we make it Frederick?”
“Too much of a mouthful. Freddy works. But for how long?”
“However long we like.”
“I won’t agree to that. What if Mama and Papa travel to visit us or we want to return to Middleton to see them? I’ll give this six months.”
“Eight. Then I can help with the first harvest, if we have one.”
“Fine. Eight months before you’re Harry again.”
“You might miss Frederick.”
“Freddy,” he corrected with a frown. “Doubtful. The little gudgeon’s irritating me already.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When I’d quipped I was bored at the beginning of our journey, Gid had warned me I was tempting trouble. Perhaps he was right, because after leaving the scanty protection of the roadside hovel, we shared a whole day with a contrary wind that seemed intent on shoving us back to Middleton, then endured a subsequent day of heavy snow. We hadn’t broached the wilderness yet, but even with the benefit of packed roads, the weather slowed our progress.
Near Londonbury I forced a further delay, requiring some time to scramble out of the new attire and struggle into the old. I felt the loss of the boys’ clothes immediately. A girl’s dress invited in the chill. Trousers simply didn’t.
Mama had assured my brother that the Hubers’ address would be easy to find, not only by its proximity to town, the biggest homestead on the first south-side road off the main thoroughfare, but also by its features.
“What are we supposed to be looking for?” I asked, pulling the hood of my cape more securely over my head.
“A spacious breezeway”—Gid squinted through the snow—“and an enormous stone icehouse.”
When we finally reached the place that matched our mother’s description and, sleigh bells ringing, swept into the yard, twilight was blurring the falling snow. The house, outbuildings, and scattering of trees cast murky shadows across the seamless white.
The door cracked, then opened wider. A stout woman, holding her shawl together at her throat,
appeared.
Gid jumped out of the sleigh. He introduced us, reached into his coat, and presented the letter Mama had asked him to pass along.
Smiling, Mrs. Huber pressed it to her bosom. “Please, come in.”
When my eyes adjusted to the dim interior, I glanced around with interest. The Hubers’ house was generously sized, but its openness spread the fire’s warmth thin. Indeed, frost trimmed the door and furred the glass of the single-paned window.
“Will this winter never end?” Mrs. Huber dusted flakes off her dark shawl and gazed at us warmly. “Dear Margaret’s beloved Harriet and Gideon. I’ve heard so much about you—knew about the pioneering, too, just not the precise schedule—and now you’re here and such a coincidence. Only this afternoon I was determined to write your mother a letter, then scolded myself for leaving the stone well in the borning room. Ink froze solid. Well, the loft’s toasty, anyway, and you can spend the night up there.” When we mumbled about not wanting to put anyone out, she exclaimed, “Heavens, of course it’s no bother. Wouldn’t think of sending you off without a good night’s rest and a full stomach. You’ll have plenty of rough sleeping and eating in the coming weeks. We can offer you respite for at least one evening.” She turned. “Come, girls.” She introduced her red-haired daughters, Fran and Kate, younger than me but older than Betsy, and clucked over an absent Sarah, “lately married and now living in your neck of the woods, close to Middleton.” Then, like one saving the best for last, she presented her eldest—“Here’s my Lance”—and, with a meaningful look: “Seventeen years old. Just your age, Harriet.”
The son, shortish like his sisters but with hair more auburn than orange, greeted us cheerfully and gave me a furtive scan.
I automatically returned the look.
Nice but no Daniel Long.
I blinked. The unbidden thought disturbed me. I was supposed to be putting Mr. Long out of mind, not clinging to him like a hoarded treasure.
Lance grinned approvingly at me. After reaching for his coat, he gave my brother a nod. “I can help you put up the cattle.”
The Beloved Wild Page 10