“Ah.” So I had the timing right. “Let me see to the boys. I’m as healthy as a horse and no use to you here.” I didn’t know much about cutting down trees. Besides, I preferred taking my chances with the brothers recognizing me than just sitting around and waiting. How boring. “I hardly ever get sick. I’ll be fine. Promise.”
“Stupid. You were sick, a couple of months ago, and exactly like the brothers. No, I’d better go, but I’ll be back by suppertime.” He drummed up a smile. “Make me something tasty to celebrate my return, and keep an eye on the cattle.”
In twenty minutes he was gone, an onion for toasting and some mint for tea in his possession.
After eating, I collected browse for the oxen, played fetch with Fancy, and organized the provisions. When I ran out of things to do, I sat against a tree. Fancy rested her head on my leg and fell asleep.
The woods seemed to curl up closer to me as soon as I stilled. Birds resumed their twittering, and the bare branches cracked against one another. Soft crunching, splashing, rasping, and rustling intermittently joined the birds’ bolder racket. It was the low rustling that urged me to my feet. I glanced around nervously, imagining all kinds of wild creatures. Hungry, toothy, venomous creatures.
I spotted Gid’s felling ax beside our branchy shelter and went over to grab it, thinking it wouldn’t hurt to keep a weapon handy. The sharp blade was square, lipped, and heavy-polled, and it glinted in the dappled sunlight. I gave the ax an experimental swing and liked the powerful feel of it. I swung again, wider this time, and Fancy barked and slunk into our lean-to. “Come back, dog,” I laughed. “I won’t hurt you.”
I perched the ax on my shoulder and swaggered to the stream and back, enjoying the picture I imagined I made: a strapping young man with his favorite tool. I’d like to see a dangerous animal dare to cross me! I strutted some more, and the forest quieted, the only sounds now coming from the quiet munching of the oxen, the trickling stream, and my stomping boots.
The camp, with its proximity to both water and the trail that would become our road, was a good location for a house. Gid probably hadn’t settled on a precise spot to build the cabin, but most if not all of these trees would have to go. I gazed up at one pretty specimen: a youngish hickory, its bark shaggily lining the trunk. Then, stepping away from it, I experimentally swung the ax again. Chopping down a tree couldn’t be that hard.
Shielding my eyes, I stared at the tree’s canopy. How far up it went. I smiled, envisioning Gid returning and blinking in amazement at the clearing I’d managed in his absence. Granted, I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to hitch the oxen to the trunks to drag them out of the way, but at least some trees could be felled. That would surely be a good start. I eyed the tree once more, shuffled my feet shoulder-length apart, and did a little experimental swinging without making impact, just to gauge my distance from the tree and get a sense of the potential in my stroke. Then I shuffled closer and, swinging with all my might, drove the blade, at an angle, straight into the trunk.
Where it got stuck.
With both hands, I pulled on the end of the handle. The blade didn’t even wiggle in its berth. I slid my hands all the way up to the base of the blade and pulled again. Nothing. Finally, I planted my boots on the trunk and yanked. The blade came free so suddenly, I fell to the ground, hard on my back, the ax still in my grasp and, mercifully, not embedded in any part of my body. Arms outstretched over my head, fingers clinging to the handle, I remained on the ground for a moment, alarmed and panting.
This position gave me a good view of the tree’s inner branches. With a sinking heart, I watched a robin flutter into the air from a top bough and a squirrel leap from one limb to another. Maybe this was the reason that February was usually the month for felling trees: Fewer animals had started their spring nesting. How many small creatures’ homes were Gid and I likely to destroy in the process of clearing for the cabin, road, and field?
Well, the damage was done. I couldn’t leave a tree spliced. Feeling like a bird killer, queasy with regret, and still trembling with nerves, I scrambled to my feet and ordered my hands to stop shaking. After taking a deep breath and situating myself by the hickory, I swung again and again, until I finished the notch. I stepped back to examine it. Cleaved a third of the way into the trunk, the cut didn’t look half bad.
I lowered the ax and rolled my shoulders, then went to the other side to start hacking from the opposite direction. This back notch went easier, and though the exertion made me ache, a deep satisfaction welled inside me. I, Freddy the Foundling Apprentice, formerly Harriet Submit Winter, could handle any hardship. Blizzard travel? Pff. Raging Genesee River? Not a problem. Capable of taming the wilderness? Just watch me.
I gazed, gloating, at my young hickory, took a final swipe at it with the ax, kept an eye on the canopy, saw when the tree began to waver and keel, and, as nonchalant as you please, strode out of its way, like any expert tree feller would. Simple pimple in the dimple.
This was why I couldn’t understand, in my final moment of awareness—immediately after something monstrously large crashed through and splintered boughs overhead and just before this terrible something made contact with my brow and knocked me senseless—how a tree going that way could possibly have managed to come this way to hammer me straight to the ground.
PART THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Daniel Long explained when I regained consciousness.
Sitting cross-legged beside my supine body, he said, “They call it a widow-maker: a dead bough the felled tree will strike loose, from itself or its neighbor, in the process of toppling to the ground. Bad luck, but you’re alive, and you did a decent job on the hickory. Sore?”
I stared, dumbfounded by his presence, and belatedly nodded. The movement made me wince. My aching head was pillowed on something woolly, soft, and familiar. It was his coat. I blinked up at his broad, straight frame and, despite the pain in my crown, experienced a sudden and excessive swell of pleasure, an avalanche sensation, though hot rather than cold. As I visually inhaled the dear, chiseled face with those dear, gray eyes, laughing eyes, even when his mouth stayed stern, I sighed heavily. Was it a surrendering sigh? Perhaps. But I didn’t feel defeated. My voice was husky when I asked, “How did you find me?”
“After Skunk’s Misery? I backtracked along the trail, then returned to the tavern to ask a couple of questions—learned something there I hadn’t bargained for.” He gazed at me intently, then abruptly shifted his attention to Fancy, who’d settled on his lap. He patted her absently, as if deliberating something. Finally he plucked a stick off the ground, tossed it, watched the dog leap after it, and continued matter-of-factly, “Once I knew for sure you’d been there, I decided the simplest recourse was to get Gideon’s new address. An agent at the Holland Land Company shared his parcel’s location. I headed north. The agent’s instructions put me in the vicinity of a neat farm—owned by friends of yours, I learned. They helped. Mr. Standen was happy to direct me to the trail for the last stretch, once Rachel Welds verified my identity and he could be certain I wasn’t about to force you to resume your apprenticeship. Your name is Freddy, and I’m an evil silversmith?”
“Sorry.” I bit my lip.
“At least it’s interesting.”
I tried to sit up, but as soon as I lifted my aching head off the coat, a wave of dizziness assailed me.
He slipped a hand under my neck and eased me back to the ground. “Not yet. You’ve got a regular goose egg growing out of that cropped hair.”
I dabbed at my tangled fringe. What must he think of me, a girl going around like a boy, making up names and stories? Blushing but without much means to hide my embarrassment, I averted my eyes and gazed instead at the canopy. Was this where I’d chopped down my tree? I couldn’t tell; the branches still so thickly knitted the sky. One downed tree hadn’t made a difference, not a bit of difference after all.
So Daniel Long had found me, and I knew precisely how. But why? Wh
y did he find me? Why did he come looking for me? I blurted it: “Why did you come?”
“Two reasons.” He’d folded his hands and rested them on his crossed legs. Head bowed, eyes lowered, he looked like a man praying. “Not long after you and Gideon left, your mother received a letter. Sally Huber of Londonbury wrote to express her pleasure in meeting your mama’s fine-looking children”—he gave me a lopsided smile—“and of course to express her condolences over the unfortunate state of your appearance. Your mother was flabbergasted. A case of head lice so severe, nothing would do but to chop off all of that beautiful golden hair? And how had the bugs beset her darling girl—in the winter, no less? What troubling environments had Gideon dragged her precious daughter into? Seedy inns, unsavory taverns? As you can imagine, astonishment became consternation. She was in a tizzy. When your mother shared her concerns with me, I offered to come here and look into the situation.”
Oh.
It was as if the terrible widow-maker bough had hit me a second time. I was that flattened. If I hadn’t been already on the ground, I would have toppled for certain. When I recovered sufficiently, in a voice that (strive though I did to control it) was filled with too much choke and quaver to be called colorless, I said, “Well. That was generous of you. Remarkably generous. Daniel Long, the best neighbor ever, leaving his prosperous farm right when he ought to be storing up firewood and splitting fence rails and making his sugaring buckets and—”
He frowned. “My cousin can handle the farm easily enough for a few weeks.”
As if he hadn’t spoken, I went on, gasping, a little wildly: “—and dropping everything to do the neighborly thing and track down the irascible daughter of the Winters. I can’t imagine why Mama didn’t send Matthew or Luke, especially Matthew, since she could have killed two birds with a single stone, learning what happened to me while keeping Matt from the gaming tables.”
“I offered to come here,” he repeated, now scowling. “Besides, Matthew’s hardly around the farm anymore. He’s working for Mr. Goodrich at the mill.”
I was brought up short by this. “Paying back Papa?”
“And courting Miss Goodrich.”
“Lydia Goodrich?”
“That’s the one.”
I scanned his face, looking for clues, afraid to find them. Tentatively: “And how does that make you feel?”
“Happy for them.” He shrugged. “Glad she found a deserving beau. Hopeful for their future.” Gently, he took hold of my hand. I’d clenched it against the ground, and he very carefully loosened my fist with his thumb.
I let him. And I stopped breathing again.
“I said there were two reasons, Harriet. The second one…” He shook his head. “That last time we saw each other, I—I behaved poorly.”
“You did?”
He smiled ruefully. “I guess we both did. But I had no right, even jokingly, to lecture you, especially when you were already lashing yourself, and I should have known better than to mind what you were saying, how you…”
Rejected me.
I briefly closed my eyes, a pain in my heart joining the pain in my head. “I didn’t mean what I said. I never meant it.”
He nodded once and went on gruffly: “I shouldn’t have taken it so personally. I shouldn’t have retaliated. And I definitely should have stopped smarting long before you left. But I couldn’t help but believe that perhaps you did mean it.” He pressed my hand between his wide palms and studied the effect. It looked like he’d found a way to make me part of his praying. “I would have come after you, whether your mother wanted me to or not, even if it was just to see you again.”
I inhaled quickly. “You would have?”
“Yes. I hated the way we’d left things. Your departure sickened me. It felt so final. I dreaded you’d grown to loathe me. And when I discovered you probably purposely avoided me in Batavia, I almost gave up and went home.” He stopped and cleared his throat. “But when I returned to the inn, I found this.”
He reached into his shirt pocket, took out the sugaring spout he’d carved for me more than a year ago, and placed it on my palm.
I brought it to my heart. “My spile.”
His mouth came up in a corner. “Expected you to toss it when you saw how I’d teased you with the initials.”
“Never. This is my good-luck charm.”
His eyes flashed, and he said fiercely, “I’m glad. When I found it and realized you’d been carrying it with you, I thought maybe…” His face turned wistful. “Our situation hasn’t been easy for you. You would have liked me better if we’d met later—at a strawberry festival or the Independence Day ball. The fact is I can’t remember a time when we didn’t know each other. For me, especially in these last few years, that familiarity’s been a gift, in the way a fiery sunset or a mighty storm is. The sun always sets, and storms are nothing new, but they seem extraordinary whenever they happen. That’s what you’ve been for me, every time I see you.”
Heavens. I closed my mouth. After a moment, I asked, “It is?”
“Couldn’t you tell?” He was flushed, his expression, interestingly, suddenly more irritated than embarrassed or enamored. “It was different for you. I think our proximity made me seem dreadful: a tepid, tired sort of fate.” I shook my head, but he overrode me with a resigned nod. “Your family, maybe the entire town, knew I wanted you and hoped to make you my wife. I’m not much of an actor, and they could tell, easily enough, which way the wind blew. But I wish they had kept this to themselves. I’m sure their expectations annoyed you to no end. It didn’t help that I always came across as kind, capable Mr. Long, the boring, old farmer next door, even though I’m not even as old as Matthew, not even much older than you, Harriet. I’m not. Not at all.”
His disgruntlement made him look so like a boy, I couldn’t help but laugh.
He gave me an abashed smile and turned his eyes to the branches overhead. The sky wore its peculiar drenched look, when the slipping sun, like an overfull cup, spilled light lavishly. He blew a sigh. “I made a muck of things, being perhaps a little too capable and helpful and”—he winced—“prosy and brotherly, confirming what you already thought of me.”
“Don’t say that.” I gripped the hand gently holding mine. “I—I never thought of you as a brother.”
“Good,” he exhaled. “Because I definitely never thought of you as a sister—just as someone who never fails to amaze me. You’re skilled and learned and honest and, well, very funny.”
I raised an eyebrow. “What about pretty?”
He shrugged, like looks were beside the point, but conceded, “Pretty, too.”
“As pretty as Miss Goodrich?”
His mouth quirked. “Did my playing the eligible beau about town improve my prospects?”
“It made me want to kill you.”
His smile widened, and for a moment we grinned foolishly at each other.
Then his eyes swept over my person. “What do we do about Freddy?”
I chewed my lip. I wasn’t ready to go home, partly because of Rachel. She needed me. I wanted to be here for her. I was also dogged by my promise to Gid to help get him settled.
But mostly, there was Freddy. I had invented him. I wanted to see what he could do. “People here think I’m a boy.”
“Do you … want to be?”
I laughed at his hesitant expression. “Not forever.” Maybe not even for long. I missed Harriet, perhaps not the former Harriet but the one I felt I could be: the Harriet who took risks and had adventures and enjoyed the desire of a man who’d leave everything—everything—just to find her. I mentally repeated that last part. I savored it.
But Harriet would have to wait.
“If you can spare the time to linger here, I want to stay on as Freddy for a while. That is, if it suits you … Daniel.” Uttering his first name, I felt heat sting my face. Yet it was mine to use freely. He’d given me that right. I smiled. “Then Freddy can quietly slip away.” So long, Freddy. Godspeed. Har
riet, accompanied by her handsome husband, would most definitely show up in the future to visit her favorite brother, Gid, and friend, Rachel. Before that, however, Freddy would have left the area with Daniel Long and disappeared forever.
No embarrassing unmasking, shocking revelations, or muddled explanations necessary.
Daniel nodded reluctantly. And though his mouth remained unsmiling, his eyes gleamed with mischief. “That will make my objective an interesting challenge.”
“What would that be?”
“Courtship. I’m here to court you, Harriet-Freddy.”
* * *
Not a minute after Daniel made this intention explicit, Gid returned. Between the recent amorous avowals and the effects of getting knocked senseless, I couldn’t muster more than a nod as greeting.
Daniel gave him a condensed version of his story, leaving out the romantic parts but eyeing me teasingly from time to time to remind me that, spoken or not, they were still there.
Gid’s response veered from relief—glad Daniel had shown up, “because Bob and Ed are sicker than I thought and the good Lord knows I could use some help, for I can’t take care of their farm and get my own started at the same time”—to consternation: “What were you thinking, playing with my ax, Freddy? I don’t go around experimenting with your spinning wheel. Serves you right, getting your head bashed. No, I don’t want to hear how you were trying to help. Keep your hands to yourself!”
Daniel frowned. “That’s enough, Gideon. Your sister did a fine job with the hickory. What happened to her could have just as easily happened to you or me.” In a kinder tone, he continued, “Listen, I’ll take over the Weldses’ chores, so you can start clearing.” Then he scanned me critically. “I’m worried about your injury, Harriet. Do you think you might recover better under Mrs. Gale’s supervision?”
The Beloved Wild Page 17