Thieving Forest

by Martha Conway

  “Susanna says if your pa won’t help her she’ll go into Thieving Forest herself.” Mop snorts. “With her bonnet and gloves just so.”

  Seth says, “Mop.”

  “Well but she scoffed at me when I offered to help,” Mop says. “Instead she’s fetching Old Adam. I came out here to look for clues but my ma says if I see anything I’m to ride back double quick.”

  So Amos sent the fool out for advance work. There are no Indians on this road. Seth pulls Ginny’s reins back over her neck and pushes his fingers into her mouth to check the bit.

  “I’m going to kill him,” Cade says. He climbs up to the wagon seat and takes the reins although usually Seth is the one who drives.

  Mop says, “So you didn’t see anything? Should I keep riding down to the ferry?”

  “You do what you like,” Cade tells him, and without waiting to see what Mop will do he jerks the reins to get the horses going.

  “Listen, Cade,” Seth says jumping up next to him. “Could be he just sees an opportunity to keep the money.” That is certainly possible.

  But Cade says, “Even at the time it seemed fishy. Why sell their wagon? They have to get to the river to get supplies.”

  “They needed the capital.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “I don’t know what to believe,” Seth says. He holds on to the seat plank beneath him with one hand. He can feel neither the ring nor the money through the fabric of his trousers, but at the same time his pocket seems to be the center of a dark world that an hour ago didn’t exist. Cade jerks the reins again to urge the horses faster. The wagon lurches crazily to the right and then straightens. Seth moves his hand along the seat to get a better grip. He is sitting on his hat.

  “That axle will surely break if you keep on.” He has to raise his voice to be heard.

  “We’ll drop the horses at Dunn’s stable,” Cade says. “The forest is too overgrown for a wagon. We’ll have to go on foot.”

  The wagon lurches again and rights itself.

  “Don’t you give him one cent of that money,” Cade says.

  Four

  By the time Old Adam finds the narrow opening where Susanna last saw her sisters—the backs of their dresses—it is well past noon. She follows him into the trees where a horde of insects rushes out to meet them, hitting hard against her netting as they look for a place to land. Old Adam’s dog snaps at them once or twice in irritation but Old Adam makes a gesture, silence, and the dog immediately stops. Like all Indian dogs, he is well trained and obedient.

  Susanna has known Old Adam for so long that she does not think of him as an Indian, but he is an Indian—a Miami, or Twightwee as they call themselves. His wife Mary, who is Shawnee, calls him a Pkiwileni. The settlers call Old Adam a Christian Indian, and that also is true: he was saved by missionaries after most of his village was killed off by the smallpox, and later they saved his wife Mary, too. The newspapers that come up from Cincinnati are filled with accounts of thieving Indians and lying Indians and bands of Indians who roam around attacking settlers, but Sirus always told anyone who would listen that plenty of natives, like Old Adam, live peacefully side-by-side with white men, either adopting their ways or keeping their own. Sirus in particular liked the Potawatomi who came into the store. He used to say that they were stubborn but fair, and so great fun to bargain with.

  Susanna pulls her gloves a little higher on her wrists. None of what has happened makes any sense. What she is doing now, she suspects, makes no sense. But she has to do something, and she likes Old Adam, she trusts him. He used to hunt with Sirus and afterward he told the girls, when they were young, fanciful stories about the wily animals they could not bring down. He is small and thin with badly pocked skin, and he suffers from rheumatism like so many natives. Too much sleeping outdoors, according to the settlers. From behind, his arms seem to jut out at odd angles, or maybe his elbows are just unnaturally prominent. He lives with his wife Mary on the other side of the settlement, where they raise hogs. After Susanna went there and told them her story, Mary fetched her a cup of rye whiskey. Susanna took a sip and handed the cup back. A peppery feeling remained in her mouth.

  “Usually the Potawatomi take for revenge,” Mary had said, looking at Old Adam. “Or to replace someone in their tribe who has died. But no battles since a long time.”

  “No battles, no,” Old Adam agreed.

  “So want money?” Mary asked.

  Old Adam said, “For that they go to Risdale.”

  Susanna adjusts the netting that Mary gave her and steps over a fallen branch in the middle of the path. Risdale is on the other side of Thieving Forest, over two leagues away. It would take a young man almost four hours to walk that distance, and that is if he had a cleared track. This path will only get worse. She imagines her sisters running down it in their stocking feet. Back in the cabin their boots are still lined up near the door and their shawls are still hanging on the peg, one over the other. There are things she wishes she could give them: boots, netting, even her turkey hen bone. They need luck more than she does. She takes off one glove to feel the bone in her pocket.

  But when they get to the first crossing stream, Old Adam suddenly stops and holds up his hand. Susanna draws in a sharp breath when she sees why: fifteen or twenty spiders are walking in single file along the water. Wolf spiders. They are brown with darker brown markings and huge, the size of young sparrows. She has never before seen spiders so big. She steps back, and then takes another step back. A curious hissing sound is coming from somewhere among them, and quite a few carry egg sacs beneath them using one curved, hairy leg. Has she ever seen spiders in a pack before? They are reputed to hunt and live alone.

  “Where are they going?” she whispers, as if they might hear her.

  Old Adam lifts his shoulders. “A safer place, perhaps. For eggs.”

  When the spiders have all passed Susanna crosses the little stream behind Old Adam, careful to use the same stones he uses as footstones because she does not want to wet her feet in the muck. On the other side of the stream the canopy above them thickens and the air begins to smell like wet moss, a smell Susanna particularly detests since it is her job every spring to fill the chinks in their cabin with clumps of it. Last spring she used Naomi’s violin bow to push the moss in until Naomi noticed and screamed. Where is Naomi now? Somewhere ahead with no water, no netting, no boots. A swarm of insects hovers around her head and she swats at them with both hands. She is both afraid that she won’t find them and afraid that she will—that she’ll come upon their bodies in the bracken. She purses her lips and forces that picture out of her mind. Concentrate on walking, she tells herself. That’s what Penelope would say.

  When Old Adam stops to examine a broken tree branch, Susanna takes a moment to adjust the grain sack on her back, which Mary helped her to tie on. In it is anything she could think of that the Potawatomi might accept in trade for her sisters, since there was almost no money in the store. Their silver dinner knives, her mother’s silver hand mirror, her gold wedding ring, and the red buttons from Ellen’s wedding dress that are shaped like cherries. On an impulse Susanna also took Ellen’s fancy nail scissors with their loopy bird-head design. But she didn’t think about food, and now she’s hungry.

  A branch cracks and she looks up into the trees. Sirus claimed that there were panthers still living in Thieving Forest. They jump silently from tree to tree before falling on their prey. Old Adam takes his hand from the broken branch and rubs his fingers on his breeches.

  “People here lately,” he says.

  “Potawatomi?”

  “Could be.”

  Susanna tries to see down the path. Another branch cracks above them. “What about panthers?” she asks.

  “Haven’t seen any prints.” He is wearing an old leather shoe around his neck as a pouch, and he takes from it a few dried berries. He gives her a couple and then helps her over an old nursing log in the path. “But if you sense danger, stop, stand st
ill. Close your eyes.”

  “Why should I close my eyes?”

  “The bright pupil gives you away.”

  The path narrows and Susanna finds herself staring at Old Adam’s back, his sloping shoulders, his thin legs like rubbed sticks in their leather breeches. All at once he seems very slight. She feels in her pocket for her turkey hen bone again. As they walk deeper into the forest the trees grow darker and ropes of stiff, dead vines rise up around their trunks. She thinks of her Aunt Ogg’s house in Philadelphia, where her younger sister Lilith lives, with two brick ovens in the kitchen and an iron railing outside painted green. There would be a boy bringing in a bundle of cut wood for the kitchen and another for the fireplace in the parlor. Old Adam’s dog trots around a burnt-out tree trunk with a single crooked branch pointing up like a finger back at God.

  “In forest you must lose fear,” Old Adam says over his shoulder. “See with all your senses. Only way to be safe.”

  She will get to Risdale and ransom her sisters. And then, she promises herself, she will never set foot in a forest again.

  Four hours later Susanna is hot, scraped, and sore, and whatever ignorance or pride started her off on this journey is by now long gone. Trouble comes to those who bring it upon themselves, her mother used to say, and she would certainly say that now if she were here. When at last they stop at a muddy stream to rest, Old Adam brings out a few strips of dried venison from his pouch and Susanna finds a flat rock next to the water to sit on. She leans over to fill Sirus’s wooden canteen, but the stream is so choked with debris that getting clear water is difficult. Old Adam’s dog stands in the middle where the water runs cleanest, taking a long drink. He turns to face Susanna, staring at her as though he has something to say but no means to say it. Water drips from his muzzle.

  “How much further?” Susanna asks Old Adam. Behind him the sunlight makes bright handprints where it can along the bank. He looks up at the treetops.

  “Turn west in little while. After that, soon there.” Not really an answer. “Must watch for kineepikwa,” he says. The snake.

  Susanna pulls her skirt closer to her body, and then, still not feeling completely secure, she stands.

  “Rested now?” Old Adam asks.

  She made the mistake of taking off her boots to bathe her sore feet; putting them on again is difficult and now her feet feel worse than before. Old Adam helps her to retie the grain sack to her back, but after only a few paces it falls into an uncomfortable position that she can’t put right. She wishes she had Old Adam’s long moccasins. She wishes she had a split skirt. Why on earth didn’t they leave for Philadelphia immediately, when the question first arose? Her gloves will have to be soaked in new milk to get all the stains out.

  Old Adam says, “In Swamp would take longer. See that?” He points to a line of rocks off the path. “Limestone. Unusual in woods.”

  “I would never go into the Swamp.”

  Everywhere she looks all she can see are thick trees and thin trees and trickles of yellowish water. Isn’t there a fairy story about a forest that never ends? A girl looking for her brother, who has been turned into a swan? However, this forest is not some magical place, it’s only an overgrown maze with ingenious ways of stabbing her legs. Get to Risdale, pay the ransom, go home. But as she quickens her pace something hits her like a bout of vertigo, and instead of her body moving forward everything else seems to be falling away. The tree canopy closes up completely, sealing them in, and a bag of cold air seems to enshroud her. Old Adam slows but Susanna carries on past him anxious to get to the end, wherever that is. As the path turns a warbler calls out not for joy but in warning, and all at once Susanna stops dead.

  A panther is standing not ten yards away from her.

  It is a long skinny beast, one rib sticking out when it draws breath, and although she is close enough to see the mud on its fur it hasn’t yet noticed her. It is intent on something on the ground. She wants to turn and run but she remembers Old Adam’s advice and instead closes her eyes. Her mouth is very dry but she is afraid even to swallow. When she hears a noise she opens her eyes again. The panther has lifted its head and is staring right at her.

  “Sees you,” Old Adam says behind her in a low voice.

  The animal’s eyes do not leave her own, and yet she senses it is distracted. The noise comes again, perhaps a trapped animal, whatever the panther has just been sniffing. Susanna stands very still and tries to think what to do. She cannot hear a whisper from Old Adam until suddenly his knife hums through the air and clips the panther on its shoulder. The animal jerks once and then shifts its weight to leap away from them. In a moment it is gone.

  “Why didn’t you kill it?” Susanna asks him. She can hear it crashing through the undergrowth.

  Old Adam plucks his knife from the nest of ferns where it landed. “Did not wish it dead.”

  She swallows, trying to get moisture back into her mouth. A breeze circles them like a ghost and brings with it a strange heavy scent. A sour, heavy scent.

  Blood.

  She pulls away from Old Adam with the worst sort of dread and Spendlove’s words in her head: If they see she’s sick they’ll kill her. And there, just off the path, behind a pitted log, she finds what she is afraid she will find: her sister Aurelia lying there in the dirt and bracken.

  Susanna drops to her knees. Aurelia’s eyes are closed. Her beautiful strawberry-blond hair is full of dried mud, and there is mud on her cheek, too, and mud on her collar. She is wearing Indian moccasins on her feet. Old Adam says something but Susanna doesn’t hear what he says. Aurelia’s left hand is raised, covering part of her forehead, and Susanna touches it. Her hand is cold, but it does not feel dead. It does not feel like dead flesh. But that isn’t mud on her cheek, Susanna realizes. It’s blood.

  As gently as she can she pulls Aurelia’s hand away to look at her forehead, and then her stomach clenches and rises. She’s been scalped—partially scalped. Insects are already nesting inside the unclosed wound. Old Adam is crouching beside her and he puts his hand in front of Aurelia’s mouth, testing for breath. The dog barks and Old Adam says something and then he stands and says something else and then suddenly—Susanna is not sure how this happened—two other figures arrive, one of them making a noise in his throat, a man with fair hair: Cade Spendlove. But she doesn’t wonder how he came here, she has no wonder left in her. As she turns her head a shifting of the light makes her look past the trees to a spot not too distant, a glimpse of cleared land. Risdale? But the trees won’t end, she understands this now. They will never get out of the forest. Seth Spendlove is looking down at her, his hand on her arm.

  “How will we carry her?” she asks.

  Five

  They get Aurelia to the tavern in Risdale and set her down in the little room off the barroom where soldiers passing through eat their meals. A man named Jonas Footbound owns the tavern with his wife Liza. Liza has the men lay Aurelia on a flat board lifted off the floor by six bricks. This will help the flow of blood, she says. She takes up a clean, blue-checked cloth and begins to wash Aurelia’s face.

  “Will she live?” Susanna asks.

  Liza rinses the cloth, dark with blood. Around here she acts as midwife or doctor since there is no one fitting either description for miles. A competent-looking woman, tall and muscular and big boned with a surprisingly small nose for her wide face. Her voice is rough from years of pipe smoking.

  “There’s them who’ve come to me worse,” she says.

  Eager Tavern, their place is called. Some men are at the bar when Susanna comes in but when they hear the news about her sisters they rally together to help in the chase. By the time they ride out the sun is barely above the tree line, but they are well armed with rifles and tallow jacklights. Seth Spendlove rides with them but Cade stays back to see to Aurelia. He helps Jonas transform the back room into a sick room, and together they remove the long trestle table and bring in a spindly legged oak stand and a basin of water, a straw tick fo
r Susanna to sleep on, and two cane-bottomed chairs. The room is small and square with rough walls, easily warmed by the small fireplace. Susanna can smell mint on the windowsills to drive off mice, something her mother also did. When Liza finishes washing and bandaging Aurelia’s wound, she lights a candle made out of a twisted rag floating in lard in a small tin saucer. For a moment she holds the saucer near Aurelia’s face.

  “Let’s see if we can’t get a bite of food inside her,” Liza says.

  How can they feed her? She looks barely alive. Susanna’s heart feels tightly knotted. Anybody who didn’t know her might think she’d been struck dumb by the events of the day, but she is worried that if she opens her mouth she will start crying and never stop.

  Her other sisters aren’t in Risdale. No one has seen them. And here is Aurelia halfway to Paradise, as her Aunt Ogg used to say. But Jonas brings in a bowl of broth—he is the cook here—and Liza puts the tiniest spoonful into Aurelia’s open mouth and by the greatest of miracles Aurelia swallows.

  “Why don’t you go get a bite for yourself?” Liza says to Susanna without looking up. “You’re done in, I can tell.”

  When Susanna hesitates, Cade says, “I’ll stay here with her.”

  The tavern’s main room is now empty. Its main feature is a long wooden counter along one end that has recently been polished with tree oil, or maybe she’s been in Thieving Forest for so long that she can’t get the smell of trees out of her nose.

  “My wife is good with the injured,” Jonas tells her. “Soft hands, though you’d not guess by looking.” Susanna figures he means because Liza is so large and rough looking, her cap turned any which way, her skirt unkempt, her voice abrupt. Jonas is large himself but much more careful in his dress. He wears trim, clean trousers and a blue waistcoat, and his boots look freshly buffed. A small deer comes into the room and stands by his side. Their pet, Jonas explains. He puts his hand between the deer’s smoke-colored ears.