Hope's Journey

by Jean Rae Baxter

  She felt Elijah’s hands on her shoulders, and she heard his voice. “Come with me. Come outside.” He helped her to her feet, and she leaned against him while they left the cabin. The soldiers were standing together. When they saw Hope and Elijah come out, they took off their forage caps.

  CHAPTER 36

  Honourable Discharge

  “What shall we do now?” Hope asked.

  “Dig a grave,” said Elijah. “There’s a spade leaning against the side of the cabin. I’ll make a start before it gets too dark.”

  “While you do that, I can look for something to eat. Those soldiers must be hungry, too.” She went inside. It seemed wrong to think about food with Pa’s body lying there. But those who live must eat. She approached the bed and folded her father’s hands upon his chest and then pulled up a blanket to cover his face. “Rest in peace,” she said softly.

  Hope turned to the shelf that held the cabin’s meagre supply of food. She found rice, salt pork, tea and dry biscuits. It wouldn’t be much of a meal, but it would do.

  As she got supper ready, she checked twice to see how the digging was coming along. There must have been two spades, because one of the soldiers was helping Elijah to dig. The other sat with his musket across his knees, watching.

  She carried the food outside. They ate silently, quickly. Then the digging resumed. When it was too dark to dig, Elijah came into the cabin. The two soldiers settled down to guard duty outside the door.

  Elijah remained slumped on the chair, his head bowed. Hope sat on the stool, watching him. She did not think that he would sleep tonight, knowing that in the morning he would be taken away to face a court martial. If the court sentenced him to face a firing squad, he would pay a high price for saving the life of a man who was soon to die anyway. It was so unfair! Elijah would lose his life. She would lose her brother. Hundreds of miles away, a Cherokee woman named Swims Deep would lose her husband, and a child would grow up fatherless. Hope knew what that was like.

  What would happen, she wondered, if Elijah tried to escape? The idea tempted her. She imagined flinging open the door, Elijah vaulting over the two drowsy guards and vanishing into the night.

  But he would not do such a thing, and she wasn’t sure she would want him to. The death of Sergeant Malcolm had cost him too much. He had told her that he would rather die than take the life of another. By escaping, he might do the very thing he had sworn never to do, for if Elijah ran off, the sergeant who had taken a chance by letting him stay at his dying father’s bedside might himself meet death against the wall.

  Elijah stirred, muttered something indistinguishable.

  “Elijah?” she said.

  “What?”

  “When the platoon comes back, do you suppose the soldiers will wait till after we have a proper burial? I mean, at least say some prayers before they take you away?”

  “Probably. Pa was a soldier. They’ll want to show respect.”

  “At Ma’s funeral, the Reverend Mr. Stuart read a Bible lesson. It began, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’”

  “I know the passage,” said Elijah. “I can find it in Pa’s Bible. Now why don’t you take your blanket, lie down on the floor and get some sleep?”

  “I won’t be able to sleep.”

  “Try it.”

  She tried it, and she did.

  At dawn Elijah and the soldiers finished digging the grave. Hope and Elijah wrapped their father in one of his musty blankets as a winding sheet. At the graveside, Elijah read the Bible passage. All four said the Lord’s Prayer. One of the soldiers recited the Psalm that began, “The Lord is my shepherd.”

  Hope thought they handled the burial very well. After it was over, Hope, Elijah and the soldiers sat down on the grass outside the cabin and ate what was left of the rice and pork she had boiled up the evening before. Now there was nothing to do but wait for the platoon to return to take Elijah away. Already the morning was half gone.

  The platoon did not return. Instead, it was Ensign Godfrey Dunn who joined them. He was carrying a leather document case.

  “Colonel Butler has sent me as his emissary,” Godfrey said, “to deliver a document of interest to Private Cobman.”

  Dressed in his full regimentals, Godfrey was certainly attired for an important occasion. His scarlet coat was freshly pressed and his cross bands were pipeclayed to snowy whiteness. On his head was his tall shako hat. Godfrey took off his hat respectfully at the grave and stood for a moment with his head bowed. After he had done that, he opened the document case, pulled out a paper and gave it to Elijah

  As Elijah read, his eyes opened wide. The paper shook in his hand. When he had finished, he said, “I can’t believe it.”

  Hope looked from Elijah’s astonished face to Godfrey’s happy grin. “What does it say?” she demanded. “Read it aloud!”

  Elijah took a deep breath:

  To all whom it may concern.

  These are to Certify that the Bearer hereof Elijah Cobman Private Soldier has served honestly and faithfully in The King’s Royal Regiment of New York and thereafter under the Command of Major Patrick Ferguson in his Special Corps a total of thirteen years, but from a long series of Hardships undergone in the Carolinas being Rendered infirm & incapable of further Service is hereby Discharged.

  Given under my hand & seal at Niagara the 2nd day of October in the year 1791

  John Butler, Colonel

  Commander in Chief, the Nassau & Lincoln Militia.

  Elijah looked up. “No court martial. No …” His voice trailed away. He looked stunned.

  “You’re free to go or to stay,” said Godfrey, “as you like.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Ska-noh

  Hope and Elijah spent the night in the cabin. The next morning Elijah packed his gear. Hope urged him to take anything he wanted. “It’s half yours,” she insisted. “It isn’t fair for me to have it all.”

  “There’s nothing I want.” He picked up Pa’s rifle, inspected it, sighted along the barrel. Then he gave a little shake to his head and set it down. “I don’t believe I’ll ever fire a gun again. But you should learn to use it. Living here alone, you must be able to protect yourself.”

  “I have Captain.”

  “He’ll be a first-rate guard dog when he finishes growing up, but even then …”

  “You’re right. I’ll learn to shoot. I’m sure I can find someone to teach me.”

  “Someone?” he laughed. “I’m certain that Ensign Dunn will be only too glad to instruct you.” Elijah slung his carrying basket onto his back and his quiver over his shoulder. He picked up the bow. “I’ll be off. I can’t lose more time if I’m to be in Chickamauga before Freezing Moon.”

  She stood for a moment with him outside the door. It was a brilliant fall day, the forest aflame with colour. A blue jay screeched as it took flight from a scarlet maple tree.

  Elijah gave Hope a hug and then stepped back, still holding her hands. “Ska-noh,” he said. “It means ‘Be strong.’ That’s one of my few Mohawk words. Okwaho said it when we parted many years ago. I thought we’d never meet again. But we did.” He paused. “Same with you and me, Sister, though I won’t try to predict how or where or when.”

  “Ska-noh.” She tried to smile. “You don’t need to worry about me. I can look after myself.”

  “I know you can.”

  Hope followed him with her eyes as he walked up the path from the cabin to the road. When he turned south and she could no longer see him, she went inside with Captain.

  Standing beside the closed door, she looked around at all the furnishings and other things that now belonged to her: bed, table, chairs, blankets, pots and pans. She looked further and found a hammer, a saw and a wash tub. So this is to be my home, she thought. I may as well make a start. She picked up the wooden bucket that stood under the shelf. To fill the washtub would require three trips to the neighbour’s well.

  The next day she strung up a clothes line and was hanging a thoroug
hly scrubbed blanket to dry when Godfrey arrived to ask how she was managing. He also brought an invitation to tea from Mrs. Hill, the kind woman who had given her a room for the night after her father turned her away. Godfrey was included in the invitation, he told her, and would be pleased to escort her there.

  As Elijah had suggested, she asked Godfrey whether he would be able to instruct her on the care and use of a rifle. He would be delighted, he assured her. Her first lesson took place that very day. Godfrey found it necessary to put his arm around her shoulders while teaching her to hold the rifle. His cheek pressed hers while she learned to aim. She found the experience delightfully warming. When he suggested that many more lessons were required, she agreed.

  The following week Godfrey helped her to write a letter to Charlotte, advising Hope on spelling while insisting that the pen be in her hand. In her letter, Hope told Charlotte about her long journey with Elijah, and she asked if Charlotte could arrange for her trunk to be shipped on the packet boat from Milltown to Niagara, for the trunk was still at Charlotte’s home. Hope thought wistfully about the blue gown with white dots that she had bought from Mary during her stay at Mrs. Fairley’s sewing establishment. She certainly would like Godfrey to see her wearing that pretty gown!

  A month passed. On a blustery November day Hope sat on her chair and watched fat drip into the flames from the goose roasting on the spit. The goose was a gift from Godfrey, who had shot a dozen of them during the fall migration. Hope kept a dipperful of water handy in case the goose caught fire, which had been the fate of the last one he gave her.

  From time to time she rose from her chair, turned the crank to rotate the spit, and then sat down again. Rain beat on the roof and a strong north wind rattled the little panes of window glass. A month ago, such a wind would have blown down through the chimney, throwing sparks from the fire, scattering ash and filling the cabin with smoke.

  It had cost Hope one pound to have the chimney fixed. She had hired a mason to climb onto the roof to make the chimney taller by adding two courses of stone. She had also paid a carpenter to replace the glass in the broken window. The price for that had been four shillings. Now her cabin was snug and warm, although after these expenditures little was left of the three pounds Ephraim had paid as her wages.

  There were other improvements that she had achieved at no cost and with no one’s help. She had gathered moss with which she stuffed the chinks between the logs and around the window frames. She had cleaned the cabin, washing everything with soap that she made by boiling fat with white ashes from the fire.

  While scrubbing the floor, she had found a tea tin stuffed with money under one of the planks. There were paper bank notes and silver coins. Pa had not mentioned this treasure trove. In his sickness he must have forgotten about it. She counted the money carefully, because half belonged to Elijah and someday, somehow, she would give it to him. Her own share amounted to three pounds, four shillings. Some of that windfall paid for a new well, the site carefully chosen to avoid seepage from the resting place of the dead raccoon.

  This was the month of her birthday fourteen years ago. “Freezing Moon” was what the native people called it. Far away in Chickamauga, Elijah and Swims Deep’s baby would soon be born, perhaps had already been born. I’m going to be an aunt, she thought, to a Cherokee child. That was an interesting and pleasing idea. Hope was happy to think that her brother was getting on with his life, as she was with hers.

  She spent days thinking about what to do with the rest of her part of the money hidden under the floor. Upon making a decision, she shared her thoughts with Captain, who lay on the floor next to her chair, enjoying the warmth of the fire.

  “I have enough money,” she explained to the dog, “to hire a carpenter to build a shed with nesting boxes and to buy a couple of dozen chickens.” She paused and spoke very clearly. “Chickens, Captain. You can help me take care of them.”

  Captain raised his head, cocked his ears and looked at her. His eyes were bright with interest.

  “I can sell the eggs to the garrison. If all goes well, I’ll buy a cow in the spring. Then we’ll have milk and butter as well as eggs. I can plant a vegetable garden. But chickens come first. I won’t give them names.” She paused, thinking how she’d learned that lesson the hard way.

  She gave Captain’s head a pat. “We’ve come a long way together since the day I fetched you from the Andersons’ farm. You were so little I had to carry you part of the way.” Captain’s tail gave a thump on the floor. “Adam made the right choice,” Hope continued, “when he picked you to be my dog.”

  Hope was rubbing Captain’s thick, wiry coat, but she was thinking about Adam. Although she had escaped the drudgery of working for the Blocks, he was still trapped by the duty he owed to his family. “I’ll be old and grey,” he had complained, “by the time I get to go anywhere.” Poor Adam. His life had seemed so bleak to him the last time she saw him. But he was a boy with spunk and confidence, not the kind who would give up easily. In a couple of years his younger brothers, the twins, would be old enough to give their father the help he needed to carve a farm from the wilderness. Then Adam would be on his way. He would not have to wait until he was old and grey to follow his dream.

  Captain laid his muzzle on his forepaws and went to sleep. While Hope gazed at the leaping flames, her thoughts turned next to Elijah. Someday, maybe when she least expected it, a message would arrive from him. Or maybe she would look up to see him coming along the path toward her, his bow over his shoulder, walking with an easy stride. In the meantime, she had plenty to do to fill her life.

  She still had one more brother to find, she reminded herself. Moses, called Broken Trail. Someday she would find him, too. She felt quite sure of this. For a girl named Hope, all things were possible.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I give my warm thanks to the generous and knowledgeable people who found time to help me with this novel. The list begins with Donald Combe, Archivist of St. Mark’s Church, Niagara-on-the-Lake. I only wish I could also thank Mrs. Elizabeth Simcoe (1766–1850), wife of the first lieutenant-governor, because her diary more than any other single source brought to life for me the early days of Upper Canada. I should also like to thank the staff at the Niagara Historical Society Museum, who patiently answered my questions and brought to my attention The Capital Years: Niagara-on-the-Lake 1792–1796, a book which is a treasure trove of specific information.

  Looking across the border, I acknowledge with gratitude the helpfulness of the guides at Old Fort Niagara, Youngstown, New York, who shared with me their knowledge of that fort’s history all the way back to 1678.

  My special thanks are reserved for those who have supported my writing the longest: my daughter Alison Baxter Lean, who invariably accepts with grace the unenviable task of critiquing my first drafts; and my writing friends Barbara Ledger, Debbie Welland, Susan Evans Shaw, Alexandra Gall and Linda Helson of the Canadian Federation of University Women, Hamilton Branch.

  This book is immeasurably stronger for the editorial attention it received at Ronsdale Press. I would especially like to thank Ronald and Veronica Hatch for their insightful criticism, which helped me to see new possibilities in the story I had set out to tell.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Although Jean Rae Baxter was born in Toronto and grew up in Hamilton, “down home” was the region of Essex and Kent Counties on the shores of Lake Erie where her ancestors had settled, some following the American Revolution and some a century earlier, in the days of New France. There were many family stories to awaken her interest in Canada’s past.

  After graduating from the University of Toronto and Queen’s University, she became a secondary school teacher in Lennox & Addington County, a part of Ontario particularly rich in United Empire Loyalist history. It was during her career as a teacher that she saw the need for historical fiction written from a Canadian point of view, for at that time almost everything in books, television and movies had an American bias.r />
  It was to provide a Canadian alternative view that she wrote The Way Lies North (2007). In this novel she focused upon the plight of ordinary white Loyalists driven from their homes by the violence of the American Revolution. This book was followed by Broken Trail (2011), which told of the native people’s struggle. The third novel, Freedom Bound (2012), dealt with the Black Loyalists. In The White Oneida (2014), Baxter examined the issues facing the native people following the American War of Independence as they strove to form a confederacy of their own.

  Hope’s Journey, the fifth book in what has now become known as the “Forging a Nation Series,” is set in 1791. It shows the determination of Loyalist refugees to build not just new lives but a new country in the aftermath of war.

  In addition to reading and writing, Jean loves travel, gardening and dogs. She visits many schools and libraries to talk about Canadian history and to conduct creative writing workshops, particularly enjoying those for “Teens and Tweens.” You will learn more about her writing on her website, www.jeanraebaxter.ca. You may contact her at jeanraebaxter@sympatico.ca or visit her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/JeanRaeBaxterBooks.