Calico Bush

by Rachel Field

  “Oh, I wouldn’t mind some honey right this minute.” Jacob smacked his lips at the idea.

  “Well, I don’t want to meet no bears or no Injuns.” Susan was very firm as she picked her way between roots and bushes.

  “Nor me,” echoed Becky.

  “Keep still then,” Caleb told them shortly. “An Injun could hear you young ones gabbin’ five miles away.”

  They kept on in silence till the witchhazel place was reached. Marguerite had never seen it growing before. The yellow fringed flowers, blooming so late, amazed her, and she liked the aromatic fragrance that came from the bark as they broke it off.

  “It is like an herb Grand’mère used to keep in her cupboard,” she told the children. “I did not know its name, but it had the same sharp smell.”

  It took longer to gather a basketful than they had expected, and Caleb grew restless. Presently he heard some squirrels chattering in nearby trees and started after them, first charging the others not to stray off in any direction.

  “’Twon’t take me long, Maggie,” he said. “You wait for me right here.”

  But the squirrels led him farther than he had thought.

  “I’m tired o’ this place,” said Susan at last. “Let’s start back along the trail.”

  “But we might lose our way,” Marguerite reminded them. “We have not been over it so far before.”

  “Our eyes are just as good as Caleb’s,” Susan retorted, “an’ I don’t care if it does make him cross. He’d no call to leave us so long.”

  “He can catch right up with us anyway,” put in Becky.

  “Let us call him first,” insisted Marguerite.

  “Not too loud, though,” reminded Susan, “account of Injuns.”

  They lifted up their voices, but no answer came. Marguerite felt suddenly very small and helpless there among the close-growing trees with the children about her. The sun that had made such bright patternings through the spruce boughs overhead had gone under a cloud. It was very shadowy and solemn there with the trees stretching endlessly and no shimmer of sea between the farther trunks.

  “Let us go then,” she heard herself saying.

  In another moment they had turned about and were making for home. They kept very close to one another, and though none spoke, each knew that the other felt afraid. It was as if something they could not name kept pace with their hurrying feet. Patty stumbled on a rooty snag and fell, twisting her ankle under her and skinning her knee. She could scarcely stand on her foot again, much less walk, so Marguerite gave the basket into the twins’ keeping and took the child on her back, charging Jacob to keep firm hold of her skirt lest he also fall. It was slower going after this. Marguerite’s arms ached with Patty’s four-year-old weight. Would they never see light between the tree trunks, she wondered?

  “Seems like we’d walked for miles,” Susan said presently.

  “Yes,” added Becky. “’Twasn’t near so long the other way, an’ there ain’t no sign o’ that big birch with the stones piled under it.”

  “We must reach it soon,” Marguerite assured them, but her heart sank at mention of the birch. She knew they should by now be well past it. But she must not alarm the children. She shifted Patty higher on her shoulders and tried to be cheerful. “There was a Prince in a story,” she told them, “who rode into an enchanted forest and no matter how fast his horse carried him, the trees always went on ahead of him. That was how he found the Princess shut up in the tower. He had to rescue her before he could get out.”

  “I don’t like that story,” Susan spoke up, “an’ I think we’re lost.”

  Now that one of them had dared to voice the dread suspicion, they stopped in their tracks and stood facing one another in a wide-eyed little group. Patty renewed her crying from Marguerite’s shoulder, and Jacob joined in from below.

  “Hush!” said Marguerite, summoning all her powers. “We cannot have come far. We must find where we have stepped on the moss and twigs and follow our own steps back.”

  But this turned out to be more easily said than done. Their bare feet had disturbed the floor of the forest very little. Soon they were more completely astray than before. Jacob now lagged behind. It was necessary for Marguerite to set Patty down every few yards and return to fetch him in the same fashion. Sometimes they called, but though they strained their ears no answer rewarded them. Besides, they were afraid to make much noise after Caleb’s warning about Indians.

  “If only Pumpkin would hear us and come,” sighed Marguerite, “we could follow him back. He has such a good nose for scents, surely he will come soon.” But though she cheered them on, her own spirits grew heavier each moment. She remembered what Ira had said about the Indian trail going north. She could not help wondering whether they had chanced upon it. Perhaps they were even then walking into the Indian country, to be tomahawked or carried far, far off as other settlers’ families had been before them. “Mon Dieu,” she prayed under her breath, “help us to find the way home!”

  And then, as they floundered on through the underbrush with rain beginning to fall, they all stopped short before a solid wall of rock that reached many feet above their heads. Ferns and low-growing trees covered it, and they were turning back in discouragement when Marguerite’s quick eyes spied a narrow opening in the rock.

  “It is a cave,” she said. “Perhaps we can rest there till the rain is over.”

  “It’s dreadful dark inside,” said Becky, hanging back.

  “Maybe there’s bears,” Susan suggested.

  “I will go in first,” Marguerite told them, setting Patty down and pushing aside the vines that half-obscured the opening. “Wait here till I call you.”

  With beating heart she stepped in, taking care to keep close to the wall of rock. At first she could see nothing; then as her eyes became used to the dimness she made out a lighter place, nearer the center of the cave. Evidently there was an opening above, like a rough chimney, down which a pale shaft of light came. Even as she noticed this she became aware of a peculiar smell, unlike any she had ever known. There was dankness in the cave and the walls dripped, but the smell was something other than this. She could not have said why, but more than the darkness or the bats that swooped unpleasantly near her head, this smell terrified her. She shivered, but she must go on. A weasel scuttled away at her approach, and a scattered pebble clinked with a hollow sound. It was only a few feet to the opening under the light, but it took all her courage to force herself there.

  “I do not like this place,” she panted; “it is evil.”

  She could see now that the hole above her head was round and blackened as if by smoke from many fires. The light came wanly through and the green of spruces showed in the opening. A great flat stone resting on two round ones was directly below, and in the queer half-light it seemed to the girl’s excited fancy that she could make out queer cuttings on it, rough letters and pictures chiseled in the stone. Below it were the remains of a fire, charred logs, broken clay dishes, and some scattered white fragments that turned her suddenly cold all over. She stood there under the greenish light with both hands pressed against her beating heart, trying to tell herself that it was nothing—this burnt-out fire, this pile of bones, and a queer smell she had not smelled before. But she knew better.

  She began to tremble, and the smell sickened her through and through. Something glittered at her feet. She forced herself to stoop and pick it up. It was a tarnished buckle, such as might fasten a child’s shoe, and nearby was a lock of hair—a long fine strand of reddish yellow, but dark and stiffened at the roots.

  “Oh, mon Dieu,” she whispered, and she felt her own fingers shakily making the sign of the cross.

  She had not even breath enough to cry out as she thrust it into her pocket along with the buckle and stumbled out into the woods once more. The children were as she had left them by the opening. She caught up Patty with such suddenness that the child cried out, and the twins and Jacob ran after her in a panic. She took n
o heed of how they went crashing through the underbush. All that mattered was to be well away from that place.

  “You’re white’s a sheet, Maggie!” Susan cried when they stopped at last to catch their breath.

  “An’ I never see your eyes so big!” Becky told her. “What was in that there cave?”

  “You must not ask me—not ever.” Marguerite’s lips trembled, and she gave a startled look behind her. “Come.” And she urged them on again in the opposite direction.

  She could feel her pocket sagging heavily at every step, and it seemed to her that nothing had ever sounded so good to her ears as Pumpkin’s distant barking.

  He came bounding toward them, his whole yellow body wriggling with joy at the reunion.

  “Good dog! Good fellow!” cried the twins, flinging themselves upon him.

  “Chien, mon brave chien,” echoed Marguerite.

  They gave themselves utterly into his charge, following his pointing nose back to the trail and their own clearing. But before they reached it a very frightened Caleb appeared. His relief at seeing them was so great that he immediately lost his temper.

  “You’re a fine lot!” he told them with a ferocious scowl. “I can’t turn my back without you get yourselves lost an’ have me chasin’ these woods for miles.”

  “You should not go off to hunt squirrels!” Marguerite retorted, her heart still pounding at the memory of all they had been through. “You were sent to watch out for us.”

  “An’ you should have done as I said,” he insisted. “I always heard you couldn’t trust a Frenchman, an’ it’s the same way with you, I guess.”

  “You leave Maggie alone, Caleb Sargent!” cried the twins hotly. “She’s got more sense’n you have.”

  “She’s nothin’ but a Bound-out Girl,” he blazed, his face growing dark with anger under his sunburn and freckles, “an’ I’ll show her who’s givin’ orders round here.”

  He turned on his heel and marched ahead, his shoulders very stiff under the musket and the dead squirrels strung on a thong. In this fashion they returned to the log house with the sun going down behind the western islands.

  “Wherever have you young ones been?” cried Dolly Sargent from the doorway. “I’ve been near distracted watchin’ for you.”

  “You better ask Maggie,” Caleb answered in aggrieved tones. “I’m ’most done for thrashin’ the woods after ’em.”

  “We got lost,” Susan explained, “when he went off to hunt squirrels.”

  “Yes,” put in Becky, “an’ it’s a wonder we didn’t meet with bears or Injuns back there in the big woods.”

  Marguerite set Patty on the doorstep and sank down beside her. She felt too spent for words just then. The cave and its ugly secret were still too near to her. She let Caleb bluster and the children wrangle without interference while she washed and bound Patty’s hurts.

  She scarcely heard the scoldings that came her way as they gathered round the table for supper, and it was only after the younger children were asleep under the quilts that she broke her silence. The two men and Caleb were busy whittling some wooden spoons before the fire, and Dolly sat nearby with her knitting. In the light of the blazing spruce logs Marguerite told them of the cave.

  “I knew it was an evil place,” she wound up. “I knew it even before I came to the stone under the hole and found the old fire and those bones.” She shivered at the memory, and her eyes grew enormous.

  “What’s there to that?” Caleb broke in scornfully. “Somebody made a fire an’ roasted a deer in there, most likely.”

  “Hush, Caleb!” ordered his father, the knife and the piece of wood idle in his hands. “Go on, Maggie. What made you think ’twas a bad place?”

  “It was that terrible smell,” she told him, “and those marks on the stone, like—like evil signs, and then—these.” She pulled the lock of hair and the buckle from her pocket and laid them on his knee.

  None of them spoke for a full minute. It was so still in the room that the snapping of the fire and the sea shuffling the pebbles down in the cove seemed strangely loud. The buckle shone faintly in the firelight, and when Joel laid down his knife and took up the strand of hair it showed bright between his fingers.

  “A scalp lock.” Caleb was the first to break silence. “See the skin stickin’ to it.”

  “An’ it never belonged to no Injun,” Ira said slowly.

  “It’s a woman’s, or a child’s—” Dolly had gone suddenly white to the lips.

  “Weren’t there no others?” Caleb was asking.

  “I do not know,” Marguerite answered. “I ran without once looking back.”

  “Just like a girl to do that,” complained Caleb. “Soon’s ever they get a chance at any thin’ they run away.”

  “Be quiet!” Joel Sargent spoke sternly. “This is a grave matter.”

  “You remember what Jordan told us that first day we landed,” Ira reminded them; “how he said the Injuns held this place was theirs ’count o’ their spirits or some such notion.”

  “Yes,” said Dolly. “I recall he did say so when they wanted we should build elsewhere.”

  “Well, I think maybe it’s somewhat to do with this cave Maggie got into,” Ira went on thoughtfully. “Every spring he ’lowed there’s queer doin’s hereabouts. I wouldn’t wonder if that’s where they kill or torture their captives.”

  “I’ve heard tell o’ such doin’s,” Joel answered gravely. “At any rate these belonged to white folks.” He put the hair and buckle into an inner pocket of his shirt before he spoke again. “There’s to be no talk o’ this to the neighbors, mind you.”

  “But maybe they’d know who it belonged to,” began Caleb.

  “You’re not to say so much as a word of it,” his father told him, “not you nor Maggie. There’s been trouble enough about settlin’ this point without we have ’em turn agin us.”

  “An’ just when they’re commencin’ to act so friendly an’ all,” put in Dolly quickly.

  “Remember now, Maggie,” Joel Sargent charged her, “an’ tomorrow you’ll go along with Ira an’ me to see if we can find that place again.”

  After that they banked the fire and turned in for the night. But Marguerite could hear the sound of low voices long after she had crawled in beside the sleeping twins. She knew that Joel and Dolly were discussing it together in the next room, and she lay wide-eyed for a long time because no sooner did she close her eyes than the cave and all that she had seen there returned to her all too plainly. She could not help feeling grateful that rain fell in torrents the next day and the one following.

  But though she and the men went on two searching expeditions, they never came upon the cave or its cleverly hidden entrance. Pumpkin might have guided them to it but for the rains washing away their scent, and Marguerite could not find it in her heart to be regretful.

  One day a week or so later Seth Jordan appeared with an invitation from Aunt Hepsa.

  “She means to set up the loom for weavin’,” he explained, “an’ she wants you should let Maggie an’ the twins come to help. They can stay the night an’ I’ll fetch ’em back. She’s lonesome with Ethan gone.”

  Marguerite scarcely dared lift her eyes from her work till Dolly’s consent was given. She wanted to sing and shout with the twins, who ran before her down to the cove.

  “Mind you an’ the twins behave yourselves. Don’t make no trouble,” Dolly Sargent called after her from the doorstep, where she stood with Debby in her arms and Jacob and Patty at her skirts.

  “Yes’m,” Marguerite answered dutifully enough for all that her spirits ran high with anticipation.

  “Good-by, Maggie!” called Jacob and Patty after her, their voices shrill on the morning air. “Good-by!”

  Aunt Hepsa lost no time in putting them all to work. The weaving shed was already full of wool, dye pots, and mysterious pieces of wood.

  “I’ve been spinnin’ like one possessed these days,” she told her guests cheerfully. “Now I�
�ve got all the longest thread ready. You two little girls can sit over there on the floor an’ wind those short lengths onto corncobs same’s I’ve commenced doin’. I’ll need Maggie to set up the loom.”

  “My, but it is big,” said Marguerite, regarding the great wooden frame with awe.

  “’Tis so,” agreed Aunt Hepsa, “but my mother always used to say ‘the heavier the loom, the lighter for the weaver,’ an’ I’ve always found it that way.”

  Now she was showing the girl how to go about the “beaming” or “drawing through.” This was a long and difficult piece of work, requiring more than one pair of hands to pass the thread through the teeth of the long wooden “rake” that ran across the middle beam. Each thread must be drawn separately through an opening which the old lady called “the harness eye,” and must be set according to the draft or pattern. Marguerite could make nothing of this. It seemed to be a series of strange dots and dashes in faded pen strokes on a sheet of worn, brown paper.

  “It looks like magic,” she told her hostess seriously.

  “Well, it ain’t,” smiled the other. “Every one of these here marks is as plain to me as the foreign gibberish you know how to talk.”

  Marguerite turned to with a will. She had taken her place on a low bench in front of the loom where she could receive the thread ends as they came through the harness eyes. At first she was clumsy at the handling; her thumbs got in the way, and she dropped or confused the threads. But soon she grew more skillful. Her brown fingers moved surely and steadily. She hardly ever missed the strands as the other passed them through to her.

  “This here’s goin’ to be ‘Whig Rose’ pattern,” Hepsa explained, “for a good warm winter spread. That reddish wool I dyed from sassafras bark will go good with the bay-leaf yellow.”

  “But how do you make the pattern, Aunt Hepsa?” The twins left their winding to draw near.

  “You’ll see when the time comes,” she told them. “I do it with my foot on this treadle. That raises or lowers the warp threads—so.”