The Trees

by Conrad Richter

  “I kin knock you down and drag you out!” the bound boy bragged at him.

  Wyitt stiffened.

  “You kain’t while I got this knife.”

  “Lemme see it!”

  Wyitt put it behind him. His young face had turned hard and cruel. His freckles looked like rusty iron. Oh, he wasn’t big as this bound boy but he’d go on his muscle before he’d let him touch his knife. The pair stood almost against each other, one scowling down and one scowling up, neither one giving way any more than two young bucks meeting in the path. The Shawanee boys watched with their black eyes glittering. They would be spited if no hitch between the two white boys came out of this.

  The bound boy gave in first, for he was fattish and you could see he would be soft.

  “I’ll swap you knives!” he dared, stepping an inch to one side.

  Wyitt went on, the victor, without saying anything. He could hear the whiskey taking hold of the Shawanees now. Already they were whooping and carrying on around the fires, dancing and singing some Indian catch that was the same thing all the time. Old Bearclaws was drinking with the big black-bearded white runner, Jake Tench, and hollering over and over the only English he knew. Wyitt had to laugh, for it sounded like, “Dirty no good! Button up your britches!”

  Wyitt’s moccasins moved slowly. His eyes took everything in. Never had he seen post doings before and it might be a good while till he saw them again. He had no need to go home just yet. He’d wait a while. He lay out behind a big felled butt and watched the squaws carry their men’s knives, tomahawks and guns to the woods to hide before harm was done.

  Those Shawanees were getting good and wild now. They even took the wolf they had tied to a log. They wanted to skin it and trade its green hide for more whiskey. But that wolf was too quick for tipsy Indians. It twisted half out of its muzzle and bright red blood spat from a dull red arm. The squaws screeched and called down curses on it. They took limbs and wanted to beat and kill it, but the white runner held them back. He took one of their blankets and threw it over the wolf’s head. Then he got some of the men to hold blanket and snarling beast fast while he started on the rear end with his knife.

  The squaws and young ones yelled like penny trumpets when they found out what that white man aimed to do. They roared at their tipsy men trying to hold that lunging beast still. When one had to spit on his hands and grab dirt to hold a jerking leg that was smooth of hide or hair as a venison bone, the squaws doubled up with laughter.

  Not in any of his born days, Wyitt told himself, had he seen a thing like this. His own Pap wasn’t quicker or slicker with the knife. Jake Tench’s hairy hand moved sure as death and never cut a hamstring. He peeled off the last of that pelt, shook off the blanket and let the live beast run. The little crowd gave. No such wolf had ever been seen in these woods before, stark naked of skin or fur. It made Wyitt’s hair stand up to see it go. Like some red beast out of one of Sulie’s nightmares, it ran across the clearing with the squaws and young ones screeching after. It staggered a little as if with rum. It jumped over a log, half fell, heaved up in the air and plopped out of sight in the run bush. And that was the last they saw of it. He wouldn’t forget this easy, Wyitt told himself. He reckoned he had enough now. It was about time he went home.

  Away from the fires the woods were black as a pit. He couldn’t make out his hand before his face. Once his moccasins got wet, his feet helped keep him to the hard path. Hands and feet felt their way, through cold runs and wet places, through mud and over soft moss, around big butts and logs, through spice-wood and hazel patches, down hollows and uphill again. Far off he heard wolves howl and some cat beast cry like a woman. Closer to him noises came and went in the bushes. He told himself he would be plenty scared if he didn’t have a hunting knife. He could slash around with that knife worse than a panther with its claw. He could even lay a beast open; in case he couldn’t find in the dark a handy small butt to climb. On no account would he lose his wits and tramp all the way home through the woods like his Aunt Beriah did once with only a tin lantern between her and a yellow panther keeping abreast of her through the bushes.

  He had no notion it was this far home. He felt he had walked half the night. He should have got to the cabin and back by this time. The path kept making strange turns this way and that. When he listened, the sounds of river and frolic came from the wrong directions. Where he was now, he had no more idea than a lamper eel in the mud except that he was lost. Once he thought he saw a faint light winking ahead. It was too early for firebugs. When he walked, that light walked too, blinking in and out from behind the butts of the trees. Then he crossed a small run and knew it was his Pap’s oiled-paper window with the firelight shining through for he heard old Sarge whining a welcome from the path.

  Somebody pulled open the door. It was Genny. All his sisters were still up this time of night. He stood back, for it did him good to see the long faces they pulled thinking their only brother was still out in the woods. Then he stuck the knife in his belt and went in.

  “Wyitt!” little Sulie cried at him. Never had she acted so glad to see him.

  Genny stood back from the door to let him in.

  “You’d catch it if Pappy was home!”

  “I was just down to the post a tradin’ my skins.” He turned so all could take in the knife in his belt.

  “Kin I see it, Wyitt!” Sulie shrilled.

  Achsa and Genny tried to get their hands on it first, but he took it out and shrewdly gave it to Sayward who was eyeing him grimly. Her face didn’t melt as she turned the knife over in her hands, feeling of the edge with her thumb as the others crowded around.

  “Is that all you got?” Achsa jeered in her coarse boy’s voice.

  “Ain’t that enough fur you!” Wyitt stiffened. Sayward handed the knife on to Genny, the next oldest.

  “Next time,” she told Wyitt, “you better go a tradin’ with your Pappy so you don’t get skun.”

  “I wa’n’t skun,” he denied heatedly.

  “And next time I ask you where you’re a goin’,” she said to him hard as could be, “you tell me! I don’t want to set up half the night a frettin’ some painter got you.”

  She was harsh, but he felt elated he had been fretted over.

  Sayward drove them all to bed now. She was glad enough Wyitt was home. When she stepped outside she could faintly hear voices of a frolic down at the post. Now and then the night air fetched them clearer. She wouldn’t have minded laying eyes on that post her own self, though the trader would not thank her to stick her head in.

  It was good enough, she felt, just to know they had humans closer around them. Her bed leaves felt more comfortable tonight. They weren’t set out any more in these woods only God Almighty knew how far. No, they had two improvements and a store around them. You might say they were living in a settlement now. She wished Jary could have hung on long enough to see it.

  CHAPTER NINE

  A NOGGIN OF TEA

  YOU could see Worth had something on his mind when he came home this afternoon. He kept his eyes from Sayward getting ready to boil soap tomorrow in the big kettle outside. Oh, when he went out to the run to wash, he growled like usual how they never boiled soap till they ran out. But after supper he went and oiled his fine paper window, tallowed the wooden hinges of the door so they’d stop their holding back and screeching, and trimmed up a rock to fit the hole a log had knocked in the fireplace wall.

  “Don’t you have any better shortgown than that ’ar?” he came right out at supper time, looking critically at Sayward across the trencher.

  It made it plain even to little Sulie that something out of the common run had come over their pappy. Once Genny opened her mouth like she would ask him about it, but Sayward pulled down her mouth at her and nodded her to go on and eat her supper. A man’s mind had stranger and darker ways than a beast in the woods. You could poultice a body wound or a snakebite and it would draw the poison out. But try and do that to a woodsy’s mind an
d you only drove it in. No, you had to bide your time and go about your business. When it ripened like a felon, it would come out of its ownself, if it was to come.

  It passed through Sayward’s head that her father might be fixing to fetch a woman home to take Jary’s place. But it had no free white women in this country that she knew of, and hardly would he spruce up his cabin for a Shawanee or Delaware wench. It would be grand enough for her as it was. Before he went to bed he poured fresh powder in his horn and told her he wanted his breakfast early, for he failed to get meat that day. And yet long after breakfast next morning, it seemed he couldn’t take himself off. Genny fetched word out to Sayward at her kettle that he still squatted on his haunches by the fire, melting lead in his iron ladle and pouring it in the funnel of his mould till it ran over. All the young ones had watched this so often they could tell their own selves by the change of color when the bullet had cooled and it was time to open the wooden handles, throw it out and pour in more. Later when those balls cooled a bit, he would cut off the sprues with his knife.

  Well, Sayward told herself, he couldn’t hold off and run balls all day. After while she saw him with his rifle, horn and bullet pouch coming from the cabin. Yes, he was heading her way. Now, like as not, this thing would come out. She moved around the kettle a speck and kept her back toward him, for a look in his face might scare those words ready on his lips and drive them back in his mind.

  “I come by those new squatters yesterday,” he began roughly. “Just to bid them the time.”

  Sayward, calm as a June morning, went on stirring the soap with her paddle, while Genny and Sulie came up soundlessly to stand around with big ears.

  “She gave me something she called tea,” Worth said. “Oh, her man was there with her all the time,” he added quickly to stop any wrong thoughts that might be in his eldest girl’s head.

  “You mean dittany?” Genny ventured.

  “No, it was nothin’ like that,” Worth growled.

  “Well, what fur thing was it?” Sayward asked him.

  Worth’s face grew heavy. “Near as I could make out, it was some kind of snack betwixt dinner and supper. It wasn’t a meal and it wasn’t a piece. A cup of tea went with it.”

  “What was it she gave you to eat?” Sayward put to him without looking up.

  “I never paid no attention.”

  “Well, you have some idee.”

  Worth pondered. Had it been meat, he could have told you the kind of game, the part of the carcass cut from, whether young or old, and how long it had been hung to ripen. But this was woman’s stuff. It made him feel kind of sheepish just to talk on it.

  “It put me in mind,” he said shortly, “of the playparty rations Jary had once when I came a courtin’.”

  “Could you take it up in your fingers?” Genny was keen to know. “Or did you need your knife to eat it with?”

  Worth threw her a look from the whites of his eyes. “The tea, she said, come from Chiny. The rest was just this and that. I mind she had two kinds of breadstuffs. But never a bite of meat or gravy.”

  “What was her breadstuffs like?”

  “Oh, I got nothin’ for such,” Worth stormed. “All I kin tell you it was cut up small and scanty like for little ’uns.”

  “The Chiny tea was tasty, I’ll warrant,” Genny said impressed.

  “I’d as soon drunk water out of a spring some leaves fell in,” he grunted.

  “Did you notice the cup she gave you?”

  “Oh, I took notice,” Worth grumbled. “It was that thin crockery, I was afeard it’d break in my fingers.”

  Sayward made a face at them to jog at their father no more. Well she knew how woodsy men hated to get jockeyed into drinking tea or coffee, let alone talk about it. They claimed such slops never stuck to the ribs.

  “Well, I’m off,” he said shortly. At the big white oak he turned. “I mind now, Saird,” he called back, “this woman ast about you. She said she might be up this way a visitin’ — maybe today.”

  When the trees had swallowed him up, the young ones studied their eldest sister’s face.

  “I knowed it all the time,” little Sulie spoke up, wise as an owl.

  Oh, her father could go, Sayward told herself, for it was out now. It was plain as the nose on his face why he wanted off this place today. She might have expected it had to do with these Covenhovens just up around the bend. The young ones said they were rich, and it must be, for they had three cows and two horses and had fetched a whole raft of plunder in hickory withe creels on those tamed beasts’ backs. The young ones had lain up in the bushes and watched them unpack.

  Genny said they had pewter and copper ware, a looking glass with a towel they hung on a tree, more pots and kettles than you could shake a stick at, a grind stone and a grubbing hoe. And that wasn’t half of it. They had two chests; fine patched quilts; a big iron shovel and a small one Genny thought for the fire; a candle mould, reels, a flax and spinning wheel. And the woman had all the bushes airing with shirts, britches, petticoats, bedgowns and sheets like great folks had. The walls of the Luckett cabin, Sayward expected, would look mighty bare of clothes to such a woman.

  “What rations kin you give a body so fine?” Genny wanted to know.

  “I’ll have to set my thinkin’ cap,” Sayward told her.

  Standing over her big kettle she thought how handier than any time yet would her mother come in if she were living. Never could Worth mind anything save it had to do with the woods. But Jary could tell you all the houses she ever went in, the special victuals they gave her and how she figured they were made. The last year Jary puttered around like she didn’t know her own name, but that old head was still a larder and storebin of most anything about folks and settlements you wanted to know. Jary would be a comfort to her oldest girl now. She would sit here and reel right off how to give this thing called tea in front of a lady.

  But Jary wasn’t here and it filled no kettles to wish her back. Sayward reckoned she would have to do it herself. She kept on cooking and stirring that soap till it dripped thick from her paddle. Then she went in and redd out the cabin. She was glad she had set sour dough to raise that morning. Only yesterday Wyitt said he knew where it had early yellow lady slippers and she had him fetch some for Genny to stick in cracks between the logs. She told him to fetch along fresh mint and cucumber tree leaves, for they made it smell good and welcome over a swept dirt floor. Now she washed her face, hands and feet at the run, combed her hair and put on her good shortgown. All she lacked was a pair of cowhide shoes, but since she had none she reckoned her feet would have to go naked.

  “Some body a comin’!” Wyitt hissed in at the door a little while after dinner.

  The young ones, even Genny big as she was, raced out and dove in the brush. Oh, Sayward knew they would manage to peek in through the cracks and see her and the visiting lady, but never would the lady see hide nor hair of them, nor would Sayward either, till it was all over with and the company gone.

  She set the door open a speck and propped it with no fireplace log but a pretty white rock she had Sulie fetch in. This was a stylish way, Jary used to say, folks would do along the Conestoga.

  After while she heard voices on the path.

  “I don’t believe any body’s home,” a woman’s voice said.

  “Now you come this far, you go on in,” a man told her. “Smoke’s a comin’ from the chimney.”

  The woman must have stood out there a little while looking around. Her steps, made plainly by cobbler’s shoes with heels, crunched up to the door log. For the first time since that door had been swung, knuckles rapped on the heavy puncheons. You could tell this company wasn’t a woodsy, for no woodsy would think themselves fine enough to knock on a door. Sayward waited for a seemly time to pass. Then with grave face and bare feet she moved to the door.

  A genteel, pock-faced woman stood there in elegant blue calico with yellow flowers figured through, a plump little woman, light-footed and light compl
ected although you couldn’t see her hair under the fine sunbonnet. Sayward guessed she had worn it just to set herself off, for there was no sun in these woods.

  The women took in each other with their eyes.

  “I’m your neighbor up the river a piece,” the caller said.

  “Kain’t you come in? Your man, too,” Sayward added, although she knew by what he said he had taken the trouble to come down here just to show his woman the way.

  “He has to go back and keep a watch on our things. We got a good many,” Mrs. Covenhoven said delicately.

  “I’d be proud if you set down and made yourself to home,”Sayward told her.

  The woman’s blue calico rustled to a stool on one side of the room and Sayward took one on the other. Here they sat for a fitting time in sedate silence. It certain was a pleasant thing, Sayward told herself, to feel a woman’s company in the cabin again.

  “I thought we’d get rain a little while back,” Mrs. Covenhoven spoke.

  “Oh, we’ll git some one a these times. You a gittin’ settled all right?”

  “Well, good as can be expected. It don’t do no good to complain.”

  “No, you just got to juke it till the storm’s over.”

  “I had the idee you had brother and sisters?”

  “I reckon they’re off in the woods right now,” Sayward told her gravely.

  Outside you could hear a twig snap close to the cabin and Sayward expected those young ones were sneaking up to peek through a crack and make faces like the caller.