Stephanie stared at her mammy, trying to figure out the reason for her great haste.
“Prissie Pigot’s birthin’ a baby, Steffy,” Bertha said.
When they had gone, Stephanie took her grubbing hoe and went into the corn. The corn itself needed no more hoeing. She and Rob had laid it by and had left it to ripen in its own good time. But the tree sprouts were like ghosts that couldn’t be laid. No sooner was one grubbed out than another shot up.
Soon Willie and Rob came up the hill from the river with three big-mouthed catfish strung on a twig.
“What did Jason want?” asked Rob.
“Mammy,” said Stephanie. “Prissie’s mighty poorly. Mammy said for you to help me in the corn, Rob, and for you to scout around and find her some shelly bark, Willie.”
“I got to clean these fish,” announced Rob.
“Just lay ’em in the river,” Stephanie told him. “Lay a big rock on the end of the twig to weight it down. Then we’ll clean the fish before dinner.”
“You mean lay ’em in the river and let the mud turtles eat ’em for dinner,” corrected Rob.
“Well, bring a kettle full of water from the spring, and put ’em in that,” suggested Stephanie.
“I might just as well clean ’em now as later,” said Rob. “And that’s what I’m a-goin’ to do. And after that I’m goin’ fishin’ some more. You can’t always be a-tellin’ me I got to do this and I got to do that and I got to do the other thing. You’re not my boss.”
Down toward the spring he traipsed, knife in hand for cleaning the fish, looking mighty pleased with himself.
Stephanie stared after him out of wide open eyes. Why, this was mutiny! Strip, stark mutiny! The kind of mutiny General Washington was always having to quile down. What could she do, she wondered. What could a body expect her to do? The corn wasn’t hers any more than it was Rob’s. And was it her business, or wasn’t it, if Rob wanted to skip the corn and hide out along the river with a fishing pole and let somebody else grub out the tough-rooted sprouts?
“Willie, honey,” she called, “you go along now and hunt the shelly bark for Mammy. There’s some around this stump right out here in the corn.”
Willie came obediently and began to gather long ragged pieces of bark in his arms, while Stephanie chopped the corn rows as clean as a swept floor.
It was almost dinner time when, nearing the end of a row, Stephanie caught sight of a short shadow lying across the corn aisle. Her panicky eyes rested first on a pair of buckled shoes. Up traveled her gaze, slowly, past a pair of knee-length breeches, past a green waistcoat, past a flowing neckerchief, past a swarthy chin to the pock-marked face and the gimlet eyes of Adam Frohawk.
“I see you’ve improved every shining hour!” rasped Frohawk, indicating with his mocking eyes the finished cabin, the tall com, the hominy block, and the ash hopper.
The sight of him riled Stephanie to the quick.
“What do you want?” she snapped at him.
“I think—I want my dinner,” he told her, as easygoing as if he’d said it was a sunshiny day. “And while you’re cooking that, I think I’ll have a look around.”
He started toward the cabin.
“Don’t you go in there!” she ordered him.
Willie was at her heels, his tongue tied with fright.
“What’s to stop me?” Frohawk asked. “Not your pappy. He’s been gone from the country too long to expect him back.”
Stephanie’s legs felt like spindly little whips under her. How did Frohawk know where her pappy had gone? And suppose Jonathan didn’t come back? Was the land to be Bedinger’s just because of that? Hadn’t her mammy a right to the land? Hadn’t she and Noel a right to it? And Rob and Willie and Cassie? They had all bent their backs clearing it.
Into the cabin strode Frohawk, peering into every corner, staring at the big fireplace, examining every tool and utensil. Stephanie stood in the door watching him. Rob would be off down the river at a time like this, she complained bitterly to herself.
“I’ll get your dinner,” she told Frohawk suddenly. “Willie, you run down into the woods and bring me some chips for kindlin’.”
“That’s a good girl,” said Frohawk. “Where’s your mammy?”
Stephanie turned away without answering, and left Frohawk in the cabin. Following Willie into the woods, she grabbed him by the shoulders, and looked straight into his eyes.
“We’ve got to find Rob, Willie!” she said. “Quick. You go down the river that way and I’ll go this. And if you find him, tell him to come a-runnin’ for his life.”
“What if I don’t find him?” asked Willie.
“Come back without him, then,” she said. “Don’t waste any time. And don’t go a far piece.”
They separated, Stephanie going down the river, Willie going up. In ten minutes they met again.
“Didn’t you find him any place, Willie?” Stephanie asked, her voice taut with anxiety.
“No, not any place at all,” said Willie. “He said when he left he was goin’ so far away he couldn’t hear you call him. And he took that Bird Head pistol with him, too.”
A wave of anger swept over Stephanie. Tears of helplessness stung her eyes.
“Listen, Willie,” she said, “you run lickety-cut to Lonesome Tilly’s and tell him to come here as fast as he can.”
“Lonesome Tilly?” Willie gulped hard. “Me go after Lonesome Tilly?”
“Yes, you,” Stephanie told him, her hand on his shoulder. “Run for your life, and tell him to come here.”
Willie stared at her out of eyes that didn’t believe she could mean what she said.
“But I—I don’t know the way,” he stammered.
“Of course you know the way,” she told him. “You have to know. A big boy like you couldn’t forget so soon.”
She gave him a push and set him going, but he turned and faced her.
“I’m—I’m afraid, Steffy!” he wailed. “Make Rob go.”
“But we don’t know where Rob is,” Stephanie reminded him desperately. “Listen, Willie, you’ve got to go!”
The thought only terrified him the more. He began to cry so loudly that the clearing, Stephanie knew, must be filled with the sound.
“Sh-h-h!” she warned him, laying a finger over his mouth. She stooped down and wiped the tears from his eyes.
“Willie,” she said, “recollect you’re a patriot, like Noel?”
“Um-hum,” he whimpered.
“D’you reckon everything Colonel Clark tells Noel to do is easy? Don’t you s’pose lots of things Noel’s sent to do are hard, and scary, and make him want to run away? But he never runs away. Noel never, never runs away when Colonel Clark sends him to do somethin’ dangerous.”
Willie stopped wailing, but he puckered his mouth as he listened to Stephanie.
“Now, you’re a soldier, too, and I’m your colonel, and I’m a-sendin’ you expressin’ to Lonesome Tilly with a message. It ain’t a hard job, Willie. He won’t hurt you. He likes you, else he’d never have brung you a coon.”
“What’ll I say to him?” Willie asked in a small voice.
“Just tell him to come quick. And you come back quick, too.”
“But what if he doesn’t know what I say?”
“Tell him anyway,” Stephanie said. “Just try to make him understand, Willie. That’s all I ask you to do. Try to make him understand. You might take hold of his hand and lead him a little way. Then come runnin’ back like a streak of lightnin’.”
Reluctantly Willie turned and vanished into the woods. Now, realized Stephanie, she would have to face Frohawk by her lonesome. She didn’t know what she intended doing. Nor did she know what she expected of Lonesome Tilly, if, indeed, he followed Willie home.
She would cook Frohawk’s dinner in the clearing, she decided. She would kindle a fire near the east edge of the clearing where she could look now and then at the Tree of Freedom, if she needed to remember what it had to say to her. That
was as far ahead as she could plan.
Frohawk was sitting on the hominy block as she came out of the woods. He stared at her as she carried coals of fire from the fireplace and kindled the fire.
“I hear your brother’s joined up with Colonel Clark,” he said. “The red-hot liberty brother, I mean.”
Stephanie’s body stiffened with anger. Her blue eyes burned with fury as she met the crafty eyes of Frohawk.
“Another word about my brother, and I—I—”
Frohawk burst out laughing.
Stephanie had meant to tell him she would not cook his dinner, but good sense told her not to invite more trouble than had already made itself at home in the clearing.
Silently she went about frying the fish Rob had left in the spring house, feeling grateful to him now for having cleaned them and left them there. Meanwhile, Frohawk prodded her with questions. Didn’t her brother know the war was as good as over? Which way would her mammy be coming home? Wasn’t it too bad her pappy never got home with all that hard money Colonel Bowman promised him so he could buy up more land when the court awarded the whole of the Salt River bottom to Bedinger?
It seemed to Stephanie time had never dragged so slowly as that half hour spent in frying the fish and watching from the corner of her eye for Willie and Lonesome Tilly. Wasn’t Tilly coming, she wondered. And was it a foolish thing to have sent Willie for him? Suppose something happened to Willie?
At last, out of the north wall of woods, came Willie, half running, looking back over his shoulder as if he thought something might grab him from behind. He opened his mouth to speak, but Stephanie motioned him to silence.
In a minute, the bushes parted and through the leaves Lonesome Tilly thrust his head covered with its tangle of white hair.
Stephanie quailed. Maybe he would be only a hindrance, she told herself. Maybe she could never make him understand what she wanted, if, indeed, she herself knew what she wanted.
She glanced at Lonesome Tilly again as he caught sight of Frohawk. In that instant his eyes burned with curiosity, and horror bubbled up in them like water bubbling in a spring. Without a sound he pulled the bushes together and disappeared.
Stephanie was about to leave her dinner and go to look for him when he peered through the underbrush again, this time nearer to her. Stealthily he inched across the clearing until he reached her. Then he slumped down on the ground at her feet as if he expected her to fend off the critter sitting on the hominy block.
“Well!” said Frohawk. “Looks like we have a visitor!”
Lonesome Tilly blinked his eyes at Frohawk.
“And what a visitor!” Frohawk burst out laughing.
“You stay around, Tilly, till I get dinner ready,” said Stephanie, “and I’ll give you some.”
Lonesome Tilly made no sign that he heard what Stephanie said. He put his hand deep in his ragged shirt bosom. Stephanie watched him fearfully. Did he have it in his little wad of wits, she wondered, to know why she had sent for him?
Frohawk’s amused eyes were on Tilly as the old man drew his hand slowly out of his shirt bosom. The amusement changed to horror, however, when he saw Tilly dragging out of his rags a great reddish copperhead.
About Tilly’s outstretched arm coiled the snake, its coppery head up, its tongue darting out toward Frohawk.
Frohawk’s eyes turned hard as flint. He reached his hand in his waistcoat pocket, whipped out his pistol, and aimed it at the snake.
Like a painter, Stephanie pounced on him, grabbing his arm. The pistol discharged, but the bullet passed below the outstretched hand of Lonesome Tilly and the upraised coppery head of the snake.
Fumbling in his anger, Frohawk began reloading, when, suddenly, up the path from the river came Rob, running straight toward Frohawk, in his hand the Bird Head pistol Jason Pigot had given him.
“Don’t shoot, Rob!” screamed Stephanie.
At the sound of her voice, Frohawk wheeled around and looked into the muzzle of Rob’s pistol, and over it into Rob’s eyes. Slowly he let go of his own weapon, and his hands went up over his head.
“Turn around, Frohawk,” ordered Rob. “I’m in charge of things here. Keep your hands up. And start walkin’.”
Stephanie stared at them, hardly believing her eyes. It was plain to see Frohawk could hardly believe his eyes, either. Grudgingly he started through the woods, Rob behind him with the pistol pointed at the middle of his back.
“Where’re you goin’, Rob?” Stephanie asked.
“To Harrod’s Fort,” Rob told her. “Where else do you think we’d go?”
Stephanie caught Willie by the hand and started after them. “You stay here till we get back, Tilly,” she called. “When we get back I’ll cook you the best dinner you ever ate.”
“What’re we goin’ to do at the Fort?” asked Willie, hurrying to keep up with Stephanie.
“We aim to ask somebody, Colonel Bowman, maybe, to see that this scoundrel minds his own business till Pappy gets home,” Rob answered. “A body don’t have to wait till December to tend to that.”
15. Neighbors
Here was a thing a body couldn’t believe, Stephanie said to herself, over and over, even though she saw it happening with her own eyes. This thing of three young uns, one of them with a Bird Head pistol, marching a grown man into the Fort to turn him over to Colonel Bowman, or to the surveyor, or to anybody with the proper say-so, was like little shavers whooping and hollering around in the clearing, and actually catching a red man when they were only playing like they were catching one.
To Rob, however, the business to which they had set themselves wasn’t young uns’ play, Stephanie could see. He wasn’t taking any foolishness or sass from anybody.
“H’ist it back!” he snapped, when one of Frohawk’s arms drooped at the elbow.
“Listen, sonny. Did you ever try holding your hands above your head like this?” asked Frohawk. “A body gets mighty tired after the first hour or so.”
“You ought ’a’ had that figured out before you got into so much meanness,” Rob told him.
If it was hard for Stephanie to believe her eyes, it was harder still to believe her ears. Every word Frohawk uttered, Rob had a ready answer for him, with the Bird Head pistol at the end of it, like the periods in Pilgrim’s Progress which said you had to stop a minute there and think. If Frohawk struck off in the wrong direction to throw them off the road to the Fort, Rob ordered him back, like her pappy turning Job around with a gee line. If Frohawk claimed he was tired, and wondered if they hadn’t all better sit down and rest a spell, Rob reminded him he’d have a long time to rest at the Fort.
Why, here, thought Stephanie, was a job as much to Rob’s liking as honey was to bears. Some day, she reckoned, he was going to be a sheriff, or a justice of the peace in Kentucky County, provided, of course, he could go fishing as often as he liked, and hunting, and traipsing around through dark green woods like her pappy. It was a pity, she thought, that Rob had grown clear away from his butterflies. But what a young un was going to be was a thing born in him, she reckoned, and he looked for it until he came to it, and apt as not, it wasn’t always what his kinfolks had laid out for him. Uncle Lucien had thought maybe Rob would be a great one to hunt out birds and butterflies and blossoms in the woods, and mount them, and give them names. But Rob, she reckoned, being like her pappy, wasn’t turned that way. He liked his butterflies better in the woods and in the fields than pinned to a slab of bark and hung on a wall. But Rob would never see ginger-colored wings striped and bordered with soft apple green hovering over a tall pink spire of the steeplebush, or dull brown cocoons clinging to dull gray twigs of trees in winter, without hearing Uncle Lucien saying wise things in his ear, she reckoned.
On the bank of the branch Frohawk stopped suddenly.
“Keep a-shufflin’,” ordered Rob.
“Wait a minute, sonny,” begged Frohawk. “I heard something.”
They listened, but heard no sound out of the ordinary.
Frohawk picked up his feet slowly, and put them down cautiously.
“Don’t try any tricks,” Rob warned him.
Hardly had he got the words out of his mouth when a voice, like an answer, came through the woods—a woman’s voice, as clear and as sweet as a church bell ringing out across the wilderness. Stephanie turned cold, not with the fear she might have felt had it been a man’s voice, but with sheer gladness that welled up in her now that through the woods was coming her own kind and her mammy’s kind.
“We’d better step off to one side, hadn’t we, Rob?” she suggested, shivering with joy. No more telling Rob to do this and to do that, she decided. Forevermore a body was to say to Rob, “Wonder if,” and “Hadn’t we better?” and “If it’s all right with you.”
The woman’s voice had now swelled into a chorus that grew louder as it came closer. Men’s voices rumbled and little young un’s voices that made a body tingle all over the way he tingled when he heard the first red bird courting in the springtime piped up sweet and clear.
Standing well off the path, they could glimpse the people through the trees now. There were horses loaded with packs. There were half a dozen men swinging along, every one with a long rifle on his shoulder. There were women carrying young uns in their arms, and young uns carrying black kettles in their hands or bundles wrapped in old quilts on their backs.
At the head of the line marched a tall man with gray hair matted on his forehead and stubbly grayish beard covering his chin. There was something about his face and about his long, even stride through the woods that was as familiar as homespun.
Stephanie, with a lump in her throat, gripped Willie’s hand.
Suddenly Willie broke away from her.
“Pappy!” he shouted.
Jonathan Venable started, and peered ahead into four pairs of eyes.
“Look out for Frohawk, Rob!” warned Stephanie, though there was no more need to tell Rob what to do than there was to tell General Washington what to do, she reckoned.
Tree of Freedom Page 17