The Winds of Autumn

by Jim R. Woolard

  “Won’t do, missy,” Lem snapped. He licked his lips, the sly wolf about to outwit the hunter by sneaking the bait from the trap. “Water’ll still seep under the edges of your sling an’ sink us.”

  Hannah Ferrenden settled the fry pan on red coals and pulled the Oldham pouch to her. She opened the pouch, heaped meal in a cupped palm, trickled water from the boiling noggin and began kneading the mixture into johnnycake, never looking Lem’s way. In the same calm voice, she said, “There’s a leather bucket—not a big bucket, mind you—of hardened pitch in Meek’s bale. We’ll sew the edges of the sling to the hull with pine roots, then seal them with hot pitch.”

  Her eyes lifted from the kneading. “Ain’t much different from caulking bottom planks on flatboats at Paw’s Allegheny yard. We’ll be heavy in the bow, but with the two of you seated past centerline in the stern, we should balance out just fine.” She paused and smiled sweetly. “Better swig some rum, Sergeant, before the night bugs fill your mouth for you.”

  Outdone and outtalked, Lem grabbed the jug and took his medicine with an exasperated shrug of the shoulders. He dried his chin with a forearm and said with not a twinge of shame or regret, “Young lady, I expect yuh could barter hides with Wentsell an’ he’d not shrink your plunder.”

  “Kind words are seldom forgotten,” Hannah Ferrenden conceded with an appreciative bow of the head.

  In the brief quiet that followed the birth of their temporary truce, I allowed that, unless we wanted uninvited savages bolting from the dark with hatchets and other sundry weapons ready for action, she’d best finish her cooking and douse the fire. Burying the first batch of johnnycake in hot ashes with her knife, Hannah Ferrenden began kneading a second. “He always so blasted serious about the chores at hand?” she inquired of Lem.

  “I reckon,” Lem answered, “the sweatin’ always comes before any pleasure with this Tyler brother.”

  Hannah Ferrenden turned toward the fire and carefully covered more johnnycake with ashes. “Then we’ll heed his counsel. I can’t have him cross with me if we’re to bed beneath the canoe tonight.”

  Lem, filching another swig from the jug soon as her gaze was averted, choked in mid-swallow and spewed rum the full width of his belly. Either our cook didn’t hear him coughing and sputtering or she pretended not to. She combined the dregs of her iron canteen with the water remaining in the noggin, and wedged it amongst bright coals at the center of the fire. Rocking to her feet, she walked to Meek’s bale again, stopping only for a loud pounding of Lem’s backside with an open hand. On her return, bearing two dented tin plates and drinking cups, she tweaked the tail of his pelt cap. “A gentleman your age shouldn’t suffer surprise so easily, nor judge ladies of whom you know so little,” she chided.

  Being called a gentleman by a handsome woman apparently soothed the sting of her scolding reproach somewhat, for when she presented the old salt with a plate of corncakes and pemmican, he squared his shoulders, hawked his pipes clear and emitted a hoarse “thank ye.” His brief sojourn with proper manners ended abruptly, however, with the first whiff of those steaming vittles. His chin lowered, and he gobbled food with the lunging bites and fast chewing of the ravished fox, slobber trickling from the corners of his mouth.

  Hannah Ferrenden smothered the fire with knife and foot. I briefly lost track of her in the resulting darkness; then her slim shadow flitted from the cooking pit to my blanket, hands lumpy with a second plate of vittles and tin cup of watered rum. She seated herself next to me and we gulped ash cake and fried meat with no more restraint than Lem had shown.

  The hesitant breeze scurried eastward and in the still of evening, the click and buzz of winged pests already astir were all around us. Long a stranger to grudges of any kind, Lem fished about in the front fold of his frock. “Forgettin’ our little spat, I ain’t above sharin’ my skeeter fat with yuh, missy.”

  Hannah Ferrenden shuddered. Her refusal was pointed, yet undeniably polite. “I’ll be fine with one of the blankets. If not, I’ll wake you.”

  “Suit yuhself, missy. I’ll sleep where I can scout the creek both ways. We start early enough, we should finish our patchin’ by noon. Blaine, me lad, will we sail late tomorrow or the next momin’?”

  Before my jaws could open, the judge’s daughter ceased eating and boldly answered the question for me. “Pitch should harden overnight. We’ll hold off till the next day,” she decided.

  Fully aware from much hard experience how sincerely we Tylers resented anyone, man or woman, speaking for us without our inviting them to do so, Lem sucked in a hefty bait of air. Hannah Ferrenden heard that sharp intake of breath and knew without question she’d overreached herself. In the ensuing silence, which probably seemed an hour for the waiting Lem, but in truth lasted only a few seconds, the light was too faint for the old salt to spot her reaching fingers grip my thigh. “Day after tomorrow meet with your approval, Captain Tyler?”

  The hold on my leg tightened. I could barely make out her shadowed eyes; nonetheless, they were studying me with rapt attention. She wanted no quarrel over what had been at worst a harmless slight, and I followed her lead, saving face for her in front of Lem. “As always, Private Ferrenden, your judgment outranks a rash tongue. We’ll shove off day after tomorrow.”

  I’d no more said that when she leaned and kissed my cheek, something I was glad Lem couldn’t see in the dark … or had he?

  The old sergeant uncorked his stayed breath, levered himself to his feet with his Lancaster, and with no hint he had spied anything out of the ordinary, announced, “I’ll take leave of yuh now. I’m too tuckered ta lift the jug agin. I’ll be back at dawn.”

  Five thumping steps and he was gone into the brush fringing the northernmost hackberries, pointed upstream. Hannah Ferrenden helped herself to the last morsel of johnnycake on our plate, and we followed his progress by ear till all went quiet. “He’s found a place where the leaves are piled soft an’ deep an’ he can watch over the creek,” I reckoned aloud. “Flayed out as he is, he’ll not be awake any great time.”

  “A sleeping guard isn’t any advantage to us.”

  “Believe me,” I corrected her, “the Shawnee make any noise chancin’ by, he’ll be on the alert with his rifle aimed the proper direction.”

  “I’m just happy he’s in the far bushes with his stink,” Hannah Ferrenden observed. “And I’m too whipped to argue about anything with you.”

  She quickly gathered the cooking gear, plates and cups, stowed the lot of them in Meek’s bundle and never forgetting we camped in hostile surroundings, fetched the turncoat’s musket from its customary stand near the cooking pit. I laid the weapon with my Lancaster and the Brown Bess, then stretched on my backside.

  Once I was settled, my nocturnal companion kicked the propping limbs free and lowered the canoe over us. I expected her to sleep as she had the previous night, her head at my feet. She turned herself instead, lifted the top blanket, and crawled alongside me, her head pillowed on my right shoulder.

  Straight off, not exactly sure what, if anything, the change in sleeping arrangements signaled, I stiffened from chin to knee. “You needn’t fear me,” she whispered, burrowing closer. “I’m fully clothed, I don’t bite to hurt and no one would see if I was to kiss you now, which I’m not.”

  She sighed, her breath tickling the underside of my jaw. “Why must I always tell a man what I want? Ease yourself and put your arm around me, damnit. I’ve slept alone and cold too often for a girl who’s afraid of the dark.”

  I did as she ordered, surprised at how she fit against me everywhere like second skin. The scent of springwater and flowering vine mingled with the stench of dried sweat and stained linen. She ignored my rank smell and slipped an arm about my neck. “When the skeeters locate us, you’ll pull the blanket over our heads, won’t you,” she muttered.

  She was sound asleep before I could say yea or nay.

  Chapter 19

  Past midnight, jerking movements disturbed my sleep. The
movements persisted, strong enough and frequent enough they kept me from dozing off again. I fought myself fully awake, and discovered Hannah Ferrenden curled in the crook of my arm, slim body wracked by sobs she stifled with a closed fist.

  I never learned why she cried that particular night. She was a prideful female, and the fist at her mouth signed these were private tears she wanted shed without my knowing. Slowly, not wanting to alarm her, I gently rolled her upper body atop my chest and held her tight. The sobbing died away. As I hoped, after pondering some little time, she decided there was no honest embarrassment in accepting the comfort of another’s embrace in the quiet of the dark.

  She clung to me and rested through the night without further upset.

  True to his word, Lem rapped on the hull of the canoe at dawn. Before he could rap a second time, the woman sharing my blanket swept nimbly across me and raised the starboard gunwale. “Prop the stern, Sergeant. I’m pleased you’re not late. We’ve a full-bang day ahead of us.”

  Nearly overwhelmed by such exuberance at the waking hour, Lem did as he was told, then butted his Lancaster. “An’ pray tell, missy, what’s first for me?”

  “You start the fire and I’ll tend Captain Tyler’s wounds. We see to that, you gather more wood and heat the pitch and I’ll hike the hill for the pine root. Anything about that not suit you, Sergeant?”

  Her simple straightforward plan was flawless, and Lem remembered from yesterday how foolhardy it was to carelessly challenge her thinking. His broken-toothed grin was sincere and belied his years. “It’s your foofaraw, young lady,” he acknowledged.

  I came next. “It’s time you were on your feet and we need the oilcloth for our patch,” she said, offering me an arm.

  She braced her feet, pulled on my clasping hand and brought me to a sitting position, then upright on wobbly knees. I sucked wind, but the hurt in my side had lessened greatly and I was beginning to believe maybe I could travel on the morrow.

  Hannah Ferrenden loosed my frock and untied the deer hide bandage wrapping my rib cage, giving voice to her findings. “Front hole’s scabbing over. Back here there’s new blood, probably from when you riled yourself while I fetched the sergeant. It would’ve been damn helpful if you hadn’t wrestled into these breeches by your ownself.”

  Beyond her shoulder, I saw Lem watching and listening beside the fire pit. At the words, “by your ownself,” the brow of his good orb shot upward and threatened to lodge in the fur trim of his pelt-cap. Following my baleful glare, his head lowered and wagged in disbelief. He would dwell on what he’d overheard and conjure up more untruths about the last three nights than a woodchuck had hairs, every one of which he would repeat till kingdom come for any willing ear. The resewn crotch of my breeches, once he laid eye on Hannah Ferrenden’s stitches, would provide final proof something indeed wild and wicked had occurred in his absence. The simple truth that I’d been capable of little more than a loud grunt, let alone any amorous pursuit of the judge’s daughter, would in no way dampen the lurid tone of his recountings, and his future listeners, savoring each detail, would seldom inquire if the lecherous old goat had actually witnessed any of what he so gleefully disclosed.

  None of this, however, sparked any ill will on my part toward Lem. I had enjoyed his tales when others bore the brunt of his humor, and could hardly protest my turn at the mark. And Lem would spin his yarns solely in the company of other menfolk. He would never knowingly insult any woman, be she rich or poor, pretty or warted. About that, he could be trusted.

  Hannah Ferrenden covered the exit wound with replacement leaves and stretched the deer skin taut. “Grab both ends at your hips,” she ordered.

  The resulting pain was surprisingly slight and my legs steadied the longer I stood there. “You get the patch made,” I said. “Maybe I can’t paddle, but I can hold a rifle an’ spy the bank while we descend the creek.”

  Hannah Ferrenden looked at me from under my chin. “I never doubt you,” she said quietly. “I only question what seems uncertain around me.”

  She had a real leaning, this woman, for sudden statements she expected me to understand on the instant. Before I could so much as nod my head, she returned to the bandaging, leaving me to stare at Lem over her closely cropped hair. When I stared without speaking, the old tale-bearer grumbled disappointedly and went seriously about his fire-starting.

  Bandaging completed, I was shepherded to a seat on the ambush log, where the judge’s daughter helped me don my tall moccasins. “You must stand guard at the creek,” she said, handing me my Lancaster. She secured Meek’s musket from our blankets and faced Lem, who was lingering proudly beside a crackling fire. “You’ll find much driftwood along the bank downstream. Bring plenty and tie together a tripod for the pitch bucket. See you don’t tarry, Sergeant. Shiftlessness sours the soul.”

  Lem’ s slitted eye trailed her out of sight. He tapped the ground with his rifle and fixed me with a cunning gaze. “High-handed like your brother, ain’t she now. I daresay yuh won’t be smilin’ like some jackanapes the first time yuh gots ta tell her no. I’ll taken my fun then, lad,” he vowed and hobbled into the brush, bound downstream of course.

  I took station where the hackberries overhung the creek and Lem, cursing with each coming and going, stockpiled sufficient wood for the day and the night to follow. His splinted knee made for slow and arduous work. He refused any assistance from me for fear of provoking additional bleeding (and possibly incurring the displeasure of our missing root digger). He trimmed a trio of sturdy branches, leaned them together across and above the fire, lashed their tops and soon had the pitch bucket hanging from their underside inches from the flames. At that juncture, his wind ran shallow and forced a spell of rest. He snugged a noggin of shaved chocolate and water in the coals and waited for the brew to warm, rubbing at his bad leg.

  The two of us were trading sips from the noggin when Hannah Ferrenden popped from the hillside trees to our rear. Sweat glistened on her forehead and pooled in dark stains at her breast and beneath her arms. The Shawnee hatchet jutted from her rope belt and thin strands of pine root, yellow and fouled with small clods of dirt, were strung from her forearm. Her bare hands and clad knees were soiled and filthy from the chopping and digging. It had been as rough an early morning for her as crippled Lem. And much remained undone.

  She leaned Meek’s musket against the oversized hackberry and trudged to the hanging bucket. What she found curved her lips in a smile. “What good fortune. Some wise Injun mixed tallow with his pitch like Paw’s yardmen. Tallowed pitch spreads thin and hardens just fine.” Her tiredness vanished and those purple eyes sought Lem. “I’ll wash my roots and we’ll cut the patch, Sergeant.”

  We watched her scurry down the steep bank to water’s edge. “Don’t never allow no slack in the traces, does she now,” Lem mumbled almost to himself. He spat decisively. “Where’d she stash that jug? ’Thout a heap of fortifyin’, she’ll drain my tap for certain.”

  His ensuing search of the camp, a hunt interrupted by several furtive glances toward the creek, located the rum amongst the contents of Meek’s bale. His caution, though, went for naught. On the second swallow, the itch he couldn’t scratch jabbed his backside with her hatchet handle. Lem spun and came to attention out of habit, prepared for any new chastisement in the offing.

  “For once you earned your dram,” Hannah Ferrenden said evenly, crisscrossing the stump of the deadfall with dripping roots. “If you’ll permit it, I’ll join you. A small ration would taste divine.”

  The unanticipated turnabout wrought a miraculous change in the old salt’s downcast demeanor. For a woman of breeding to partake of the camp jug was as uncommon as flying horses. For her to ask permission of the very man whose smell and contrariness seemingly offended her to no end, bespoke friend ship and respect, not loathing and disapproval. Lem was forever cantankerous and stubborn; never was he willingly or blindly the fool. The dark scowl faded from his tattooed countenance, his head cocked sideways a
nd he held forth the jug with both hands. I swear the grin creasing his grizzled face extended from ear to ear. “Missy, I believe you’ll do ta run the creek with,” he proclaimed, pushing the jug at Hannah Ferrenden.

  She didn’t disappoint him. Slipping a finger through the neck ring, she rolled her wrist backward and lifted all at once, neatly balancing the heavy jug on the flat of her folded arm. The jug halted even with her shoulder, the spout at her lips. Her elbow tilted and she drank, swishing the rum about her mouth before the swallow. The folded arm lowered, her wrist rolled the opposite direction and she returned the jug smoothly to Lem.

  “Never seen a prettier pour,” he boasted on her behalf, stoppering the jug. “Now let’s cover the hole in that canoe an’ taken out of here afore the heathen luck on ta us an’ have our hair.”

  Hannah Ferrenden gave the orders and the limping Lem followed them without objection. They warped the canoe’s overturned prow atop the deadfall and draped the outside of the hull with the oilcloth. The judge’s daughter measured the draped cloth, Stick Injun’s knife poised for the trimming. Emboldened by their jug-sharing, Lem suggested a topgallant pattern wider at bottom than top. Such a pattern, narrow width stretched tight over the entire V of the bow and fastened at both gunwales, would require sewing and sealing along just the bottom edge on the stern side of the hole, sparing much time and sweat.

  Hannah Ferrenden nodded, whacked Lem’s shoulder and said, “Lemuel”—not “Sergeant”—“I apologize. I’ve doubted everything about you except your complainin’ and drinkin’. I’ll trim here, you cut at the port gunwale.”

  A rooster who’d just covered a dozen hens strutted less than the freshly complimented old salt. He nearly tripped on his own moccasins turning the stern of the canoe. He jabbered throughout the patch making, bragging of previous endeavors with sails and spars aboard ship and ashore in ports and river yards. Hannah Ferrenden wisely let him yammer away, nodding often enough Lem was convinced he owned her ear, though I suspected if his knife slowed or stilled, the drummer’d sound a different tune.