Cordelia Underwood, or the Marvelous Beginnings of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  Coincidentally, Cordelia was thinking about that very same moment: how clever he had been in her rescue and what good humor he had exhibited when he saw that she had made short shrift of Ernest.

  This sudden trouble was a poor showing for both of them, and they rode in silence for several miles.

  “Do you hear that?” asked Scott. He pulled up at one end of a forest corridor and Cordelia unexpectedly found herself so close to the man that their knees touched. Scott had his head cocked to one side, turning an ear away from the breeze in order to hear something ahead of them. “Do you hear it?” he asked again.

  She was distracted, at first, by the opportunity to regard his features from such an immediate perspective; then the sound did reach her ears. It was not quite like distant thunder, nor yet quite like an approaching locomotive.

  “Horses,” she said. “How many are there?”

  “Several, anyways,” he said. “Let’s hope it’s the rescue party, but just in case . . .” He nodded once toward the trees and waited for her to disappear among them, but the rumble of approaching hooves was suddenly louder, and three riders appeared down the trail.

  Scott took his horse several lopes toward the newcomers while dragging his rifle from its scabbard. More riders appeared, the first three pulling up thirty or forty feet away. Scott fixed himself squarely in the path between Cordelia and the oncoming horsemen, a shell levered into his rifle before a word could be said or another step taken. He did not aim, but pointed in the general direction of the riders, who piled up and ran into one another.

  “Dresden!” came a familiar voice, and he found himself staring down the barrel of his rifle at Irving Johnston, the sheriff of Penobscot County.

  Even then, it took a moment to drop his guard. He was angry at himself for being careless, for allowing such a large force to come up on him so quickly—and he had been a little frightened.

  Behind him, Cordelia had unsheathed Wallace’s shotgun and was breaking the breach with the intention of loading it. Then her father pulled up beside the sheriff and she almost dropped the gun where she was.

  “Daddy.”

  James Underwood jumped to the ground and halfway between Scott and the sheriff, Cordelia met him and he threw his arms about her, his face grim with tears and a fierce joy. Cordelia too was crying—and for the first time since her abduction she yielded herself to a series of great sobs that shook both of them.

  Dresden Scott was thunderstruck by the scene—the absolute and honest love between the parent and the child. A vision of a much-loved but long-departed face—some scene from his own past—rose up to obliterate the one before him and he looked away.

  “Mr. Scott,” said James. “I am at your service.” He reached out his hand.

  Scott did not know how the man had approached him, but tears still ran down the father’s face, and the guide looked instead at the hand. Scott dragged the back of his own hand across his eyes, as if he had been at hot work; then he took James’s hand and shook it firmly.

  There was a lot of sentiment on the other end of the small stretch of path as well. Several men had taken off their hats, and more than one found the need to clear his throat. “Good work, Dresden,” said the sheriff. He had taken the shotgun from Cordelia and checked to be sure that it was not loaded. Cordelia discovered that she was gripping two shells in her other hand, so hard that her palm hurt, and she passed these to the sheriff.

  “And you knocked him right over the head?” said one of the men who were returning with Cordelia and her father.

  “Three times!” declared another. “She hit him three times!” Clearly the story was going to be a popular one.

  “A chamber-pot lid and a cast-iron ladle,” said a third man.

  Nine men had gone on with the sheriff in hopes of catching the three kidnappers at or near Pete Stem’s cabin. This left five men in all (counting James and Dresden Scott) to accompany Cordelia back to Millinocket.

  It had been suggested that they camp where they met (the father and the guide, as well as the young woman, were exhausted), but Cordelia hoped to make their original campsite before nightfall, to ensure that they reach town the next day. She could not help thinking of her poor mother, and Priscilla and Ethan, and John Benning, waiting to hear of her fate.

  James explained with a good deal of feeling how John Benning had wanted to go with the search party after riding all night. He passed on to Dresden Scott, also, John’s regret at having mistrusted the guide.

  This news was received with little enthusiasm, probably due to Cordelia and Dresden’s weariness. Cordelia considered the excuse a bit flat, no matter how tired Mr. Benning was; after all, Dresden Scott had ridden all night and morning as well.

  But she felt shameful thinking such a thing, and it caused her to wonder if, after all, she were a shallow sort of person. Perhaps she was seeing how little she knew John Benning—he had proved himself to be charming, it was true, but charm itself need not be a quality of great depth. He was amusing, and his frank admiration had been exciting, but it occurred to her that he had revealed very little of himself. She looked at Dresden Scott, who rode in front of her, and hoped that he had forgiven her for her ungracious words.

  Regarding John Benning’s regrets, Dresden Scott was neither impressed nor glad to hear of them; it annoyed him that he might have to think well of the man, which made him think less well of himself. For some reason, since rescuing Miss Underwood, he had behaved poorly, and he hoped that she would only remember that he had come to help her, and not that he had sounded angry about it afterwards.

  “I think that John is a very good fellow,” said James, hoping to make his daughter feel better.

  The thought irritated her, but she smiled warmly, understanding what her father was attempting to do. “Yes, I think he is,” she said.

  Mr. Scott seemed to have seen something ahead of them on the trail and hurried off to look at it. Once he reached his object (unseen by the rest of the party) he only glanced at it cursorily and continued riding beyond the circle of conversation.

  “Hit him three times!” said the first man again, with an appreciative whistle.

  The wind fell to nothing that night, so that the smoke from their fire rose in a twisting column toward the vault of summer stars. Sparks were lifted with the currents of heated air or spun above the flames, erratic as insects.

  James stared into the flames, and past them, into the events that had taken him here. Several feet away, Cordelia lay with her back to the fire, a blanket pulled up to her chin, her red hair the only part of her visible in the glow.

  Dresden Scott, too, sat considering the fire, and neither man could have said why exhaustion hadn’t taken them. The truth was that Cordelia afflicted them both, the father with guilt and the younger man with regret. The two men commiserated without understanding, and when the need to speak forced itself to the surface, they behaved as if it were the abandoned pit beneath Minmaneth Rock that troubled them so.

  “Do you have any idea what was buried across the lake?” asked Scott quietly.

  James looked up, wondered if the question was outside of Scott’s legitimate concern, then thought of the man rescuing his daughter and said: “As to its exact nature, no; though a clue left by my brother, who buried it there, leads me to believe that it had something to do with William Kidd.”

  “The captain?”

  James gave half a smile. “Yes.”

  “The pirate?”

  James’s laugh was short and low.

  “No wonder you kept it to yourself,” said Scott.

  “I think I would give whatever those scoundrels dug up just to know what it was,” said the father. “If it were mine to give. But curiosity can demand a high price.”

  “Men prize the thing ungain’d more than it is,” cited Scott.

  “That’s the second time I’ve heard you quote the Bard,” said James.

  “Is it?”

  “Or the second time I recognized it. Is f
luent Shakespeare to be expected among men of your trade?”

  “I don’t know . . .” said the guide. “A book may be more highly prized in a place like this. More rare and, therefore, better remembered.”

  “Are you carrying Hamlet in your saddlebags, then?”

  “Much Ado About Nothing, actually.” Scott chuckled. He glanced past the fire at Cordelia, wondering if she were asleep. “It was my mother who filled me with words. Her English was not perfect, and she was conscious of it in public. But she had read Shakespeare in her own language, as a young girl, and was under the impression that a complete knowledge of him was necessary to anyone functioning among Anglo-Saxons. My father might have mitigated this opinion, but he died before I was old enough to remember him.”

  James took advantage of this unexpected reminiscence by observing Dresden Scott closely, peering past the beard and the wavering shadows to those gray eyes. There was something about the guide that he liked very much—not just that the man had rescued his daughter, but that he had done it so simply, and referred to it (when asked) with such little fanfare.

  “And your mother?” asked James, more to keep the man talking than for his own curiosity.

  “When I was seventeen.”

  James calculated that this event must have taken place a decade and a half ago, though for the look in Scott’s eyes, it might have been yesterday. “I am sorry,” said the father, and Scott straightened his posture, where he sat on a log, as if he had been caught at something. There was an uncomfortable silence that James attempted to fill with another question. “Were you raised in Millinocket?”

  “Down on Pleasant River, near Brownsville. My mother cooked, and sewed, and did laundry. We were more fortunate than a lot of people.”

  “And your education never tempted you from the woods? You never went out into the world?”

  “The world?” Dresden Scott spoke as if this were a matter of semantics. “The book in my saddlebags is proof that the world will come to me, Mr. Underwood.”

  James wasn’t so sure, but he did know men who lived unhappily in the very press of things. For himself, he liked his city street and was glad for carriages and trains and steamboats.

  “I’m afraid I spoke some angry words to your daughter today,” confessed Scott suddenly.

  “You did?” said James, almost amused. His tone was wry. “I can’t imagine it. Did she take you to task for dawdling?”

  “Not at all!” insisted the guide. “It was my fault entirely.” James found that hard to believe, and almost said so. He looked over to his daughter, who was indeed asleep, and a great rush of gratitude, relief, and love filled him. Had Mercia been there, sitting about the campfire, she would have told Dresden Scott to apologize, if he felt badly, and be done with it. James simply said, “I’m sure it was nothing.”

  After another silence, Scott asked, “What will your daughter do with her land, do you think?”

  “I wouldn’t hazard a guess. Certainly she was taken with it. She might pitch a tent or build a castle.” James yawned, and suddenly he felt as if he might not make it to his bedroll. His last glimpse before closing his eyes was that of Dresden Scott staring into the fire. He’s younger than I, thought the father. His last thought was of his wife, who did not yet know that their daughter was safe.

  The lights burned late at Mrs. Cuthbert’s. Little was said at dinner, though John Benning was asked to give a more detailed account of himself. Ethan, piqued at not being allowed to accompany his uncle, made himself the prime questioner. Mercia said little. Priscilla was timid and apologetic, as if she had caused it all somehow; she sat like a ghost at the table.

  Mrs. Cuthbert presided over her table with calm and dignity.

  “And you lost all sign of the two riders?” asked Ethan, and Mercia’s eyes lit up at the annoyance in the boy’s voice.

  “Yes,” said John Benning, patiently. “I got off on the wrong track, I’m afraid, and couldn’t find my way back.”

  “So Cord could be with the men you were following after all.”

  “Ethan,” said Mercia. “I think John has answered enough questions.”

  “You are right, of course, Ethan,” said Benning. “I couldn’t be sure. But before I lost it, the trail was moving back in this direction, so I suspect not.”

  Ethan looked as if this did not satisfy him, but let it go.

  “I’m sorry,” said Benning to Mercia. “I think bed probably is the best thing for me.”

  “Please, John, get some rest. We will let you know as soon as we hear anything.”

  He stood from the table, looking as if he might collapse before he mounted the stairs. “I am so sorry about this, Mrs. Underwood.”

  “I know you are, John. Thank you.”

  Looking embarrassed and impotent, he left the table and disappeared upstairs.

  “It seems I should have been able to do something,” said Priscilla—the first words she had spoken in an hour.

  “Nonsense,” said Mercia. “What would any of us have done?”

  “Cordelia was so brave.” Tears coursed down the young woman’s cheeks. “When she saw me, she looked as if she could have driven off the whole lot of them. I suppose she did in a way.”

  Ethan smiled, but there were tears in his own eyes, and the expression had a ferocious quality to it. “I wished I could have seen it—her knocking that brute over the head!”

  Mercia looked as if she wished for some silence and space around her, but Priscilla was beginning to tremble.

  “Let’s go to the front room, then,” said Mrs. Cuthbert, taking command. “I have a jigsaw puzzle there that I’ve been working on for three weeks, and I can’t seem to get anywhere with it.” She stood at the head of the table and pronounced the meal over. “Dishes can wait. Come now.” She scooped up her three guests in the breeze of her passing and situated them at a card table in her cozy, well-lit parlor. “It’s Benjamin Franklin with the kite. The box is here somewhere. At any rate, I’ve got the kite, and there’s a dog here, I think, but I can’t make heads or tails of Ben himself.”

  Ethan was glad for something to occupy him. Priscilla and Mercia shuffled some of the pieces about absently. By the time Ethan had grown tired enough to lie down on the sofa and go to sleep, Mercia had hold of her niece’s hand on the table.

  Another hour ticked away, and Priscilla’s head had come to rest on her aunt’s shoulder. Mercia held her while the young woman slept, fitfully, nervously. Mrs. Cuthbert came into the parlor at quarter to eleven and found Mercia herself asleep, sitting up in the chair. The landlady turned down the lamps and went to bed.

  BOOK TENJULY 12, 1896

  64 The Man Himself

  MERCIA WOKE SOME TIME BEFORE MIDNIGHT AND INSISTED THAT PRIScilla and Ethan go to bed in proper fashion. She herself went to her room and sat up in the dark, gazing from the window out into the moonlit street, listening to the midsummer crickets and peepers. Once the sound of a horse brought her closer to the screen, but the rider passed by to the other side of town. She lay down on the bed, then, and waited.

  Birdsong woke her, and sunlight warming the bed where she lay. She sensed movement in the house, smelled biscuits and bacon, and realized that she was hungry, and yet almost sick at the idea of eating.

  Where could her daughter be? What sort of night had Cordelia passed, and in what sort of company?

  Steps sounded on Mrs. Cuthbert’s porch. Mercia sat up and could see herself in the mirror above the commode. “Good heavens,” she said. Her first inclination was to hurry downstairs, but seeing her like this would not be a comfort to her sister’s children. Outside Mercia’s door, Mrs. Cuthbert had placed a pitcher of water, still tepid from the stove. Mercia was grateful for this small amenity and soon, with the help of a brush and a change of clothes, felt more or less ready for whatever the day had in store.

  She stopped at the head of the stairs to get the shivers out of her system, then descended to the front hall with great calm, and even the look
of optimism.

  Breakfast had been set and Priscilla and Ethan sat at the table. Ethan seemed as ferocious as the night before, with an appetite to match. Priscilla worked admirably at her meal, though each mouthful was a chore. John Benning stood at one of the windows overlooking the porch and the street.

  “Good morning,” said Mercia, like a teacher greeting her class.

  Her niece and nephew returned her greeting with a weak smile and a determined smile, respectively. “Mrs. Underwood,” said John Benning.

  It took some courage and a deep breath to ask the first question. “Has there been any news?” She knew that had there been, she would not have been allowed to sleep.

  “Not really,” said John. “I went down to the telegraph office, as your husband requested, but there has been little response. Several people have wired information concerning Charles Stimply, but it does nothing more than confirm what we already know about him—that he served with Captain Under-wood, and that he died several months ago at sea.”

  There was a silence as Mercia took her place at the table; then John said, “I should have gone with them.”

  “We all wish that we could be with them, John,” said Mercia.

  “I wish I could be with Cord,” said Ethan. “I wish they’d taken me instead.” And he meant it.

  “I’ll go back down to the telegraph office in a little while,” said John. “Then perhaps I should ride out and try to catch up with them.”

  Mercia decided that this was not the moment to dissuade him. Mrs. Cuthbert arrived with a pot of coffee and John sat down.

  James sent the youngest of their party to Millinocket at first light. The fear and anger over his daughter’s mistreatment had turned (now that she was safe among them) simply to anger. He wandered the hilltop and walked partway down the slope while the dew was still upon the grass and a low mist hung over the lake. He turned to peer at the campsite above him, half-convinced that the men who had abducted his daughter would come again. He was glad when he saw Dresden Scott standing at the top of the hill.