Cecelia carried in an armful of scrap wood for the stove and caught sight of me.
“Oh, love,” she dropped the logs and came to my side, laying her hands on my shoulders. I held the locks in my hands and wept. All the while she stroked my arms and pressed her cheek to my hair, drawing me close. I clung to her and my grief crippled me, leaving me without words.
When at last I could breathe, and had collected myself enough to place the small tokens of my children back into the Bible’s pages, Cecelia saw me to the pine stuffed tick and sat me down. Soon I had a cup of hot coffee at my feet, and she’d brought Tom and Rachel inside to sit with me. I couldn’t offer thanks, but clung to my children and looked up at her. She smiled slightly, her own eyes glassy with tears threatening to fall.
“I’ll be just outside, finishing up,” she said, though I knew she would be attending to the bulk of the work.
“Give me a moment, I’ll help.”
“Rest,” she said, “I believe these two have seen some interesting sights while we’ve been putting the tent up.”
Obediently, Tom started talking about a rabbit warren they’d found close by. When I next looked up, Cecelia was gone.
Later, once the sun was gone and darkness was creeping in, the men came out of the woods like bears, all noise and hunger. Tom, Rachel and I were collecting extra wood and sticks to pile near what was to be the cookhouse. While we were in the tent Cecelia had dug a hole for a fire and hung our largest pot over it. Inside she’d cooked up a simple stew of the dried beans and peas that Leehorn had indicated to us. In the steaming pot I could see she’d added some of our supplies; rice, onion and no doubt some much needed seasonings. A second pot proved to contain coffee.
The men looked our way and, like weary horses scenting a nosebag, they knew their dinner was at hand. After finding their plates, cups and eating irons from the bunkhouse, they came to us in clusters and singly. In the firelight they looked like strange forest imps in their long red socks and bright woollen coats and trousers.
“Where’ve you come up from?” asked one after another, and we gave the same answer every time. Many of the men had come from Indian Territory too, and knew of the troubles with the grasshoppers, or had experienced them first-hand. Those that had lost their farms shook their heads and spat on the dirt to show their anger at the way things had gone. I noted that several of these men had tokens of those they’d lost with them; a lace edged handkerchief in their breast pocket, or a piece of ribbon about their neck, on which hung a button or beads clipped from a dress. None had wedding rings or jewellery of any kind. Like myself they had sold it to pay their way north.
Most of the men went back the bunkhouse to eat, but a few stayed outside by the fire, chaffing their hands in its warmth. Myself I was feeling the cold even under my coat and shawl, my fingers like iron nails under my gloves, I took them off to warm the bare skin by the fire – chilblains be damned. Cecelia had neither gloves nor muffler, she’d only bought herself a thin, second-hand coat. I offered her my gloves, but she shook her head.
“You got no ring I see Miss,” called a thin man with a patchy black beard. I was to learn that his name was Gill, though he was known to the others affectionately as ‘Pisspot’ for reasons I chose not to explore.
“I’m widowed,” I said, busying myself in scraping the bottom of the pot for the latecomers.
“So I’d be if I’d ever married,” he said, “my woman was carried off by the ague and fever seven months ago.”
“More likely she was carried off by some fellow with more money and a better stake,” called out a red haired wit from by the fire.
‘Pisspot’ Gill leapt to his feet at the insult and the two started a brawl on the naked dirt nearby. The others either cheered them on, or ignored them, rolling their eyes as they finished off their dinners. Cecelia looked aghast at the oaths coming from the scrapping pair, and the sounds of punching and the blood being spat onto the ground. I set aside my ladle and elbowed her gently.
“Tis a man’s world up here.”
After a while, Gill, the winner of the fight, went off to the outhouse, while the red-haired boy, known to the others as ‘Irish’ stumbled back to the fireside to staunch his nose with his sleeve and drown his sorrows in whisky-laced coffee.
He was not the only Irishman in camp, we’d seen a few, and many had such nicknames; Red, Irish Pete, Long Irish, Copper-Knob-Jo and the very imaginative Short Irish. There were a good number of men from other countries, with strange accents that I couldn’t place. Cecelia said later that she believed they were ‘Germanic’ – German or Dutch men from Europe. Perhaps the biggest surprise were the number of half-Indian men and mulattos employed by Leehorn, and the fact that they seemed to be welcomed by the others as equals. I said as much to Cecelia as we were cleaning the pans.
“It’s as though they don’t notice, or care,” I said.
“They probably don’t, much,” Cecelia said, scrubbing at the caked stew pot with determination. “Charles did business with a man who made his fortune in furs up here. He traded with the Dakota Sioux and the Ojibwe up until the 30s, when the decline started. We had him to dinner a few times – a very tedious man – but he did tell us of the large numbers of Indians here, trading in furs. Up until a few years ago there were more Indians here than whites – and they have lots of mixed people too. They get treated as whites as long as they’re wearing the right clothes.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Just like?”
“For the most part,” Cecelia said, “Edward, that is, Charles’s colleague, said that he knew of a half-Ojibwe working as an interpreter for a trader…William Warren I believe his name was. I remember Edward said this translator was educated in the east and writing essays on the Ojibwe people in his own time. They were published only two years ago, in the Minnesota Pioneer - Edward had a copy.”
I whistled low. I couldn’t imagine writing an essay myself. My writing could about stretch to a letter, providing it was of no great length.
“I wonder how the men up from Indian Territory and back east think about it.”
Cecelia sighed. “I’m sure with all these new people, like ourselves, arriving, things will change soon enough. It’s strange to think of these new people learning our old ways – learning to hate people who’ve lived here long before they even thought to jump on a ship and come here.”
We cleaned up and put our things away. As our first day in camp drew to a close and we crawled exhausted into our bed, curling up in the unfamiliar smell of pine needles, I thought on what Cecelia had said. I was one of these new people she spoke of. Not as new as some, but still, I’d been born in England, not in America, as she had. It troubled me to think that I might be learning to hate, as she’d said these men were. I promised myself I would try and keep my mind my own, and not give a whit for whatever anyone else thought.
As I closed my eyes to the shifting canvas of our roof, I thought lastly of Martha, and wondered if she’d come north as we had. Perhaps she was somewhere with her baby, happier and able to live a better life.
I hoped so.
Chapter Six
Cecelia
Our work was hard, and it kept us busy from morning until night, which I suppose was a blessing. With full days and dreamless, exhausted nights, it seemed there was less time to consider the empty places where Nora and Beth should have been. Laura worked with focus and determination, and we both entered figures into our ledger against our future, watching the totals increase with each passing day.
Not only did we cook two meals a day for the men, breakfast and dinner, but we also passed out cold cornbread to be eaten at midday. While they went off into the woods, dressed in their garishly patterned woollens, we stayed at the camp and undertook the multitude of tasks that we could charge a penny for. Laura and Rachel mended ripped clothes and holey socks, and Tom kept our washtub full and the kettle boiling to get the lousy, filthy clothes clean. Given the amount of darning and stitching to be done
, I taught Tom to handle a needle and thread, and he took to it quite well. Rachel continued to struggle with the work and was not shy about letting her frustration with it be known to us.
Rachel’s preferred task was chopping up stumps for firewood, or failing that, dragging Tom out to the woods to set or check snares, and to fish. The fishing poles were old things that Leehorn had kept on his wall, relics from when he’d had sons to take out on the lake near his home.
“Now they’ve gone off looking for their fortune, all grown and with their own youngun’s. Expect if they could, they’d write.”
Leehorn, for such a rough exterior, appeared to have the soul of a good Christian, and a better father. It was he who told Tom about the fishing poles, and he who insisted it was no trouble to take Tom and Rachel fishing at the stream of an afternoon, once he’d handed out work assignments and checked on his men. I think he was quite lonely. Not once did he speak of what had befallen Mrs Leehorn, or even allude to her existence. I could only assume that like many men living a hard life, trying to make his fortune, he had lost her to the cruelty of nature.
At first I worried about him taking Rachel out with no adult chaperone. She was only a young girl, but Laura told me that the previous winter Jamison had been leering at her. There were a lot of men around, many of them widowed or without a woman. I wanted to keep Rachel safe. Still, we trusted Leehorn, and Laura assured me that Rachel was more than capable of defending herself, something which I knew all too well.
Tom didn’t really take to fishing. He would go with his sister and Leehorn to the stream, and gamely attempted to practice the skill and learn the various techniques and tricks that Rachel spoke of so animatedly come evening. Still, I could see that the fish turned his stomach, he could hardly stand to look at the few he brought home, much less touch them. I took pity on him and when fishing was proposed I asked him to gather water or wood. He could keep an eye on his sister that way, but was spared the struggle with the gasping fish and murky waters.
Conversely, Rachel flourished as a fisherwoman, whether due to Leehorn’s friendly encouragement or a dogged desire to succeed in all practical skills put before her. She brought home many strings of freshwater fish and became quite practiced at gutting them with her little knife. Fried fish became a steady part of our diet, and fish stew proved a welcome change for the men.
What pleased me the most though, was not the progress that the children were making, or even our success at business; it was the way Laura and I could be together. It was as though, in building our tent, we had constructed a place for each other in our lives. No more did I have to hide how much I wanted to be near her out of respect for her grief. She allowed me close to her and often came close to me. At night when I rushed out of my clothes in the chill evening air, she held the blankets up for me to dive under, laughing at my shivering and fitting her warm feet over mine.
As we went to sleep we could hold each other, and I could at last touch the softness of her naked back, kiss the curve of her throat and wake with the warmth and scent of her about me. On nights when she could not sleep, I would often wake to find Laura tucked into bed beside me, working her knitting needles in the faint light from the banked stove, a still-warm cup of coffee at her elbow. On one such night, it occurred to me that, for the first time in my life, I understood what people saw in marriage.
*
Winter came on quickly, and soon we were breaking the ice in our water buckets every morning. There was snow over the ground and the sounds of the axes rang out through the frozen forest. I had no idea how they were still felling trees, they must have been frozen hard as iron. It certainly seemed to sharpen their appetites. We went through Leehorn’s stocks and most of our own, until I had to start thinking about going to buy more.
“I can’t take the wagon, not in this snow,” I said to Laura as she shuffled pans of cornbread in and out of the cherry-red iron bake box. The men took the hot food in their grimy hands and ate it without pause, breathing out great gouts of steam.
“You need a sled,” a mulatto man in a yellow wool jacket said, overhearing.
“Sled?”
“It’s how we used to haul supplies in snow,” he said, taking his hunk of cornbread and making his way back to the bunkhouse.
“That’s a very good idea,” I said, “we’ll have to build one.”
Laura passed cornbread my way. “Best get on with it, we’re down to our last bag of meal.”
The sled we made was nothing more than a plank platform on two waxed green-wood runners. With a piece of rope tacked to the front it could be pulled, and I put some more ropes into a sack to secure our purchases. Only one of us could go; someone had to stay to guard the wagon, the tent and to keep cooking for the men with the few supplies we had left.
“I’ll have to stay,” Laura said.
I’d known it would have to be so; there was no way I could handle cooking for all those men without Laura there to give me confidence. I could just about boil up a stew, but they were used to Laura’s cooking now and mine would make a poor substitute.
“I’ll take a rifle. I’ll be back before you even have a chance to miss me,” I said, trying to smile, but feeling my eyes be drawn to her swelling belly.
Laura patted my hand. “I’ll be fine. This one’s not coming for a while yet.”
I placed my hands gently on her stomach, feeling the swelling there. “I just worry.”
“And I worry that you’ll get stuck somewhere in a snowdrift,” Laura said.
Privately I was also a little frightened of what might befall me out in the woods. I’d not lost the terror of wolves that last winter’s attack had left me with. Neither was I enthusiastic about travelling for miles, in the direction Leehorn had told us a town lay. Of the town itself he’d only said, ‘Tis a gun and hatchet kind of place’ which did not fill me with confidence.
“Perhaps you should have Tom with you, to help,” Laura said.
“I can go,” Rachel said suddenly.
Both of us started, as we hadn’t heard her come out of the woods. She had over her shoulder two rabbits, tied at the feet with twine.
“Rachel Deene I have told you not to go out there alone,” Laura said, “and that eavesdropping is a sin.”
“I wasn’t alone – I was in sight of Irish.”
Laura muttered something under her breath, which sounded very much like a plea to the heavens.
“I can go to town with you,” Rachel said again. “Tom’s better at the mending anyways, he’ll be more of a help to ya if’n he stays here. Lee says he’s got a damn sight more patience than me for womanly workings.”
“Rachel – please speak as you were raised to,” Laura sighed.
Rachel sighed, but kept her beseeching eyes on me. “He’s just getting over his cold, he won’t be as much help as I can be.”
Laura thinned her lips, but, after banishing an unrepentant Rachel to the wagon after a cup of flour, she turned to me.
“I think some time away from the men may do her some good, she’s picking up all kinds of poor habits.”
Stifling a smile, poorly, I agreed that taking Rachel with me might keep Leehorn from imparting any further wisdom to her, at least for the time being. Though God only knew what we’d encounter in town.
That night, lying in the rude tent we’d built together, I watched Laura take down her hair. It was something that pleased me greatly, watching her long brown hair, gilded by the light from our glowing stove, fall about her shoulders and gleam like mahogany. As I had done in that barren inn bedroom, I took up a comb and drew it through the locks as she relaxed against me. It was our nightly ritual.
In all the time we had been alone together of a night, I had been afraid to touch her too intimately. Even to put my hand on her bare shoulder made my throat turn thick and my chest grow tight with fear and excitement. Fear that she would push me away, of not knowing what it was that I intended to do. Excitement at the idea that I might yet know her that
way, and be so close to her. Closer than any dear friend. Closer than anyone. When I held her at night we were like old marrieds, but touching her made my heart beat like a girl’s should on her wedding night; fast and heady.
That night, the night before I was to take Rachel into the woods to find the town, Laura turned in my arms and looked at me. The tips of our noses almost touched. I heard her swallow nervously, felt the faltering rush of her breath against my lips.
The kiss, like the few we had stolen together on the prairie, was sweet and warm. My heart beat in my skin as I brought my hands up to touch her hair, to run it through my fingers and cup her cheek.
In the gloom we lay down, and Laura put shaking hands to my arms, plucking at the shirt I wore over my shift, to keep warm. I nodded and she fumbled the buttons, in the end I took the job over and she half laughed to herself as she discarded her shawl.
Too shy to go before each other naked, we had spent the past months sleeping in our underclothes. Still, the idea of lying before her, unclothed, filled me with nerves so intense I felt almost faint.
The dark helped us to be brave.
Our clothes discarded, I took Laura into my arms and felt her warm weight against me for the first time, without layers of dusty cotton in the way. Her breasts were heavy and hot against my flatter chest, her belly rounded while mine was smooth. She put her hands on me and traced the curve of my bare arms, my sides. Her eyes were wide and dark, looking me over more thoroughly than I dared look on her.
Smoke Through the Pines Page 4