Daniel Plainway - Or The Holiday Haunting of the Moosepath League

by Van Reid

  Isabelle was decked out in slightly newer, slightly more fashionable, but no less practical clothes. Her wool skirt was layered like a quilt with petticoats, and though her boots must remain a mystery above the ankles, they looked very much like her husband’s. She had a coat with a beaver collar and a fur hat that might have been amusing if she hadn’t been so fetching looking out from under it. Capital said later that it was the hat that convinced him she knew what she was doing.

  “You sure you are going, Mrs. Covington?” he asked only once, and she took no offense.

  “I am, Mr. Gaines,” she said with the sort of quickness that indicated she knew the question was coming.

  “Capital,” he said.

  “If you wish, thank you. I am Isabelle.” Her determination was somewhat contradicted, however, by an uneasiness that she could not entirely conceal. Her presence, in fact, and her lack of ease had been under some discussion between Mister Walton and Sundry, and they rightly considered that though she would rather none of them had ventured on this mission, she was unwilling to allow her husband to venture without her.

  “Courage can only visit the fearful,” Mister Walton had quoted.

  “I see the widow allowed you the use of her sleigh,” said Mister Walton with almost a wink.

  “She did,” said Capital, and standing before the sleigh, he quickly altered the subject by telling them his plan, which he had devised in the dark hours of the morning with Mr. Noel and Mr. Noggin. He’d been almost too excited about the whole business to sleep; he looked game, however, and none the worse for a restless night.

  “I’m sorry Mr. Noel and Mr. Noggin aren’t coming with us,” said Sundry. “You might see them before the day is out,” said Capital. He absently stroked Moxie’s head as he told them the roundabout method by which he hoped to confound their opponents, giving the affair the shine of a real adventure. “Well, sir,” said the old major to no one in particular, “let’s burn to it.”

  The entire state had been snowed upon several times since Thanksgiving, but the white drifts were deeper this far inland than they were in Portland. Roads were not generally plowed in those days (only the railroads had the power and mechanics to push snow from their course), and when the roads were groomed at all, they were rolled so that the snow was compacted into a hard surface. Sleighs were the mode of travel, and horses were bred with their ability to winter in mind.

  The road from Skowhegan to Canaan therefore was not a straightforward means of travel but was filled with the hazards and difficulties consequent to the season’s already heavy weather. Capital had a good horse for this sort of thing, however, and once they had their gear packed in the back of the sleigh, they were soon skimming over the snow like a coaster.

  They were not long getting out of the general settlement and were heading south toward the Kennebec when Capital Gaines asked, “What do you think these runes say, Mr. Covington?”

  “That’s just it. They seem to be runes-their shapes match actual figures in Norse writing-but they don’t seem to say anything. In one or two places there will be a short recognizable word, but you could lay down letters at random and do that much.”

  “I took note last night of a strange shape down by the bottom right,” said the old man. “What could that be, do you suppose?”

  “You can’t see it very well in the photographs,” said Frederick. “The sun was low, it seems, and in order to expose the other marks properly, he had to underexpose that one figure. It looks almost like the pictograph of an ox. Our own letter a developed from something like it, the two rays of an angle and an intersecting line about halfway along the rays. The head of an ox.”

  “What would that mean?”

  “I couldn’t say. I’m not familiar with pictographs in rune making. Do you have a theory, Mr. Gaines? I would be greatly appreciative of one.”

  Capital Gaines laughed.

  “A directional marker?” wondered Mister Walton, who sat back to this conversation.

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” said Frederick.

  “Are the runes abbreviated directions then?” asked Capital.

  “I’m not sure they are runes.”

  “Ah, well,” said Capital, “it’s pretty out in the forest this time of year.”

  Twice when they reached the height of a steep slope, their driver and guide stood on his seat and surveyed the road before and behind them. For a while they followed the flow of the Kennebec. Below them the dark waters and snow-covered islands seemed void of color and motion.

  It had been a long time since Mister Walton and Sundry had seen so much forest, and the dark ranks of trees that closed on their left, then on either side as they left the river heightened the mysterious nature of their mission as much as would the Gothic ramparts of a castle. Sundry thought he caught sight of a small, doglike creature skirting the edge of the trees; then the swift shape disappeared amid a stand of alders. He ruffled Moxie’s downy ears and wondered what her nose was telling her.

  They traveled for more than an hour, west and southwest of some prominent wooded hills. Then in a shadowy hollow, while the sky had begun to show signs of coming weather and the wind had risen, Capital drew the mare up and let out a “Hallo!”

  Moxie let out a surprised bark, and the others in the sleigh were similarly startled.

  “Hallo!” came an answering call from the woods.

  “Get your gear,” said Capital, and he nickered the horses a little closer to a stream that crossed the road just ahead of them. The water disappeared through a screen of evergreen and brush, beyond which they could barely see a little glen, as dark and tidy as a gnome hole, with glaciated boulders and ancient deadfalls surrounding it like purposeful boundary keeping. Capital rubbed his horses’ noses and simply said, “Stand,” to them.

  A man was picking his way down the stream by way of a series of stones, and he cried out a “Hallo!” again as he peered up from the confines of the glen to see whom he was greeting. “Capital?” he called.

  “It’s me!” called the man, and with his own gear slung over his back, he half slid, half leaped down the snowy bank to the stream. Moxie capered alongside him, and neither of them looked more than a young man or a pup.

  “Capital!” said the man, with more emphasis than volume, and they gripped hands. “What are you up to, you old scalawag?”

  “Paul!” said Capital.

  Sundry, who had taken his own things and Mister Walton’s, was quickly down the slope and pulling up beside the two men. Paul was of an age with Capital, a tall, wiry man, his curly hair and heavy beard a mix of coal black and gray; his face was weathered, and he had bushy eyebrows that overhung a handsome, if rugged, face.

  “We’re off to search for buried treasure,” said Capital lightly.

  “You’ve picked a good time of year for it,” said Paul, whose voice carried with it the rhythm and inflection of Acadian French.

  “We thought the deeper it was buried, the more we’d find,” suggested Capital.

  “Then wait a day or so, and it will be buried deeper.” Paul was watching as Frederick and Isabelle preceded Mister Walton down the short slope to the stream. Clearly his interest was up. “Shall I do for our tracks before I take your sleigh?”

  “That would be fine. My friends, this is Paul Duvaudreuil, who has been my friend for longer than either of us would care to admit.”

  Mr. Duvaudreuil was pleased to meet them all, and he laughed when Moxie offered her paw. For the dog he could speak his native French, and Moxie was as pleased to hear endearments voiced in this language as in English.

  “You’ll have to trust me to explain another time, Paul,” said Capital. “But the quicker you have my sleigh on its way to Pittsfield, the better.”

  “I am on my way,” said Mr. Duvaudreuil. He had a short knife out of the sheath at his belt and was cutting pine boughs.

  “And we must be gone ourselves,” said Capital, and without further. adieu, he led his small party over the
same stones that Paul Duvaudreuil had traversed. In two minutes they had passed through the cathedral like stillness of the glen (the stream rippling was itself like an aspect of silence) to a border of juniper thicket. “I hope you won’t find this difficult traveling in your skirt, Isabelle,” said the old man, but he did not hesitate before leading the way over the junipers, using them much like the steppingstones in the stream.

  Sundry had heard of this way of hiding one’s tracks; the junipers were thick and heavy enough to keep a normal person from making much of a track beneath it, and if one was able to step in their very center, he hardly left a trace of his passing. The native Indians could fairly dance over a stretch of juniper.

  “Our tracks from the road,” said Frederick, a little out of breath keeping up with their guide.

  “Paul will have covered those and his own already,” said Capital. “It’s not as easy as it sounds, but he learned the trick from an old Indian when we were boys, simply as a means to have fun with me one winter. He’s done the same with his own tracks coming in from another path.”

  They broke through a stand of fir then, and Capital watched as Isabelle joined them. She seemed as ready as ever, and he simply nodded his approval. They were in a small clearing, and there was another sleigh above them on a little rise. Two light Percherons stood in harness, looking sturdy and willing. The woods all about were muffled with snow, and Mister Walton marveled that it was only December.

  “I’ve seen it like this, back in ‘72, in October,” said Capital. “A little north of here,” he amended, “but we had snow in Augusta.”

  Sundry and Frederick were loading the sleigh with their gear, and the clergyman lifted his wife into a seat. Mister Walton and the husband climbed after, and Sundry clambered up alongside Capital. a crow called from a nearby tree, and the older man chuckled softly. The black bird lit on a dancing pine bough and cocked an eye down at them.

  “That’s as good as a telegram for declaring where we are,” said Capital. He put a hand to his mouth and gave out a croak that would have sounded rude in a parlor back home.

  The crow turned its head and applied its other eye. Capital called again. For some distance the bird said nothing, but curious, it passed from tree to tree, following them. Moxie barked at the creature once, and Frederick hushed her and ordered her to settle between them.

  The horses were like dancers in the snow, their handsome legs flashing through the drifts and their broad chests pressing forward with the illusion of small labor. They followed the western shore of the stream for perhaps three-quarters of a mile before they crossed a brook and came within sight of Oaks Pond.

  “The ice is probably strong enough, cold as it’s been,” said Capital, “but tracks on the pond can be seen from any high bank. Better to keep ourselves a little concealed among the trees. There are some trails near the water, however, and the way will be easy till we come to the brook that leads to Lake George, where we will have to make some decisions.”

  Along trails that deer had broken, the horses only gained speed; they seemed born for the task, and the lake to their right flashed in and out of the trees. The broad expanse of sky above the plain of ice gave greater evidence of the coming storm-a palette of gray had conquered the atmosphere—and when this was remarked, Capital assured them that he knew of more than one hunting camp where they could see a blizzard through. “It may seem the middle of nowhere,” he said, “but we’re not so far out.”

  The accompanying crow had chased after some breeze above the lake, racing ahead of them by half a mile, but they could hear it calling, and several others of its kin answered from other corners of the otherwise silent woods.

  18. John 19:27

  He never discovered where the old woman was going, and he wished afterward that he had inquired. He never knew her name.

  Snow was drifting from the clouded atmosphere.

  Eagleton had just spoken to his landlord the front door of the house on Chestnut Street when he first heard the altercation; he was raising his hat back to his head as he closed the door and stepped onto the stoop to follow his bags to the awaiting cab.

  A second cab stood at the curb, and the driver was down from his seat and berating an elderly woman in thunderous tones and blasphemous verbiage. He had a worn hat tilted to one side, a cigar in the hatband; he was unshaven and red-nosed. The man’s eyes bulged with anger, and he did everything but shake his fist at the woman.

  She was a small person whose command of English, slight from the start, had evaporated with anxiety. She wore dark clothes and a broad scarf over her head and was from her accent a person of Acadian extraction. She was attempting to explain something to the driver but was thwarted by her own tears and his unwillingness to listen.

  Eagleton would have been the first to admit that displays of anger and the use of profanity were, by practice, reasons to move swiftly in another direction, but the discrepancy between the cabdriver and the elderly woman was so great that he swallowed his uncertainty and, stepping past his own cab, approached the scene.

  “I was never meaning to pick up one of you people!” the man was saying even as he laid a hand upon the woman’s collar. “What’s this here then? That trinket will cover the cost and my aggravation, you can bet on it!”

  “No, no!” the woman was shouting. “Monfils, mon fils.”

  “Good heavens!” was all that Eagleton could find to say.

  “Lay off!” said the man before Eagleton could get within a pace of him. “She takes my cab, then pretends amazement when she doesn’t have a purse or a penny to her name!”

  “I have my purse lost!” the woman pleaded.

  “Is it inside?” wondered Eagleton.

  “It’s not inside,” said the rough man, grinning most disagreeably. “She’s an Egyptian.” He still had her collar in one hand and with the other attempted to lift something from her neck.

  “If she were Egyptian, it would not matter a whit!” Eagleton declared, and he was about to suggest that the woman was speaking French when the situation became intolerable and he did the unthinkable, which was to lay a hand upon the man’s arm and shout, “Sir!” horrible sneer still occupying the lower half of his face. “You had better The driver swung his gaze like a ship’s boom into Eagleton’s face, that have good reason to be laying hold of me, mister!” he spit. “‘Cause I don’t care how fine your hat is, but what I’d be glad to knock it off—and your head with it!”

  Eagleton’s driver had joined the scene by this time, and it was not apparent whether he was prepared to come down on one side or another or whether he was simply wanting a ringside seat.

  “Sir!” said Eagleton again, followed by “If you will be so kind, I will happily defray the cost of this lady’s travel.”

  “You’ll pay her fare?” said the man.

  “I will indeed!” said Eagleton, who was growing uncommonly warm.

  “And if you will not cease your belligerent manner, not to say your cowardly language, I will be forced to express my displeasure to the authorities!” He had by this time produced his own wallet and put in the man’s hand a sum that would have made the driver happy had he given the old woman three tours of the city.

  “He never earned that!” said Eagleton’s own driver; he snatched the money from the first cabbie’s hand and returned it to Eagleton. “Give him a couple of coins, and if he doesn’t take it, I’ll knock the hat from his head!”

  In his highly emotional state Eagleton thought that the transaction had grown complicated, but he did as his driver told him, and the unpleasant cabbie climbed back onto his seat, shouting, “She can’t even speak English!”

  “She seems to be speaking English and French,” countered Eagleton’s driver, “and that’s two more languages than you command.”

  The unpleasant man spat on the sidewalk at Eagleton’s feet and drove away with several sinister deprecations.

  Eagleton and his driver both apologized to the elderly woman, the two of them as
men and the driver as a member of his profession. Eagleton was averse to being late for his meeting with his friends and Mr. Burnbrake, but he doffed his hat and said in careful syllables, “Is there anything else I can do for you, ma’am, or any place my driver and I can take you?”

  The woman took Eagleton’s face in both her hands, and he thought that she was going to kiss him. “You with the beautiful hair!” she said, her English returned to her now that the moment of crisis had passed, and indeed, Eagleton’s blond locks seemed like a source of light on this overcast day. “How like a good son to come to an old woman’s rescue!”

  “Oh, well,” said a reddening Eagleton. “I am sure one of my friends would have done more.”

  Then the woman reached for the back of her neck and unclasped the delicate chain hanging there. “My heart, it would be broken if that man took this, but to you I give it.”

  “My word!” said Eagleton, with a hand raised to indicate the absolute necessity of his refusal.

  But the woman took hold of the hand with a surprisingly determined grip and laid in it the chain, from which hung a tiny silver cross. “You cannot deny me,” she insisted. “My son is dead-almost forty years at Bull Run-and to me this was his last gift!”

  “But, ma’am!” cried an astonished Eagleton.

  “You will give it to your mother,” she said firmly, and when he seemed frozen in place, she took the cross and chain from him again and deftly fixed them about his neck. “I had a dream last night,” she said, “and my son told me he would send another son to help me from trouble, and here you are.” Her sweet wrinkled face smiled up at him. She had tears in her eyes, and the condition seemed contagious. Both Eagleton and the driver were clearing their throats and hemming and hawing and blinking as she moved away from them down the sidewalk.