by Almost Eden
“Our daughters, Aee, Bee, Cee, Dee and Eee.”
Light bowed slightly. “Mesdemoiselles.”
Maggie clasped her hands together. “Oh! They’re all so pretty.” Soft giggles blew from her mouth. She smiled up at Mrs. MacMillan. “Not a one of ’em is ugly, ma’am.”
The red-faced girls, not knowing how to take Maggie’s compliment, stood with downcast eyes.
Light glanced at MacMillan and his wife to see their reactions to Maggie’s remark. He was relieved to see MacMillan beaming proudly and Mrs. MacMillan’s smile.
“Thank you, Mrs. Lightbody. Won’t you come in?” She turned to her husband. “The meal is almost ready, Mr. Mac. Why don’t you and Mr. Lightbody sit in the shade until I call you. You can show him around the place this afternoon.”
“All right, my dear.” MacMillan waved Light toward a bench beneath a giant elm. “I’m out of tobacco or I’d offer a smoke.”
Light looked up at the elm whose spreading branches seemed to cover the whole sky.
“Ain’t it a wonder?” MacMillan said, his eyes following Light’s to the top of the tree. “Ain’t another ’round here to match it. Two hundred fifty feet if it’s a inch.” He patted the trunk. “Gotta be eight feet thick.”
Light nodded. It was hard for him to make talk unless there was something to discuss.
After a lengthy silence, MacMillan said, “Ya goin’ to the Bluffs?”
“To the mountains to the west.”
“I heared them mountains reaches to the sky. Feller with Clark said ’twas the prettiest sight he ever did see. Said beaver’d come right up to say howdy.”
“How far to where the river turns northwest?”
“Not goin’ to the Bluffs, eh?” MacMillan chuckled. “I was wonderin’ how come ya tied up with that outfit. Figured ya knowed four men ain’t goin’ to get that cargo to the Bluffs.” When Light remained silent, MacMillan added, “Up ahead there’s towing and cordelling to be done. It’d take eight or ten men for that and ta fight off the riffraff on the river ’bove the turn. Where ever ya be goin’ ya’d have the best chance to go by canoe and be rid a him and that German feller.”
“I was told it was mostly Osage country between here and the mountains,” Light said, ignoring MacMillan’s words of advice.
“’Tis. Ya be Osage?”
Light nodded.
“My woman’s ma was Osage, her pa a Pittsburgh boatman. He was the orneriest bastard to come down the Ohio.” After another silence MacMillan said, “Miz Mac bein’ Osage helped me get a foothold here. Fine people, the Osage. Treat ’em fair and they’ll do the same by ya,” he added.
The sound of Maggie’s laughter floated out the door. Both men looked toward the house.
“That bald-headed bastard’s after yore woman.” MacMillan said quietly. Light’s dark eyes narrowed, but he didn’t answer. “See one like him ever’ once in a while. They don’t give up once they get a woman on their mind. Not even a Indian woman’d suit after he seen what he wants. Guess ya know ya’ll have to kill ’im sooner or later.”
“I reckon so.”
* * *
Maggie had seldom been in the company of women who accepted her as readily as the MacMillans did. They didn’t seem to think it strange when she prowled the house, exclaiming over the clock, the pewter plates and the pieced quilt that covered the bed in the corner.
“This is nice,” she exclaimed, rubbing her moccasined toe over the hard-packed clay floor. Do ya sleep in here, Aee?”
“Pa and Ma sleep in there. We sleep in there.” She gestured toward the room separated by a half partition.
“Can I see?”
“I guess so,” Aee said, after her mother nodded her approval.
Aee led the way into the other room. Her sisters, clearly fascinated by the visitor, followed.
“This is nice,” Maggie exclaimed again. She moved to sit down on the wide shelf that served as a communal bed for the girls. “Do all of ya sleep on here?” Without waiting for an answer she said, “I slept on a pallet. Pa was goin’ to build me a bed off the floor . . . someday.”
The youngest girl, a child of three or four years, came to lean against Maggie’s knees and gaze up at her. Maggie’s smile was one of pure pleasure.
“Yore name’s Eee, ain’t it, little ’un?”
“Uh huh. I can stand on my head.”
“Ya can?”
“Want me to show ya?”
“If ya want to.”
“Not now, Eee. It’s time for noonin’,” Aee said, then to Maggie. “She’s a hoyden. Ma said she should’a been a boy.”
“What’s a hoyden?”
Aee frowned and wondered if it were possible that she had more book learning than this woman.
“It means she acts like a boy . . . sometimes.”
“And that’s bad?” When Maggie stood, the little girl took her hand.
“I got a pet chicken. I’ll show you, if ya won’t go.”
“They ain’t goin’ . . . yet,” Bee blurted, then turned beet red when Maggie looked at her and exclaimed, “Ya can talk!”
“’Course she can. She’s bashful, is all,” Aee said, and led the way to the door.
The MacMillan children were well-mannered even though they were excited about having visitors. Maggie found herself seated across the trestle table from Light. There had been a quiet commotion when Eee had been told to sit in her usual place, which was not beside Maggie. The child had gone sullenly to the other end of the table. The meal of roasted buffalo hump, pigeon pie, hominy and soda bread was followed by vinegar pie.
Hungry for news, MacMillan asked about the latest happenings in St. Louis and St. Charles. He had not heard that Aaron Burr had been brought to trial and acquitted or that an Indian trail from Davidson County, Tennessee to Natchez on the Mississippi River had become known as the Natchez Trace, a road much used by traders and the military.
Mrs. MacMillan listened carefully to the conversation but did not participate. The younger children appeared to be too excited to eat. Aee waited on the table, pouring tea and removing empty serving platters.
Aee shyly asked if they knew Berry and Simon Witcher, who lived north of where the Missouri flowed into the Mississippi.
“Light does,” Maggie said proudly. “Tell ’em, Light. Tell ’em how Berry saved Simon from the mad riverman, Linc Smith, and how you killed that man that was goin’ to blow them up.”
“You tell it, chérie.”
Maggie repeated the story that had become a legend up and down the rivers. While telling it her eyes went often to Light. He added a word or two when she asked him to confirm a fact. He listened carefully, his dark eyes traveling from one face to the other and returning often to gaze proudly at his wife.
“Light threw his knife and killed the man just as he was goin’ to shoot the barrel of gunpowder. He saved them all.”
“Maggie,” Light admonished gently. “Jeff and Will were there.”
“But ya did it, Light. Berry tells ever’body ya did. Light went t’ the weddin’,” Maggie said, and looked around the table at the expectant faces. “Zeb Pike was there. He wanted Light t’ go with him up the Mississippi.”
All eyes turned to Light. “No, I didn’t go,” he said, and then, to Maggie, “Chérie, you talk too much.” There was love and pride in his dark eyes when he spoke.
Maggie laughed. “And ya don’t talk enough.”
The girls gazed at Light with awe. They had heard the story many times but never expected the famous scout would be sitting at their table.
Later MacMillan showed Light his grindstone, root cellar and the pull-bucket well surrounded by a waist-high stone wall. He lowered a bucket on a rope, pulled it up and poured the water in the chicken trough.
“Spring-fed,” he said proudly. “Clear and sweet.”
They walked to a railed enclosure where a cow chewed contentedly on meadow grass that had been forked from the large pile outside the fence. Two hobbled oxen gr
azed in the open field beyond the cowpen.
“Don’t keep horses,” MacMillan explained. “Too big a temptation for the Delaware.”
Light didn’t reply. Men who lived in the woods did not speak when no answer was required.
In a shed beside the barn a Negro worked at making bowls out of burls from ash and maple trees.
“Got two Negroes and a couple of Osage on the place,” MacMillan volunteered. “Them, my two oldest and Miz Mac are all crack shots.”
Eight guns in a place like this would hold off a good-sized attack. Light was curious about the Negroes. It prompted him to ask a question, something he seldom did.
“You keep slaves?”
“Don’t believe in tradin’ in human flesh. Never did. The Negroes and the Osage are free to go anytime. Osage drift in and out from time to time. Howdy, Linus,” he said to the Negro, who was bent over a bench where he was scraping the inside of a burl.
“Howdy, Mista.” The small man smiled warmly, and his dark eyes flicked from MacMillan to the scout.
“Linus is the best woodworker I ever did see. Looky here at this. He can burn the inside of a burl to within a half-inch.” MacMillan held a highly polished bowl for Light’s inspection. “We send ’em downriver to a feller in St. Louie. He sends them on to New Orleans. Linus gets part of the money. He’s goin’ to have more than me if I ain’t careful, and I’ll be workin’ for him.”
Linus’s grin widened, and his eyes glistened with unvoiced pleasure. He was still smiling when they left the shed.
The settler led the way to the larger building. The minute they entered, two Indians went out the back.
“My potash works,” MacMillan said. “Know anythin’ ’bout potash?”
“Nothing at all,” Light said.
MacMillan chuckled. “Ya start with a pile of wood ashes,” he said and continued on. “Got the idey when I cleared a spot a farmland. We downed the trees one year, burned ’em the next. I got to thinkin’ them ashes’d make lye after a time and when the water is boiled out, ya get the potash.” He showed Light an iron pot holding gray powder. “That’s called pearl ash. Not easy work, but it sells good downriver. We boil some of it with animal fat to make soap.
“I’m figgerin’ on having a settlement here. Folks comin’ upriver all the time now: trappers and settlers. Good land for crops right here without goin’ any farther. Only one drawback.” His eyes twinkled. “Man has to run after he sows seed to keep ahead of the crops a jumpin’ up behind him.”
That brought a smile from Light and encouraged MacMillan to continue.
“Might even have a town on this bend someday, what with the salt works back in the cave and the potash. Miz Mac ain’t fond of the idey. ’Course we won’t see a full-blown town, but our younguns will. Be mighty proud to have ya and yore woman a part of it. We’ll give ya a hand settin’ up if ya’d want to squat here and dig in.”
“Thank you, but I’d not be much good as a farmer.”
“Didn’t think ya’d want to.”
* * *
In the middle of the afternoon Light and Maggie prepared to leave the homestead. At the edge of the clearing Maggie looked back to see the MacMillan girls lined up beside their mother. All were waving good-bye.
“They liked me, Light.” There was a kind of wonderment in Maggie’s voice.
“They did, ma petite. It was no surprise to me.” Light threw his arm across her shoulders.
“Will we be back?”
“Oui, you will see your friends again.”
Several canoes, a raft and two flatboats were moored in the creek that ran alongside MacMillan’s homestead. Light directed Maggie to the canoe he had purchased for two of his precious hoard of coins. After a few instructions from Light, Maggie proved to be an able hand with the paddle. By the time they reached the faster water of the river, they had settled into a rhythm, and the canoe slid smoothly through the water toward Eli’s boat.
“What’ll we do without horses, Light?”
“I want to talk to you about that, pet. It’s gettin’ late in the year for us to start across the plains. I’m thinkin’ we will stay somewhere near here for the winter. It’ll take time to build a shelter and lay in supplies for winter.”
“Oh, could we? Will we be close enough so I can see Aee and Bee sometimes?”
“It is possible, ma chère.”
Light’s mind was forging ahead. The crickets were singing, which meant they would have a killing frost anytime. The tree limbs would soon be bare, and the cold north wind would sweep the dry, crisp leaves along the ground. He wanted to take a look at the country on the other side of the river and get some idea about the abundance of game so he’d know what he could count on when winter came. They would live off the land as much as possible. Other provisions he would buy from MacMillan.
He felt no obligation to be part of Nielson’s crew. This was the place and the time to break with the Swede. Something about Nielson created a restlessness in him. It was not only the way he looked at Maggie, it was the way Eli looked at him.
When they reached the flatboat, they found Eli lying on a pallet. Paul was on his knees beside him trying to get him to drink tea.
Otto Kruger sat on the bank above the craft, his back to a tree, a keg of Eli’s whiskey beside him.
Light tied the canoe to the boat and he and Maggie scrambled aboard.
“What’s the matter with Eli?” Maggie went immediately to where he lay.
“Mon petit chou! It’s glad I am that you’ve come back. Eli is burning with a fever. He is sick. Very sick.”
“He was a’right when we left.”
Paul threw up his hands and sputtered in French.
“Speak English,” Light said sharply when he saw the anxious look on Maggie’s face. “She can’t understand you.”
“Forgive me, madame. I am so . . . worried.”
Light knelt down and placed the back of his hand against Eli’s forehead, then touched his arms and placed his hand inside his shirt.
“The fever will burn his brain. We wet him down.”
Taking a bucket from a hook on the side of the shed, Light lowered it into the river and filled it. Starting with Eli’s bare feet he poured the water over him, then went back for another bucketful.
“I wet his shirt, m’sieur, and wrap it about his head. No?” Paul’s face was clouded with worry. He knelt beside the delirious man.
Eli thrashed around on the pallet, his hands flying up as if to ward off an attack. He muttered, his eyes opened suddenly and his hand lashed out, striking Maggie on the shoulder and knocking her back on her heels.
“Madame!” Paul hastened to explain. “He did not know . . . he did not mean to—”
“I know that. Hold his foot so that he’ll not hurt it more.”
“Fraulein!” Kruger’s speech was whiskey-slurred. “He vill soon be det! Den who be boss?”
Maggie turned on him. “Hush yore nasty mouth, ya bald-headed . . . old . . . buzzard.”
The German hooted with laughter. “I like voman vit’ fire.”
“Ignore him, pet,” Light murmured. “Take the wet rag from around Eli’s ankle and apply another poultice.”
“I grind the gonoshay leaves between two stones as madame had done,” Paul said.
Maggie took the slab of bark holding the pulverized herb and added enough water from the water barrel to make a sticky paste. She applied it carefully to the swollen angry flesh of Eli’s ankle. She took one of the rags her mother had put in her pack to use when she had her monthly flow. While she was wrapping Eli’s foot, it crossed her mind that she had finished her woman’s time just before she left home and it had not come again.
Was there a child already growing in her belly?
Thinking of that secret part of her body, her eyes sought her husband. Just looking at him sent her heart to fluttering in remembrance of what they had done together. She tingled as she thought of the two of them warm and naked beneath the blankets:
his being hard and deep inside her and his hot splash of seed awakening a soft explosion from her own body.
Maggie lowered her head to hide the blush that covered her face. Her mother had told her it was a man’s right to do as he wished in the marriage bed. She had not, however, mentioned how enjoyable it would be for the woman or that she had the privilege of pleasuring herself on her man’s body. Light had whispered to her that she had a right as his wife to reach for him when she felt the need.
She remembered the first part of their journey as being the most wonderful time of her life. She longed to be alone with her man again. Light was the only person she had ever known who didn’t seem to think her odd. He did not think it unnatural for her to travel the woods at night or to be unafraid of animals or sing and dance when the mood struck her.
She smoothed the hair back from Eli’s fevered brow. They couldn’t leave him while he was sick. The man who lay fever-bound on the pallet had become dear to her, but not in the way Light was dear to her. She liked Eli very much though. In just the few short days they had known him, she had come to trust him completely. She glanced at Light and found that he was looking at her as she stroked Eli’s brow, his clearly defined features devoid of expression.
Maggie sat back on her heels. She wanted Light to like Eli. At times she thought he did, and at other times she thought he did not not.
When she stood, she caught Light staring upriver and followed his gaze. Four paddlers dipped into the river rhythmically, sending a canoe speeding through the water. Maggie soon recognized MacMillan and one of his girls in the front of the craft, an Indian and a Negro in the back.
From a few yards out MacMillan threw a rope to Light, who pulled the canoe close to the boat and secured it. After MacMillan boarded, he held a hand out to assist Aee.
“Heared ya got a sick man.”
CHAPTER TEN
Neither Paul nor Maggie stopped to wonder how MacMillan knew Eli had taken a turn for the worse. Light, however, remembered the settler saying that nothing went on up or down this section of the river without his knowing about it. The scout filed the thought in the back of his mind and listened to what MacMillan was saying to Paul.