The Way Lies North

by Jean Rae Baxter

  The broth was delicious, with little bits of fat and shreds of meat floating in the hot liquid. They drank it in shifts, passing the Hoopers’ cups, bowls and spoons from hand to hand. When the last drop had been drunk, Mama packed away the hambone to use again.

  Before long, the smallest children piled themselves into a heap like a litter of sleepy puppies.

  “At first I worried about travelling with so many children,” said Mama. “But these little ones made hardly a peep all day.”

  “They were too hungry,” said Mrs. Weegar.

  “And frightened,” Mrs. Platto spoke up. “My young ones are deathly afraid of the Rebels. Last week the Sons of Liberty hanged a man on an oak tree fifty feet from our front door. His crime was to bring me a letter from my husband. Some Rebel neighbour must have noticed the man come up our lane, because first thing I knew, those Liberty men were on our doorstep. I shooed the children inside, but they knew what was going on.”

  “The Lord will punish evil-doers for their wickedness,” said Mrs. Weegar.

  Mrs. Vankleek added, “Amen.”

  “Soon we’ll put all that behind us,” said Papa. “If we make an early start, we can reach Oneida Lake tomorrow before dark.”

  Charlotte lay down close to the fire’s warmth. As the flames sank, the burning wood popped and hissed. That night she scarcely noticed the hardness of the ground.

  At dawn Charlotte woke up before anyone else. Smoke was still rising from last night’s fire. She put on more wood to start it blazing again, and then set water to heat in the camp kettle. Using Papa’s hand-axe, she cracked the hambone and tossed it in. Even without much flavour, a hot drink would give everyone a good start for the day’s march.

  A dreamy feeling came over her as she gazed into the fire. It was lovely to have a few minutes alone. She tried to see Nick’s face in the glowing embers. But though she could summon up individual features — his blond hair with the lock that tumbled over his forehead, his blue eyes with the dark ring around the iris that made them bluer still, his slightly bumpy nose — she could not fit the parts together. Did this mean that she was forgetting him? The thought frightened her, because if she forgot him, he was just as likely to forget her.

  The possibility plunged her into gloom. It was foolish to have all her dreams focused on this one boy. Yet she could not imagine sharing her life with anyone else. If she could not be with Nick, she would rather die an old maid.

  Charlotte had just about decided that her life was ruined when Elijah joined her beside the fire.

  “You’re looking glum,” he said as he sat down.

  “I have a lot on my mind. I was thinking about my future.”

  “You mean, when we get to Carleton Island?”

  “No. Years and years further off than that. When we get to Carleton Island, we’ll likely just sit there until the war is over.”

  “Not me. The King’s Own Regiment, the Royal Greens, is garrisoned there. I’m going to enlist.”

  “What about your mother? Don’t you have to look after her and Moses? And now there’s your sister.”

  “Ma won’t need me after we get to Carleton Island. She’ll have plenty of company. As for Moses, he’s going to enlist too.”

  “He’s only nine years old!”

  “That’s old enough to be a fifer or a drummer boy.”

  “Will your mother let him go?”

  Elijah laughed. “Ma can’t stop him. Moses always does what he wants to do.”

  Charlotte shook her head. Even Moses, that skinny little boy who should be rolling a hoop down the Canajoharie boardwalk — even Moses wanted to be a soldier. Like his father and brothers. Like Charlotte’s brothers. Of all the men and boys she knew, Nick was the only one who hated war.

  Hunger gnawed at her insides. For a time she tried chewing a twig to ease the pangs, but all that did was leave a bitter taste.

  All morning they kept on walking. Nobody said much. Apart from Hope’s whimpering, there was scarcely a human sound. The chickadees in the bushes along the trail were the only reminder that the forest was alive.

  The path was broad and clear — the easiest they had travelled so far. A small stream ran beside it.

  “That stream is called Wood Creek,” Papa said when they stopped to rest, “and this trail is the Oneida Carry. It’s a portage that traders and Indians use between the Mohawk River and Oneida Lake.” He took out the map. “See where it ends at the eastern shore. There are two landmarks, a pink granite boulder and a fallen ash tree, to show where the Mohawks will meet us.”

  “Are you so sure they will?” Mrs. Cobman asked.

  “I don’t doubt it. They have given their word.”

  He stood up and slung the rucksack onto his shoulders with one hand. That’s how light it was. “Come on!” he said. “We’ll be there for supper.”

  Supper! What sort of supper? It would not be like Mama’s home cooking — roast pork and potatoes, apple pie. What did Mohawks eat? Corn bread. Dried deer meat. Maple sugar. Those would be fine. Her mouth watered at the thought of food.

  As they neared Oneida Lake, the trail descended to low-lying land covered with heavy brush. The loamy smell of damp earth and rotting leaves filled her nostrils. Then the deep woods’ odour gave way to something swampy as the trail ended at the shore. The rays of the setting sun, so low in the west that it seemed to rest on the water, gave the surface of Oneida Lake a leaden sheen.

  “Here we are,” said Papa. “There’s the fallen tree, and there’s the granite boulder.”

  But where were the Indians? Along the empty shore Charlotte saw no sign of another human being. Maybe the Mohawks had already left. Maybe they had never been here at all.

  Papa must have seen the fear in everyone’s eyes. “Don’t worry,” he said. “When we’ve lit our fire, they’ll know that we’ve arrived.”

  Charlotte stood at his elbow and looked out over the water. The only sign of life was a flock of mergansers fifty feet offshore.

  “If we could catch those ducks, we could eat them.”

  “Fish ducks,” said Papa. “No good to eat.”

  “I’m willing to try.”

  “Oneida Lake holds better things. It’s full of salmon and whitefish. Eels too. Your friend Nick would like those. Smoked eel. Isn’t that a favourite with Dutch people?”

  Charlotte stiffened. A year had passed since Papa last mentioned Nick’s name. Why do it now?

  “I reckon he might. But I never asked him.”

  Papa got out his flint and steel. As he knelt to strike a spark, he said, “I suppose you haven’t seen Nick for a long time.”

  “Five months.” She knelt beside her father and puffed at the red glow in the flax tinder.

  “I reckon love and war don’t mix,” Papa said gently.

  “Especially when your sweetheart is on the wrong side.” She fed a wisp of grass to the tiny flame.

  She felt Papa’s hand upon her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  As the water heated in the camp kettle, Mama tossed in the ham bone. Steam rose, but this time there was no smell of broth.

  They sat around the fire and talked about food.

  “When my husband’s regiment was on a march from Montreal to Lake Champlain,” said Mrs. Platto, “the men ate their boots and leather cartridge cases to keep from starving. They had already eaten their mascot. It was a Newfoundland retriever. Some men swore they’d never eat the flesh of their own dog. But they all did, after it was cooked.”

  The poor dog! Charlotte thought. The poor soldiers!

  A long silence followed Mrs. Platto’s story. Then Hope began to cry. “Eh-eh-eh.” It was not a wail, merely a fretful whimper that went on and on. Mrs. Cobman put the baby to her breast. For half a minute there was silence, then the crying began again.

  “She’s starving,” said Mrs. Cobman. “I think we’ve come to the end. I ain’t got strength to go on. And even if I did, there’s nowhere to go.”

  “The Lord i
s our refuge and our strength,” said Mrs. Weegar.

  Mrs. Platto spoke sharply. “I’d sure like to see some sign of that.”

  Chapter six

  Exactly when did the Mohawks arrive? One minute they were not there, and the next they were — eight dark shapes moving from the trees into the light of the fire.

  They were dressed in leather — breechcloth, leggings, shirt and moccasins. Their heads were shaved except for a crest of hair into which feathers were fastened. For a moment they stood watching, then turned to one another and spoke in their own language. One spoke, then another, until each had had a turn. Finally they nodded their heads in unison, and one man stepped forward.

  He looked older than the others, between thirty-five and forty years of age. His bearing was dignified, his expression quietly alert.

  “My name is Axe Carrier,” he said. “White men know me as Nathaniel Smart.”

  Papa held out his hand. “I am Henry Hooper. How am I to address you?”

  “As Axe Carrier, while we’re on Indian land.” He looked about. “John Stuart told me that Henry Hooper had one wife and one daughter. But I see many women and children.”

  “All are Loyalists from the Mohawk Valley. They joined us as we went along. The Rebels burned their homes.”

  Axe Carrier nodded. “It happens everywhere.”

  Steam rose from the camp kettle, though there was not the faintest whiff of cooking. Axe Carrier glanced into the kettle, where the lonely hambone bobbed up and down in the boiling water.

  “Okwaho!” he called to a young warrior. Charlotte didn’t like the look of this one. His cheeks were painted with jagged yellow streaks like bolts of lightning, and there was a cruel glitter in his dark eyes.

  The young warrior peered into the kettle, grunted and walked away into the dark.

  “I hope he’s gone to get food,” said Charlotte to Mama.

  After a few minutes he re-appeared, carrying a covered basket the size of a milking pail. After removing the lid, he tilted the basket over the kettle. A stream of fine white meal poured into the boiling water. Instantly the broth bubbled into a milky froth, splashed down the sides of the kettle, and hissed in the fire.

  “Praise the Lord!” exclaimed Mrs. Weegar.

  “Amen,” said Mrs. Vankleek.

  “Humph!” said Mrs. Platto as she picked up a stick from the ground to stir the mixture. “Better give credit where it’s due.”

  What a sweet smell! It made Charlotte’s mouth water and brought back memories of home, when corn meal mush bubbled in the pot over the kitchen fire.

  Mrs. Platto’s stick moved more slowly as the mush thickened. She lifted the kettle from the fire and gave one last stir while Charlotte fetched the family’s cups, bowls and spoons from the rucksack.

  Four shifts were needed to get everyone fed. When the kettle was empty, the children swarmed upon it to wipe the inside clean with their fingers, then licked their sticky hands.

  The Indians sat apart, not sharing the meal but talking quietly among themselves while the others ate. Then Axe Carrier approached the fire.

  “My warriors want to leave tonight. We have camped nearby for five days, with nothing to do but eat and sleep. Now we’re short of food. The sooner we leave, the sooner we reach Carleton Island.”

  “How many people will your canoe carry?”

  Axe Carrier shrugged. “Half of you.”

  “Only half?”

  “Unless we tie you up in bales like beaver pelts.”

  “There might be objections to that,” said Papa. “It sounds as if two trips are needed.”

  “Yes. Some must wait for the canoe to return.”

  “For how long?”

  “About two weeks, depending on the weather.”

  Papa turned to the others. “You heard that. Who wants to go tonight?”

  From the shouts of “I do!” it sounded as if everyone wanted to.

  “Well,” said Papa, “we may have to draw lots.”

  “Just a moment,” said Mrs. Cobman. “Provided there’s shelter and food, I’d as lief stay and get some rest.”

  “If she stays, I’ll stay,” said Mrs. Platto. “Let Mrs. Weegar and Mrs. Vankleek go together. With their little ones, they’ll fill the canoe.”

  “Okwaho and I will stay,” said Axe Carrier. “Six paddlers are enough.”

  “Fine,” said Papa. “Two women and nine children go tonight, leaving twelve and a babe in arms for the next trip.”

  While Mrs. Weegar and Mrs. Vankleek alternately praised the Lord and called their children together, the warriors who were leaving retrieved the canoe from its hiding place further along the shore.

  Elijah turned to Charlotte with a look of disgust. “Looks like we’re stuck here.”

  “Two more weeks out in the cold,” Charlotte sighed.

  “It ain’t fair,” said Moses. “I don’t want to stay if Polly Platto’s going to be here.”

  “Pay her no heed,” said Elijah. “You stick with me. Maybe we’ll go hunting.”

  “Do you mean it?” Moses smiled.

  The long canoe emerged like a ghost from the darkness as the paddlers brought it in close to shore.

  “That’s a big canoe,” said Charlotte to Papa. “I never saw anything that size on the Mohawk River.”

  “It’s a freight canoe, made for the fur trade by Ojibwas up north. That one looks about thirty feet long.”

  “Is it strong enough to hold all those people?”

  “It’s built for heavy loads. The Ojibwas line them with cedar. The birchbark is just a skin.”

  While the warriors held the long canoe steady in the shallows, Axe Carrier and Okwaho removed their moccasins and undid the thongs that attached their leggings to their belts. Wading barelegged into the frigid water, they carried Mrs. Weegar and Mrs. Vankleek to the canoe, and then the nine children, one by one.

  Paddles swished, and the long canoe moved away from shore. The passengers looked like a row of dark bumps along the gunwales. Above them knelt the paddlers, two near the stern, two near the bow, and two in the middle, silhouetted against the rising moon. The soft plash of paddles was the only sound. Then from across the water a woman’s voice rang out:

  “Praise the Lord!”

  And a second voice responded, “Amen!”

  Charlotte giggled.

  “Now, now!” said Mama. “Those are religious women. We must respect them.”

  “Humph!” said Mrs. Platto. “My religion teaches that the Lord helps those that help themselves. And I never saw Mrs. Weegar or Mrs. Vankleek lift a finger. Maybe the Lord doesn’t need our help, but we should offer!”

  Charlotte agreed, but not out loud. She had noticed recently that people were of two types: those who worked and those who let others work for them. She also suspected that her own fate was to be one of the workers, whether she liked it or not.

  Axe Carrier and Okwaho carried their moccasins and leggings back to the fire. Neither gave any sign of noticing the cold. When dry, they dressed themselves again.

  The next morning, Axe Carrier and Okwaho showed the others how to build shelters. For each, they made a framework of long flexible poles set in a circle, with the two ends of the poles planted in the ground on opposite sides. They covered the poles with slabs of bark. To Charlotte the shelters looked like upside-down mixing bowls, or perhaps toadstools with no stem. They were small, no more than eight feet in diameter and four feet high. “They’re what we use as sweat houses,” Axe Carrier said.

  In the Hoopers’ shelter there was barely room for all three to lie down. It would be like sleeping in a doghouse, Charlotte thought. Still, that was better than the open air.

  “Now we’ll set snares for small game and put out lines for fish,” said Axe Carrier when the shelters were complete. “Okwaho and I will teach you to live off the land.”

  “There must be plenty of deer,” said Papa. “I see you have a rifle.”

  “No guns. This is Oneida territory. W
e don’t want to attract attention.” Axe Carrier paused. “Okwaho has his bow with him. He’ll get us a deer.”

  Later, after Charlotte and her parents had crowded into their little hut and settled for the night, she had a question to ask.

  “Why are the Mohawks helping us? They waited five extra days for us to arrive. They fed us. We would have died without their help. I don’t understand why they would do so much for strangers, especially of a different race.”

  Papa answered. “There’s a long history behind it, daughter. It began with self-interest on both sides. The Hurons and the Iroquois were ancient enemies, evenly matched until France established a foothold in the New World. French explorers hired Hurons as guides, paying them with trade goods, including guns that they could use against the Iroquois.”

  “So the Iroquois wanted guns too?”

  “Understandably. That was the original reason they formed an alliance with the English. During the French and Indian Wars, the Hurons helped the French, while the Iroquois helped the English. But with the fall of Quebec, the French and Indian Wars came to an end.”

  “The Battle of the Plains of Abraham!” Charlotte exclaimed. “Wolfe and Montcalm.”

  “That’s right. And for more than twenty years, Mohawks and colonists shared the Mohawk Valley in peace. Then all that fuss began about the Stamp Act and No Taxation without Representation. The Iroquois didn’t know what to make of English colonists fighting each other. Both sides wanted the Iroquois nations as allies. The Oneidas chose to help the Rebels. That decision upset the Mohawks a great deal.”

  “Why did the Mohawks stay loyal?”

  “They figured that England had treated them fairly and would continue to do so.”

  Mama spoke up. “Don’t forget about Molly Brant.”

  “I was getting to that, Martha. It was after his first wife’s death that Sir William Johnson married Molly Brant. Molly and her brother Joseph were royalty among their own people. It was their influence that settled the question of loyalty. From then on, we weren’t just convenient allies to the Mohawks. We were friends. Friendship has high value among them, a sacred value. A Mohawk will go a long way to help a friend.”