The Way Lies North

by Jean Rae Baxter

“If it’s Oneidas, we’d walk right into them,” Charlotte said.

  “It can’t be Oneidas,” Papa said. “If they attacked, they wouldn’t make any noise, and certainly not a noise like that.”

  Clank, clank, clank. It was coming closer.

  Mrs. Platto, who continued stirring the kettle of mush over the fire, said, “If we weren’t sixty miles into the bush, I’d say it was a cowbell.”

  And before anyone could offer a different suggestion, a brown cow walked out of the woods. The cow’s udder was so full that her teats nearly touched the ground. Following the cow was a short, bow-legged man wearing patched trousers and a coonskin hat. He had a pack on his back and a switch in his hand.

  “I’m Tom Snelgrove,” he announced. “This is Bessie. I smelled your cooking a mile off. I’m tired of milk. I’ll trade you a whole pail of it for one hot meal.”

  “Where’s your pail?” asked Mrs. Platto.

  “That’s just a manner of speaking. You’ll get your milk, even if it ain’t in a pail.” He squatted on the ground next to the cow’s flanks. “Watch this.” He grasped one teat, squeezed, and a stream of milk shot through the air into his open mouth.

  Then he turned to the wide-eyed children. “Anybody else want a drink?”

  The younger Plattos did, though Polly stood aloof. Snelgrove squirted the milk into the children’s open mouths with an aim so accurate that scarcely a drop splashed on their clothes or on the ground.

  Charlotte laughed. “I wish I could do that.”

  “Open your mouth,” said Snelgrove.

  “No! No!” She backed away. “It was your aim that I admired.”

  “Dinner is ready,” announced Mrs. Platto in a stop-your-fooling voice. “When we’ve cleaned out the kettle, Mr. Snelgrove can fill it with milk, and we’ll drink some in a civilized manner.”

  After dinner, Snelgrove told his story.

  “Me and Bessie been walking for seven days,” he said, “all the way from Cherry Valley. The Rebels burned me out. I didn’t lose much, because I never had much to start with. Just Bessie. I wasn’t going to leave her for those damn Rebels.”

  “Where are you heading?” asked Papa.

  “Carleton Island.”

  “How do you plan to get there?”

  “By way of the Black River, I’ll follow it north. The mouth ain’t far from Carleton Island.”

  “There’s a channel to cross. How will you manage that? You can’t swim your cow over at this time of year.”

  “I haven’t got that part figured out. We’ll make it somehow.”

  In the morning Snelgrove traded another kettle of milk for a packet of cold corn mush.

  “Time to be off,” he said, and picked up his switch.

  “First, a word of advice,” said Papa. “Take off that cowbell and stuff it in your pack. Otherwise, the Oneidas will hear you a mile away.”

  Snelgrove scratched his chin. “I reckon you’re right. Bessie won’t be happy without her bell, but it’s for her own good.” He took off the bell and crammed it into his pack. “We’ll see you at Carleton Island before Christmas!”

  Bessie lowed softly as she plodded beside him into the forest.

  It was an hour later that Mrs. Cobman, Hope in her arms, rushed up to the others. “I can’t find Moses,” she said. “Have you seen him?”

  “No, I haven’t,” said Charlotte.

  “Wasn’t he with the other children when they said good-bye to Snelgrove and the cow?” Mama asked.

  “No.” Mrs. Platto shook her head. “Moses wasn’t there.”

  Mrs. Cobman turned to the children huddled near the campfire. “Did you young ‘uns see Moses?”

  Polly’s arm shot up as if this were a classroom quiz.

  “I saw him!”

  “When? Where?” Mrs. Cobman’s voice rose. She clutched the baby to her chest.

  “When Bessie left, Moses went the other way.”

  “Which other way?”

  “Bessie went that way.” Polly pointed east. “And Moses went the other way.” She pointed west with a smug smile. Yes, Moses was in trouble again.

  Mrs. Cobman bit her lower lip. She looked angry, but also afraid. “If that boy went off alone, after everything we told him—–”

  “Don’t worry, Ma. He must be checking our snares,” said Elijah. “We set some for rabbits last night.”

  Polly smirked. “Or maybe he climbed another tree.”

  The adults stood in a circle, looking at each other’s faces but avoiding each other’s eyes.

  “We’d better go after him,” said Papa.

  “No search party,” said Axe Carrier. “He’s had an hour’s head start. Okwaho and I can track him faster if we go alone. There’s an Oneida fishing village at the west end of the lake, and that’s the direction he has gone. Unless we hurry, they’ll find him before we do.”

  After the two warriors left, a feeling of dread settled in. All conversation stopped. Mrs. Cobman gazed bleakly into the fire. When Elijah sat down beside her, she turned her back to him.

  “Ma,” said Elijah, “they’ll find Moses. He always turns up.”

  At midday Mrs. Platto cooked a kettleful of cornmeal mush. No one ate much. Mrs. Cobman did not pick up her spoon.

  “Sadie, you must eat,” said Mrs. Platto firmly. “You got Hope to think about too.”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Cobman’s voice sounded hollow. At the reminder, she began to eat. She ate mechanically, as if clockwork raised and lowered her hand.

  When a cold drizzle started to fall, Mrs. Cobman took Hope into her shelter. The others remained standing about the fire. Polly Platto was in tears.

  Time passed slowly. Minutes stretched into hours. Nothing happened. Water was trickling down Charlotte’s neck. What was the point of staying out in the rain? Charlotte looked westward one last time, and then went into the shelter. Mama joined her. Papa remained outside, tending the fire.

  The rain had changed to sleet, and darkness was falling by the time the searchers returned. Moses was not with them.

  “We followed his tracks all morning,” said Axe Carrier. “Around midday we came to a leaf pile beside the trail. Some leaves were scattered about, some pressed down as if someone had been lying in them. From that point on, the boy was no longer alone. Beyond the leaf pile, there were moccasin prints as well as boot marks in the earth.”

  “Moccasin prints,” Mrs. Cobman said in a low voice. “Where did they lead?”

  “We don’t know. The trail went cold.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We lost the trail.” He spoke slowly. “Oneida warriors move like wolves in the forest. They double back on their tracks over and over, each time heading off in a different direction so nobody can tell which way they’ve really gone. I know their tricks.”

  “Where do you think they’ve gone?” Papa asked.

  “Most likely to their fishing village at the far end of the lake.”

  Mrs. Cobman looked as if she had been turned to stone. Her voice shook, “Won’t you go after them?” All eyes turned to her. No one moved or spoke.

  Axe Carrier broke the silence. “There’s no use. If the boy is there, we have no way to rescue him.”

  Mrs. Cobman’s eyes shifted from Axe Carrier’s face to Papa’s. “Do something!” Her voice rose. “You can’t let those heathen savages kill my child.”

  Axe Carrier flinched but said nothing.

  Hope wailed. Mrs. Cobman tightened her grip. There was a tiny squawk, then silence.

  The baby can’t breathe, Charlotte thought. Somebody has to get her away from Mrs. Cobman before she suffocates. Charlotte reached out her arms. “Let me take her.”

  “No! Don’t nobody touch my baby!” She twisted away and ran, stumbling through fallen leaves, toward the forest. Okwaho blocked her path. At the sight of him, she screamed, “You’re the cause. Elijah took good care of his brother before you lured him away.”

  Okwaho took a step backwards. His hand strayed to
the handle of his knife, though he didn’t look as if he planned to use it.

  “Ma!” said Elijah. “It ain’t Okwaho’s fault.”

  Not a sound came from the baby. Charlotte watched in horror. Didn’t Mrs. Cobman know that she was crushing her own child?

  Suddenly Mrs. Platto grabbed Mrs. Cobman by both shoulders. “Sadie! Pull yourself together! You’ll kill that baby if you don’t stop.” She shook her hard enough to loosen her bones. “You must bear this like a soldier’s wife.”

  Mrs. Cobman seemed to hear, and her frenzy passed. She made no further resistance as Mrs. Platto took the baby and gave her to Mama. Then Mrs. Platto gently took Mrs. Cobman’s arm. “Come out of the rain, Sadie. In a few minutes, you can have your baby back.”

  “They won’t kill your son,” Axe Carrier said calmly.

  She wiped her eyes. “What will they do with him?”

  “They’ll keep him as a hostage or they’ll adopt him. Either way, he is safe.”

  After Mrs. Platto had led the tearful woman away, Papa asked, “Is that true?”

  “If there had been signs of struggle, I’d fear for him. But there were none. The tracks showed that all three were walking at an ordinary pace — a boy in boots and two men in moccasins. The warriors used no force.”

  That night Charlotte lay inside the hut listening to sleet strike the bark roof over her head. Where was Moses now? He might be out in the rain, cold and wet on a wilderness trail. Or he might be snug and dry inside an Oneida lodge, sleeping on a pile of warm pelts. Was he lonely? Was he frightened? Or did he think it a fine adventure to be captured by Indians? She wondered whether she would ever see him again.

  Chapter eight

  Squinting into the setting sun, Charlotte and Elijah watched the long canoe approach over the green lake.

  “It’s two days early,” said Charlotte.”

  “I reckon we’ll leave tomorrow,” Elijah said glumly.

  “If the weather holds.”

  “I keep hoping that Moses will come back. But if he does, there won’t be anybody here. I wish we could stay a while longer.”

  “We can’t,” she said regretfully, not adding that it would do no good anyway.

  Others joined them as they watched. There were no shouts of welcome. As soon as the canoe was hauled up on land, Axe Carrier spoke in Mohawk to the paddlers. They nodded from time to time, adding comments of their own. Then Axe Carrier addressed the Loyalists.

  “The warriors tell me that twelve nights ago, when they paddled by the Oneida fishing village at the west end of the lake, smoke was rising from the fires, the drying racks were covered with fish, and many canoes were pulled up on the shore. This morning before dawn, they passed by again. The village looked deserted. No fires. No fish. No canoes. What did it mean? It was too early to break up fishing camp. My warriors knew something must have happened. Now they understand. They believe that the Oneidas have taken the boy away to their main village, many miles to the west.”

  The Mohawks unloaded blankets for everyone — rough, woollen army blankets from Fort Haldimand’s commissary — and a barrel of flour from which Mrs. Platto mixed up bannock dough to bake over the fire. That night Axe Carrier and Okwaho ate their meal with the other warriors, sitting apart from the white people.

  Charlotte feared that Mrs. Cobman would become hysterical again when the time came to leave, but she took her place in the canoe meekly and sat on a folded blanket with Hope in her arms.

  “Well, here we go,” Charlotte said as she climbed in. Though she had seen hundreds of canoes on the Mohawk River, she had never been in one before. She gripped the gunwale as it moved away from shore. The shifting motion made her nervous. She worried what would happen if the canoe tipped over, or if an enemy shot at it from the shore. One bullet piercing the birchbark skin would sink them all in the deep, icy water of Oneida Lake. And so their journey would come to a disastrous end.

  There was little to see when she peered over the side: a sunken log, some rocks, a few perch. It was better to keep her head up, she decided, and watch the trees along the shore. Solid ground. That was where she would rather be.

  With ten paddlers — Papa and Elijah had each taken a paddle — the canoe ploughed steadily forward.

  After a while, Charlotte’s nervousness disappeared, leaving her bored. Squatting in the bottom of the canoe was tedious and uncomfortable. Tomorrow she would ask Axe Carrier if she might paddle too.

  A breeze rose late in the afternoon. It was a stiff wind by the time the long canoe was pulled up on shore at the Oneida fishing village. Charlotte climbed out of the canoe, stretched, and looked around. Wind whistled among the deserted huts and shook the empty drying racks that stood over the ashes of dead fires. At the edge of the camp, Elijah was poking around in the bushes. Charlotte joined him out of curiosity.

  “I think I’ve found something,” he said as he knelt by a fallen log.

  Even before he rolled it over, Charlotte half knew what lay under the log. In a shallow cavity were Moses’ coat, shirt, breeches, dirty socks and battered boots, lined up in a row.

  “Well,” she said, “this proves that Moses was here.”

  “And that he’s alive.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s simple. If you were the Oneidas, and you’d captured a white boy, and you planned to keep him, you’d dress him so he wouldn’t stand out, and then you’d get rid of his old clothes.”

  “I reckon so.” She wasn’t sure that Elijah had proved his case, but it sounded likely.

  Elijah picked up one of Moses’ boots, brushed off the earth, and turned it upside down. When he shook it, a black beetle fell out. For a moment Elijah cradled the boot in his hands, then replaced it exactly as he had found it. When he rolled the log back, there was no sign anything had been disturbed.

  “We’d better keep this to ourselves,” said Elijah.

  “Shouldn’t we tell your mother?”

  He shook his head. “She’d only run crazy again.”

  Elijah was right, but Charlotte felt guilty all the same.

  “Let me take a paddle,” Charlotte requested the next morning.

  Axe Carrier shook his head. “Paddling is harder than you may think. When we reach white water, your paddle would flail about and get in the way. Now, if you were a Mohawk girl—–”

  “You’re about to tell me that Drooping Flower can handle a canoe,” Charlotte said with a smile.

  “She can shoot the worst rapids on any river.”

  Charlotte sighed. There might be advantages in becoming a woman of two worlds.

  From Oneida Lake to Lake Ontario was downriver all the way. Over long, smooth stretches of the Oswego River, the canoe seemed to fly with invisible wings. Then a sudden change would bring it close to jutting rocks where the water foamed white.

  The first run through rapids took Charlotte’s breath away. She clutched the gunwale, waiting for a smash. But the warriors leaned into their paddles and laughed, their faces flushed with triumph at each danger overcome. Soon she caught the excitement and began to enjoy the noise and swirl of the leaping water.

  On the next day, the sky clouded over in the afternoon and rain began to fall. It had soaked through Charlotte’s cloak by the time the paddlers stopped for the night. After unloading the canoe, they turned it over and propped up one side with paddles to make a shelter to keep off the rain.

  Late into the night, Charlotte, Papa and Axe Carrier stayed awake to tend the fire. They sat so close to its warmth that their clothes steamed. Charlotte’s woollen blanket smelled like a wet sheep.

  In the shelter of the canoe, Mrs. Cobman curled like a mother cat around her baby.

  “I pity that woman,” said Axe Carrier. “It is great sorrow to lose a child.”

  “What can be done to get the boy back?” asked Papa.

  “Nothing. When you get to Fort Haldimand, you should report what happened. But the Commander can’t order out the regiment to search for one c
hild. If the Oneida plan to use him as a hostage, they will start the bargaining. But if they adopt him, they won’t give him up.

  “It troubles me that I cannot go to the Oneidas and ask for the boy. In the past, I could have walked into their camp and said, ‘Brothers, you have the son of my cousin with you. My cousin is full of sorrow. I bring you presents and ask you to return the boy.’ It would have been as easy as that. But now the Oneidas are the friends of our foes.”

  Axe Carrier stared into the fire. “The breaking of nations is a terrible thing. Long ago we were the Five Nations: Mohawk, Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga and Oneida. Then the Tuscaroras joined our Confederacy and we became the Six Nations. We were Aganuschioni — United People. But today we are no longer united. We have lost our brothers, the Oneidas and the Tuscaroras. We have lost our lands.”

  “You share our story,” said Papa. “You are Loyalists too.”

  By the fourth day the rapids were behind them, and the long canoe moved silently over grey water reflecting a grey sky. On both sides lay wetlands full of sere, yellow rushes and cattails with bent stems. Marshes stretched for miles.

  The river widened and widened until it was no longer a river but an unending vista of waves. Charlotte had never seen so much water. So this was Lake Ontario; no wonder they called it a Great Lake.

  The long canoe trembled as the first breaker hit. As if this were a signal, all the men rose onto their knees, leaned over the gunwales, and thrust their paddles into the swell. The bow shot up as the canoe crested each wave, then smacked with a crash into the trough.

  The canoe was rocking and bouncing and plunging. With every tilt Charlotte’s stomach lurched. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out the waves crashing all about her. But even when she could not see, she still felt the canoe pitch and toss. She tasted vomit. She had to hold it down, keep it in. This is the worst, she thought. I’m going to be seasick in a canoe.

  Abruptly, the rocking stopped. When Charlotte opened her eyes, she saw that the canoe had entered a sheltered bay where the biggest wave was a ripple. She took a long, slow breath, and the heaving of her stomach stopped.