Hope's Journey Page 5

  She smelled smoke on the air. Not ordinary wood smoke. This odour was oddly sweet, drawing and repelling her at the same time. Her skin prickled, and a chill ran down her spine. She turned around and began to walk, slowly at first, then faster, glancing over her shoulder from time to time. She was running by the time she reached the cabin. At the door, she stopped and took a deep breath before pressing the latch.

  Before Mrs. Block had a chance to ask what had kept her so long, Hope blurted, “I heard drumming back in the woods, and there was a strange smoky smell.”

  “Sweet grass,” said Mrs. Block. “There must be Mississaugas hanging about. Indians don’t understand that when you sell your land, there’s an obligation to leave. If they come to the cabin, don’t give them anything to eat. Otherwise, we’ll never get rid of them.”

  “Are they dangerous?”

  “No. Just a nuisance. Now get busy. Put the raspberries into a bowl and add some potatoes to the stew. Ephraim will be back for supper any time now.”

  The next day, Indians showed up at the cabin door. There were two men, two women and half a dozen children. One woman had a baby in a cradleboard strapped to her back.

  So these were Mississaugas. They looked different from the Mohawks she had seen around Fort Haldimand. No scalp locks. The men, like the women, had their hair in braids. Their clothing was a mixture of ragged cloth and leather. They looked tired and thin.

  “Go away!” Mrs. Block shouted from her chair. “We have no food to give you!”

  The Indians spoke to each other in their own language. One of the women held up a broom, the other a birch-bark basket. These people weren’t beggars, Hope realized. They had come to trade.

  “We don’t need your brooms and baskets,” Mrs. Block shouted. “Go away!”

  “I’m sorry,” Hope said before shutting the door.

  “You don’t need to apologize to them,” said Mrs. Block.

  The Indians quietly left. As Hope watched, they reached the start of the old trail and in moments disappeared into the forest. So it was their drumming she had heard and their sweet-grass smoke she had smelled.

  Two days went by, two days of sunshine for ripening more berries. Hope set out eagerly. She picked and picked until her fingers were scarlet with raspberry juice. But though she found plenty of berries, there was no trace of the Indians. She kept on walking beyond the place where she had heard the drumming. When her basket was nearly full and she was thinking it was time to turn back, she came suddenly to a small creek, its rushing water tumbling over rocks. On the creek bank stood a log cabin. She stopped and stared.

  It was a small cabin, perhaps eight feet by ten. No door. A scrap of greased rawhide dangled from one corner of the empty window frame. Pegs whittled to a sharp point had been set into the head jamb of the door frame, and it looked as if something—a blanket or an animal hide—had once hung there to cover the entry.

  Fascinated, although somewhat afraid, she called, “Anybody here?” No answer. She called again. Still no answer. Hope tiptoed inside. The air in the cabin had the same smoky, sweet odour that she had smelled two days ago. Mississaugas had been here. They were here no longer.

  That they had moved on seemed reasonable. What puzzled her was the presence of the cabin. Why was it here? It was not one of those bark shelters that Indians made. Though small, it was built like a settler’s home.

  By the time Hope returned to the Blocks’ cabin, the sun was losing its heat and the shadows were lengthening. Mrs. Block looked as if she couldn’t decide whether to be angry that Hope had been away so long or happy that she had returned with such a feast of raspberries.

  The berries won. While Hope fed them to her, Mrs. Block showed no reluctance to answer questions.

  The cabin, she said, had been built by an old man who called himself the Squire. He was mad, but had a lot of sense about some things. He must have lived with the Indians at some point, because he knew what roots and berries were good to eat. He set snares for animals. He fished in the creek.

  “Was he a hermit?” Hope asked.

  “You could call him that. He thought he could live in that cabin for the rest of his life without being disturbed. But after the war ended, Britain bought this land from the Mississaugas. All of us entitled to a Loyalist grant put our names on a list deposited with the quartermaster general. We drew our location tickets from a hat. Ephraim drew this lot. When he took possession, he was mighty surprised to find the Squire living on his land.

  “When Ephraim told him to leave, the Squire claimed that possession was nine-tenths of the law. I told Ephraim to have the sheriff throw him off. But Ephraim turned soft-hearted, telling me that even if he cleared an acre a year, he’d never clear that far back in his lifetime. So he let the old man stay.”

  “Nobody lives there now,” said Hope.

  “No. The winter before last there was a bad cold snap. Ephraim went back to check on the Squire. There he was sitting in his cabin, his back against the wall, frozen solid, with his limbs splayed out like a wooden doll’s. If the Squire did have squatter’s rights, they died with him.”

  Hope shivered, picturing what it would be like to find a dead man sitting in a cabin frozen stiff. “After that,” she asked, “who used the cabin?”

  “Indians, from time to time. I told Ephraim to tear it down, but he hasn’t got around to it yet.”

  Hope was glad that Ephraim did not always follow orders. Despite the Squire’s fate, she liked the idea of a cabin hidden in the woods.

  CHAPTER 10

  Disaster

  Hope pulled a warm egg from the straw. It was the fifth she had found today, and she still had two nesting boxes to check. The chickens were all outside the shed, scratching in the dry earth.

  “Hope!” Mrs. Block bellowed from inside the cabin. “What’s taking you so long?” Since the shed and the cabin shared a common wall and there were gaps between the logs of that wall, Mrs. Block’s rebuke sounded loud and clear.

  Hope bristled. Mrs. Block had sent her to look for eggs only a few minutes ago. Now she was complaining before allowing Hope enough time to check the boxes thoroughly. A sixth egg remained to be found; Hope was sure of that. The young hens were clever at hiding their eggs. Yet no hen could suppress the urge to cluck with pride every time she laid an egg. “Look what I’ve done!” she seemed to say. Thus Hope knew how many eggs she could expect to find.

  She uncovered the missing sixth egg, which was buried in the straw, and added it to those in the bowl she was carrying.

  “Stupid girl!” Mrs. Block exclaimed as Hope entered the cabin. “Will you never learn to come when I call?”

  Hope held out the bowl to let Mrs. Block see the six small white perfect eggs.

  “There should be seven.” Mrs. Block’s tone implied that Hope was at fault.

  “One of the hens hasn’t started laying, but she will.”

  “If she hasn’t yet, she’ll never be any good. Now make me a cup of tea. Then you can take Bossy over to the Andersons.”

  After Mrs. Block had finished her tea, Hope rounded up the seven hens and the rooster and shooed them into the shed. She gave Snowflake a cuddle and then left the shed, closing the door behind her.

  It was the sort of sultry summer day when the air is still and nothing stirs. Bossy, lying in a patch of clover chewing her cud, was not interested in going anywhere. Hope had to flick her regularly with the switch to keep her moving. Only the mosquitoes were active; Hope had a dozen new bites by the time she reached the Andersons’ place.

  Adam was waiting for her, and he was not waiting alone. The puppy was with him, sniffing around the woodpile in the yard. As Hope approached, Adam picked him up.

  “You have to take him today.” He thrust Captain at her. “He’s ten weeks old. Woeful pushes him away. Pa doesn’t want a half-wolf around the place. He would have drowned him with the rest, except I promised you’d give the pup a home. But you keep putting it off.”

  “I can’t tak
e him today,” said Hope. “I haven’t asked Mrs. Block or Ephraim if I can keep him. Please give me one more week. I have to find the right moment.”

  Adam shook his head. “If you don’t take him now, Pa’s going to put him down.”

  What choice did she have? Hope took the puppy. She carried him part of the way. Whenever she set him down, he ran about, investigating every hole in the ground that might house a chipmunk or other small creature. He did not seem to notice that the day was too warm for spending so much energy.

  It would have been faster to pick him up and carry him all the way, but Hope was in no hurry. She needed time to think up reasons why the Blocks should have a dog. As a watch dog to warn off prowling Indians? No. That would not work; the few Indians in the area posed no danger. As a hunter to spring rabbits and grouse for Ephraim to shoot? No. That wouldn’t work either. Sheepdogs were for herding, not hunting. As a guard to protect the chickens from foxes and mink? That might work … unless they suspected that Captain was half wolf.

  Hope faltered at the cabin door. Maybe she should find somewhere safe to leave Captain for a couple of hours … until she found the right moment.

  The shed was the only place she could think of. She took him there. A couple of hens were walking around on the dirt floor; others were roosting in their nesting boxes. She didn’t see Snowflake.

  She set down Captain and pulled together a small pile of nesting straw as a bed. The puppy seemed to know what it was for. Worn out from his walk, he climbed onto the straw and lay down. With a sigh he rested his muzzle on his forepaws and closed his eyes. The hens paid no attention.

  Before leaving the shed, Hope looked around anxiously. Where was Snowflake? There was no way the little hen could have escaped from the shed. Someone must have taken her. Hope held her breath as she walked to the cabin door, opened it and stepped inside. There, on top of an upturned bucket lay Snowflake’s headless body.

  “You’re slow getting back,” said Mrs. Block. “You certainly like to take your time.”

  Hope choked on a sob. “Snowflake!”

  “What?”

  “Did Ephraim kill her?”

  “If you mean that runt pullet, of course he did. It never laid an egg and never would. Now you can take it outside to pluck and draw. Put the feathers in a sack. Just the soft ones. We’ll save them for a pillow. Keep the gizzard, heart and liver. They’ll go into the stew for supper tonight.”

  “I’m not going to eat it,” Hope muttered as she left the cabin, carrying the chicken, a sack, a sharp knife and a bowl.

  She sat on the doorstep, wanting to cradle Snowflake’s body but unable to take her eyes from the bloodied stump where the head ought to be. After a long time she said to herself, Snowflake’s gone. This isn’t Snowflake. It’s just a dead bird.

  Hope began to pluck, saving the down feathers and leaving the rest to go into the midden. When the body had been stripped, she used the knife to enlarge the vent under the tail. She thrust her hand inside. Amidst the soft, wet entrails she felt something hard and smooth.

  From Snowflake’s body she drew out a perfect egg.

  And there were more. At least a dozen. These were still soft. They ranged from one that was full size to an egg that was smaller than a thimble.

  Ephraim found her weeping when he returned to the cabin at midday for something to eat. Tears running down her cheeks, she held out the bowl to show him its contents: the gizzard, heart and liver … and the perfect egg. She thought he would say something about the egg, but he did not.

  “You made a pet of that pullet, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Remember what I told you: never give a name to any creature you expect to eat.”

  “I didn’t expect to eat her.”

  “You know that sooner or later every chicken ends up in the stew pot. You mustn’t be sentimental about food animals. God created them for us to eat.”

  Apparently regarding the discussion as closed, Ephraim was about to enter the cabin, when suddenly a strange commotion rose from the shed. There was clucking and squealing and yapping.

  “Something’s got in with those chickens!” Ephraim raced to the shed. Hope did not move. If the hens didn’t kill Captain, then Ephraim would.

  She waited. Any moment now, Ephraim would appear with the puppy. Dead or alive. Hope kept her head low when she heard him coming around the corner.

  “Look what I found.” She raised her head. He gave her a look that was more amused than angry. “This young fellow was chasing hens all around the shed. I don’t suppose he has anything to do with you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Did he come from the Andersons’ place?”

  “He might have.”

  Ephraim sat down next to her, holding Captain carefully.

  “I don’t suppose you know his name?”

  “Captain.”

  “We’ll have to tell my mother.”

  “Does she like dogs?”

  “Hates them.”

  “Oh.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The World Turns Upside Down

  “Over my dead body!” Mrs. Block bellowed. “You’re not keeping a dog in this cabin.” Her hands gripped the armrests of her chair, and her eyes were almost popping out of her head.

  “Please, Mother, don’t let yourself become excited. You know what Dr. Sills said last time.”

  Hope scooped up Captain in her arms and edged her way to the door. She felt for the latch. With her eyes on Mrs. Block’s face, which was purple, she opened the door and slipped outside.

  “Whew!” Hope held up the puppy so that they were nose to nose. Now for the first time she noticed that his eyes were yellow. He had wolf eyes. From his sire. Had Ephraim noticed it, too?

  Inside the cabin, Mrs. Block was still shouting. “There. Will. Be. No. Dog.”

  “Now, Mother. I’ll make sure that the dog is no trouble. When my case is settled, there’ll be money to buy sheep. The dog can herd them. He’ll be worth his keep.”

  “I told you if we gave Hope an inch, she’d take an ell. I’ve had bad servants before, but that girl is the worst of the lot. Sneaky. Deceitful.”

  “Mother, you know that’s not true. Hope’s a good girl.”

  “You always take her side against me. We’ll get rid of the dog and the girl, too.”

  “What are we going to do?” Hope asked the puppy, whose eyes fastened on hers with a trusting expression, as if he were sure she would think of something. “I know,” she said. “We’ll stay in the shed until this blows over. But you must not worry the chickens.”

  She carried him into the shed and set him down. At the sight of Captain, the three hens that were walking about on the floor took flight to the safety of their nesting boxes.

  Hope sat on the floor. The puppy crawled onto her lap. While she was patting him, she kept her ears tuned to what was happening on the other side of the log wall that separated the shed from the cabin. It was easy to hear everything through the gaps between the logs. Mrs. Block used words that Hope never expected to hear from a lady. The old woman was beside herself with rage. Afterwards, Hope wished that Mrs. Block had expressed herself differently. Phrases such as, “as long as I live,” and “over my dead body,” did not seem well chosen. Or perhaps they were too well chosen. At any rate, Mrs. Block’s outbursts ended abruptly. Hope heard a hoarse gasp, a crash and then silence. She shivered. The sudden quiet was more frightening than the shouting before.

  Then she heard Ephraim’s voice. “Mother? Mother? Oh, my God!”

  What had happened? A stroke? A seizure? Hope cowered with the puppy on the floor while the chickens huddled in their nesting boxes. On the other side of the wall Ephraim was mumbling and moving about.

  Hope did not know what to do. Should she leave the shed and go to the cabin to ask if she could help? Or would it be better to wait until Ephraim came to find her, as sooner or later he certainly would? She decided to wait.

  The shed had no wi
ndow, but the gaps between the logs were wide enough to let her know that the light was starting to fade. Hope was feeling hungry and was sure that Captain was hungry, too. Inside the cabin, the pot of chicken stew was simmering over the fire. Hope had put it on to cook before Ephraim told his mother about the dog. The stew smelled delicious. Of course Hope wasn’t going to eat one bite of it. But it smelled delicious, anyway.

  She was relieved when at last she heard Ephraim’s voice. “Hope, are you in the shed? If you are, please come here. I have something terrible to tell you.”

  “I’m here. I’m coming.” Captain followed her to the cabin.

  Ephraim met Hope at the door, which he opened only half way, using his body to block her from seeing what was inside.

  “My mother has gone from this world to a better place.” He stepped aside to allow Hope to enter. Now she saw that he had laid Mrs. Block’s body on her bed, where she lay with her hands folded upon her bosom. Her face looked more peaceful than Hope had ever seen it before.

  She felt no sorrow. Maybe this meant she was a wicked, heartless girl, for she felt worse about Snowflake’s death than about Mrs. Block’s. But she did feel sorry for Ephraim, remembering her own grief when her mother had died.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said gravely.

  “Thank you.” Ephraim breathed deeply, and then he said, “Before it’s completely dark, one of us should go to tell the Andersons. There are many things that need to be done. Mother’s body must be prepared for burial. A grave must be opened. Mr. and Mrs. Anderson will help us.”

  He began to walk back and forth very fast, his feet thumping on the split logs of the puncheon floor. “I knew this might happen. Dr. Sills warned her.” He clutched his head with both hands as he paced. “Apoplexy. She had a seizure in the spring. Before you came.”

  Since the room was small, with the bunk that ran along one wall taking up two feet of space, pacing the floor involved many quick turns. At last he stopped. “This was bound to happen sooner or later. It’s a shock, anyway.”