The Sign of the Beaver Read online

  The Sign of the Beaver

  Elizabeth George Speare

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  ...

  copyright

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  Houghton Mifflin Company Boston

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

  Speare, Elizabeth George.

  The sign of the beaver.

  Summary: Left alone to guard the family's wilderness

  home in eighteenth-century Maine, a boy is hard-pressed

  to survive until local Indians teach him their skills.

  [1. Frontier and pioneer life—Fiction. 2. Indians

  of North America—Fiction. 3. Survival—Fiction.

  4. Friendship—Fiction] I. Title.

  PZ7.S7376Si 1983 [Fic] 83-118

  ISBN 0-395-33890-5

  Copyright © 1983 by Elizabeth George Speare

  All rights reserved. For information about permission

  to reproduce selections from this book, write to

  Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue

  South, New York, New York 10003.

  Printed in the United States of America

  MP 30 29 28 27

  To William and Michael

  CHAPTER 1

  MATT STOOD AT THE EDGE OF THE CLEARING FOR some time after his father had gone out of sight among the trees. There was just a chance that his father might turn back, that perhaps he had forgotten something or had some last word of advice. This was one time Matt reckoned he wouldn't mind the advice, no matter how many times he had heard it before. But finally he had to admit that this was not going to happen. His father had really gone. He was alone, with miles of wilderness stretching on every side.

  He turned and looked back at the log house. It was a fair house, he thought; his mother would have no cause to be ashamed of it. He had helped to build every inch of it. He had helped to cut down the spruce trees and haul the logs and square and notch them. He had stood at one end of every log and raised it, one on top of the other, fitting the notched ends together as snugly as though they had grown that way. He had climbed the roof to fasten down the cedar splints with long poles, and dragged up pine boughs to cover them. Behind the cabin were the mounds of corn he had helped to plant, the green blades already shooting up, and the pumpkin vines just showing between the stumps of trees.

  If only it were not so quiet. He had been alone before. His father had often gone into the forest to hunt, for hours on end. Even when he was there, he was not much of a talker. Sometimes they had worked side by side through a whole morning without his speaking a single word. But this silence was different. It coiled around Matt and reached into his stomach to settle there in a hard knot.

  He knew it was high time his father was starting back. This was part of the plan that the family had worked out together in the long winter of 1768, sitting by lamplight around the pine table back in Massachusetts. His father had spread out the surveyor's map and traced the boundaries of the land he had purchased in Maine territory. They would be the first settlers in a new township. In the spring, when the ice melted, Matt and his father would travel north. They would take passage on a ship to the settlement at the mouth of the Penobscot River. There they would find some man with a boat to take them up the river and then on up a smaller river that branched off from it, many days' distance from the settlement. Finally they would strike out on foot into the forest and claim their own plot of land. They would clear a patch of ground, build a cabin, and plant some corn. In the summer his father would go back to Massachusetts to fetch his mother and sister and the new baby, who would be born while they were gone. Matt would stay behind and guard the cabin and the corn patch.

  It hadn't been quite so easy as it had sounded back in their house in Quincy. Matt had had to get used to going to sleep at night with every muscle in his body aching. But the log house was finished. It had only one room. Before winter they would add a loft for him and his sister to sleep in. Inside there were shelves along one wall and a sturdy puncheon table with two stools. One of these days, his father promised, he would cut out a window and fasten oiled paper to let in the light. Someday the paper would be replaced with real glass. Against the wall was a chimney of smaller logs, daubed and lined with clay from the creek. This too was a temporary structure. Over and over his father had warned Matt that it wasn't as safe as a stone chimney and that he had to watch out for flying sparks. He needn't fear. After all the work of building this house, Matt wasn't going to let it burn down about his ears.

  "Six weeks," his father had said that morning. "Maybe seven. Hard to reckon exactly. With your ma and sister we'll have slow going, specially with the new little one.

  "You may lose track of the weeks," he had added. "Easy thing to do when you're alone. Might be well to make notches on a stick, seven notches to a stick. When you get to the seventh stick you can start looking for us."

  A silly thing to do, Matt thought, as though he couldn't count the weeks for himself. But he wouldn't argue about it, not on the last morning.

  Then his father reached up to a chink in the log wall and took down the battered tin box that held his watch and his compass and a few silver coins. He took out the big silver watch.

  "Every time you cut a notch," he said, "remember to wind this up at the same time."

  Matt took the watch in his hand as gently as if it were a bird's egg. "You aim to leave it, Pa?" he asked.

  "It belonged to your grandpa. Would've belonged to you anyhow sooner or later. Might as well be now."

  "You mean—it's mine?"

  "Aye, it's yourn. Be kind of company, hearing it tick."

  The lump in Matt's throat felt as big as the watch. This was the finest thing his father had ever possessed.

  "I'll take care of it," he managed finally.

  "Aye. I knowed you would. Mind you don't wind it up too tight."

  Then, just before he left, his father had given him a second gift. Thinking of it, Matt walked back into the cabin and looked up at his father's rifle, hanging on two pegs over the door.

  "I'll take your old blunderbuss with me," his father had said. "This one aims truer. But mind you, don't go banging away at everything that moves. Wait till you're dead sure. There's plenty of powder if you don't waste it."

  It was the first sign he had given that he felt uneasy about leaving Matt here alone. Matt wished now that he could have said something to reassure his father, instead of standing there tongue-tied. But if he had the chance again, he knew he wouldn't do any better. They just weren't a family to put things into words.

  He reached up and took down the rifle. It was lighter than his old matchlock, the one his father had carried away with him in exchange. This was a fine piece, the walnut stock as smooth and shining as his mother's silk dress. It was a mite long, but it had a good balance. With this gun he wouldn't need to waste powder. So it wouldn't hurt to take one shot right now, just to try the feel of it.

  He knew his father always kept
that rifle as clean as a new-polished spoon. But because he enjoyed handling it, Matt poked about in the touchhole with the metal pick. From the powder horn he shook a little of the black powder into the pan. Then he took one lead bullet out of the pouch, wrapped it in a patch of cloth, and rammed it into the barrel. As he worked, he whistled loudly into the stillness. It made the knot in his stomach loosen a little.

  As he stepped into the woods, a bluejay screeched a warning. So it was some time before he spotted anything to shoot at. Presently he saw a red squirrel hunched on a branch, with its tail curled up behind its ears. He lifted the rifle and sighted along the barrel, minding his father's advice and waiting till he was dead sure.

  The clean feel of the shot delighted him. It didn't set him back on his heels like his old matchlock. Still, he hadn't quite got the knack of it. He caught the flick of a tail as the squirrel scampered to an upper branch.

  I could do better with my own gun, he thought. This rifle of his father's was going to take some getting used to.

  Ruefully he trudged back to the cabin. For his noon meal he sat munching a bit of the johnnycake his father had baked that morning. Already he was beginning to realize that time was going to move slowly. A whole afternoon to go before he could cut that first notch.

  Seven sticks. That would be August. He would have a birthday before August. He supposed his father had forgotten that, with so many things on his mind. By the time his family got here, he would be thirteen years old.

  CHAPTER 2

  BY THE NEXT MORNING THE TIGHT PLACE IN HIS stomach was gone. By the morning after that Matt decided that it was mighty pleasant living alone. He enjoyed waking to a day stretched before him to fill as he pleased. He could set himself the necessary chores without having to listen to any advice about how they should be done. How could he have thought that the time would move slowly? As the days passed and he cut one notch after another on his stick, Matt discovered that there was never time enough for all that must be done between sunrise and sunset.

  Although the cabin was finished, his father had left him the endless task of chinking the spaces between the logs with clay from the creek bank. At the edge of the clearing there were trees to fell to let in more sun on the growing corn, and underbrush that kept creeping closer over the cleared ground. All this provided plenty of wood to be chopped and stacked in the woodpile against the cabin wall.

  To cook a meal for himself once or twice a day, he had to keep a fire going. Twice in the first few days he had waked and found the ashes cold. Back home in Quincy, if his mother's fire burned out she had sent him or Sarah with her shovel to borrow a live coal from a neighbor. There was no neighbor here. He had to gather twigs and make a wad of shredded cedar bark, then strike his flint and blow on the tiny spark until it burst into flame. A man could get mighty hungry before he had coaxed that spark into a cooking fire.

  The corn patch needed constant tending. In these hot, bright days, every drop of water that those green shoots demanded had to be lugged from the creek, a kettleful at a time, and there was no way to water the corn without encouraging the weeds as well. As fast as he pulled them, new ones sprang up. The crows drove him distracted, forever flapping about. A dozen times a day he would dash at them fiercely, shouting and waving his arms. They would just fly lazily off and wait on a nearby treetop till his back was turned. He dared not waste his precious powder on them. At night wild creatures nibbled the tops of the green shoots. Once he sat up all night with his rifle across his knees, batting at the mosquitoes. When morning came he stumbled into the cabin and slept away half the day. That was the second time he let the fire go out.

  He seemed to be hungrier than ever before in his life. The barrel of flour was going down almost as fast as when two were dipping into it. He depended on his gun to keep his stomach filled. He was still proud of that gun, but no longer in awe of it. Carrying it over his shoulder, he set out confidently into the forest, venturing farther each day, certain of bringing home a duck or a rabbit for his dinner. For a change of diet he could take his fish pole and follow the twisting course of the creek or walk the trail his father had blazed to a pond some distance away. In no time he could catch all the fish he could eat. Twice he had glimpsed a deer moving through the trees just out of range of his rifle. One of these days, he promised himself, he would bring one down.

  It was a good life, with only a few small annoyances buzzing like mosquitoes inside his head. One of these was the thought of Indians. Not that he feared them. His father had been assured by the proprietors that his new settlement would be safe. Since the last treaty with the tribes, there had not been an attack reported anywhere in this part of Maine. Still, one could not entirely forget all those horrid tales. And he just didn't like the feeling he had sometimes that someone was watching him. He couldn't prove it. He could never see anything more than a quick shadow that might be a moving branch. But he couldn't shake off the feeling that someone was there.

  One of those pieces of advice his father had been so fond of giving him had been about Indians. "They won't bother you," he said. "Most of 'em have left for Canada. The ones who stayed don't want to make any trouble. But Indians take great stock in politeness. Should you meet one, speak to him just the same as to the minister back home."

  Matt had seen his father follow his own advice. Once, when they had tramped a long way from the cabin, they had seen in the distance a solitary dark-skinned figure. The two men had nodded to each other gravely, and lifted a hand in salute, exactly as if they had been two deacons passing in the town square. But how could you be respectful to a shadow that would not show itself? It made Matt uneasy.

  He had grown used to the stillness. In fact he knew now that the forest is rarely quiet. As he tramped through it he was accompanied by the chirruping of birds, the chatter of squirrels, and the whine and twang of thousands of bothersome insects. In the night he could recognize now the strange sounds that used to startle him. The grunt of a porcupine rummaging in the garden. The boom of the great horned owl. The scream of some small creature pounced upon in the forest. Or the long, quavering cry of the loon from the distant pond. The first time he had heard that loon call he had thought it was a wolf. Now he liked to hear it. Mournful as it was, it was the cry of another living creature. Matt would worm his shoulder into a comfortable spot in the hemlock boughs that made his mattress, pull the blanket over his head to shut out the mosquitoes, and fall asleep well satisfied with his world.

  He would have liked, however, to have someone to talk to occasionally. He hadn't reckoned on missing that. For much of the day he was content to be alone, tramping through the woods or sitting on the bank of the creek dangling his fishline. He was like his father in that. But there were times when he had a thought he'd like to share with someone. With anybody. Even his sister, Sarah, though he'd never paid much mind to her at home.

  So he was not so quick-witted as he should have been when unexpectedly someone arrived.

  CHAPTER 3

  HE WAS SITTING ON THE FLAT STONE THAT SERVED as a doorstep, waiting for his supper to cook. The late sun slanted in long yellow bars across the clearing. The forest beyond was already in shadow. Matt was feeling well pleased with his day. That morning he had shot a rabbit. He had skinned it carefully, stretching the fur against the cabin wall to dry. Chunks of the meat were boiling now in the kettle over the fire, and the good smell came through the door and made his mouth water.

  In the dimness of the trees, a darker shadow moved. This time it didn't disappear but came steadily nearer. He could hear the crackle of twigs under heavy boots. Matt leaped to his feet.

  "Pa!"

  No answer. It wasn't his father, of course. It couldn't be. An Indian? Matt felt a curl of alarm against his backbone. He stood waiting, his muscles tensed.

  The man who came tramping out from the trees was not an Indian. He was heavyset, the fat bulging under a ragged blue army coat. His face was almost invisible behind a tangle of reddish whiskers. Halfw
ay across the clearing he stopped.

  "Howdy!" he called cheerfully.

  "Hello," Matt answered uncertainly. Was this someone who ought to be greeted like a deacon?

  The stranger came closer, so that Matt could see the small blue eyes that glittered in the weather-hardened face. The man stood, deliberately taking his time, looking over the cabin and the cornfield.

  "Nice place you got here."

  Matt said nothing.

  The man peered curiously over Matt's shoulder through the open door. He could easily see that the cabin was empty.

  "You all alone here?"

  Matt hesitated. "My father is away just now."

  "Be back soon, will he?"

  Matt was puzzled by his own unwillingness to answer. He ought to be glad to see anyone after all these days alone, but somehow he wasn't. He didn't quite know why he found himself lying.

  "Anytime now," he said. "He went back to the river to get supplies. He might be back tonight. When I saw you coming I thought it was him."

  "Guess I surprised you. Reckon you don't get much company way off here."

  "No, we don't," Matt answered.

  "Then your pappy wouldn't want you to turn away a visitor, would he?" the man asked. "Thought mebbe you'd ask me to stay for supper. I got a whiff of it half a mile off."

  Matt remembered his manners. The man's easy grin was beginning to wipe away some of his doubts. "Of course," he said. "Come in—sir."

  The man snorted. "Ben's the name," he said. "You may of heard of me in the river town."

  "We didn't stay in the town very long," Matt answered. He hurried now to light a candle. The stranger stood inside the door, taking in every inch of the small room.

  "Your pappy knows how to build a good, tight house," he said. "You reckon on staying here for good?"

  "It's our land," Matt told him. In the candlelight the room looked snug and homey, something to be proud of showing off to a stranger. "My mother and sister will be coming soon."