Calico Captive Read online

  For answer, Susanna pulled aside the woolen jacket that had taken the place of the gray blanket. Captive's wrinkled, red little face puckered up even more tightly at the disturbance, and her pitiful mouth opened in a hungry howl. Susanna raised her eyes and met Miriam's in a long grave look.

  She knows, Miriam thought with wonder. She knows the dreadful things I have been thinking about her. And she knows that I will never think them again! Suddenly she was closer to her sister than ever before in their lives, and the love and courage shining from Susanna's eyes warmed her more deeply than the fire or the broth. Somehow, without a single word, their whole relationship was changed. Miriam had always been the little sister, always tagging along, always just a little at odds with the rest. Now she was a Willard too! For just one moment at least, Susanna's courage had been hers. She had measured up.

  All at once, for the first time since that fearful morning in Charlestown, something like happiness bubbled up in her. Here she and Susanna both lay by the fire, soaked through and scarcely able to sit up, but Miriam felt that they stood side by side, and that whatever lay ahead the two Willard women would see it through together.

  One of the Indians had shot and cooked a big bird of some kind, and now the steaming morsels were carefully divided. As her own master offered her a portion on a piece of bark, Miriam saw to her amaze ment that it was a piece of breast meat, the choicest bit. He offered it gravely, as though it were some sort of honor.

  The meat was stringy and undercooked, but as she ate it slowly, making each bite last as long as possible, Miriam tried to sort out the bewildering ideas that had crowded upon her in the last few moments. What strange creatures these Indians were! Were those howling savages who had burst in upon them at Number Four the same men who had built a fire to dry their prisoners' clothes? Were those greedy barbarians, scrabbling for everything they could lay hands on, the same men who here in the forest scrupulously divided the meager food into equal portions and offered it to the prisoners before they had tasted it themselves? They were sly, ignorant animals, yet they had a sort of dignity about them.

  They have treated us well, Miriam had to admit to herself. Nothing like those stories of what they do to prisoners. Yet I know they despise us, every one of us. If they don't abuse us, there is some reason in their minds, or perhaps they are too proud to bother with us. I can never understand them.

  The real surprise, however, was still to come. After they had eaten, as the Indians prepared to march again, Mehkoa came toward her. She saw him coming, but she would not look at him, and turning her head away, she pretended to be absorbed in braiding her damp hair. She was aware that he stood waiting for a long time, but she would not look up. What if he had saved the baby? A baby meant only money to him. The Indians would not let any part of their prize slip through their fingers. She still hated him, and his devilish grin. Finally, however, her curiosity was too much for her, and she raised her head to look at him. He was holding something in his hands, something bright blue, and her heart leaped in unbelief. It was the blue dress!

  "White girl wear," he said. "Old cloth no good any more. White girl put this on."

  Miriam sat up and clutched the blue folds tight, as though they might be snatched away in one of his tricks. It would be like him. But he simply stood waiting for some word from her. Miriam turned her head away again. The dress was hers. He had stolen it, and he had no right to be thanked for it now. She wouldn't put it on either. She would carry it, every step of the way. Then, looking down, she saw that the boy was right; the old dress was no good. The rocks and the jagged log had torn the rotting fabric to shreds. She had no choice but to tramp through the forest in the only pretty dress she had ever owned. As the soft folds went over her head, Miriam felt her control suddenly cracking. She began to laugh, a laughter that sounded shocking and that she couldn't stop.

  "Miriam, what is it?" James was instantly at her side. "Are you ill?"

  "I got a birthday present," she sobbed. "Did you know it was my birthday? My only present, and it had to come from a horrid Indian. And 'tis too late to do me any good."

  She hated Mehkoa more than ever. Yet somehow, she had a definite conviction that he would trouble her no further. It was only later, lying beside the fire, that it occurred to her to wonder, uncomfortably, if in the battle between her and the Indian boy it was she who had come out the winner after all.

  Chapter 5

  MIRIAM WAS long past caring that the precious dress was bleached and torn to a shapeless rag when at last the party reached the village of St. Francis. The prisoners had known for several days that a destination was near. They were traveling not on foot now, but in three Indian canoes. They had left the shining Lake Champlain behind, progressing by a series of rivers and streams, now wide, now narrow and swift. Twice they had stopped at French forts, once at Crown Point and once at Chamblec, and each time the French soldiers, though refusing to buy any prisoners, had handed out hot food and brandy. From these first encounters with the French, Miriam saw little reason to fear them. If it were Canada they were approaching, their fortunes were bound to improve.

  The spirits of the Indians were visibly on the rise, and their pace was accelerated. Powerful bronze arms sent the three canoes racing with long rhythmic thrusts, and now and again shouts of unguarded triumph sent shivers down the spines of the prisoners cramped against the rough floors. By night, in the light of the fire they had built on the shore, the Indians danced, circling in an endless weaving chain around the fire, one brave after another breaking the pattern with violent, hideous contortions.

  When they tired of dancing they rehearsed the prisoners for some future performance that must meet exacting standards. Each of the white prisoners was taught a special song. Over and over Miriam's master drilled her in the detestable, meaningless words, Danna witchee natchepung. Sylvanus was the only one who seemed to perform to the Indians' satisfaction. He would pose, legs astride, arms folded like a chieftain, and shrill Narviscumption, until they howled and slapped their legs with relish.

  Finally, late one afternoon, the canoes drew up to a narrow strip of sand where the Indians donned war paint. Here for the first time each of the prisoners was daubed. Miriam held herself rigid as her master drew a bark twig across her cheeks and forehead, leaving a sticky smear of vermilion. Susanna looked like an apparition, her gaunt cheeks hideously spotted. Sylvanus was a comical little goblin, his baby face a striped replica of his master's.

  "What is it for, Peter?" Miriam whispered, steadying the spoon against the baby's ravenous groping mouth, as they took advantage of the brief halt. "Are we coming to Canada?"

  Peter Labaree rubbed his chin glumly. "No chance of that now," he said. "We've turned south again two days ago. Changed their minds, I mistrust."

  "Then where are they taking us?"

  "From the direction, I reckon Saint Francis."

  St. Francis! The most dreaded word in all New England!

  "Then they'll kill us!" she moaned, her fear breaking through the whisper. Peter lifted a warning hand.

  "Steady now," he cautioned, taking the jerking spoon out of her fingers. "I think they're still bent on selling us to the French. Probably want to show us off first. And they need food as bad as we do."

  "They burn people at the stake at Saint Francis!"

  Labaree shook his head. "These Injuns are Abenakis. If they was Iroquois now, I wouldn't give much for our chances. With the Abenakis, I'd say the worst we've got to look forward to is the gantlet."

  That was another of those words the women at the fort used to whisper. The gantlet—double lines of Indians armed with clubs and knives, through which a captive was lucky to come out alive.

  "Keep your chin up, girl," advised Labaree, noting too late what his words had done. "You've got to allow these redskins have treated us decently enough so far."

  They pushed on again, the Indians whooping and yelling in anticipation. Presently the tense nerves of the prisoners jumped to an an
swering clamor from the shore, as they swept toward a stretch of pebbly sand. Instantly, from the trees, a howling frenzy of women burst upon the shore. After the weeks of silence, the hubbub was paralyzing. Miriam shrank in the canoe and stared at the ragged screaming women, the naked shrill, excited children, and the dogs, countless mangy frantic creatures, leaping and yelping.

  At a fierce gesture from her master she pulled herself up and cringingly stepped out on the shore. Surely she would be torn to pieces! But the leader was shouting above the uproar, and the women fell back. Booing and screeching with disappointment, they nevertheless obeyed, shoving the children, kicking the dogs, into a rough sort of line with an opening at the far end. Then, abruptly, there was silence. The gantlet! Even the children knew what it meant.

  "Sing!" commanded the leader, pointing to Susanna.

  Unbelievably, Susanna began to sing, a thread of a voice lifted quite clearly and steadily in the chant she had memorized. Clinging to James's arm, her head high, she moved between the lines of Indians, and not a single hand was raised against her. After her Polly and little Sue parroted their song and dance in terror and streaked past their mother to the other end.

  "Sing!" ordered Miriam's master. "Singl Dance fast!"

  Under the grease paint, Miriam's face felt stiff. Her dry tongue could not make a sound. The snap of a switch stung her bare ankles, and her feet jerked involuntarily. The words came back to her, Danna witchee natchepung! Another stinging cut sent her scurrying after the others. A howl of derision greeted her undignified flight and, mortified, she halted beside her sister. Why couldn't she have carried it off like Susanna? Another roar, this time of approval, greeted Sylvanus, who was strutting as though he knew he bore a charmed life.

  The gantlet was over. Labaree had been tripped, and blood trickled from an ugly bruise on his forehead, but not a hand had seriously been raised to harm any of them.

  They had barely drawn a thankful breath when a deep throbbing drumbeat set them quivering afresh. In the center of the clearing stood a drum made of a tree trunk, as wide round as a washtub and high as a man's waist. The jabbering women were again stilled. The lines of the gantlet parted, and into the clearing between moved a row of warriors. Behind them strode a tall figure with towering shoulders under a scarlet blanket, his great beaked nose jutting beneath a tremendous feathered bonnet. His measured words fell like deeper drumbeats into the complete stillness.

  Before this chief the prisoners were led, and each was solemnly considered. Susanna first was officially claimed by her master, who presented to her a belt of wampum, saluted her formally, and led her away, with Captive in her arms. Little Sue and Polly were claimed by squaws. When it came Miriam's turn, her master spoke at length to the Grand Sachem. For a long chilling moment the whole weight of that awful gaze held her motionless. Then he gave an order, and two women stepped forward. One was as shapeless as a bag tied through the middle, with brown wrinkled face, like a dried apple. The other was a girl, younger than Miriam, with a smooth copper skin and an unblinking stare of pure hatred.

  These women led her away from the clearing, between a double row of squalid bark huts and wigwams, among which sagged an occasional decrepit log cabin. Her glance was caught by the hairy circles that dangled like flags from every doorpost, until with a prickle of horror she realized what they were—scalps! She turned away her eyes, and looked beyond the huts to a tottering church steeple with a huge cross black against the reddened sky. Then she blinked as she stepped through a doorway into the dimness of a wigwam.

  There was a choking smell of wood smoke, of unwashed bodies, a fragrance of sweet grass, the redolence of boiling meat. A fire burned in the center of the wigwam, and nearby, on a pile of dirty blankets and skins, squatted a wizened and shrunken old woman.

  The hasty pudding, ladled into a wooden bowl on the floor, sent up puffs of mouth-watering steam. The shapeless squaw handed her a wooden spoon, and after a moment's hesitation, Miriam sat clumsily down on the floor, to dip in her spoon with the others. A cackle like that of a hen in the barnyard broke from the toothlesss old squaw. With a flick of disdain in her black eyes, the Indian girl sank gracefully to her knees and back on her heels. Miriam flushed, aware of her own awkwardness, but at the first taste of the luscious dish she forgot her pride. She dipped the spoon again greedily, but after a few swallows her knotted stomach refused more food. She moved back dizzily, and while the others ate, she sat neglected on a ragged blanket, till the smells, and the strange jabbering, and the crackle of the fire blurred and wheeled into an exhausted sleep.

  In the morning she was left to her own devices. The three Indian women busied themselves making moccasins. The woman, who said her name was Chogan, threaded colored beads and applied them expertly in a complicated design. The old grandmother smoothed and cut the soft skins, and the girl stitched the pieces together. After watching for a time while the women worked and chattered, Miriam ventured to the doorway and stood looking out, and as they still ignored her, she found courage to go in search of the others.

  To her relief, Susanna called to her from a nearby doorway.

  "How is it with you, Miriam?" she inquired anxiously. "Do they treat you well?"

  "They don't pay me much attention," Miriam admitted. "Except for the girl. I think she'd enjoy seeing me tortured."

  "Have they adopted you?"

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "I have been adopted into this wigwam. That was what the belt of beads meant. Now my master, Sabbatis, is my 'little brother,' and I have to call the old woman my nigawes. That means mother—God forgive me! I suppose we should be thankful. James said that once we are adopted they will not harm us. I wish I knew where they have taken the others."

  "I don't see how you stand it!" Miriam burst out. "I wouldn't call that old hag mother, no matter what they did to me!"

  "Then you'd be very foolish," replied Susanna crisply. "There could be worse things. Anyway, 'tis not for long, just till James can arrange for the ransom money. A white woman just came by here, though, who says she's been in this place for ten months. She says they won't object if we wash our clothes down by the river. I'll see if I can find the children and we can make ourselves more fitten."

  As the days went by Miriam decided that she could not have been adopted. She was fed and allowed to sleep and otherwise completely ignored. Susanna and James had been put straightway to work. Susanna, with her slight strength, sat all day braiding tumpline or stitching deerskin shirts for her "little brother." James labored somewhere at the edge of camp, while Peter Labaree had been taken away, presumably to Montreal. When Miriam, restless with inactivity, ventured to help Susanna, Sabbatis took the work out of her hand and sent her away. Did he mistrust her ability to do even such a simple task?

  Back in her own wigwam, Miriam sat watching the women. There was no man in this family. Chogan was apparently a widow, and her daughter still unwed. At least here was no master to drive her on, and no Mehkoa to torment her. She had caught only a few glimpses of the Indian boy. She had learned, without surprise, that he was a person of importance, son of one of the sagamores who surrounded the Grand Sachem. Praise be, she need no longer concern herself with him, but sometimes the constant vexation of the trail seemed preferable to this boredom, this endless waiting that was worse than the stifling existence inside the fort at Number Four.

  She sat watching the women's expert fingers, and in spite of herself, her interest was caught by the bright beaded design that formed under Chogans needle. Her own fingers itched to try it.

  "I could do that," she offered finally. Chogan stared at her doubtfully. Miriam picked up a needle that had fallen to the dirt floor, and wove it through the air in a convincing gesture. Grudgingly the squaw handed her an unfinished moccasin and indicated where it should be stitched, then watched sharply and with surprise as this "no-good white squaw" drew the needle capably through the soft leather. After that Miriam was allowed to work at the family trade of mocca
sin making, though if an outsider appeared at the door the work was snatched from her hands. The occupation was better than idleness, and within a few days she had progressed to applying the beads, painstakingly copying the Indian woman's designs. Even the old grandmother nodded and smacked her lips in approval. Only the Indian girl seemed to understand that it was boredom and not good will that had prompted Miriam's interest. Every day she managed, by her lithe strength and the arrogant perfection of every graceful gesture, to make Miriam feel clumsy and weak. Between the two girls the wary hostility never relaxed.

  Gradually her own young strength reasserted itself. A summerlike mood lay over the village. The still pools by the river's edge reflected the first red leaves of the maples. The warm blue sky cooled at night into a soft blackness thick-clustered with stars. There was plenty of food; the Indians feasted and shared their bounty lavishly. The work was not too burdensome to women accustomed to settlement living. Little Polly and Sue, though they were led away every evening to sleep in a distant wigwam, were allowed to join their mother every morning. Polly clung close to her mother's skirt, and was content to sit motionless for hours holding the baby carefully in her arms while Susanna worked. Sue gradually found courage to join in the noisy games with the white and Indian ragamuffins that swarmed the village. Both little girls had color in their cheeks now, and their bare arms and legs looked rounder. The baby Captive, fed on walnut meats stewed in cornmeal, was beginning to coo and gurgle like a proper child. Their work done, Miriam and Susanna sometimes joined the wistful straggle of white women who scrubbed their rags of clothes at the river and stubbornly cherished a remnant of English decency amid the squalor of the camp.

  Early one morning, Miriam and Susanna sat for a few moments outside the wigwam of Sabbatis. Susanna's eyes lifted from her work and searched the roadway beyond the huts, straining in the hope of seeing James, who occasionally was able to walk past the wigwam on his way to work and to stop for a hurried word.