Nattie Nesmith/Chapter 15

by Sophia Homespun

 

Chapter XV.

Alarm.

IBLEY'S Corner was a place that had grown up in a night, as it were. There were, perhaps, half adozen frame houses, a store, a blacksmith's shop, and an immense saw-mill. This last was what had made the place. The several families had moved there and put, up dwellings, for the purpose of boarding the hands who were employed in felling the forest, drawing logs, and converting them into marketable lumber. The wild, brawling river, broken into unnumbered foamy waterfalls by rugged rocks, and its banks, here and there, studded with groups of tall, majestic pines, gave to the place, in spite of its utilitarian air, something of the romantic and picturesque. The mad, leaping waters seemed to be trying to drown the noise of the men with their logging teams, the whirr of the mill wheels, and the sharp toothings of the glistening saws, which, day and night, kept up their unceasing play.

Most of the men were French Canadians; but the families that took boarders were chiefly Yankees. There was one house standing near the saw-mill, though on the opposite side of the river, which was rather neater in appearance than the rest. This was the abode of the contractor, the man who managed the business. A foot-bridge with high railings led across the wild little river from his house to the mill. There was a road in the rear of the cottage, and a group of tall pines on the hill above. These trees made a mournful sighing in the long, winter nights.

Within this dwelling, on the present evening, were four persons,—a man, his wife, their baby in the cradle, and a visitor. The last named we have met before. It was Augustus Reid. The other three were the contractor, his wife and child. He was a comparatively young man, not much above thirty, and had a familiar face. His wife was small and fair, devoted to the baby in the crib, over which she was constantly hanging, and calling her husband's attention to some fresh charm or beauty which her doting eyes had discovered.

There was business in the looks of the two men.

"Reid," said the contractor, at length, "I think that I can employ you, if you will accept the place which I have to offer."

"What is it?" asked the young man.

"It is to take charge of the gang that go to the forest. Some of these Canadians are quite rough and savage; they need a hand to keep them under. You are young, but have a natural gift for commanding. I think that you would do admirably. Will you undertake this part of the work for us?"

"The Canadians would prefer one of your race," was the answer.

"Nonsense! they will never know but you are a full-blooded white unless you tell them," returned the contractor; "put you in the uniform of our logging men, and the difference would never be known."

The young wife looked quickly toward the visitor, and said: "You are foreign, then; perhaps Spanish!"

"I am American," he answered, with a half smile.

"The real, aboriginal American," the husband added; "but has been so much among the whites that the wild woods look is quite wiped away."

Augustus Reid colored; while the wife said:

"I don't think that I would ever have guessed it. What a mixed population we live among!"

"That is so, Dimple," said the husband; "but it suits me. It is novel, exciting, and shows us human nature in a variety of phases. I don't know what would induce me to return to the tame old country from which we emigrated, where things go on in such a plodding, hum drum style that one day is a true type of all the rest. I like to see things move on. I like novelty, change, and a spice of danger, too, perhaps,—at least, Dimple says that I do."

Here he glanced toward his wife, who answered, while she rearranged the soft blankets around the sleeping babe:

"It is true enough, Robert. How the great pines, back here on the hill, are moaning and complaining! I shall fancy that I hear distressed cries, as of some poor creature that needs shelter, to-night."

"It is asign of storm," remarked Augustus Reid,—"or thus I have often heard my father say,—when the winds moan as they do to-night."

"Is your father"—— the wife paused abruptly.

"My father is an Indian," the young man answered; his name is North Wind, and he is now journeying among the whites."

"I wonder that he did not give you his name, or some other one characteristic of his race."

"My father gave me an Indian name, and by it he still calls me, as do the red men generally," was the answer; "but my mother was a white woman, and when dying, she called me by a name as nearly like what her own had been as possible. She wished me to carry it among her people, and said that some day it might find me a friend among them. Hers was Augusta Reid."

"Where did she live?"

"I do not know; she never spoke of her early life, or how it came about that she married an Indian."

"Was she content with their rude mode of living?"

The young man bent his eyes to the floor, as he answered:

"I was a mere child when she left me, and could not well judge; but she was always delicate and pining. My father was wild with grief when she died."

"Has he no other child?" asked the young wife, looking tenderly toward her sleeping babe.

"He has an Indian wife now, and several little children."

"Does he like the red children as well as he does you?"

The young man smiled, and answered:

"He is not indifferent in his feelings toward the son of the pale-face,—Torch Eye, as he calls him,—but the Indian has a strong will. My father marks out a course for me; if I follow it, he is ready to lay down his life for me; but of late, my inclinations, or perhaps what the whites term conscience, have led me contrary to his wishes; therefore he has turned from me."

"He wants you to lead a life like his own, I suppose," said the wife; "to be skilled in hunting, in the use of the tomahawk, and become, at length, a brave leader among the wild race."

"All this he desires," was the answer.

"And what more?" the young woman asked, not from mere idle curiosity. Her countenance evinced an interest in the young man before her; but the question caused him embarrassment.

He rose, and walked toward the window. The husband exchanged glances with his wife, and hastened to turn the conversation into another channel.

"When I was a boy at home, a dozen or more years ago," the contractor said, "a squad of Indians used to come to our village every fall, put up their tents, and remain till spring. They made baskets and sold them, and I don't know that they did any harm; they seemed to be peaceable and inoffensive, and almost all the villagers traded with them. I suppose now that they must have come from this region, and perhaps our young friend may have been of their number sometimes."

"No," answered Augustus Reid, again resuming his chair by the stove; "my father did not go onsuch journeys while my mother lived. It was only after he had an Indian wife and some young papooses, that he took up these roaming habits."

"Then you have never been far into the land of the whites," the contractor said.

"Much of my life has been passed with my father's uncle, who lives on the western boundary of the forest, near a large town. I have worked in the shops of white people for two years past. My inclinations lead me as much to such employments as to the use of the bow and arrow. The wild and the civilized parts of my nature are, perhaps, about equal."

He said the last with a half smile in which was some bitterness, and at once added, as the moan of the pines on the hill above at that moment came more distinctly to the ears of the group around the stove, and seemed to fill the whole room with wailing:

"The storm comes nearer, and there will be rain. I must leave you now; but if it seems expedient to accept the post which you have offered me, I will let you know before many days. It hardly seems to me that I am a proper person to be set over a gang of Canadians; many of them are strongly prejudiced against our race."

"Is that so?" asked the contractor. "Still, I think that you would find no difficulty in the place which I have in view, nor do I believe that they would suspect your nationality. But it seems to me that you are wrong in fancying that a rain storm is at hand; the air was very cold when I came in to-night. I really hope that our fine sledding is not going to be broken up at present."

"I think that there is a thaw at hand," was the answer; "though it will not, probably, carry off all the snow."

As he spoke, a few sharp clicks on the window-pane gave evidence that the storm had already begun.

"You had better tarry with us till morning," the young wife said.

"Thank you," he returned; "there is a point which I wish to visit to-night."

"Do any of your people live near?" she continued.

"There are a few scattered wigwams in this forest," he answered.

"But miles from here, I should suppose," she said.

"A few miles are not much to one of our race," he returned; and, with a bow of adieu, he closed the door behind him, and stepped out into the darkness.

The moon was wading through heavy clouds, and great, occasional drops of rain, mingled with whirling sleet, fell on the blanket of the young Indian. The sounds from the saw-mill were abroad on the night air, and the mad river roared and seethed on its course. He could see the white, tossing foam of its waves as he stepped upon the little foot-bridge, which trembled and shook with the force of the impetuous currents beating against its timbered supports.

When he was about half way across, something met him,—a small body, which shrank away, and swiftly passed. The moon was just then under a thick cloud, so it was too dark to see the figure; but, as he turned around in the direction in which it went, a faint odor, as of burning cotton, was borne back on the breeze. It was poor Nattie, in her fire-eaten garments. She had fled thus far, through the wilderness, towards the abode of white men. But Augustus Reid had no suspicion of this, and Nattie did not even glance at the person whom she met. She imagined afoe in every living object that she encountered, and only sought to elude them, if possible.

She bent her steps directly to the house which the young man had just left, and peeped into the window. It looked so cheery and comfortable to poor Nattie, as she stood there, hungry, tired, her clothes half burned and hanging loosely about her, and the smart of the burns stinging most cruelly! There seemed to be an air of her old home about the apartment, but perhaps this was because her eyes had been so long unused to the comforts and appliances of civilized life. Possibly, any home of the whites would have worn the same grateful aspect, in her eyes.

"Will it do for me to rap?" thought Nattie. "What a sight I am, to enter such a nice place as this! It would be better for me to find the shed, and lie down there. I am so sick, and faint, and miserable, that perhaps I shall die before morning. I guess that these are people of my own race, so they will bury me, and I sha'n't have to lie above ground after I'm dead. If I had been a good girl, I might now be in a home just as pretty and warm as this. I might have my mother, or, at least, Biddy, to put oil on my burns, fix me nicely in my little bed, and get me some good supper. Then, after a while, the aches would ease off, perhaps, so that I could go to sleep and get rested. Oh, dear! I wonder if God sees me now, or am I cast out, a prey for evil spirits forever?"

As Nattie was about to turn away, acry of surprise and terror arose within. The young wife had seen the wild, scarred face at the window, and was clinging to her husband in great alarm.

"Who could it have been?" she cried;—"the most fearful face pressed close against the window-pane, glaring upon us with its distressed, staring eyes!"

"It must have been imagination," returned the husband; "but, to satisfy you, I will open the window, and see if anything is there."

"Don't! don't!' she cried; "it may be some of the wild people around, come to rob and murder us."

"I have no such fears," said the husband, throwing up the sash.

The roar of the pines and the rising storm came floating into the apartment, mingled with the wail of a dark object that lay on the ground beneath the window.

"There is something here, living and in distress," said the husband. "Hold the lamp, Dimple, while I see what itis."

The wife tremblingly obeyed. A prostrate human form was soon discovered. The sash was lowered, and the man took the lamp in his own hand, and went to the outer door. His wife clung to him in terror.

"Don't be alarmed," he said; "it is some person who is sick, or hurt, and I think it is a woman, or child."

He stepped along the path, to the spot where the form lay. An odor of burned clothing pervaded the immediate atmosphere. He put out his hand; it touched what scemed to be a raw, bleeding arm. A faint cry of pain followed.

"Who are you?" the man asked. "Are you wounded? Do you want to come in?"

No answer. He stooped again over the figure, and stretched out his hands. This time they encountered burned rags.

"Have you been in a fire?" he asked. "Do you live in this village?"

Still no answer.

"Wife, bring the light," he said. "You need not fear; it is a child, a girl; and she is helpless, badly hurt in some way. We must take her in, and see what is the matter."

The little woman came cautiously toward her husband. He lifted the figure, and carried it in to the warm, bright sitting-room. Such a sight! such a sight! And what was to be done? No doctor in the settlement,—only an old French woman who could mumble a little English, and pretended to have some knowledge of the healing art.

There was a hurried consultation between husband and wife, the little woman declaring that she could not do a thing,—not even stay in the house when those bleeding burns were dressed.

While they talked, Nattie recovered sense sufficient to hear, and partly comprehend, the dismay of the kind people who had taken her in.

"I don't want any French one to come," she said, evincing a strong dread as she spoke the words. "If you would give me a drink of broth, and put me away into some back room, where I could be safe, with a little oil for my burns, I think I could go to sleep and get rested."

"Sleep!" cried the poor, frightened woman; "why, girl, you are burned half to death; your clothes are almost consumed, your hair is singed, and your arms are all bloody! You must have been through a dreadful fire. Where do you live? and have all your friends perished in the flames? How dreadful, Robert," she added, turning to her husband, "that, while we have been sitting here so comfortable, some of our neighbors' houses have been destroyed and their lives, perhaps, lost!"

"No house in the settlement can have been burned to-night," he said; "for we should have heard the alarm."

The old unsteadiness now returned to Nattie's brain, and she said, looking about the room:

"I've I see white beads everywhere."

"White beads!" repeated the wife; "there are none in the house. She is wandering."

"Bowls of white beads, and moccasins, and pin-cushions, and red willow baskets."

The couple exchanged glances, and whispered:

"Indian."

"Indian; not Frenchman," said Nattie, in a faint whisper, and with a visible shudder at the name last uttered.