Home on Stoney Creek, page 11
Sarah shut her eyes. “God, please don’t let him do it!” she prayed silently. “Please don’t let him!”
Then she heard a shout—some strange, harsh Indian word. Instantly, it was awfully quiet out there. Sarah put her eye back to the hole. The Indian still had Ma by the hair. He was staring at something he held in his hand. The other Indians stood watching him, the shredded feather quilts forgotten in their hands. The two inside the cabin had come to the doorway and were watching, too.
Then the Indian with Ma raised his hand, and Sarah saw the sun strike the Little Captain’s silver disk, which was still around Ma’s neck on the rawhide string. The Indian turned the disk from side to side, examining it carefully. He grunted, gave some short, brisk command that Sarah couldn’t understand, and all the Indians melted into the woods as quickly and as silently as they had appeared.
Ma sank down in the yard and began to cry. Sarah grabbed Jamie and ran to her, with Luke right behind them.
“Oh, thank God, children!” Ma cried out. “I was sure they had killed and scalped you all!”
“What made ‘em leave, Ma?” Luke asked. “That big one was ready to kill you!”
“I know!” Ma answered. “I was so scared! But he saw the Little Captain’s necklace, and he made them leave. I don’t know. Maybe he thought we were friends of his. I just thank God I had it on!” She got up and picked up Jamie. “Let’s see what they tore up inside. I just looked up and there they were! I’ve never been so scared in my life!”
As she stepped over the doorsill, Sarah felt sick. Everything was ripped or chopped, even the table top and the floor they had worked so hard to smooth. Feathers from the ruined quilts were everywhere, and coals scattered from the fireplace lay smoldering on the floor.
Luke grabbed the empty water bucket and made a dash for the creek.
Sarah stood there looking at the feathers floating in the squirrel stew that had been dumped onto the floor. Then her glance fell on the wooden silverware holder Pa had made. A dull emptiness was all that was left where Ma’s gleaming silver spoons and forks had been.
What kind of a place was this to live, where Indians came screeching out of the forest to kill and rob and burn? Sarah knew there had been Indian raids in Virginia. Only a year or so ago, a whole settlement had been destroyed. But Indians didn’t often come around the towns. She had never seen one near Miller’s Forks. And as soon as Pa got back, she was going to tell him he just had to take them all home!
Chapter 20
The next evening, Sarah was sitting on the cabin doorstep peeling potatoes for supper when she heard a horse whinny. Her heart skipped a beat. Were the Indians back? “God help us!” she breathed. Then she heard Bess answer the whinny from out in the barn, and she saw Pa riding Willie through the meadow toward the cabin.
She jumped up and ran to meet him. “Oh, Pa, I’m so glad to see you! It seems like you’ve been gone forever! And we’ve been attacked by Indians! And you’ve just got to take us back home!” she babbled.
“Whoa, there, Sary girl!” Pa said. “Tell me what happened. Is everybody all right?” He swung down from Willie’s back, a worried frown creasing his forehead.
Ma appeared in the doorway. “We’re fine, Hi,” she assured him, “but it sure is good to have you back! We’ve had some exciting times!” She told him briefly about their encounters with the Indians.
Pa hugged them both. “Thank God you weren’t all killed!” He reached up to untie the two sacks of precious salt he had brought.
Having Pa back made everything seem better, Sarah thought as they sat down to supper. Of course, having salt definitely made the food taste better! Sarah ran her fingers over a tomahawk cut in the table, one of three or four that had been too deep to sand out, along with several like it in the floor. They were constant reminders to her of that dreadful day the Indians had come.
“Pa, can we go back home?” she begged. “Please!”
“You are home, Sary,” he said firmly, and her heart sank.
“But, Pa,” she began, “the Indians….”
“Now, don’t you worry about them, Sary,” Pa interrupted. “They’re not likely to be back, not this winter, anyway. And I told you God would take care of us. Didn’t he see to it that Ma had that necklace just when she needed it?”
Sarah hadn’t thought about it that way. Had God caused the Little Captain to give Ma that silver disk so it would protect them from other Indians? She surely was glad Ma had been wearing it! She had only to close her eyes to see that Indian’s tomahawk above Ma’s head!
Whatever the reason Ma had been spared that day, Sarah had to be content with Pa’s answer, for he made it plain that they weren’t going anywhere. She might as well resign herself to being there until she was old enough to leave on her own. Someday, though! She promised herself.
The pretty weather lasted through October and into November. Pa and Luke finished gathering the corn and cut the cornstalks for fodder for the animals. Now they were cutting and stacking firewood near the cabin for the long, cold winter ahead, while Sarah and Ma shelled corn to grind into meal and threshed the plump grains of wheat from the straw by beating it with sticks. Ma made wild grape jelly too, and Sarah stored so many hickory nuts and walnuts in the loft she felt like a squirrel.
“Come help me get that deer meat out of the salt box, Sarah,” Ma said one crisp November morning. “Your Pa needs to salt down the buffalo he and Luke shot down by the river yesterday.”
Carrying Jamie, Sarah followed Ma to the barn. “Has the deer meat got enough salt in it to keep it from spoiling this winter, Ma?” she asked, peering into the huge log Pa had hollowed out for a meat box.
Ma nodded. “It ought to be salty enough by now, and Luke has cut us a stack of green hickory limbs to smoke it.”
Sarah’s mind went back to hog-killing time in Virginia, remembering the hams, shoulders, and bacons hanging in the hickory smoke until they were partly cooked and had that delicious hickory-smoke flavor. Then all winter, whenever they wanted meat, all they had to do was run out to the smokehouse and lift it down from a peg in the beams overhead.
“Wouldn’t you like to have a big old slice of fried ham or some crisp bacon with your eggs in the morning?” Sarah asked wistfully, brushing the salt off a chunk of deer meat before handing it to Ma.
Ma took the meat and hung it over the hickory limbs. “Don’t you know it!” she answered. “And I reckon I could eat a whole sack of smoked sausage and a bowl full of fried apples!” Ma stood there a moment, lost in thought. Sarah wondered if she, too, were remembering the smokehouse full of meat and the cellar filled with barrels of apples, pears, and dried peaches, not to mention pickles and….
“Hand me another slab of meat, Sarah,” Ma said. “Someday we’ll have a smokehouse again and hogs to kill, but this winter I reckon we’ll be thankful we’ve got deer and buffalo. And once that buffalo hide is scraped and cured, it’ll make a dandy cover for Luke’s bed up there in that cold loft.”
“We’ve made covers out of all kinds of hides since those Indians ruined the feather quilts,” Sarah said, “and they are warm. But they’re nowhere near as soft, and they certainly don’t smell as good!”
Ma laughed. “Well, at least they didn’t completely ruin both of them,” she reminded Sarah. “But I have to admit the one I patched together from pieces of the two of them is never going to be what it once was!”
“It’s kind of lumpy,” Sarah pointed out, “like the flour and meal from Pa’s mill.”
“Sarah, I’m so glad to have flour and meal, I’m not going to say a word about how coarse they are! Anyway, when your pa was at the salt springs, he sent an order for some millstones. They’ll likely be here by spring.”
Spring, Sarah thought, is a long way off. The trees had just lost their leaves. Only a few stray flocks of birds passed over on their way south now. And in the mornings, she sometimes found ice on the water when she went out behind the cabin to wash her face in the log water trough. Winter was on the way, and spring seemed as far away as all the comforts they had left back home in Virginia.
The first snowflakes began falling on Thanksgiving eve. Pa and Luke were feeding and bedding down the animals in the barn, and Sarah was gathering eggs from the hay. They made sure Hunter, the chickens, and the geese were inside the barn too, then hurried back to the cabin. There they were greeted by the tantalizing smells of cornbread dressing and wild turkey, and spicy pumpkin bubbling in the kettle to make pies.
Birthdays went by with little notice from Ma, but she had always believed in keeping Thanksgiving. “This year, I really know how those Pilgrims felt when they set aside a time to thank God for their first harvest in the new land,” she said.
Sarah tried not to remember how the brick house had looked when they had finished waxing and polishing and decorating for the holiday. She tried not to think of the noisy, happy gathering of family and friends at their house or Aunt Rose’s or Grandma’s. She busied herself with hanging bright-colored gourds and ears of colored corn over the mantel, and with making a bouquet for the table of red sumac berries and big brown burrs mixed with red and orange bittersweet.
The snow fell all that night, and by morning the cabin was surrounded by a whole new world of sparkling white. Pa and Luke set to work making a path to the barn so they could milk and feed. Ma had to call Sarah twice before she shut the door and went to help with breakfast.
“A body would think you’d never seen snow before!” Ma teased.
“I’ve never seen Kentucky snow before,” Sarah answered. “I like snow. It’s so clean and new looking, like a fresh-baked cake with heaps of sugar frosting.”
“Everything in Kentucky is fresh and new,” Ma said. “That’s why your pa was so set on coming here. It meant a fresh, new start. Someday….” But she let the thought trail off. “Let’s make some snow cream!” she suggested instead.
Snow cream made by mixing snow into a bowl of milk and honey wasn’t as good as the snow cream they had made back home with milk and sugar and vanilla. But Sarah decided—as Pa always said—it was better than nothing. And she was glad Ma had let them make it early, for by the time they had eaten their turkey dinner, the snow was melting and leaving bare, brown patches on the hills. The next day the creek was running full, and Sarah was sure she had never seen the mill wheel turn so fast as Pa ran off a batch of meal.
Pa was planning a trip to Harrodstown to trade flour and meal for some sugar. He wanted to buy a sow, too, so they could raise pigs again.
I surely would like to see Ann, Sarah thought, but she knew Ma wasn’t going to let her go with Pa, so there was no use asking. Anyway, she was busy making Christmas presents. She was determined to make something for each member of the family.
It was hard to make gifts and keep them secret, living in one room where everybody knew what everybody else was doing. Luke was lucky to have his loft all to himself, and he wouldn’t let anyone near it these days without special permission.
Ma was persnickety about her workbasket, too. Sarah had gone to it to get the thimble, and Ma had flown at her like an old setting hen.
The only ones who didn’t have secrets these days were Pa and Jamie.
Now that it was too cold to do much outside work, Pa was busy making things, but they weren’t secret. He had brought into the cabin some of the wood from a big walnut log he had cut and split back in the summer. After smoothing it, he made a beautiful dark walnut bedstead for him and Ma. Out of that same log he also had made a smaller trundle bed for Sarah and Jamie that could be pushed back under the big bed out of the way during the day.
The big bed, covered with the patched feather quilt, along with the table and benches Pa had made earlier, made the cabin look more like a real house. But, Sarah thought, it’s still not home.
The women at Harrodstown had taught Ma how to mix buffalo wool with lint from the nettles that grew everywhere in Kentucky. Once the tangled mess was combed with Ma’s carding combs, it could be spun into a light-colored thread. When Pa finished the loom he was making, they could weave the thread into cloth. It wasn’t as nice as the sheep’s wool they had back home but it would have to do until they got some sheep.
“Can’t linsey-woolsey be dyed anything but that old butternut color?” Sarah asked when she saw Ma making a batch of the yellow-brown dye from walnut hulls.
“Butternut doesn’t show dirt much,” Ma answered, stirring the dye.
“It’s not such a good target for the Indians, either,” Pa said.
“It would be nice to have some pretty curtains, rugs, and bed covers, though,” Ma said. “I’m plumb out of indigo, and I doubt there’s any in Kentucky. It was scarce as hens’ teeth back in Virginia. But there’s a soft blue-gray that can be made from blue cedar berries, and sumac makes a pretty red. Hickory bark makes yellow, and polk berries make purple. Linsey-woolsey doesn’t dye so well, but when my flax is ready, I’ll make some linen thread, which dyes real pretty. You hunt the dyes, Sarah,” she promised, “and we’ll have some pretty colors around here.”
“Anything for something besides drab old butternut!” Sarah vowed.
“I could see if there’s any indigo when I’m at the fort, Della,” Pa said.
“Thank you, Hi, but that won’t be necessary. We’ll get along just fine with what we have,” Ma responded. “Anyway, we need a new pig more than we need pretty colors.”
Pa soon left for Harrodstown, but he was back in three days with twenty pounds of sugar, some vanilla flavoring, and a lumpy-looking sack he took to the barn. Pa had brought home secrets. But better than that, he brought news.
“Kentucky has been made a county of Virginy by the Legislature, and they promise to help us against the Indians,” he said when he came in from the barn.
“You didn’t hear news of the war, I reckon?” Ma asked wistfully.
“Most of the fighting seems to be up north right now,” Pa answered. “It’s likely that Nate’s as snug as a bug in a rug for the winter.”
What’s Pa up to now? Sarah wondered. She could tell he was fighting a grin from the sparkle in his eyes.
He reached inside his deerskin shirt and handed Ma a crumpled piece of paper. “Anyway, he sent us a letter.”
“How did you get it, Pa?” Sarah asked, as Ma took the letter and sank down on the bench. Sarah saw her hands tremble as she smoothed the paper.
“A new settler picked it up at a station on his way in,” Pa said. “It was addressed to “’The Hiram Moore Family, Somewhere in Kentucky.’”
Sarah read over Ma’s shoulder as she read the letter through and then began reading it aloud. It was dated September first.
Dear Folks,
I hope this finds you well and prosperous. As for me, I am fine as frog hair, except for a small leg wound which is about healed now. If you had been here to doctor it, Ma, I know it would have been well sooner, but I have had good care from a Patriot family here in Virginia. Luke, I wish you had been here to teach me to whittle while I was laid up!
I reckon you heard Patrick Henry is Governor of Virginia now. But I am still with his old troops under the command of General Washington. We haven’t seen much action lately, as the general has been getting most of it up north and we have been ordered to guard the home front. There’s been some fighting farther south, I hear.
I am sending this by a fellow who is coming west, in hopes it will reach you sometime. Kiss the baby for me. I reckon he will be half grown before I see him again. Pa, don’t work too hard. And, Sarah, I hear girls marry young in the backwoods, but don’t you get any notions of marrying some country bumpkin before I get to Kentucky. When this war is over, I aim to bring you back to Williamsburg to study with Aunt Charity’s girls, if you want to come.
May God richly bless you all. Your humble and obedient son and brother, Nathan.
Ma wiped her eyes on her apron. “I’m just so thankful he’s all right,” she said, “or was when he wrote this.”
Sarah was too excited to cry. Nate was coming for her when the war was over! Marry some country bumpkin? Nate ought to know better! She was only twelve! And she had no intention of getting married for a long, long time. Anyway, who would she marry out here in the wilderness? And “if” she wanted to come? Nate knew she did! Apparently her brother knew her better than God, who had let her be dragged away from her home. Or, Sarah wondered bitterly, did Nate simply care more about how she felt?
I’ve already had my Christmas, she thought. Just the idea that she would be going home was gift enough.
Chapter 21
Almost before she knew it, the spicy scent of cake baking and goose roasting told Sarah it was Christmas Eve.
Sarah fought to keep her thoughts off the memories of Christmases past and added berries and red and orange bittersweet to the blue berries on the cedar boughs that already decked the fireplace. Smiling, she laid a small speckled goard in an old bird’s nest that was snuggled in the greenery on the mantel.
Sarah placed a bouquet of cedar and red berries in the center of the table. She stepped back, assessed her handiwork, then let out a sigh of satisfaction.
Ma looked up and smiled at Sarah with the old sparkle in her eyes. “The cabin looks beautiful, Sarah,” she said.
Luke and Pa came in from the barn. Luke looked at Sarah’s decorations, smiled a secret kind of smile, and went straight to the loft.
Pa went over to stand in front of the fire. He still had not brought in that mysterious lumpy sack he had hidden in the barn after his trip to the fort. Sarah was wondering if she ought to just come right out and ask him about it when Luke came down the ladder. One arm was filled with a bundle wrapped in his other shirt.
“I made something for the whole family to share for Christmas,” he explained. “I want to give it to you now.”
