Home on Stoney Creek, page 8
Luke had more free time there too, with no school and only the one fireplace to keep supplied with wood. Of course, Pa was always having him help build something, but it seemed to her that Luke spent a good bit of time alone on the creek bank, whittling while he waited for the fish to bite. He wouldn’t let her go with him. He said she talked too much and scared away the fish.
Well, let him have his old spot on the creek bank! Sarah had discovered a place of her own that Mr. Luke didn’t even know was there. From the yard, it looked like just another giant sycamore tree spreading its white limbs over the creek. Even from down on the creek bank, the opening was hardly visible, hidden behind that small cedar bush. Once inside the hollow trunk, though, Sarah could stand upright, and she could stretch both arms wide without touching either side of the secret room inside the heart of the tree.
It was her own special place where she could go to think or to daydream, to plan all the wonderful things she would do when she went back to Virginia. And it was there that she kept the family of stick dolls she had worked so hard to make, along with their wood chip plates and little acorn cups and saucers. She also had made a rock table and chairs and a small fireplace, which Jamie had knocked over one day. He had torn up one of the dolls, too.
Sarah was ashamed to remember how she had yelled at the baby and slapped his little hands. Jamie, of course, had run to Ma, crying. But Ma hadn’t scolded her. She understood about the playhouse, maybe because she had been a little girl once herself. Anyway, she kept Jamie at the cabin when Sarah went to the hollow tree after that, and she hadn’t let Sarah’s secret out to Luke.
Sarah sighed. She couldn’t go to the playhouse today with Jamie along. She looked down at him, toddling happily beside her. “Come on, Jamie,” she said, “we’ll find that old goose’s nest, and then we’ll go play in the creek.”
“Pay keek?” Jamie repeated.
“Ouch!” Sarah yelled as her bare toe hit a sharp rock. She examined the cut under her big toe. It was bleeding freely. Wearing shoes would have protected her feet, but she and Luke always went barefoot from the first day of summer until the first frost. She doubted that she could get her shoes on, anyway, if her feet had grown the way they usually did.
Sarah wondered if the cobbler would come around to make shoes this fall like he had in Virginia. She swished her foot in the creek to wash off the dirt and blood. But there probably wasn’t a cobbler in Kentucky. Ma would just have to make them deerskin moccasins like the Indians wore. She had already made Luke some to wear when he went hunting, since they were quieter than his heavy shoes.
Sarah sat Jamie down, and he promptly began to cover his feet and legs with sand. She looked at her cut again. The cold water had slowed the bleeding, but it hadn’t stopped. Ma had put a spider’s web on a cut on Pa’s leg once when he hit it with the axe, and the bleeding had stopped soon afterward. Sarah slowly made her way along the creek, looking for a web. There wasn’t a spider’s web anywhere in sight, though. “If I wasn’t looking for one, I’d run smack into the creepy thing and get it all over my face!” she said aloud.
She bent down to examine her foot again. The bleeding had finally stopped. I’d better look for that goose’s nest if I’m going to find it before dark, Sarah thought. There was no telling where that old goose had hidden her eggs.
“Let’s go, Jamie,” Sarah said. But when she turned to where she had left him in the sand, he wasn’t there.
“Jamie!” she called softly. Ma would give her a switching if she found out Sarah had taken her eyes off that baby for a minute. Then cold fear crawled down her spine. What if he had wandered into a bear’s den or stumbled over a copperhead or fallen into a deep hole of water? What if he had run into a band of Indians?
“Jamie!” Sarah strained her ears to hear over the gossipy whispering of the creek. If Jamie was nearby, he was probably playing “mousie,” a game she had taught him to play when she wanted him to be quiet and not bother her.
Then relief swept over her. Sarah could hear Jamie singing one of his little “happy” songs. All at once, Sarah knew where he was. She tiptoed over to the hollow tree and peered inside.
Jamie sat in the secret room, rocking back and forth, singing his funny little off-key lullaby to a stick doll he held cradled in his arms. His eyes widened when he saw Sarah, and he let the song trail off.
“Sadie mad?” he asked fearfully. “Sadie ‘pank Jamie?”
Sarah grabbed him and hugged him, not caring that she was crushing the doll. She even let him keep it when she carried him to the cabin.
“Did you find the nest?” Ma asked as they came through the doorway.
Sarah had to think a minute before she remembered what Ma was talking about. “Not yet, Ma,” she answered, “but I’m going back to look right now.” She sat Jamie down on the floor and ran out of the cabin before Ma could ask what she’d been doing down there all that time.
The closest Sarah came to finding those goose eggs, though, was when the old goose waddled proudly into the yard several days later with eight fluffy yellow goslings trailing along behind her.
Chapter 15
“Pa, let’s go fishing tomorrow,” Luke said at supper one evening toward the first of August. “We don’t have much to do until harvest.”
Pa sat there a minute, holding a bowl of green beans and summer squash, staring at Luke. “How do you think your Ma’s going to make bread out of whole corn and wheat kernels, son?” he finally asked, passing the bowl to Sarah.
Luke looked puzzled. “But after we take the corn and wheat to the mill, Ma will have cornmeal and flour….” His words trailed off. “Oh,” he said. His face turned red as they all laughed.
“That’s right,” Pa said. “There’s not a grist mill anywhere near here. There was one over on Elkhorn Creek, but the Indians burned it.”
Sarah looked at Ma. How could she sit there with an unconcerned smile on her face, knowing there was no mill to grind the wheat into flour or the corn into meal? “What are we going to do, Ma?” she asked anxiously.
“It appears to me your pa’s fixing to become a miller,” Ma answered.
Pa nodded. “I aim to start on our mill first thing in the morning. We’ve got good water power here to turn the mill wheel and plenty of rock and timber to build any kind of mill we want. It may take the rest of the summer,” he added, “but, come harvest time, God willing, we’ll have our own mill.”
Sarah clapped her hands in delight. “I always loved the dusty, musky smell of the mill at Miller’s Forks, and the roar of the wheel as the water poured over it!” she exclaimed.
Before Pa’s mill was finished, though, Sarah wished she had never heard of a grist mill. She, Ma, and Luke carried rock until their hands were calloused and their backs ached, and still Pa yelled, “More rock!”
“I think Pa discards more rocks than he uses!” Sarah panted under her load as she passed Luke carrying two buckets.
Luke nodded. “And it sure takes a lot of wet clay to stick ‘em together!”
“More clay!” Pa yelled.
Luke rolled his eyes. “I’m glad he’s only building the part of the wall that goes down into the water out of rock!” he said fervently as he trudged up the creek to the clay bank.
At night, they were all so tired they dropped onto their pallets on the floor and didn’t stir until the rooster’s crow announced the sunrise. Pa said later he reckoned that was why none of them realized they had had a midnight visitor until it was too late.
One misty morning when Luke went to turn the cow and calf out to pasture, he came running back to the cabin. “Pa! Pa!” he panted, falling in the cabin doorway, “a bear’s....”
Pa grabbed his gun and was out the door and gone before Luke could get his breath. “...tracks are all around the barn,” he finished saying to Ma and Sarah. Then he turned and ran after Pa.
Pa was just coming back around the barn when Ma and Sarah got there. “Did you see which way he went, Luke?” he asked. “There are tracks in the mud all around the barn, but they don’t show up in the grass outside the barn lot.”
Sarah thought the tracks looked like they were made by a giant with claws on his toes who danced around the barn barefoot.
“I didn’t see the bear, Pa,” Luke explained. “You left before I could finish. I was trying to say, ‘A bear’s tracks are all around the barn. And there are claw marks on the doors.’”
“I see,” Pa said, a funny half-smile playing over his mouth as he examined the tracks and claw marks. “He’s a big one,” he said, “at least a 400 pounder I’d guess, but it looks like our barn stood the test. I don’t think he got inside.” He swung the big barn doors open. The horses and the cow and calf were all right.
“What was he after, Pa?” Luke asked. “The calf?”
“Maybe. I think it’s a mite big for him, though. Black bears are full of curiosity. Full of tricks, too. They can climb a tree like a kitten. Once I came upon a pair of black bears who were standing on their heads and turning somersaults and dancing around like two young ‘uns playing.” Suddenly Pa stopped talking. He turned and ran outside.
Sarah came up behind Pa at the rail of the pigpen and saw his shoulders slump. “That’s what he came after, and that’s what he got,” he said. “The pig’s gone.”
“Are we going after him?” Luke asked eagerly.
“It’s too late to do the pig any good,” Pa answered. “Wonder why that hound of yours didn’t bark last night and wake us up? I was so tired from working on that mill, though, I doubt I’d have heard thunder!”
“Here, Hunter! Here, boy!” Luke called. Then he whistled his special whistle that always made the dog come running. But if Hunter heard, he didn’t answer. Pa was looking worried now, too.
“Hiram!” Ma called. “Hunter’s out here behind the cabin. He’s hurt!”
Luke ran toward the cabin, with Pa and Sarah right behind him. Sarah caught her breath when she saw the dog. His head had a large gash across the top, one of his long ears was tattered, and his left eye was swollen shut.
“I heard him whining back here,” Ma explained. “He was trying to get to Luke when he whistled, but he’s too weak to stand up.”
Pa leaned over and picked up the dog gently. “He’s lost a lot of blood,” he said. “Ma, send me some lavender water out to the barn and some bread soaked in milk.”
Sarah followed Pa and Luke to the barn, trying to swallow the lump in her throat. Hunter might die, and all because he had been brave enough to tackle that murdering old bear. Ma soon followed with the lavender water and bread.
“He’ll be all right,” Pa said as he bathed the dog’s wounds. “Your ma’s lavender water will clean the cuts and help them heal, and the bread will give him strength.”
Hunter wasn’t eating, though. He just lay on the hay and let Pa doctor him, with only a low whimper of pain when the lavender water stung the cuts. His good eye was glazed and dull-looking.
“Pa,” Luke said loudly, “we’ve got to get that bear!” Then he turned and stumbled out of the barn. Sarah knew he didn’t want them to see the tears in his eyes. She felt like bawling herself. No matter what Pa said, Hunter looked like he was dying.
For the next few days, Ma doctored Hunter, and he seemed a little stronger. At least she no longer had to coax him to eat the food she carried to the barn.
Finally the rock work was done, and Pa and Luke cut, hauled, and notched logs for the upper walls of the mill. When a day of rain set in, they both sat in the cabin whittling paddles for the mill wheel.
Sarah had gone back to chinking the cabin, working quickly to make up for the time lost in carrying rock for the mill. “Wish I could just yell, “More clay!” and somebody would bring it to me,” she said wearily as she sank onto her pallet one night, almost a week after the bear had paid them his visit. When nobody said anything, she knew they were all as tired as she was.
The fire was almost out and the cabin was dark when Sarah woke up that night. The square of window where moonlight usually crept in around the shutter was even blacker than the rest of the cabin. Sarah rubbed her eyes. They felt like they were full of sand. She surely had been sleeping hard....”
A loud, rumbling roar outside raised the hair on the back of her neck and almost shook the cabin. Hunter was barking furiously inside the barn. Sarah felt, more than saw, Pa grab his gun and head for the door. Luke joined him in the doorway in his night shirt. Pa must have been sleeping with his clothes on, for he was fully dressed. He must have been expecting that bear to show up again.
“If I shoot and miss,” she heard him tell Luke as they left the cabin together, “that bear will be gone before I can reload. If I only wound him, he may attack us. I’ve got to kill him with my first shot!”
Sarah ran to the doorway. The moon was coming up over the trees, but it was still very dark out there. She could barely make out the shape of the barn and Pa and Luke standing at the corner of the cabin.
“Stay behind me so I won’t shoot you by mistake,” she heard Pa whisper to Luke. “I can’t see much out here.”
As they moved away from the cabin, Sarah followed to the corner. She looked back and saw Ma standing in the doorway.
Looking toward the barn, she could see the bear now, standing on his hind legs, a darker shadow among shadows. She could feel her heart begin to pound in her throat.
Pa stooped, picked up something, and threw it at the bear. The bear turned slowly and looked at him. Sarah could see his small, mean-looking eyes glittering red in the moonlight.
“Oh, Lord, guide this bullet!” she heard Pa pray as his gun exploded.
The bear gave an angry roar. He took four or five steps toward Pa, then stopped. Sarah could hear Pa frantically trying to reload the gun. The bear swayed and swiped at his head with one huge paw.
“You hit him, Pa!” Luke shouted.
The bear stood there a moment, then fell to the ground with a heavy thud and lay still.
“Boy, right between the eyes!” Luke yelled.
“His eyes were all I could see, son,” Pa answered.
“Praise the Lord!” Sarah heard Ma breathe.
“Well, there’s bear steak for supper and a bear skin rug for the floor,” Pa said.
“And tallow for candles,” Ma added shakily.
“There’s one bear that won’t hurt my dog again!” Luke said. From inside the barn, Hunter barked, as if to say, “Amen!”
Sarah just stood there, thinking. She knew Pa shot animals for food all the time, but she usually wasn’t there to watch. One moment that big bear had been standing there threatening them all, and the next he was lying dead on the ground. Was that the way it was in a war? Did Nate have to shoot other men the way Pa had shot the bear? Then Sarah had a terrible thought. They hadn’t heard from Nate for a long, long time. Had some British bullet done to him what Pa’s had done to that bear?
All at once, a longing pierced through her as sharply as a bullet, a longing for a time when all of them had been safe by the kitchen fireplace in the brick house, laughing and talking around the table as they ate or worked or played together. She winced at the pain of the memory. Would it ever be that way for them again?
Chapter 16
I wish Ma would hurry up and find something to use for sweetening, Sarah thought as she reached for the tin box on the mantel to store the new candles she and Ma had made.
Since Ma had not been able to bring the heavy candle molds she used back in Virginia, she had showed Sarah how to dip tightly-rolled strings of cloth into the melted fat from the bear again and again until it hardened into fat yellow candles. Except for the fireplace, those candles would be their only source of light during the long, dark winter evenings, and Sarah was glad Ma had found something to substitute for the sheep’s tallow they didn’t have here.
Ma almost always knew something to use in place of whatever they ran out of, but it had been two weeks now since the sugar sack was emptied, and so far, she hadn’t come up with a substitute. Sarah was so hungry for something sweet that, after her chores were done, she set out to hunt for berries or anything that might satisfy her sweet tooth. She hunted all afternoon, but she came back to the cabin with an empty bucket and an equally empty stomach.
“Hey, Sarah, guess what we found!” Luke yelled excitedly as she started across the clearing. She looked back to see Pa, Luke, and Hunter coming across the meadow.
Hunter was still a good hunting dog, even though he had only one eye now. He could trail deer and rabbits or tree squirrels and raccoons, but that wasn’t anything to get so excited about. Wild game was standard fare around here. Anyway, Pa and Luke were carrying nothing but their guns.
“Give up?” Luke asked as they neared the cabin.
“I guess so,” Sarah answered crossly. She was in no mood for games.
“How would you like to have some biscuits dripping with sweet, golden honey?” Luke teased.
“Luke, that’s not funny,” she began. Then she realized what he and Pa must have found. “A bee tree!” she shouted. “You found a bee tree?”
Luke was shaking his head no, ready to tease some more, but Pa said, “Don’t be cruel, son. Sary’s got a sweet tooth as big as that hollow tree where the bees hid all that sweet, wild honey!” He grinned at her. “The bees don’t know it yet, but they’re going to share it with us. We’ll have hot biscuits and butter and honey for breakfast in the morning, Sary girl.”
Sarah danced around the yard with happiness, then ran to tell Ma.
“Won’t that taste good!” Ma exclaimed as Pa and Luke came into the cabin. “I’ll make us a little cake tomorrow out of flour and eggs and honey. And we can sweeten our coffee, such as it is, and have pancakes and honey. Oh, won’t it be nice to have something sweet for a change?”
