08 Heart of the Wilderness Page 8

  She let her glance fall to the pile of carefully wrapped pelts. The returning canoe would bear flour and salt and coffee and yard goods and all the other supplies they so desperately needed for survival. Kendra sighed deeply and reached out a hand to let it trail in the cool stream.

  They passed by the Indian village, and Kendra nodded greetings to the children who played about the bank. She recognized a few of them by name. Nonie had provided the information on the few trips they had made together to the little settlement. But George did not like Kendra to spend much of her time with the other children. He feared that if she learned more of their ways, she would have even greater difficulty when she had to go back to the city for her education.

  George had been putting off sending Kendra out. He knew that it had to be done. He knew that he had waited longer than he should have. But she was doing well. She could read almost anything he handed her—with understanding. And she was quicker at working out sums than many of the adults he knew. Still, she did need to go out. Back to the city. She needed to learn about her own culture. Her own people. She needed to learn the social graces that would identify her as civilized. He knew that. But it was so hard to let her go. To think of the long days without her about the cabin.

  George rested the paddle for a moment and let the small craft drift as he studied the face of his grandchild. She was doing fine—wasn’t she? She was happy. Content. Nonie was caring for her. Nonie with all of her ridiculous scare stories. He did hope that she had stopped feeding the child all the nonsense about ghosts and wandering spirits. He had talked to her about it on more than one occasion. Kendra hadn’t brought the tales to him of late. Did that mean they had stopped—or had Kendra chosen not to discuss them with him anymore?

  Kendra felt his eyes upon her and lifted her head to look at him. The green eyes were so large and intense. The small oval face so much like his Mary’s. He could not hide the love—the pain—that he was feeling inside. He forced a smile to crinkle the corners of his eyes, make his mustache twitch at the sides of his mouth. “Happy?” he asked simply.

  Kendra nodded. She was happy. Totally at peace with herself and her world. She tilted her head and listened for the return call of the whiskey jack, then nodded again.

  “Except for poor Oscar,” she said to her grandfather. “I wish he could have come. He hates to stay alone.”

  “He has all the other dogs for company,” her grandfather answered.

  “But he doesn’t want the dogs for company,” argued Kendra. “He wants us. He thinks he’s people.”

  George threw back his head and laughed good-naturedly. It was the first time Kendra had heard him laugh so generously for a long time. A smile played about her lips, and before long she felt a little giggle rising in her own throat.

  From then on the trip became a shared delight. They chatted and laughed and teased each other as they had not done for a long time. Both of them enjoyed it. It was a breaking of silence. A bonding together. A release from a thought prison that had held back full communication.

  We need to do this more often, thought George. She needs to be able to talk and laugh. She is not silent by nature. She should not be forced into that mold. She needs to talk and to be free to share her feelings. She needs to be with me more. Be less with Nonie.

  And George decided that he would find ways to integrate the child more into his style of living.

  Chapter Nine

  Fire

  There were visitors at the fort. The trader’s brother and sister-in-law had come from a city somewhere to visit him in his “wilderness.”

  Kendra tried not to stare at them, but she could not help feeling interested. As her grandfather accepted a cup of hospitality, the trader’s thick bitter coffee, Kendra sat on a pile of furs and listened to the conversation and studied the faces before her.

  “Your granddaughter?” Kendra heard the visiting woman ask. “How nice.” Then she turned to Kendra and gave her a big smile.

  “How long has she been with you?” the woman asked.

  George had to stop and do some calculating. “Past four years now. Almost five,” he answered, surprising even himself at the time that had quickly passed.

  The woman cast another glance at the slight young girl in her simple shirt and buckskins. Her blond braids were in sharp contrast to her tanned cheeks.

  “ ’Course she goes out every winter,” speculated the woman.

  “Oh no,” George said quickly. “She has been with me the whole time.”

  The woman’s eyes showed her surprise. She did not hold back but spoke her mind quickly. “Where does she get her schooling?”

  It was more than a question. It was an accusation.

  “I teach her,” George answered, his voice getting deeper with his need to defend the circumstance.

  “But—” began the woman.

  “And I dare say she can read better for her age than any of those city kids,” he went on, tempted to call Kendra to him to show off her ability. He did not do so. He felt it would be unfair to the child to drag her into their little dispute.

  The lady cast another glance at Kendra and seemed to concede the point. Then she licked her lips, doubt still showing in her eyes. “What about her religious training?” she challenged further.

  George stirred uncomfortably. He put no stock in religious training, whether one was raised in the wilderness or the middle of the city. Did he dare to speak his feelings to the woman before him? Would he take the stand of an infidel in front of the whole trading post? If he did, how might it affect the future of Kendra?

  He swallowed the words he wished to say and replied simply, “You think the wilderness has no God?”

  The woman nodded in silent agreement. She could not argue that point. She saw the work of God everywhere she looked in this wide, open, beautiful country.

  The subject was dropped, the coffee finished, and the bartering begun.

  “I have something I would like to give you,” the woman said, approaching Kendra as her grandfather was loading the canoe for their return trip.

  In her outstretched hand she held a silver chain, and on the chain was a strange, delicate figure.

  “What is it?” asked Kendra.

  “The cross,” said the woman. “You wear it about your neck—like this.”

  She placed the necklace around Kendra’s neck and fastened it securely.

  “Is it an amulet?” asked Kendra.

  “A—a what? No—no nothing like that. We don’t wear it like a—like a charm. We wear it simply as a—a remembrance.”

  “Oh-h,” said Kendra. But she had no idea what the woman was talking about.

  “You are a very pretty girl,” went on the woman, reaching out to stroke the blond head of hair. She smiled. “And rather intriguing too. A young Scot in Indian dress. You make quite a picture.”

  Kendra did not fully understand the words. She had no idea what the woman was carrying on about.

  “Are you a Scot?” Kendra asked. She knew the woman was not Indian.

  “Oh no.” The woman chuckled merrily. “I’m German,” she said.

  Kendra supposed that the words should mean something to her— but they did not. She had nothing with which to identify them. So she tucked the word away for future reference and studied the woman carefully.

  She looked kind. Her eyes were clear and direct. Her mouth curled easily into a smile. She was neat and pleasing. Her body looked strong and sturdy. Kendra concluded that it must be fine to be German.

  George McMannus was approaching. The woman stepped back and smiled at Kendra again.

  “Perhaps we will see you again sometime,” she said pleasantly.

  Kendra nodded, then turned to follow her grandfather to the canoe. Her fingers reached up to feel the cross that dangled from the chain around her neck. It was a pretty thing. Shiny and simple. Kendra had never had anything like it before. She was anxious to show it to her grandfather.

  The two pushed off i
n the canoe for their return up the river. Papa Mac was much too busy easing the canoe out into the stream and around all the other canoes that bobbed up and down on their moorings to be distracted by Kendra’s new possession.

  Kendra watched, noticing how skillful he was with the paddle and subconsciously noting how to handle the oar with the most efficiency.

  When they had waved for the last time to the group clustered at the water’s edge and the canoe dipped behind the first bend in the river, Kendra sat back and relaxed. It was all paddling upstream now, but her grandfather had made the trip many times and seemed not to tire as the paddle dipped rhythmically into the cool, clear stream, thrusting them ever forward against the pull of the current.

  “Look what the lady gave me,” Kendra finally said, her fingers still on the silver cross.

  “What lady?” he asked absently, not even glancing up at her. He was intent on easing their way around an outcropping of rock in the stream bed.

  “The German lady,” said Kendra. “The one visiting the post.”

  But before her grandfather could even respond, Kendra changed the topic with, “What’s a German?”

  His eyes still on the rocks as he steered the canoe carefully through the maze, he replied, “A race of people. They come from Germany.”

  “Where’s Germany?” asked Kendra.

  A frown furrowed his brow. He had been priding himself on Kendra’s advanced education. But the truth of the matter was there was so much that he wasn’t teaching her. So much that he couldn’t teach her. She needed lessons in geography. In history. In social studies. He didn’t have the time or the ability to teach her what she needed to know. No—he would have to send her out. It wasn’t fair to the child to keep her from school.

  Deeply troubled, he sighed. He did not wish to spoil their time together by bringing up the subject. When they had spoken of it before, Kendra had always begged for a bit more time. But now—? The woman had been quite right, though it galled him that she had dared to question him on the raising of his granddaughter. But she was right. Kendra needed to go to school.

  He would keep her with him throughout the summer, but he would write a few letters and when the fall arrived again, he would take her to the city.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  For a moment Kendra was puzzled by her grandfather’s question. They sat at their evening meal together, Oscar stretched out on the floor beside Kendra’s chair. Then Kendra noticed that his eyes were studying the chain with the lovely silver cross attached hanging around her neck.

  “The woman gave it to me,” Kendra explained, eyes shining.

  “What woman?”

  “The German woman—at the post.” Kendra fingered the cross and lifted it so that she and her grandfather could get a better look. “She brought it to me when I was waiting for you to put everything in the canoe. She said it’s a cross.”

  “I am well aware of what it is,” he responded, but he didn’t sound pleased or excited about Kendra’s gift.

  She looked at him, not understanding the gruffness in his voice.

  “Don’t you like it?” she dared to ask, disappointed.

  “I guess it’s harmless enough,” he replied carelessly. But Kendra could sense that he was not pleased with the gift.

  Still, he had not said that she couldn’t keep it.

  Perhaps he just didn’t think it was pretty. Already Kendra had noticed that her grandfather was drawn to things she and Nonie were not; the reverse was also true. She would show the cross to Nonie. She felt quite sure that her response would be quite different.

  “Look what I’ve got.”

  Kendra had run down the path to meet Nonie. Grandfather was still at the house preparing the dogs for a trip to the bush to haul firewood. Nonie approached the cabin slowly, her ever-present herb basket on her arm.

  “Look!” said Kendra again and lifted the silver cross for the woman to see.

  Nonie’s eyes brightened. She may not have understood the cross, but she did understand silver jewelry. “Good!” she said to Kendra.

  Kendra was quite pleased with herself. Nonie had pronounced the gift as something worthwhile.

  “A lady gave it to me,” she explained as she skipped along beside Nonie toward the cabin. “A German lady.”

  The old woman stopped short, stared at Kendra with dark, brooding eyes, then said, “German. P-f-f-t.” She spat in the dust of the trail.

  Kendra’s eyes shadowed. She did not understand the response. Nonie had liked the gift. Now she looked at it with contempt, spitting out her word with the one angry exclamation.

  “P-f-f-t,” said Nonie, and she spit again.

  Then without another word to the girl, she resumed her silent steps toward the cabin.

  Kendra turned to follow, her eyes troubled with questions, her mind filled with deep confusion and sorrow.

  There was something bad about Germans. Maybe she shouldn’t have accepted the gift. Maybe she should take it off now and throw it into the lake as an appeasement to the moon ripples. Would Mother Earth—or some other unseen being—be angry with her? What might be the consequences? Kendra shivered at the thought.

  Wordlessly she followed Nonie. When she reached the cabin, she cast a glance at the woman. Noticing that her back was turned, Kendra reached up and slipped the silver chain over her head. She would take no chances.

  For a long moment she stood and looked longingly at the pretty cross. She hated to give it up, but she really had no choice. Tonight she would steal down to the edge of the waters, and when the first moon cast its gold over the ripples of the lake, she would cast her gift into the deep. She hoped there would be a loon. If a loon cried at just the right time—the time that the moon first turned the ripples gold—it would be a good omen. Any spell that might have been cast over her would surely be broken.

  Kendra hoped that she would never again have to face the curse of a German.

  There was a strange crackling sound up on the roof. Kendra wondered if a bird or squirrel was doing something quite out of the ordinary. She listened for the sound to come again.

  Nonie had stopped what she was doing and tilted her head to listen too.

  The sound came again. This time Nonie’s head jerked up quickly. “Come!” she said to Kendra and reached out to nudge her toward the door.

  Kendra frowned in puzzlement—not because of the command but because of the urgency with which it was spoken.

  “Come,” said Nonie again, and the two of them pushed through the cabin door at the same time.

  It was then that Kendra noticed a different smell. In the air about the cabin a new color of smoke drifted leisurely.

  “What is it?” Kendra asked, fright making her voice tremble.

  “Fire,” said Nonie. “Fire on roof.”

  Kendra lifted her eyes to the sloping roof of the cabin. Sure enough.

  The smoke was curling upward, caught by the gentle breeze and spiraling around the chimney.

  “Get pail!” shouted Nonie, and after one wild glance at the woman, Kendra ran for the pail that stood on the bench by the door.

  “Water,” barked Nonie.

  With terror making her heart constrict, Kendra dashed for the stream and scooped up a pail of water.

  Nonie had already placed the ladder against the side of the house. Now she took the pail from Kendra’s numb fingers and turned to mount the ladder. Her knees were stiff, her shoulders bent. Kendra feared that the woman would fall in her attempt.

  “Let me,” she said, taking the pail back. “I will do it.”

  When Kendra looked over the side of the roof line, she could see that the fire had started in the chimney. The flames were now extending beyond the stonework and reaching angrily toward the sky. Kendra pulled herself up onto the roof and struggled with the heavy pail of water.

  She crept as close to the flames as she dared and flung the water with all of her might. She heard the sizzle and sputter as the water collided with
the fire, but even as she watched, the hungry flames flared up again. The water had little effect.

  By the time Kendra scrambled back down the ladder, Nonie was there with another pail of water. They exchanged pails and Kendra remounted the ladder.

  Again and again she climbed the ladder—up and down. The flames had escaped the chimney now and were licking at the dry shingles of the roof.

  But each time Kendra threw another pail of water on the flames, she seemed to make a small bit of headway. Not much. But as the dry shingles soaked up more and more of the cold river water, the fire seemed to lose a bit of power in the struggle.

  Kendra’s face burned. Her arms ached. Her back felt as if it were broken, and with all the trips up and down the ladder, her legs seemed like jelly. She wondered if she would be able to fight on.

  But she did. She climbed and dumped every pail that Nonie dragged up to her. And finally the flames flickered, struggled, then ceased.

  Kendra was ready to collapse. What if they had lost their cabin? What if they had lost their home? The traps? Her books? Their supplies? Everything they owned was in that cabin. What if they had lost it all?

  She climbed stiffly down the ladder for one last time and collapsed on the cool ground beside Nonie. Both were exhausted, soot-covered, both flushed from the heat of the fight.

  “Mother Earth angry,” said Nonie between gasps for breath.

  Kendra immediately thought of the silver cross given to her by the German. Her grandfather had said that it was harmless. But Papa Mac had not understood about Nonie’s gods. Had not realized how angry they could be.

  She had thrown it away. Given it to the gods of the lake. She had been careful that the first light of the moon was tinting the ripples of the water. But no loon had called. There had been two loons on the lake. Kendra had pleaded in her heart for one of them to call to the other, but they had stubbornly refused. Was that the problem? Were the loon brothers also angry?