Drums Along the Mohawk (45 page)

“She? That woman. She’s crazy.” He was exasperated and confused. They were all crazy. He turned on Nancy. “Don’t talk blasted nonsense at me.”

Nancy began to blubber.

“I don’t want to die.”

“You won’t die,” shouted the doctor. “I tell you. Listen to me. You won’t die.”

Nancy was appalled at the way the doctor looked down at her with the breath-making noises in his nose.

“Did Mrs. Demooth say that?”

Nancy nodded.

Without another word he turned and stamped out. He had his own war to wage and he laid down the law to Demooth. Nancy heard it all. Her terror increased. She was afraid that Mrs. Demooth would want to kill her. In her heart she had the unavoidable conviction that Mrs. Demooth knew better than the shouting doctor. She wanted to find somebody, Hon, McLonis, any friendly person, before she died.…

The doctor had reduced Mrs. Demooth to tears. He not only dressed her down, he told the captain what he thought of him for letting his wife behave so to a poor, defenseless girl. His whole big face was flushed and his eyes stared at them as if they would burst out of their sockets. Nothing could stop him until Mrs. Demooth began to laugh. She went off into peals of screaming laughter, one after the other, drowning all other sound.

The doctor took one look at her, stepped to the pantry, where he found the water bucket, and doused the woman with the entire bucketful. He slammed the bucket on the floor, swore
once, and told her to go and dry her face. Then he stormed out of the house to his horse.

After the doctor had left, Nancy listened to Captain Demooth leading his wife to her room. She sat where she was, not getting supper, not even moving, but listening to the continued sobbing in the bedroom. Over and over, Mrs. Demooth kept saying, “I’m so frightened, Mark. I’ve been so frightened. I can’t sleep. I don’t see how you can sleep. I dream about them. I dream about Indians. They won’t let me even sleep.…” The sun set. Twilight came into the small room, cool, with a wet smell from the sopping land. The snow was nearly gone. Only here and there stretches of it left in the folds of the land made shimmers in the dusk.

The house gradually quieted. A long time after, the captain came into the kitchen. Nancy could hear him moving there. She saw the light come on in the crack under the door. She tried to stir herself, and she got as far as the door.

Her own face was swollen from crying. Her eyes felt as though they were filled with blood. When she opened the door the captain was standing by the table.

He turned his face.

“Yes, Nancy.”

“Do you want me to get some supper?”

He looked at her gravely.

“No, thanks.”

Nancy forced herself to speak.

“How about
her
?”

“I don’t think she needs anything. I think you’d better not go to see her. I think she’s sleeping.”

Nancy swallowed. Her contracted throat gulped with the effort.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

The captain’s face was not kind. It was not unkind either. It
frightened her. She would rather have had him swear at her the way the doctor had.

“You’d better stay in your own room, Nancy. I may have to move you somewhere else for a while. But I’ll take care of you till your child’s born.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve got to go over to the fort for half an hour. I think she’ll be all right. She’s sleeping.”

Nancy’s eyes widened as she saw him go through the door. She knew better. She knew that
she
wasn’t asleep. It was just a pretense to get him to go. To get him to leave Nancy alone. As the door closed after him, Nancy gave a little moan. She couldn’t cry to him to come back. Her voice wouldn’t work. She wrestled with her brain to make her voice work, but it would not. The bedroom door had opened.

“Don’t you dare to make a sound.”

Mrs. Demooth was standing in the door. Her hair was bunched about her head in wild damp masses, but her eyes, which stared at Nancy, were dry and brilliant inside the red lids. Crying had made her voice hoarse and nasal.

Totally unable to stir, Nancy watched her in horror; but Mrs. Demooth stayed in the door. Both listened to the diminishing sound of the captain’s footsteps along the muddy road. It was a full minute after they had died away before either woman spoke.

“He said I wasn’t to leave the room.”

She did not raise her voice; but for a moment her eyes wavered, as if even yet she feared that the captain might hear her. For a moment she was silent. There was no sound at all but the rapid beating of Nancy’s heart. Then Mrs. Demooth lifted her chin.

“I never hired you. He hired you and then he told me. I didn’t want you to begin with.”

Suddenly Nancy started shuddering. The shudders brought
little repercussions of sound out of her throat, a hushed animal whimpering. Her mouth began to open. “Stop it.” Mrs. Demooth’s voice was raised a note; it was still hoarse. Nancy closed her mouth and swallowed, and wiped her mouth with her hand and wiped her hand on her apron.

“You’re nasty,” said Mrs. Demooth, watching her. “You’re not only a whore, you’re nasty.” She nodded. “Don’t you move. He said I mustn’t leave my room. I was younger than you when he married me. I used to live in a fine house in Schenectady. Our servants weren’t idiots. There weren’t any Indians. There was a wall round the town. I came with him. I went into those awful woods and lived in a log cabin. I never said ‘No’ to anything he wanted. And he hired you. Do you know I’ve always hated you? Do you know how I’ve wanted to kill you? Answer me. Answer me, will you?”

Nancy could barely nod. The motion opened her lips.

“You’re nasty. Nasty. But you can’t move. Neither of us can move. Do you understand? It’s what he wanted. It’s his orders. It’s the will of God. You can’t move. I have to stay here. He made me promise. I never said ‘No’ to him. But I’m going to kill you, Nancy. I’m going to kill you, do you understand? I know
I’ll
be killed soon. The Indians are coming to kill me. But I’ll kill you first. The Lord will let me live long enough for that. To kill you and that abomination inside your body. Don’t move. You can’t move.” She laughed deep in her throat. No one had ever heard her make a sound like that. She laughed again, listening, herself fascinated. “God has made me an instrument in His hand. He removes all unclean things from His earth. He comes and walks the earth to do it Himself, or else He makes instruments like me. He walks the earth. Do you hear me, you?”

Nancy’s eyes were dull. Suddenly she put her hands to her abdomen, taking hold of herself.

Mrs. Demooth began to laugh.

“It knows. It is dying. I told you I would kill it.”

Nancy screamed.

“You know I hated you, but you didn’t go. You couldn’t. He wouldn’t let you, because he wanted me to kill you. Now He comes walking. To see you die. You and what’s dying in you now.”

Nancy’s knees buckled. She seemed to collapse over herself onto her face.

Mrs. Demooth watched her. There was no tremor to the open flame of the lamp. There was no tremor in Nancy’s body. Mrs. Demooth smiled. She looked right and left, listening. Her smile deepened. Her face seemed even paler. Little bunches of flesh swelled beside her nostrils. Slowly she took a step over the threshold of her room and stopped. She looked right and left again and listened. Then she walked over to where the girl lay and bent down and lifted her shoulder. Nancy rolled partly on her side, and lay limp, bent slightly at the hips, preserving the position. Mrs. Demooth let go the shoulder and straightened up. Then deliberately she kicked Nancy.

She returned to her room and paused for a moment to look back at the prone figure with exalted eyes. She raised her eyes slightly, closed the door, and went to bed.

The evening mist drifting into the shadows drew across Nancy’s face. Her lids fluttered. Gradually she opened her eyes. There was no sound. Her eyes rolled slowly towards the bedroom door and found it closed. Tears came into her eyes and rolled down over her face.

Suddenly she blenched. She put her hand to her belly and pressed against herself. Her face was contorted with the effort to rise soundlessly. Her long legs moved with infinite care. She
took off her shoes and tiptoed to her room. There the horror overwhelmed her completely. No longer trying to be quiet, she gathered her belongings in a panic,—her dress, her comb, her nightgown, and her cloth shoes,—and twisted them into her shawl. She came back through the kitchen, bent slightly forward, keeping her eyes from the door, and went out into the darkness. She ran heavily.

On Captain Demooth’s return he found his wife rigid on her bed, with a slight froth drying at the corners of her mouth. He could not waken her and called for Nancy. When she did not answer, he went into the kitchen and rang the bell. Then he went to her room and found that she had gone.

He took the lamp into the yard, shouting for Clem, and with the old Dutchman searched the yard. By the fence they found Nancy’s fresh tracks. She had climbed the rails and crossed the meadow towards the south. They managed to follow her tracks as far as the woods. But there they had to stop.

“There’s no use in looking any more.”

Clem shook his head: “Only an Indian could foller her through that brush.”

“Didn’t you hear anything at all?”

“I was sleeping pretty hard. I was tired.”

“I’ll have to get back to my wife.”

“Anything wrong with her?”

“She’s had a fit, I think. Her mother told me she used to have them when she was little. Will you go fetch Doc, Clem?”

Clem said,
“Tschk, tschk,”
in his best manner.

“Hurry up, Clem. I feel as if I was going crazy myself. We just had an express from Albany. Walter Butler’s escaped.”

“God help us,” exclaimed Clem; but he was thinking about fording the river. The water was high, now.

When, a few hours later, Nancy broke free of the woods, she found herself on one of the bare, hillside pastures. Looking back, she saw the mist lying below her in the valley. She had come a long way.

Her shawl was a sodden bundle hanging from her clinched fingers. Her short gown was torn over one shoulder. Her petticoat clung wetly to her legs. She felt like a flogged person; she was reeking with sweat and wet from the whipping branches. Her hair hung round her face. A little stream of blood trickled from a cut cheek.

She fought hard to gain her breath, turning her back on the valley and fixing her eyes on the stars. Gradually against their distant patterns she made out the dark shoulder of the hill. When she saw it, she started once more at her heavy walk. Her body was like a dead weight precariously balanced on the arch that joined her legs.

Somewhere under the mist behind her, a dog rushed out of an invisible house. She could hear his furious barks traveling back and forth. All at once the dog’s voice deepened, fixed, and she realized that it had picked up her scent.

But at the same moment a long whistle pierced the mist. It was followed by a man’s incensed shouting. “Prince! Come back here, Prince!” Nancy heard the name quite plainly. The dog stopped barking and then, a moment later, yelped; and the night became still. A long shuddering breath went out of Nancy. She set herself with a desperate deliberation against the hill.

A half hour later she stopped on top of the hill in a scattered
grove of maples to draw deep breaths. Though she knew that she was out of reach of pursuit, she did not dare stop for long. She was convinced that what Mrs. Demooth had told her would surely take place. The pain she had carried out of the house had died, but she was sure that it would come to life again. Even now she could feel its premonitory stirrings.

She tramped nearly all night. The general slope of the ground was downward, but at times she was brought up against sharp rises that took interminable climbing. A little before dawn she lost her sense of direction. She could no longer see the stars; the sky had turned to a dull gray with neither light nor shadow. The ravine in which she floundered was gray, like the sky, and the wet touch of branches on her cheeks or breast was cold.

She stumbled into a small stream without seeing it and came at last to a halt in water that pushed icily against her knees. She put her hand down and lifted a little water to her mouth. Her lips felt swollen to her hand’s touch. She could not drink.

After a minute she gave up and wearily forced her way out of the water. Her knees would not lift her feet the height necessary to climb out on the bank, and she struggled futilely, feeling the cold earth against her thighs. She splashed heavily, though she did not hear it, and fell face down on the thick dead sodden grass, and lay there.

It was then that the pains returned. Nancy lifted her swollen, pale, and tear-streaked face and cried out. Her voice was not loud, it was utterly forlorn. It made the Indian think of a rabbit in a faulty snare.

The Indian had been scouting down towards the flats when the dog scented him and barked. His first intention had been to sneak up beside the corner of the barn to see whether he could pick up an easy scalp. He wanted to save up for a new gun; his old French trade musket that he had inherited from his father shot very badly. For hunting he even had to carry his bow. He
had picked up two scalps that month, one down at Ephratah, and one of a lone trapper between Edmeston and the little lakes. The one he had got at Ephratah had not come off well and he was not sure whether he would be able to get the eight-dollar bounty for it at Niagara. He ought to take another to be sure.

But the dog had so obviously spotted him that the Indian decided to give up that chance, and he legged it up the hill with the dog chasing him. The man had called in the dog; and the Indian had nothing to show. But then he had heard somebody floundering in the wet way above him. When he reached the pasture, whoever it was had disappeared, but the Indian found plain tracks and a tatter of cloth together beside a juniper. He could not understand it; it was too dark to see the tracks, but just on the chance he had started following. In the dark, that was slow and painful work. As soon as it got lighter, however, he made the surprising discovery that the footprints had been left by a woman. He fingered the pouch under his belt in which he carried his
Oki
, the skin of a red-headed woodpecker, and realized that at last it was bringing him a little luck. You got eight dollars for any scalp regardless of sex. This ought to be an easy eight dollars. The woman was alone.