the leathery pods, beans plinking into the small kettle held on
her lap.
The baby inside began a languorous roll across her midriff.
Naomi set the pot aside and slipped two hands under her loose
blouse, smoothing callused fingers over skin stretched thin and
tight. Keeping a hold on the life waking in her belly helped ease
the niggling fear always pecking at the base of her hopes and
dreams. She shifted her seat and moved one hand around to rub
the ache at the small of her back. The last weeks always proved
142 Christine
Blevins
to be the hardest to endure. Soon, if all went well, she would live
to hold this baby healthy and alive in her arms.
Winnie came from around the cabin toting a sloshing bucket,
their two dogs crowding her heels, pink tongues lolling. She
poured water into their trough.
“Move over, Patch—there’s enough for both.” Winnie wrapped
her arms about the brindled hound, pulling him back. “Git in
there, Little Black. Have a drink.” But Little Black ignored Win-
nie, turning instead to strike a stance staring out at the cornfi eld.
A ridge of bristly hair crawled upright along his backbone and he
fl ew off like a dry leaf in a windstorm. Patch broke from Winnie
and lit a shuck after Little Black. Both dogs dashed into the
waist-high corn, barking like mad.
Naomi braced against the tree trunk and struggled to her feet.
A man, filmy and faded in the brilliant sunlight, loped toward
her, dodging around cornstalks and tree stumps. Naomi took
two steps forward, dogs barking, a fistful of blouse clutched at
the hollow of her throat. The midday heat shimmered above the
fi eld and she shaded her eyes, squinting.
Black hat.
Blue shirt.
White man.
It was Tom—Tom Roberts.
“
Winnie!
Run fetch Jackie and your da.
Hurry!
” Naomi
watched Tom tearing across the field in full stride, her jaw
clenched. News carried swift-foot in the blaze of a summer day
could not bode well.
Tom, Seth, Winnie, Jack, the Martin dogs, and Tom’s dog,
Friday, all met in the dooryard, kicking up a chaos of dust and
noise. Battler woke snuffling, coughing, and screaming, and
Naomi sank down to gather him up on her lap.
Red-faced Tom doubled over, panting hard, hands pressed to
his knees. He went to the trough, got down on his hunkers,
shoved the dogs aside, and filled his hat with water. Tom took
Midwife of the Blue Ridge
143
three long gulps and dumped the remainder over his head. “War
party . . .” he fi nally gasped, standing tall. “Shawnee . . . movin’
fast . . . coming along the streambed . . .”
Winnie clasped Jack by the hand and Naomi’s children stood
together in the dooryard, stiff and pallid as the French porcelain
figures in her old master’s china hutch. Desperate to stanch the
onslaught of sick horror wrenched up from her gut and throb-
bing in her throat, Naomi closed her eyes and pulled Battler tight
to her breast, squeezing the squawking toddler into silence. She
drew in one long, deep breath and set Battler down on his rump
on the rug. “Winnie, mind your brother.” She hoisted herself up
to her feet. “I’ll go gather the bedding.”
“Help yer mam,” Seth directed Jack. “Sclim up to the loft, and
toss down a bag o’ meal, a side of bacon . . . I’m goin’ to saddle
the mule . . .”
“Where’s Maggie?” Tom asked, stopping the Martins in their
tracks. Seth looked to his wife, who turned to her daughter.
“Where is she? Where’s Maggie?” Seth demanded.
Winnie blurted, “I told her not to, but she said she needed
cherry bark to make syrup for Battler’s croup . . .”
“SYRUP!” Seth shouted.
“She said she’d not be long . . .”
“AYE-GOD! Does anyone ever mind a word I say?” Seth
stomped about the yard, finger piercing the air. “Stay close, I
tolt yiz. Nae wanderin’, I tolt yiz. Perilous times, I tolt yiz
all . . .”
“Maggie means well,” Naomi interjected. “Battler’s been aw-
ful poorly . . .”
“A snotty nose isnae worth a body’s scalp, woman!”
Tom grabbed Seth by the shoulder. “Hell ain’t but a mile
away, brother, and the fences are all down. Tuck tail and get
your family to the station
now
.” Tom flattened his felt hat and
wedged it under his belt. “I’ll find Maggie. We’ll meet up with
you in Roundabout.”
144 Christine
Blevins
Seth nodded to the sense of Tom’s solution. “Ye dinna need
Friday underfoot. We’ll take him with us.”
Tom nodded and pulled a knife from the sheath at his side.
Propping his right foot on an overturned bucket, he bent over
and secured the blade under the red wool garter at his right knee.
“Did anyone take notice which way she headed?”
Winnie pointed to the northwest. “The cherry grove, near the
Berry Hell . . .”
Naomi ran to Tom and hugged him about the waist. “Bring
her in safe but be wary—she’s gone upstream.”
“Upstream,” Tom repeated with a chuckle. “Now, don’t that
just fi gure?”
Seth stepped forward. “Mind yer topknot, Tommy.”
“And you mind yourn.” The men clasped forearms, and Tom
lit out.
H
At last Maggie was free from Jack stalking her heels, Winnie jab-
bering in her ear, and Seth recounting yet another horrific tale of
the Redman’s cruelty. Her worries seemed to fly from her shoul-
ders and perch high up in the treetops. She skipped into the cool,
clean silence of the forest, singing her favorite ballad.
“In Scarlet town where I was born,
There was a fair maid dwellin’
Made every youth cry well-a-day,
Her name was Barbara Allen.”
Seth’s strict orders held them all but tethered to the cabin. Even
the two cows, usually belled and allowed to roam free to forage,
were penned behind the stable. Hunting and trapping fresh meat
for the table was curtailed, forcing the Martins to depend on de-
pleted winter stores of salt pork and jerked venison.
Maggie and Winnie only were allowed to leave the dooryard
Midwife of the Blue Ridge
145
to collect water, or to see to the dairy chores—and even then,
only if accompanied by Jack and his ancient musket. Their
boundaries were stringent, the times, grim.
“Stay well within earshot.” In this, Seth was firm. No one was
allowed to wander alone. And absolutely no one was allowed to
wander beyond the cleared field to the north or the springhouse
to the south.
Maggie scooted alone and defiant down the steep path toward
the Berry Hell, swinging a hatchet in her hand and singing her
song.
“ ’Twas in the merry month of May
The green buds were a-swellin’
Sweet William on his deathbed lay
For love of Barbara Allen.”
What began as a stuffy nose had settled thick in Battler’s
chest. Maggie worried when her standard mustard plaster and
hyssop-flower tea seemed to give him little ease. His pitiful cry-
ing and coughing made it almost impossible for anyone in the
Martin household to find sleep. Sick baby and dire threat of In-
dian attack combined with exhaustion to concoct a stressful
brew of frayed nerves and short tempers.
Early morning, while braiding her hair, Maggie noticed Bat-
tler’s odd color and rapid breathing. She pressed an ear to his la-
boring chest and heard the crackling rattle that signaled lung
fever. Not wanting to alarm Naomi or deal with contentious
Seth, Maggie determined to violate restrictions and take swift
steps to treat Battler’s illness.
The Berry Hell crept alongside the stream, a good twenty
square yards of thick, thick briar protected by a tall stand of wild
cherry trees. Maggie entered the grove and strode up to the larg-
est
tree—one whose trunk was wider than her outstretched
146 Christine
Blevins
arms—its lateral roots growing close to the surface. Resolute in
her task, she fell to her knees and used her hatchet to scrape away
hard-packed earth, exposing a good portion of meaty root.
Battler’s congested lungs required a strong tonic obtained from
macerated root bark. Although difficult to harvest, the soft inner
bark of black-cherry root would yield a very potent syrup, much
more effective than what she could distill from trunk or branch
bark. She attacked the tough root with rabid fervor and chopped
it through.
Using the hatchet as a lever, she pried the cut root end to jut
out from the earth. Maggie rolled her sleeves up past her elbows
and straddled the root. She planted bare feet, spit on her palms,
grabbed solid hold, and began tugging and twisting with all her
might. The tree root creaked, crunched, and stuttered out of the
ground, popping up a spray of dirt, ripping free to send Maggie
fl ying backward, square on her bum.
“Och, aye!” She caught her breath, staring in stunned triumph
at the
fi ve-foot length of black-cherry root lying between her
splayed limbs. She stood, tucked the hems of her everyday brown
skirt into her waistband, and dragged the root down into the
stream.
“Now, that’s quick harvest,” she praised herself, with a self-
satisfied smile. Seth would never even know she had disobeyed
him. Maggie picked up her song as she rinsed away the clumps of
dirt and clay clinging to her prize.
“He sent his servant to her door
To town where she was dwellin’
Haste come ye now, to my master’s bed,
If your name be Barbara Allen.”
“
Maggie!
Stop that singing!”
Startled, she looked up to see Tom circling around the Berry
Hell, blue eyes intent on her. Hatless, his long hair was tied loose
Midwife of the Blue Ridge
147
with a leather lace and two angry furrows were drawn between
his brows. With his rifl e in a two-fisted grip, Tom’s shoulders sat
rigid in his chambray shirt patched dark with sweat.
“Thee must come with me—
now
.” His voice was quiet and
low.
She had not laid eyes on Tom Roberts since the night of the
gather-all two weeks before, when he bade her farewell in the
dark with a chaste kiss on the cheek and a promise. “I’ll call on
you soon.”
Every day from that day on, she watched for him—waited for
him to stride smiling through the waist-high corn and take her
up in his arms. But he never came.
Probably for the best, she figured, as her life was not her
own—not for four years anyway—and Seth had warned her to
steer clear of Tom. “An unfettered man like tha’,” Seth said. “Lord
only knows where he goes, where he spends his nights . . .”
Maggie tossed and turned some nights, envisioning Tom in
Bess Hawkins’s bed. But most nights, she tossed and turned envi-
sioning herself in his arms, in his bed, only to remind herself that
other than a rude blanket on the dirt, Tom did not even have a
bed to call his own.
Now Tom appeared suddenly, creeping through the brush like
an irate phantom, and Maggie found herself struck dumb, clutch-
ing the tree root dripping in her hands.
“Quick . . .” he implored, his hand outstretched. “Shawnee
war party comin’ upon us.”
Maggie clambered up the bank. “What of Naomi . . . the
children . . . ?”
“On their way to the station. I’ve come for you.” Tom wrested
the root from her hands and tossed it into the water.
“I—I need that . . .” she stuttered, taking a step back.
He seized Maggie by the arm and pushed her along.
“Move!”
She stopped short. “My hatchet . . .” she said, pointing to
where she’d left it lying beneath the cherry tree.
148 Christine
Blevins
Tom cocked a woodsman’s ear, listening. Maggie heard it, too.
The subtle sound of bodies traveling through the underbrush,
murmuring voices harmonizing with the tone of water rushing
over smooth stones—a steady movement of many, most assuredly
coming their way. With Maggie by the arm, Tom snatched up the
hatchet and slipped it into his belt. “We have to hide.”
“
Hide?
We have to run!” Maggie struggled to pull free.
The crisp sound of brittle wood snapping underfoot cracked
through the trees. Maggie twisted away and ran scrambling up a
steep incline to the ridge trail. Tom followed with three long
steps. Clutching a fistful of skirt, he yanked her down. Maggie
flailed about like a trout tossed up on a bank. Tom clapped a
hand over her mouth and whispered in her ear. “God’s eye on it,
Maggie—you will not outrun a Shawnee brave.”
Tom half carried, half dragged her to the Berry Hell. He slid
his rifl e into a low opening in the briars—a brambly tunnel not
more than two feet across, formed by hogs rooting for fallen
fruit. “Scoot in, push your way to the center. I’ll be right
back.”
Maggie clutched him by the arm, tears springing hot to her
eyes. A smile played across Tom’s lips. “I have to wipe our tracks,”