The Hollow Tree (18 page)

Maybe it was the sadness of Tibby, maybe the capture of Japhet Oram, or the reliving of Gideon’s hanging and Anne’s hysteria, maybe the knowledge that Jem still distrusted her, but Phoebe was filled with a sudden, overpowering rage.

“What kind of spying do you think I’ll be doing here?” She was so angry she spat out the words. She bent down, grabbed a loose clod of earth, and hurled it at Jem with all her strength. Then she burst into tears and ran, sliding and falling and bumping into trees, down the hill.

Much later, when she had calmed down and was pushing her way through the snow behind the Robinsons’ cart, where Betsy rode with Jed
and Noah, she remembered seeing pine cones and moss in Jem’s hands. She felt ashamed that she had misunderstood, and she tried to tell him so, but whenever she moved up beside him to ask his forgiveness, he found a reason to busy himself somewhere else.

Bertha Anderson, with her ox and cart, now led the refugee party. Joseph Heaton brought up the rear with the prisoner, his hands bound in front of him, tied to the back of the Heatons’ cart. The job of guarding the prisoner, Joseph Heaton told everyone, was not to be entrusted to a feeble old man like Aaron Yardley or a youth like Jem Morrissay. He only glanced disdainfully at Josiah Robinson and obviously did not consider that any of the women could do the job, so he had relinquished the lead position with reluctance, a shake of his fist, and the admonition to Bertha Anderson to “keep us outta the swamps and don’t go gettin’ us halfway up no mountains. And if you sees signs of catamounts ’n’ such, you’re to give a good warnin’.”

Phoebe heard his loud complaints, his sharp orders to his wife and to his prisoner, but all she listened for was a silence that said he had left his post. He did that only twice in the day, but shouted for Jem to “come keep guard” while he disappeared to relieve himself. She knew she couldn’t get near Japhet with Jem marching along beside him.

They plodded up steep hills in snow so thick everyone had to walk in order to lighten the weight in the carts. Now and then one of the mothers would insist that they stop for the children. Uncle Josiah leaned heavily on Rachael’s arm. Jonah Yardley, on the other hand, seemed to gain strength from his very need of it, and he swung along on his crutches beside Phoebe with never a word of complaint, the cat by his feet.

Anne had withdrawn into herself once more. She no longer bothered with Jem. She no longer gossiped with Charity Yardley. Phoebe heard Charity say to Lucy Heaton that “the Robinson chit is the most unobliging human being I have ever met.” She couldn’t help smiling bitterly, but nothing could take her mind from Japhet for long.

All day and long after they had camped for the night, the question went round and round in Phoebe’s head — how was she to free Japhet? Joseph Heaton never left the prisoner’s side while they walked, and stationed himself near him once he had him safely secured to a tree after they’d stopped. If he left him for even a minute, Jem took his place.

Japhet. Phoebe had begun to think of him by his first name. It was as though, having made up her mind to rescue him even though he did not know it, there existed a bond between them. There was another bond. She didn’t know where
he had come from or anything about him except that he was not what he had said he was. She knew, though, that he was a prisoner and so was she. Unlike him, she was free to run off into the wilderness, but she was afraid of it. She no longer felt she would ever convince Anne that she was not the villain Anne thought she was. She had been thinking, for some time, though she still kept it in the pocket tucked into her sleeve, that she would never deliver Gideon’s message in time to anyone who’d have any use for it. Tibby, who she had promised to care for, was dead, and although Betsy Parker had glued herself to Phoebe’s side, she was sure that both she and Jonah would manage without her. No, she was not imprisoned by anything but her own terror of going out alone again into the wild. But the bonds of that prison were every bit as strong as the rope that tied Japhet. In a kind of way she felt that, if she freed Japhet, she was freeing herself — and Gideon.

When all the fires had burned low and people were restlessly settling down to sleep, Phoebe watched for her chance to creep over to where Japhet sat, tied to a large oak tree, hands and feet bound before him with the tough cedar-root rope the Mohawks called watapi. She could see, because the moon was full and it was a clear night, that he had fallen asleep. His head was hanging down, bobbing like an apple on its
branch. Joseph Heaton was sitting a foot or two from him, his head nodding, too. Jem lay sleeping, the same distance on the other side. Phoebe thought desperately of creeping over to where they slept and knocking them both on the head with Charity Yardley’s iron cooking pot. The only thing that stopped her was not knowing how she could hit one of them without the other one waking up.

I will have to be very quiet, she thought, and she was about to stand up when, as though reading her mind, Jem woke, sat up, and looked over towards where she sat. She could feel his eyes boring into her. She lay down, determined to keep awake, but, after a little while, she fell asleep — and dreamed that Joseph Heaton was riding on Bartlett’s back, chasing Tibby and Gideon and Japhet with his hunting knife. Jem was running beside them, his coppery hair flying loose behind him.

She woke because Jem was squatting beside her, shaking her. “You was havin’ a nightmare.” She blinked and rubbed her eyes. There were tears. She sat up, shivering. She grabbed Jem’s hand. “Why were you chasing them?”

“Huh?”

“You were, oh … ” She shook her head. “It was the dream.” She didn’t move from his comforting presence until she realized she was holding his hand. “Thank you,” she mumbled, pulling free.

“That’s all right.” Jem sounded as self-conscious as she felt. He got up and went back to his place by Japhet Oram. Phoebe pulled her blanket up around her shoulders, but she didn’t sleep for a long time.

The second day was much the same as the first had been. Although the sun was bright, it was cold, and the going was all uphill in the snow. Jem and Joseph Heaton had a quarrel that stopped just short of a fist fight after Jem asked Japhet how near the Onion River they were, where it might be best to cross it, and what would be the best procedure north from there. Joseph Heaton told Jem not to “trust no dad-blasted spy.” Jem muttered something Joseph said he hadn’t any business saying in front of good Christian women. If Jem’s mother and Bertha Anderson hadn’t stepped between them, they might well have come to blows.

The first time Jem took his turn guarding “the spy,” Phoebe could see by the expression on his face that he was more than a little tired of Joseph Heaton. She couldn’t help but smile. Then suddenly Noah Robinson darted from his mother’s side after a rabbit, fell in the snow, and started to roll downhill. Jem took after him. Phoebe slipped towards Japhet. She drew her knife from her sleeve just as Jed Robinson bounded towards her with the cat in his arms.

“Phoebe! Phoebe! I found George. He got
lost in the bushes.” He pointed towards a clump of bushes leaning over the frozen stream that ran beside the hill they were climbing. Wondering where Jed found the energy, as thin and hungry as he was, Phoebe took the cat from him and made no further attempt to free Japhet.

Two near-fights among the boys were avoided by Bertha Anderson bullying Charity Yardley into taking some of the children into her cart once they reached the top of the hill. Johnny Anderson and Arnie Colliver were begging for something to eat, and Sam Colliver was whimpering that he was
so
cold. It was easy to see that trouble between some of the refugees could easily erupt.

As for Phoebe, all she hoped was that any one who had noticed her at Japhet’s side would think she had simply wandered there.

But Jonah had noticed, after she had returned to his side and thrust George into his arms. “I see what you was gonna do,” he told her in a low voice. A chill ran down Phoebe’s spine.

“I won’t tell,” he said.

Phoebe looked at him, disbelieving.

“I can see this Japhet Oram isn’t likely what he says he is. I’m hobbled in the leg, I’m not very old, but I’m not slow in my upper works.” He grinned at her. “And I hate that old buzzard. He’s not the king and he doesn’t know all there
is to know, and I don’t want to see him win over anybody, not even General George Washington himself.”

Phoebe squeezed his hand. She wondered if everybody else disliked Joseph Heaton as much as she and Jonah and, probably, Jem did. Jem. Phoebe was sure he had seen her slip in beside Japhet Oram, because every time she glanced in his direction he was looking at her with a thoughtful expression on his face. But he said nothing about it.

When, in mid afternoon the refugees reached a small beaver meadow, surrounded by a mostly evergreen woods, the level ground and the shelter the trees gave from the rising wind were too good to pass up, so they stopped there for the night. There was one large maple tree in the meadow at a little distance from the surrounding forest, and there Joseph Heaton tied Japhet.

Other than eating the small ration of beans Abigail Colliver fed him, and thanking her, Japhet said nothing and looked at no one, although Phoebe did think she saw him wink at Jed when Jed and Noah and Arnie Colliver stood in front of him and stared — before their mothers called them away.

Phoebe camped as near to the prisoner as she dared without attracting attention. Since she had Jonah and Betsy and the cat with her, she did not think anyone would notice.

Someone did. Anne. Phoebe was getting her fire going when Anne appeared beside her.

“I know what you mean to do, Mistress Olcott, and do not think for a single moment that you will get away with it. I mean to watch your every move. Every move! And you know what happens to traitors and spies,” she hissed. With that she disappeared into the dark.

Phoebe went cold. Had Anne gone to tell Joseph Heaton what she suspected? Would he tie her up? Would be hang her on that tree? And Japhet Oram, too? Would all the others let him do that? She began to shake.

“Phoebe, I asked you three times, d’you want me to put these chokeberries in the beans?”

“I am the one slow in the upper works, Jonah. Yes, give Aunt Rachael whatever you’ve found for the pot.” By this time three pots were all it took to cook what was left of the rations for everyone. So Phoebe had given up cooking unless the hunting and fishing proved successful.

Phoebe busied herself then, helping Aunt Rachael, settling the children, anything that would keep her mind off Anne — and Japhet. It was only when Betsy had been comforted one last time from the fear of the howls of wolves and the hooting of owls, and Jonah had pulled George close to himself in the cocoon he’d made of his quilt, that the full force of what she was about to do swept over her.

Free Japhet Oram? If she did not, he would surely be hanged. He would be hanged like Gideon, and it would be her fault if she could have freed him and didn’t. No matter how she tried not to, her imagination would create his dead body swinging from the tree where he was now tied. But, every time she thought about freeing him, she shrank from it. She had come all the way over the mountains with only a bear and a cat to do one last service for Gideon because of the horrific thing that had happened to him. She had come along with Jem from Shaw’s Landing on Lake Champlain because she had been afraid she would be hanged if she went home. How could she deliberately put herself into that danger now for someone she didn’t even know? I can’t do it, she decided. It probably is not true that he will be hanged when we get to Fort St. John’s.

She lay down to sleep. But she couldn’t sleep. The picture of Japhet’s dead body swinging from the tree was too insistent. After at least an hour of this torment, she rolled over and looked across the few yards of meadow that separated her from the tree. The moon was hovering over the tops of the evergreens and she could see Japhet clearly. His head was nodding. Joseph Heaton was sleeping, soundly by the look of him, on one side of Japhet. Jem was sitting on the other side. He was sitting up straight, but
every few minutes his head would nod. It was obvious he was having trouble staying awake.

Phoebe lay without moving, wishing the wolves would cease their dismal cries, her eyes shifting from Jem to Japhet to Joseph Heaton and back again, over and over. She knew that no matter how afraid she was, she was going to have to do this thing.

She waited. Half an hour went by. An hour. The moon was high in the sky and there was a cold stillness on the land. Jem’s head nodded once, twice, and finally drooped on his neck.

Without really knowing what she meant to do, Phoebe reached out and grabbed a stick from the pile beside the fire. With the stick in one hand, her little knife in the other, she crept past Aunt Rachael and Uncle Josiah, past Mistress Yardley and old Aaron Yardley, to the edge of the meadow and around to the tree where Japhet was tied. Just as she reached it, Jem moved again. She didn’t stop to think. She struck him on his head with her stick. He slumped over without a sound.

Swiftly and silently she moved to Japhet’s side and began to slice at the
watapi
that bound his hands. He stiffened, struggled for a moment, realized what she was doing, and held his hands as far from the tree trunk as he could. It took an agonizing amount of time, but at last his hands were free. He grabbed the knife from Phoebe.
Within seconds he had the
watapi
cut from his ankles, and Phoebe had the rope untied from around his waist. He staggered to his feet, dropped the knife, and stumbled off.

For a moment Phoebe was too stunned to move, too stunned to realize that she had actually freed him. Then, like a fox on the run, she took off in the direction Japhet had taken. But as she reached the shelter of the trees, she stopped.

“Jem! Oh, dear Father in heaven, Jem!” she breathed. She dashed back to where he lay on the ground. She bent over him. She set her ear to his mouth, terrified she would feel no breath. He groaned and rolled, pulling her with him. She leapt up, her hand at her throat. He made no move. She stared down at him for one second. Then she turned on her heel and ran.