CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

AFTER A DAY’S hard ride through the wilderness, up jagged hills and down rocky ravines, Margaret, John, and Higgins reached the cabin of one Mr. McCormick and found three women, also newly ransomed, housed there. Higgins explained that they were all to pass the winter together, a piece of information he had heretofore withheld. McCormick himself was off hunting in the woods, sore pressed to feed his guests.

Margaret looked with misgivings around the miserable cabin. Mr. McCormick, she was told, was an elderly bachelor, and his cabin displayed the dirt and disorder of a solitary life. Then she scrutinized the three women who were to be her winter companions, standing or sitting in various attitudes that revealed their characters. They were watching her as well, and she took pains to introduce herself, going from one to the other with an outstretched right hand.

The first, a pretty girl although a little worn, seized her hand eagerly. “Lucy Grey,” she said. “A war party of Cherokee took me a year ago when I was crossing the mountains.”

“Alone?” Margaret asked, surprised.

Before Lucy could answer, a stout middle-aged woman announcing herself as Caroline McDimmit said, “She was a-following after the soldiers.”

“I was their cook!” Lucy Grey protested.

A quiet-looking elderly woman intervened. “I’m sure you had good intentions, dear, no matter what the outcome.” She took Margaret’s hand and squeezed it. “I’m Matilda Gage. They took me when I was digging potatoes outside Fort Harrod. We was starving, somebody had to go. I was not ill-used,” she added.

It could be worse, Margaret thought. All three women were used to hardship and they would find ways of getting along.

McCormick came in, a wizened old man sporting a big black beard; he’d found no game. He saluted Higgins, who began at once to count out paper three-pence notes and Spanish dollars into McCormick’s hand. Then, without a word of farewell, Higgins turned to leave. Catching hold of his sleeve, Margaret asked, “Is it not possible to proceed directly to the Greenbrier?”

“Winter will soon close the mountains to all passage,” Higgins told her. “You and your boy will be safe here till the weather breaks.” John, clinging to his mother’s skirt, let out a howl.

During the three dreary months that followed, Margaret’s principal task was attempting to comfort John, who cried day and night to be returned to the Shawnee. Margaret used her whole store of songs as she rocked him in her arms, but even “Go tell it on the mountain” which had been his favorite had lost its appeal. She had little to promise him, especially as the wretched place reminded her too keenly of the cabins “at home”.

Mr. McCormick was no company. He lay insensible with drink from sunset to noon, and only when Margaret prodded him could he be persuaded to go out, grumbling, and shoot a wild turkey. He expected the women to do all his chores in repayment for his scant hospitality. They took turns drawing water from the spring a league away, carrying two buckets back to the cabin slung from an ox bow Margaret found in the shed.

McCormick lay snoring when the wood pile gave out, and since the other women had never handled an ax, Margaret was elected to split firewood until her palms were raw. As for the outhouse, all refused to consider it, and complaints rose in a chorus the first cold winter night when they were forced to make use of the malodorous shack. Margaret had exiled the chamber pot to the shed to end the arguments about who was to empty it. She set an example, she hoped, by parading to the outhouse no matter the foulness of the weather.

On the third day of this new captivity (for Mr. McCormick did not allow the women to venture outside the dooryard except to fetch water or use the outhouse), Margaret began to work to persuade the other women to help her clean the cabin. “None of us, I believe,” she said, although she had scant evidence, “is used to living in a pigsty. We are here willy-nilly until spring, and the time will pass easier in a more orderly place.”

Matilda Gage agreed to make use of the broom. She came, Margaret surmised, from gentle folk and had some book learning. She spoke clearly and calmly, with a soft accent that reminded Margaret of home. After sweeping for a while, she leaned on her broom, objecting that cleaning the cabin was a labor worthy of Hercules, who had shoveled out the Augean stables in ancient Greek times. It was an apt comparison since on the last cold night, Mr. McCormick had brought his horse inside to spare its freezing. He did not offer the same hospitality to the women’s horses; they had to make the best of it in the shed and grew thick fur as a consequence.

Margaret was able to convince Caroline that scrubbing Mr. McCormick’s filthy tinware would spare them diseases, and she finally agreed to take on the task. “I will be a model to the others,” she said.

Lucy Grey, a saucy wench, refused to rise from her pallet to help with the sweeping, scouring, and scrubbing. After conferring with Matilda and Caroline, Margaret approached the girl to announce that those who would not work, would not eat. Lucy, who was possessed of a healthy appetite, sprang up at once, seized the broom, and soon sent dust particles dancing in a ray of sunlight that penetrated the filthy windows. Mr. McCormick meanwhile sat spraddled on a sawhorse and laughed at the women’s activity.

After two days of labor, the puncheon floor was nearly white, the moth-eaten buffalo robes beaten, the pallets aired (Margaret was sure many unclean bodies had rested on them), and the big iron kettle scrubbed, filled from the spring and set outdoors over a good fire to prepare for making soap. Mr. McCormick rose from his sawhorse to supervise the soap making, blaming the condition of his cabin on the lack.

“There is always hot water,” Margaret said with asperity, using both hands to thrust him away. He had the unpleasant habit of standing far too close when he addressed her. Rebuffed, he turned his attention to Lucy, who repelled him with a blow to the jaw that rang through the cabin, following it with a kick to his fundament as he turned away, bellowing with pain. “Show me your silver first!” she shouted, knowing the man had none.

McCormick knew better, Margaret noticed, than to approach Matilda Gage, who managed to retain a certain rustic elegance even in those surroundings. She took to tying on her worn lace cap every morning over her freshly braided hair, as though she was on her way to meeting. Margaret admired the way her dignity protected her.

As for Caroline McDimitt, her size was her protection. She was a sturdy, well-rounded woman who had managed to maintain her girth even in captivity. Before Margaret asked her, she turned to the work with a will, carrying all the bedding out into the sun and beating it with a stout stick.

That evening they sat down at a scrubbed table to pick to pieces and devour two rabbits McCormick had brought in. He kept the third rabbit for himself.

By the time the worst of the winter was over and the snow and ice had begun to melt, John finally stopped begging to return to the Shawnee. He became very quiet and pale, and Margaret feared for his health. She brewed toddies for him with the hoarhound root she had learned to dig beneath the snow, adding a teaspoon of treacle, but he did not regain his color or his appetite.

On a day of warming sun, Mr. McCormick without asking for permission took John along when he went after deer, and Margaret heard the boy’s loud clear laughter as he came back, riding behind McCormick and holding on with both arms. After that he trailed after their host all day long and began to regain his appetite.

Now, with the longer days and increasing warmth, Margaret began to plead with Mr. McCormick to start on the journey east. He did not favor leaving yet—there might still be a late snow in the mountains—and Margaret surmised that he did not want to leave at all. The company of the four women was pleasant, his food was prepared with care, his cabin scoured every week, and his shirt and trousers boiled in the soap kettle to rid them of fleas. During the laundering process, he lounged in a long garment Margaret recognized as a flannel dressing gown. Why should he undertake the rigors of the trail? After all, he had already been paid.

She surmised from the lengthening days that they had entered the month of April and again approached McCormick to persuade him to start out. “We must wait out blackberry winter,” he told her, reclining at his ease on his pallet. “Feed the horses a few handfuls of the remaining corn,” a task Margaret assigned to Caroline. And indeed, a rush of cold weather froze the melting snow around the cabin and for five days more they were marooned, McCormick explaining that riding through ice would slit the horses’ fetlocks.

“What is the meaning of this cold?” Matilda asked, trying for common ground.

“It sets the blackberries for next summer’s harvest,” he told her.

“I remember hearing that same reason given at the Greenbrier,” Margaret told her.

Warm weather returned on the sixth day. Lucy was all for the women starting out at once on their own—she was devoured by restlessness—but Margaret reminded her, “We scarcely know in what direction to start.”

Overhearing, McCormick heaved a big laugh. “I have made the journey three times with other ransomed women, more patient and grateful than you have proved to be. You’d scarcely survive, lost in the mountains.”

Now Matilda Gage began to pray morning and evening for their deliverance; morning had been sufficient before, and even Caroline, who had been so staunch, began to sink into despair. “I will never see my children again,” she said.

McCormick seemed to be moved by her desperation. That evening he began to make preparations, packing saddlebags with blankets, canteens of water, strips of deer jerky and strings of dried apples, as well as bags of ground cornmeal.

“Surely we will not need so much,” Margaret objected, but McCormick only grunted. Then she admitted to herself that she had little idea of the length of their journey. From her nine days ride after her capture to the first Shawnee camp and then the two removals from villages due to warfare, she had lost track of the distance that lay between her and what she still deemed civilization, although now she knew it needed another name.

That was the first night McCormick left the rum jug plugged. Next morning, he rousted the four women out of their blankets before first light, advising them to lay on every garment they had (which were few) for the ride ahead. He told Margaret that ’twas better for John to ride on the saddle behind him, and the little boy was delighted, clasping the big man with both arms as Margaret wedged him into the saddle.

The wilderness they broke through that first day extended without change for the thirteen days that followed. There were no trails. Here and there a faint track, made by deer, relieved them for a while, but they were soon back in nearly impenetrable brush.

They rode slowly. Their way was often barred by fallen trees or thickets too dense to penetrate, necessitating a detour. Mr. McCormick seemed certain of their way and sang or whistled as they jogged slowly along, single file. Accepting his guidance, Margaret even began to like him a little.

Every night, they stopped at dusk near a half-frozen stream or sometimes by a settler’s field of corn, abandoned when he fled back East. The winter-dried ears were poor fodder for the horses but they chomped them eagerly. Even long boiling over the camp fire did not make them soft enough for humans. They shared deer jerky and dried apples and spooned up a gruel made with corn meal and hot water.

But the supplies that had seemed too ample at first dwindled at a perilous rate; the women were always ravenous for their one meal of the day, and Mr. McCormick, who had a huge appetite, refused all notion of rationing. “Fill your bellies,” he advised. “We’ll find settlers to feed us by and by.” He also promised to bring in game but he was no kind of shot, and day after day he brought back nothing, cursing as he came out of the woods that the savages had taken everything.

“They have names,” Margaret protested. “Do you not know them?”

“No need,” McCormick said grimly.

To spite him, Margaret began to list all the names she had learned, beginning with the ones she had imagined during those first days on the trail, names that seemed ridiculous to her now: Topknot, Uncle, Brother One, Brother Two, Raven Wing, then proceeding to the names she had learned, Shawnee now nearly as comfortable in her mouth as English. But John, overhearing, began to wail and Margaret stopped to comfort him.

On the fourteenth day, their provisions were exhausted and soon hunger assailed them. Margaret urged the women to fill themselves with water, but that caused too many stops for relief along the trail and McCormick forbade it.

John was fading rapidly. He no longer had the strength to hold on to Mr. McCormick as he rode, and Margaret took him back in front of her on her saddle and held him tightly with one arm. She felt a desperation so keen she nearly cried out. Was she condemned to lose her second child?

It was in that extremity that she spied a hawk as they were breaking camp on the fifteenth morning. It was sitting on the top branch of a big bare maple, tearing at a pheasant it held in its claws. Margaret, riding ahead, had seen it. She did not dare to alert the others for fear of driving the hawk away with its prey. Slipping from her saddle, she found a round smooth stone and launched it with all her strength. The stone struck the hawk in the breast and, startled, it dropped the pheasant in the branches and flew off.

“Help me,” Margaret called as the others rode up.

It fell to Lucy as the youngest and nimblest to climb the maple, free the pheasant from the branches, and bring it down. Margaret snatched the bird and laid it out on a stump, then swiftly plucked and gutted it while the others stood watching, Matilda Gage weeping with hunger.

Then she spitted the bird on a stick and held it over a small fire, turning it as a few drops of grease sputtered on the coals. When it was partly cooked and the delicious aroma rose, she shoved off the other women, tore out a wad of bloody breast meat, and chewed it before pushing it into John’s limp mouth. He gagged. She stroked his throat. Finally, he swallowed.

“Have at it,” she told the others and they tore at the bird with their bare hands. Only McCormick held back, laughing at the spectacle as he lit and smoked his hunger-killing pipe.

After that, providence seemed to take mercy on the little caravan. The country slowly became more open as they rode southeast, the way a little easier, although by now Lucy and Matilda were groaning from saddle sores rubbed raw. Indeed, the horses endured the ordeal with less trouble than their riders, although Margaret’s Jenny was going lame.