CHAPTER XXIII
WINTER AND SPRING
Snow came as it comes to us in the Northland--a blinding fall, heavy and monotonous--and in forty-eight hours the Johnstown Road was blocked.
Followed a day of dazzling sunshine and intense cold, which set our timbers cracking; and the snow, like finest flour, creaked under our snow-shoes.
All the universe had turned to blue and silver; and the Vlaie Water ran fathomless purple between its unstained snows. But that night the clouds returned and winds grew warmer, and soon the skies opened with feathery white volleys, and the big, thick flakes stormed down again, obliterating alike the work of nature and of man.
Summer House was covered to the veranda eaves. We made shovels and cleared the roofs and broke paths to stable and well.
Here, between dazzling ramparts, we lived and moved and had our being, week after week; and every new snow-storm piled higher our palisades and buried the whole land under one vast white pall.
Vlaie Water froze three feet solid; fierce winds piled the ice with gigantic drifts so that no man could mark the course of the creeks any more; and a vast white desolation stretched away to the mountains, broken only by naked hard-wood forests or by the interminable ocean of the pines weighted deep with snow.
Only when a crust came were we at any pains to set a watch against a war party from the Canadas. But none arrived; no signal smoke stained the peaks; nothing living stirred on that dead white waste save those little grey and whining birds which creep all day up and down tree-trunks, or a sudden gusty flight of snow-birds, which suddenly arrive from nowhere and are gone as suddenly.
Once a white owl with yellow eyes sat upon the ridge-pole of our barn; but our pullets were safe within, and Penelope drove him away with s...o...b..a.l.l.s.
The deer yarded on Maxon; lynx-tracks circled our house and barn, and we sometimes heard old ta.s.sel-ears a-miauling on the Stacking Ridge.
And, toward the end of February, there were two panthers that left huge cat-prints across the drifts on the Johnstown Road; but they took no toll of our sheep, which were safe in a stone fold, though the oaken door to it bore marks of teeth and claws, where the pumas had striven hard to break in and do murder.
Save when a crust formed and we took our turns on guard, my Indian rolled himself in bear-furs by the kitchen oven, and like a bear he slept there until hunger awoke him long enough to gorge for another stretch of sleep.
Nick and I took axes to the woods and drew logs on a sledge to split for fire use. Our tasks, too, kept us busy feeding our live creatures, fetching water, keeping paths open, and fishing through the ice.
In idler intervals we carved devices upon our powder-horns, cured deer-skins in the Oneida fashion, boiled pitch and mended our canoe, fashioned paddles, poles, and shafts for fish-spears, strung snow-shoes, built a fine sledge out of ash and hickory, and made Kaya draw us on the crust.
So, all day, each was busy with tasks and duties, and had little leisure left for that dull restlessness which, in idle people, is the root of all the mischief they devise to do.
Penelope mended our clothing and knitted mittens and jerkins. All house-work and cooking she accomplished, and milked and churned and cared for the pullets. Also, she dipped candles and moulded bullets from the lead bars I found in the gun-room. And when our deer-skins were cured and softened, she made for us soft wallets, sacks, and pouches, and sewed upon them bright beads in the Oneida fashion, from the pack of trade beads in Sir William"s gun-room. She sewed upon every accoutrement a design done in scarlet beads, showing a picture of a little red foot.
Lord, but we meant to emerge from our snows in brave fashion, come spring-tide; for now our deer-skin garments were splendid with beads, and our fringes were green and purple. Also, Nick had trapped it some when opportunity offered, setting his line from Summer House along Vlaie Water to Howell"s house, thence across the frozen Drowned Lands to the Stacking Ridge, and from there back over the Spring Pool, and thence down-creek to the Sacandaga, where Fish House stood with its glazed windows empty as a blind man"s eyes.
He had, by March, a fine pack of peltry; and of these we cured and used sufficient muskrat to sew us blankets, and made a mantle of otter for Penelope and a hood and m.u.f.f to match.
For ourselves we made us caps out of black mink, and sewed all together by our dip-lights in the red firelight, where apples slowly sizzled with the rich, sweet perfume I love to smell.
Sometimes Nick played upon his fife; and sometimes we all told stories and roasted chestnuts. Nick had more stories and more imagination than had I, and a livelier wit in the telling of tales. But chiefly I was willing to hear Penelope when she told us of her childhood in France, and how folk lived in that warm and sweet country, and what were their daily customs.
Also, she sang sometimes children"s songs of France, and other pretty ballads, mostly concerning love. For the French occupy themselves chiefly with love and cooking and the fine arts, I judge, and know how to make an art of eating, also. For there in France every meal is a ceremony; but in this land we eat not for the pleasurable taste which, in savory food, delights and tempts, but we eat swiftly and carelessly and chiefly to stay our hunger.
Yet, at times, food smacks smartly to my tongue; as when at Christmas tide I shot a great wild turkey on the Stacking Ridge; and when Penelope basted it in the kitchen my mouth watered as I sniffed the door-crack.
And again, gone stale with soupaan and jerked meat and fish soused or dried with salt, Nick shot a yearling buck near our barn at daylight; and the savour of his cooking filled all with pleasure.
Upon the New Year we made a feast and had a bottle of Sir William"s port, another of Madeira, a punch of spirits, and three pewters of b.u.t.tery ale.
Lord! there was a New Year. And first, not daring to give drink to my Saguenay, we fed him till he was gorged, and so rolled him in a pile of furs till he slept by the oven below. Then we set twenty dips afire by the chimney, and filled it up with dry logs.... I am sorry we had so little sense; for I was something fuddled, and sang ballads--which I can not--and Nick would dance, which he did by himself; and his hornpipes and pigeon-wings and shuffles and war-dances made my head spin and my heavy eyes desire to cross.
Penelope"s cheeks burned, and she fanned and fanned her with a turkey wing and laughed to see Nick caper and to hear the piteous squalling which was my way of singing.
But she complained that the dip-lights danced and that the floor behaved in strange fashion, running like ripples on Vlaie Water in a west wind.
She had sipped but one gla.s.s of Sir William"s port, but I think it was a gla.s.s too much; for the wine made her so hot, so she vowed, that her body was all one ardent coal, and so presently she pulled the hair-pegs from her hair and let it down and shook it out in the firelight till it flashed like a golden scarf flung about her.
Her pannier basque of rose silk--gift of Claudia and made in France--she presently slipped out of, leaving her in her petticoat and folded like a Quakeress in her crossed foulard, and her white arms as bare as her neck.
Which innocently concerned her not a whit, nor had she any more thought of her throat"s loveliness than she had of herself in her shift that morning at Bowman"s.
She sat cooling her face with the turkey-wing fan and watching Nick"s contre-dancing--his own candle-cast shadow on the wall dancing vis-a-vis--and she laughed and laughed, a-fanning there, like a child delighted by the antics of two older brothers, while Nick whirled on moccasined feet in his mad career, and I fifed windily to time his gambolading.
Then we played country games, but she would not kiss us as forfeit, defending her lips and vowing that no man should ever again take that toll of her.
Which contented me, though I remonstrated; and I was glad that Nick should not cheapen her lips though it cost me the same privilege. For we played "Swallow! Swallow!" and I guessed correctly how many apple pips she held in her hand when she sang:
"Who can count the swallow"s eggs?
Try it, Master Nimble-legs!
Climb and find a swallow"s nest, Count the eggs beneath her breast, Take an egg and leave the rest And kiss the maid you love the best!"
But it was her hand only we might kiss, and but one finger at that--the smallest--for, says she, "John Drogue hath said it, and I am mistress of Summer House! What I choose to give--or forgive--is of my proper choice.... And I do not choose to be kissed by any man whether he wears silk puce or deer-skin shirt!"
But the devil prompted me to remember Steve Watts, and my countenance changed.
"Do you bar regimentals?" I asked, forcing a wry smile.
She knew what was in my mind, for jealousy grinned at her out of my every feature; and she came toward me and laid her light hand upon my arm.
"Or red coat or blue, my lord," she said, her smile fading to a glimmer, "men have had of me my last complaisance. Are you not content? You taught me, sir."
"If he taught you that a kiss is folly, he taught you more folly than is in a thousand kisses!" cries Nick. "Why," said he, turning on me, "you pitiful, sober-faced, broad-brimmed spoil-sport!" says he, "what are lips made for, you meddlesome a.s.s, and be d.a.m.ned to you!"
Instantly we were in clinch like two bears; and we wrestled and strained and swayed there, panting and nigh stifled with our laughter, till we fell with a crash that shook the house and set the bottles clinking; and there thrashed like a pair o" pups till I got his shoulders flat.
But it was nothing--he being the younger--and he leaped up and fell to treading an Oneida battle-dance, while Penelope and I did beat upon the table, singing:
"Ha-wa-sa-say!
Hah!
Ha-wa-sa-say--"
till the door opened and there stands my Saguenay, bleary-eyed, sleep-muddled, but his benumbed brain responsive to the thumping cadence of the old scalp-song.
But I pushed him down stairs ere he had sniffed a lung-full of our punch, having no mind to face a drink-mad Indian that night or any other.