Into the Wilderness
Page 151

When the sweet flag was burning inside the shelter, Nathaniel asked Elizabeth to start the cooking fire and see to the food. It was twilight, and they were both hungry. She did as he asked, but he could see by the set of her jaw that she had gone long enough without information. He joined her at the cooking pit, hunkering down beside her while she worked. And he told her what he knew about what was to come.
"A doctor?" Elizabeth asked feebly, when he had finished.
"It's too late to take the arm off. Even if there was time to go fetch somebody."
"I see." She was cutting meat into chunks and tossing it into the pot. There was a settled quality to her face when she worked through a problem. Nathaniel watched her thinking, almost seeing the darting of the ideas behind her eyes. Looks—Hard was Runs-from-Bears' name for her, but it was a good one.
"He could take some broth, couldn't he?" she asked quietly.
"I expect he could," Nathaniel said. "He probably ain't had anything for more than a day."
"How long do you think it will be?"
He shrugged. "Hard to say. He's strong, and he's fighting. But he's been lying there for a while, and fever takes a lot out of a man. I expect he's about burned out now, so maybe a day."
She caught his eye; he knew she was thinking about Todd. It worried him, too, but they couldn't leave the man to die alone.
"How close behind us do you think Richard is?"
"Don't know, really." He cleared his throat, and then tried again. "We have done some backtracking, but he knows his way around and we leave a good trail. Two days, I'd guess, if we set still. Maybe less."
She digested this in silence, her hands moving automatically about the task in front of her.
"I don't want anyone killed," she said. "If it comes to that, then I think we should go back with him."
Nathaniel watched her work, but his real attention was turned to the forests around them. He knew what she wanted; he didn't know if he could give it to her, and so he promised her nothing at all.
Behind them, there was a shifting and a groan from the shelter. They waited, tense, and then stood when the singing started. The voice shaky at first, and then settling a little into a fine tenor.
"Why, that's Latin," said Elizabeth.
"Aye," said Nathaniel. "The Agnus Dci." And to her quizzical expression, he finished: "From the mass."
"How is it that you recognize the Catholic mass?" she asked, her brow creased in confusion.
"Lots of the Kahnyen’keháka are Catholic," Nathaniel said. "Not to mention the Scots."
"But not you," Elizabeth said. It was a tone he had never had from her: wary, and put off.
"Oh, aye, once I was," he said softly. "A long time ago."
There was no time to explain any more, because the singing in the shelter had suddenly stopped.
"We had best introduce ourselves," Nathaniel said, brushing off his leggings.
"It's the polite thing to do."
* * *
Elizabeth had expected the man to be frightened, and uncommunicative.
Nathaniel had told her that he was an escaped slave, and she anticipated that such a person would be wary of strangers. Instead, he had a slow smile and he was willing to talk, even eager. His language was accented in a way which reminded her very strongly of Axel, which surprised her again. But she resisted the urge to ask him questions.
The first thing he did, after drinking two bowls of water and introducing himself as Joe, was to apologize that he had no chair to offer her.
"Been meaning to rig something," he explained. "But this sore arm of mine has been keeping me from my work."
Elizabeth glanced uneasily at Nathaniel, but he seemed to take this tremendous understatement in stride. She herself could not bear to look at the arm for long. It lay there tight and so swollen in its wrappings that she thought she could almost see it pulse.
"What happened?" Nathaniel asked. "Get your hand caught in a trap?"
He nodded. "A few days back. But I expect I'll be up and about tomorrow." His eyes turned to Elizabeth, their whites murky gray.
She tried for what she hoped was an encouraging smile. "I've got some broth cooking," she said. "You must be hungry. I hope you don't mind, we added your dried meat to ours."
"Beholden to you." There was something gracious about him that contrasted with the nervous plucking of his fingers at the blanket. "But it's near dark," he pointed out. "And you should both be inside before."
"Before what?" Nathaniel asked.
Joe's head swung toward him in surprise. "Before the Windigo come."
"Windigo?" echoed Elizabeth, turning to Nathaniel.
"The stone men," said Nathaniel softly. There was a new expression in his eyes that Elizabeth did not like at all.
* * *
Nathaniel paced up and down while she scooped the thin stew into a bowl.
"He seems so reasonable," she said in a low voice. "Does he really not know he is dying?"
Nathaniel ran a hand through his hair. "Hard to say."
Joe was singing again, his voice hoarser now.
"Does his mind wander from the fever?" she asked. "Is that why he fears—what did he call them?"
"The Windigo. No, that's not the fever. He was afeared of them before he got hurt—it took a long time for him to do all this, these pits."