Into the Wilderness
Page 254

She took her place in front of the room and curtsied, completely at ease. Nathaniel didn't recognize the dress she was wearing, pale yellow with ribbons in her hair to match. It made the copper of her skin shine, her plaits stand out glossy black. She looked more like her mother with every passing year. On his deathbed, Chingachgook had called Hannah "Little—Bird," the name Sarah had gone by as a child. But there was a solidness in Hannah that Sarah had never had, something she had more in common with her mother's sister, and her grandmother.
Many-Doves and Falling—Day were sitting in the second row, off to one side. Their whole attention was fixed on Hannah.
A hooting laughter from outside, closer this time. Jed McGarrity caught Nathaniel's eye and raised a brow.
There was no help for it. Nathaniel cast a regretful look at his daughter, and slipped out the door with Jed and Axel right behind him.
* * *
The schoolhouse windows stood wide open in spite of the cool evening air, so that the building seemed to bulge and pulse with all the life inside it. As they walked away Nathaniel was aware of Hannah's voice, clear and strong. There was a hint of Falling—Day's rhythms in her tone now: a gift she had inherited from his own mother, the ability to take on voices that were not her own. She had insisted on a Kahnyen’keháka story, and Elizabeth had not tried to dissuade her. Nathaniel followed along with one part of his mind as he made his way past the outhouse to a stand of evergreen just behind it.
"Brother Fox saw a woman with a cart filled with fish, and as he was always both hungry and lazy, he thought up a good trick. Pretending to be dead, Fox lay down on the path so that the woman would pass him. The woman saw the fox and thought that she should have his good pelt, and so she picked him up and put him in her cart with her fish. Behind the woman's back, Fox emptied the cart of the fish and crept away himself."
"Later, Brother Fox met with Wolf and told him of this very good trick."
There was laughter from the shadows, and a wolflike howl.
"Get a good hold on your temper, Nathaniel," Axel said softly. ""Cause they'll do their best to get it away from you."
In the schoolhouse, the barest hint of a pause and then Hannah's voice carried on:
"But the woman was not so dumb, and having found out what foolery had been played on her, she understood the wolf's game as soon as she saw him lying in her path. For his trouble, Brother wolf received a good beating instead of a fish dinner."
"Look, Middleton, we got company." Billy Kirby straightened up out of the shadows. He had been drunker before, but not by much. With him a trapper, the nameless kind who came into the village to drink and bother women who would never have any interest in him. The stench of liquor and sweat hung around him like a cloud of black fly
Behind Nathaniel, Jed drew a disgusted sigh and let it go with a rush.
"Middleton!" brawled Billy, half turning. "He was there a minute ago," he said, his face creased in confusion.
"You could use a place to lie down, Billy." Axel scratched his beard thoughtfully. "Why don't you head on home?"
"You ordering him off this place?" asked the trapper, peering up from his spot on the ground owlishly. "He's the sheriff, you can't order him around like that."
"That's true enough, Gordon," said Axel with a soft laugh. "I can't order a man off land that don't belong to me. That would be up to Nathaniel here. Me, now I could tell you to stay out of my tavern if I was riled enough."
The trapper held up a hand in surrender, and then pulled himself to his feet to shamble off into the woods in the direction of the village.
Billy wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and considered them from under half—raised lids.
"Came to fetch my brother home," he said. "He don't belong in there with that woman and her brats." Billy glanced uncertainly around himself, and then jerked with his chin toward the schoolhouse and the sound of Hannah's voice. "I don't want him hearing none of that Mohawk nonsense."
Axel moved forward another step, and Jed came up on the outer flank.
"We'll send him home for you," Axel said easily. "You go on ahead now, while you're still healthy."
Billy's face clouded with doubt, and then cleared suddenly. "Maybe I'll just come on in and join the party. Tell a few Mohawk stories of my own."
"There's children in there," Jed said. "They ain't doing you any harm, Kirby. Let them get on with their party in peace, why don't you?"
Billy flushed, the color moving up from his collar to mottle on his neck and jowls. "There won't be any peace in Paradise until things is settled," he said. His gaze flickered toward Nathaniel and away again. "Until we run you squatters out and get the mountain back. You got the gold, don't you? Think you can buy your way clear. Well, you can't. O'Brien will find it and take it away from you, and then we'll get the mountain back."
There was a scab high on Billy's cheekbone, a relic of the last beating Nathaniel had given him. Nathaniel fixed on that, and tested the weight of the rifle in his hands. Hannah's voice came into the silence:
"Next Brother Fox met Bear, who also wanted fish. Fox told him: "Down at the river there is an air hole in the ice. Put your tail down in to it as I did and you can pull up as many fish as you can eat.
"Bear, always hungrier than he was bright, did as he was told. And instead of a fine fish dinner he froze his tail off in the icy water."