Read Online Follow the River by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom - Free Book Online Page A

She sat holding the sopping apron against Bettie’s wound, feeling the baby kick within herself, and tried to watch the proceedings at the fires. Into the big kettle the Indians were putting barley and cutting pieces of the venison they had taken from Mrs. Lybrook’s house. A short, slight, older warrior was bent over the smaller pot, stirring and mashing the plants in the water. The smell of a stew began to mingle with a sharp, bitter medicinal steam from the other kettle.
    And then the Indian brought a piece of cloth and a gourd to the kettle. He dipped a mass of green slime out of the kettle and into the cloth, then folded the cloth over and over to contain it. Holding it gingerly by the corners then, he brought it to Mary and held it forth to her, nodding in the direction of Bettie’s arm.
    With a rush of gratitude, Mary realized that her remotest hope had come true: the Indians had prepared a poultice of the comfrey and other medicinal leaves and barks. “Thank’ee, Mister, thank’ee thank’ee!” she kept saying as she squatted down and plastered the slick, squishy compress over the bullet wound. “Oh, I can’t believe this, merciful God, how thou work’st even through heathens and murtherers.” Mary was almost ecstatic. Surely this poultice would be even better than the ones they had learned to use in the settlement. She hummed softly while applying it. The chieftain came over once and looked down at the two women. He did not ask anything or show any expression, but for the first time Bettie spoke directly to him:
    “Y’ll burn in etarnal hell, for what y’ done t’ my poor babe …” Mary grew alarmed for the possible consequences of such an outburst, not knowing how much of it the Indianunderstood; but Bettie added, “…  may the Devil give y’ a minute’s respite, though, for this kindness. It feels better already, sir …” And then she lapsed back with a sigh and closed her eyes.
    The chieftain looked at Bettie for a moment, then at Mary. “H’mm,” he said, and went away.
    The barley chowder the Indians had been cooking in the big kettle was savory, and there was plenty of it, and Mary felt her strength growing afterward. But the constant tending to the poultice, and to Tommy and Georgie, and the groaning weight of her own womb had her gasping with exhaustion by nightfall. The Indians removed Henry Lenard from the company of the women and children after dinner, and put him in a back corner of the cave with his hands bound behind him and his feet tethered to a log. Mary worried for some time that they might be planning to torture or kill him. But as the night deepened and the warriors settled themselves down to conversation and tobacco smoking in the glow of the cookfires, she presumed that he was being moved only for the sake of security, as he was, after all, the only one among them well enough and unencumbered enough to have a reasonable chance of running away.
    Mary at last built and bound another splint, with the rest of the poultice dressing lining the inside, and when she saw that Bettie was deep in sleep, she lay back on the dirt between her and the children. She watched the fireglow shift shadow-shapes on the irregular vault of the cave above, smelled the tobacco and the dusty, musty earth-smell of the cave, and heard the Indian men’s voices grow less distinct and the rush of the river rapids outside grow more monotonous, and tried to keep her slipping mind awake long enough to take stock of the day and what it had signified. Her eyes came open for a moment as a wolf howled somewhere outside, and a familiar, squeezing ripple of pain moved through her waist, then receded. It’s not going to be long ’til we have another of us to care for, she thought. Then she went almost overpoweringly drowsy again.
    But thank God, she thought. That they made a poultice for poor Bet means something.
    It means … it means for now, anyway … they’d as soon have us alive as dead.
    Then