Rolf in the Woods Part 24

Quonab knelt by the sufferer. He felt her hot, dry hand; he noticed her short, quick breathing, her bright eyes, and the untouched bowl of mush by her bed.

"Swamp fever," he said. "I bring good medicine." He pa.s.sed quietly out into the woods. When he returned, he carried a bundle of snake-root which he made into tea.

Annette did not wish to touch it, but her mother persuaded her to take a few sips from a cup held by Rolf.

"Wah! this not good," and Quonab glanced about the close, fly-infested room. "I must make lodge." He turned up the cover of the bedding; three or four large, fiat brown things moved slowly out of the light. "Yes, I make lodge."

It was night now, and all retired; the newcomers to the barn. They had scarcely entered, when a screaming of poultry gave a familiar turn to affairs. On running to the spot, it proved not a mink or c.o.o.n, but Skook.u.m, up to his old tricks. On the appearance of his masters, he fled with guilty haste, crouched beneath the post that he used to be, and soon again was, chained to.

In the morning Quonab set about his lodge, and Rolf said: "I've got to go to Warren's for sugar." The sugar was part truth and part blind. As soon as he heard the name swamp fever, Rolf remembered that, in Redding, Jesuit's bark (known later as quinine) was the sovereign remedy. He had seen his mother administer it many times, and, so far as he knew, with uniform success. Every frontier (or backwoods, it's the same) trader carries a stock of medicine, and in two hours Rolf left Warren's counter with twenty-five pounds of maple sugar and a bottle of quinine extract in his pack.

"You say she's bothered with the flies; why don't you take some of this new stuff for a curtain?" and the trader held up a web of mosquito gauze, the first Rolf had seen. That surely was a good idea, and ten yards snipped off was a most interesting addition to his pack. The amount was charged against him, and in two hours more he was back at Van Trumper's.

On the cool side of the house, Quonab had built a little lodge, using a sheet for cover. On a low bed of pine boughs lay the child. Near the door was a smouldering fire of cedar, whose aromatic fumes on the lazy wind reached every cranny of the lodge.

Sitting by the bed head, with a chicken wing to keep off the few mosquitoes, was the Indian. The child's eyes were closed; she was sleeping peacefully. Rolf crept gently forward, laid his hand on hers, it was cool and moist. He went into the house with his purchases; the mother greeted him with a happy look: Yes, Annette was a little better; she had slept quietly ever since she was taken outdoors. The mother could not understand. Why should the Indian want to have her surrounded by pine boughs? why cedar-smoke? and why that queer song? Yes, there it was again. Rolf went out to see and hear. Softly summing on a tin pan, with a mudded stick, the Indian sang a song. The words which Rolf learned in the after-time were:

"Come, Kaluskap, drive the witches; Those who came to harm the dear one."

Annette moved not, but softly breathed, as she slept a sweet, restful slumber, the first for many days.

"Vouldn't she be better in de house?" whispered the anxious mother.

"No, let Quonab do his own way," and Rolf wondered if any white man had sat by little Wee-wees to brush away the flies from his last bed.

Chapter 52. Annette's New Dress

Deep feelin's ain't any count by themselves; work 'em off, an' ye're somebody; weep 'em off an' you'd be more use with a heart o' stone--Sayings of Si Sylvanne.

"Quonab, I am going out to get her a partridge." "Ugh, good."

So Rolf went off. For a moment he was inclined to grant Skookom's prayer for leave to, follow, but another and better plan came in mind. Skook.u.m would most likely find a mother partridge, which none should kill in June, and there was a simple way to find a c.o.c.k; that was, listen. It was now the evening calm, and before Rolf had gone half a mile he heard the distant "Thump, thump, thump, thump--rrrrrrr" of a partridge, drumming. He went quickly and cautiously toward the place, then waited for the next drumming. It was slow in coming, so he knelt down by a mossy, rotten log, and struck it with his hands to imitate the thump and roll of the partridge. At once this challenge procured response.

"Thump--thump--thump,, thump rrrrrrrrrrrr" it came, with martial swing and fervour, and crawling nearer, Rolf spied the drummer, pompously strutting up and down a log some forty yards away. He took steady aim, not for the head--a strange gun, at forty yards--for the body. At the crack, the bird fell dead, and in Rolf's heart there swelled up a little gush of joy, which he believed was all for the sake of the invalid, but which a finer a.n.a.lysis might have proved to be due quite as much to pride in himself and his newly bought gun.

Night was coming on when he got back, and he found the Dutch parents in some excitement. "Dot Indian he gay no bring Annette indoors for de night. How she sleep outdoors--like dog--like Bigger--like tramp? Yah it is bad, ain't it?" and poor old Hendrik looked sadly upset and mystified.

"Hendrik, do you suppose G.o.d turns out worse air in the night than in the day?"

"Ach, dunno."

"Well, you see Quonab knows what he's doing."

"Yah."

"Well, let him do it. He or I'll sleep alongside the child she'll be all right," and Rolf thought of those horrible brown crawlers under the bedding indoors.

Rolf had much confidence in the Indian as a doctor, but he had more in his own mother. He was determined to give Annette the quinine, yet he hesitated to interfere. At length, he said: "It is cool enough now; I will put these thin curtains round her bed."

"Ugh, good!" but the red man sat there while it was being done.

"You need not stay now; I'll watch her, Quonab."

"Soon, give more medicine," was the reply that Rolf did not want. So he changed his ruse. "I wish you'd take that partridge and make soup of it.

I've had my hands in poison ivy, so I dare not touch it."

"Ach, dot shall I do. Dot kin myself do," and the fat mother, laying the recent baby in its cradle, made c.u.mbrous haste to cook the bird.

"Foiled again," was Rolf's thought, but his Yankee wit was with him. He laid one hand on the bowl of snake-root tea. It was lukewarm. "Do you give it hot or cold, Quonab?"

"Hot."

"I'll take it in and heat it." He carried it off, thinking, "If Quonab won't let me give the bark extract, I'll make him give it." In the gloom of the kitchen he had no difficulty in adding to the tea, quite unseen, a quarter of the extract; when heated, he brought it again, and the Indian himself gave the dose.

As bedtime drew near, and she heard the red man say he would sleep there, the little one said feebly, "Mother, mother," then whispered in her mother's ear, "I want Rolf."

Rolf spread his blanket by the cot and slept lightly. Once or twice he rose to look at Annette. She was moving in her sleep, but did not awake.

He saw to it that the mosquito bar was in place, and slept till morning.

There was no question that the child was better. The renewed interest in food was the first good symptom, and the partridge served the end of its creation. The snakeroot and the quinine did n.o.ble work, and thenceforth her recovery was rapid. It was natural for her mother to wish the child back indoors. It was a matter of course that she should go. It was accepted as an unavoidable evil that they should always have those brown crawlers about the bed.

But Rolf felt differently. He knew what his mother would have thought and done. It meant another visit to Warren's, and the remedy he brought was a strong-smelling oil, called in those days "rock oil"--a crude petroleum. When all cracks in the bed and near wall were treated with this, it greatly mitigated, if it did not quite end, the nuisance of the "plague that walks in the dark."

Meanwhile, Quonab had made good his welcome by working on the farm. But when a week had flown, he showed signs of restlessness. "We have enough money, Nibowaka, why do we stay?"

Rolf was hauling a bucket of water from the well at the time. He stopped with his burden on the well-sweep, gazed into the well, and said slowly: "I don't know." If the truth were set forth, it would be that this was the only home circle he knew. It was the clan feeling that held him, and soon it was clearly the same reason that was driving Quonab to roam.

"I have heard," said the Indian, "that my people still dwell in Canada, beyond Rouse's Point. I would see them. I will come again in the Red Moon (August)."

So they hired a small canoe, and one bright morning, with Skook.u.m in the bow, Quonab paddled away on his voyage of 120 miles on the plead waters of Lakes George and Champlain. His canoe became a dark spot on the water; slowly it faded till only the flashing paddle was seen, and that was lost around a headland.

The next day Rolf was sorry he let Quonab go alone, for it was evident that Van Trumper needed no help for a month yet; that is, he could not afford to hire, and while it was well enough for Rolf to stay a few days and work to equalize his board, the arrangement would not long continue satisfactory to both.

Yet there was one thing he must do before leaving, take Annette to pick out her dress. She was well again now, and they set off one morning in the canoe, she and Rolf. Neither father nor mother could leave the house. They had their misgivings, but what could they do? She was bright and happy, full of the childish joy that belongs to that age, and engaged on such an important errand for the first time in her life.

There was something more than childish joy showing in her face, an older person would have seen that, but it was largely lost on Rolf. There was a tendency to blush when she laughed, a disposition to tease her "big brother," to tyrannize over him in little things.

"Now, you tell me some more about 'Robinson Crusoe,'" she began, as soon as they were in the canoe, and Rolf resumed the ancient, inspiring tale to have it listened to eagerly, but criticized from the standpoint of a Lake George farm. "Where was his wife?" "How could he have a farm without hens?" "Dried grapes must be nice, but I'd rather have pork than goat," etc.

Rolf, of course, took the part of Robinson Crusoe, and it gave him a little shock to hear Quonab called his man Friday.

At the west side they were to invite Mrs. Callan to join their shopping trip, but in any case they were to borrow a horse and buckboard. Neither Mrs. Callan nor the buckboard was available, but they were welcome to the horse. So Annette was made comfortable on a bundle of blankets, and chattered incessantly while Rolf walked alongside with the grave interest and superiority of a much older brother. So they crossed the five-mile portage and came to Warren's store. Nervous and excited, with sparkling eyes, Annette laid down her marten skin, received five dollars, and set about the tremendous task of selecting her first dress of really, truly calico print; and Rolf realized that the joy he had found in his new rifle was a very small affair, compared with the epoch-making, soul-filling, life-absorbing, unspeakable, and cataclysmal bliss that a small girl can have in her first chance of unfettered action in choice of a cotton print.

"Beautiful?" How can mere words do justice to ma.s.ses of yellow corn, mixed recklessly with green and scarlet poppies on a bright blue ground.

No, you should have seen Annette's dress, or you cannot expect to get the adequate thrill. And when they found that there was enough cash left over to add a red cotton parasol to the glorious spoils, every one there beamed in a sort of friendly joy, and the trader, carried away by the emotions of the hour, contributed a set of b.u.t.tons of shining bra.s.s.

Warren kept a "meal house," which phrase was a ruse that saved him from a burdensome hospitality. Determined to do it all in the best style, Rolf took Annette to the meal-house table. She was deeply awed by the grandeur of a tablecloth and white plates, but every one was kind.