Midwife of the Blue Ridge (21 page)

the leathery pods, beans plinking into the small kettle held on

her lap.

The baby inside began a languorous roll across her midriff.

Naomi set the pot aside and slipped two hands under her loose

blouse, smoothing callused fingers over skin stretched thin and

tight. Keeping a hold on the life waking in her belly helped ease

the niggling fear always pecking at the base of her hopes and

dreams. She shifted her seat and moved one hand around to rub

the ache at the small of her back. The last weeks always proved

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to be the hardest to endure. Soon, if all went well, she would live

to hold this baby healthy and alive in her arms.

Winnie came from around the cabin toting a sloshing bucket,

their two dogs crowding her heels, pink tongues lolling. She

poured water into their trough.

“Move over, Patch—there’s enough for both.” Winnie wrapped

her arms about the brindled hound, pulling him back. “Git in

there, Little Black. Have a drink.” But Little Black ignored Win-

nie, turning instead to strike a stance staring out at the cornfi eld.

A ridge of bristly hair crawled upright along his backbone and he

fl ew off like a dry leaf in a windstorm. Patch broke from Winnie

and lit a shuck after Little Black. Both dogs dashed into the

waist-high corn, barking like mad.

Naomi braced against the tree trunk and struggled to her feet.

A man, filmy and faded in the brilliant sunlight, loped toward

her, dodging around cornstalks and tree stumps. Naomi took

two steps forward, dogs barking, a fistful of blouse clutched at

the hollow of her throat. The midday heat shimmered above the

fi eld and she shaded her eyes, squinting.

Black hat.

Blue shirt.

White man.

It was Tom—Tom Roberts.

“
Winnie!
Run fetch Jackie and your da.
Hurry!
” Naomi

watched Tom tearing across the field in full stride, her jaw

clenched. News carried swift-foot in the blaze of a summer day

could not bode well.

Tom, Seth, Winnie, Jack, the Martin dogs, and Tom’s dog,

Friday, all met in the dooryard, kicking up a chaos of dust and

noise. Battler woke snuffling, coughing, and screaming, and

Naomi sank down to gather him up on her lap.

Red-faced Tom doubled over, panting hard, hands pressed to

his knees. He went to the trough, got down on his hunkers,

shoved the dogs aside, and filled his hat with water. Tom took

Midwife of the Blue Ridge
143

three long gulps and dumped the remainder over his head. “War

party . . .” he fi nally gasped, standing tall. “Shawnee . . . movin’

fast . . . coming along the streambed . . .”

Winnie clasped Jack by the hand and Naomi’s children stood

together in the dooryard, stiff and pallid as the French porcelain

figures in her old master’s china hutch. Desperate to stanch the

onslaught of sick horror wrenched up from her gut and throb-

bing in her throat, Naomi closed her eyes and pulled Battler tight

to her breast, squeezing the squawking toddler into silence. She

drew in one long, deep breath and set Battler down on his rump

on the rug. “Winnie, mind your brother.” She hoisted herself up

to her feet. “I’ll go gather the bedding.”

“Help yer mam,” Seth directed Jack. “Sclim up to the loft, and

toss down a bag o’ meal, a side of bacon . . . I’m goin’ to saddle

the mule . . .”

“Where’s Maggie?” Tom asked, stopping the Martins in their

tracks. Seth looked to his wife, who turned to her daughter.

“Where is she? Where’s Maggie?” Seth demanded.

Winnie blurted, “I told her not to, but she said she needed

cherry bark to make syrup for Battler’s croup . . .”

“SYRUP!” Seth shouted.

“She said she’d not be long . . .”

“AYE-GOD! Does anyone ever mind a word I say?” Seth

stomped about the yard, finger piercing the air. “Stay close, I

tolt yiz. Nae wanderin’, I tolt yiz. Perilous times, I tolt yiz

all . . .”

“Maggie means well,” Naomi interjected. “Battler’s been aw-

ful poorly . . .”

“A snotty nose isnae worth a body’s scalp, woman!”

Tom grabbed Seth by the shoulder. “Hell ain’t but a mile

away, brother, and the fences are all down. Tuck tail and get

your family to the station
now
.” Tom flattened his felt hat and

wedged it under his belt. “I’ll find Maggie. We’ll meet up with

you in Roundabout.”

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Blevins

Seth nodded to the sense of Tom’s solution. “Ye dinna need

Friday underfoot. We’ll take him with us.”

Tom nodded and pulled a knife from the sheath at his side.

Propping his right foot on an overturned bucket, he bent over

and secured the blade under the red wool garter at his right knee.

“Did anyone take notice which way she headed?”

Winnie pointed to the northwest. “The cherry grove, near the

Berry Hell . . .”

Naomi ran to Tom and hugged him about the waist. “Bring

her in safe but be wary—she’s gone upstream.”

“Upstream,” Tom repeated with a chuckle. “Now, don’t that

just fi gure?”

Seth stepped forward. “Mind yer topknot, Tommy.”

“And you mind yourn.” The men clasped forearms, and Tom

lit out.

H

At last Maggie was free from Jack stalking her heels, Winnie jab-

bering in her ear, and Seth recounting yet another horrific tale of

the Redman’s cruelty. Her worries seemed to fly from her shoul-

ders and perch high up in the treetops. She skipped into the cool,

clean silence of the forest, singing her favorite ballad.

“In Scarlet town where I was born,

There was a fair maid dwellin’

Made every youth cry well-a-day,

Her name was Barbara Allen.”

Seth’s strict orders held them all but tethered to the cabin. Even

the two cows, usually belled and allowed to roam free to forage,

were penned behind the stable. Hunting and trapping fresh meat

for the table was curtailed, forcing the Martins to depend on de-

pleted winter stores of salt pork and jerked venison.

Maggie and Winnie only were allowed to leave the dooryard

Midwife of the Blue Ridge
145

to collect water, or to see to the dairy chores—and even then,

only if accompanied by Jack and his ancient musket. Their

boundaries were stringent, the times, grim.

“Stay well within earshot.” In this, Seth was firm. No one was

allowed to wander alone. And absolutely no one was allowed to

wander beyond the cleared field to the north or the springhouse

to the south.

Maggie scooted alone and defiant down the steep path toward

the Berry Hell, swinging a hatchet in her hand and singing her

song.

“ ’Twas in the merry month of May

The green buds were a-swellin’

Sweet William on his deathbed lay

For love of Barbara Allen.”

What began as a stuffy nose had settled thick in Battler’s

chest. Maggie worried when her standard mustard plaster and

hyssop-flower tea seemed to give him little ease. His pitiful cry-

ing and coughing made it almost impossible for anyone in the

Martin household to find sleep. Sick baby and dire threat of In-

dian attack combined with exhaustion to concoct a stressful

brew of frayed nerves and short tempers.

Early morning, while braiding her hair, Maggie noticed Bat-

tler’s odd color and rapid breathing. She pressed an ear to his la-

boring chest and heard the crackling rattle that signaled lung

fever. Not wanting to alarm Naomi or deal with contentious

Seth, Maggie determined to violate restrictions and take swift

steps to treat Battler’s illness.

The Berry Hell crept alongside the stream, a good twenty

square yards of thick, thick briar protected by a tall stand of wild

cherry trees. Maggie entered the grove and strode up to the larg-

est

tree—one whose trunk was wider than her outstretched

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Blevins

arms—its lateral roots growing close to the surface. Resolute in

her task, she fell to her knees and used her hatchet to scrape away

hard-packed earth, exposing a good portion of meaty root.

Battler’s congested lungs required a strong tonic obtained from

macerated root bark. Although difficult to harvest, the soft inner

bark of black-cherry root would yield a very potent syrup, much

more effective than what she could distill from trunk or branch

bark. She attacked the tough root with rabid fervor and chopped

it through.

Using the hatchet as a lever, she pried the cut root end to jut

out from the earth. Maggie rolled her sleeves up past her elbows

and straddled the root. She planted bare feet, spit on her palms,

grabbed solid hold, and began tugging and twisting with all her

might. The tree root creaked, crunched, and stuttered out of the

ground, popping up a spray of dirt, ripping free to send Maggie

fl ying backward, square on her bum.

“Och, aye!” She caught her breath, staring in stunned triumph

at the

fi ve-foot length of black-cherry root lying between her

splayed limbs. She stood, tucked the hems of her everyday brown

skirt into her waistband, and dragged the root down into the

stream.

“Now, that’s quick harvest,” she praised herself, with a self-

satisfied smile. Seth would never even know she had disobeyed

him. Maggie picked up her song as she rinsed away the clumps of

dirt and clay clinging to her prize.

“He sent his servant to her door

To town where she was dwellin’

Haste come ye now, to my master’s bed,

If your name be Barbara Allen.”

“
Maggie!
Stop that singing!”

Startled, she looked up to see Tom circling around the Berry

Hell, blue eyes intent on her. Hatless, his long hair was tied loose

Midwife of the Blue Ridge
147

with a leather lace and two angry furrows were drawn between

his brows. With his rifl e in a two-fisted grip, Tom’s shoulders sat

rigid in his chambray shirt patched dark with sweat.

“Thee must come with me—
now
.” His voice was quiet and

low.

She had not laid eyes on Tom Roberts since the night of the

gather-all two weeks before, when he bade her farewell in the

dark with a chaste kiss on the cheek and a promise. “I’ll call on

you soon.”

Every day from that day on, she watched for him—waited for

him to stride smiling through the waist-high corn and take her

up in his arms. But he never came.

Probably for the best, she figured, as her life was not her

own—not for four years anyway—and Seth had warned her to

steer clear of Tom. “An unfettered man like tha’,” Seth said. “Lord

only knows where he goes, where he spends his nights . . .”

Maggie tossed and turned some nights, envisioning Tom in

Bess Hawkins’s bed. But most nights, she tossed and turned envi-

sioning herself in his arms, in his bed, only to remind herself that

other than a rude blanket on the dirt, Tom did not even have a

bed to call his own.

Now Tom appeared suddenly, creeping through the brush like

an irate phantom, and Maggie found herself struck dumb, clutch-

ing the tree root dripping in her hands.

“Quick . . .” he implored, his hand outstretched. “Shawnee

war party comin’ upon us.”

Maggie clambered up the bank. “What of Naomi . . . the

children . . . ?”

“On their way to the station. I’ve come for you.” Tom wrested

the root from her hands and tossed it into the water.

“I—I need that . . .” she stuttered, taking a step back.

He seized Maggie by the arm and pushed her along.
“Move!”

She stopped short. “My hatchet . . .” she said, pointing to

where she’d left it lying beneath the cherry tree.

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Blevins

Tom cocked a woodsman’s ear, listening. Maggie heard it, too.

The subtle sound of bodies traveling through the underbrush,

murmuring voices harmonizing with the tone of water rushing

over smooth stones—a steady movement of many, most assuredly

coming their way. With Maggie by the arm, Tom snatched up the

hatchet and slipped it into his belt. “We have to hide.”

“
Hide?
We have to run!” Maggie struggled to pull free.

The crisp sound of brittle wood snapping underfoot cracked

through the trees. Maggie twisted away and ran scrambling up a

steep incline to the ridge trail. Tom followed with three long

steps. Clutching a fistful of skirt, he yanked her down. Maggie

flailed about like a trout tossed up on a bank. Tom clapped a

hand over her mouth and whispered in her ear. “God’s eye on it,

Maggie—you will not outrun a Shawnee brave.”

Tom half carried, half dragged her to the Berry Hell. He slid

his rifl e into a low opening in the briars—a brambly tunnel not

more than two feet across, formed by hogs rooting for fallen

fruit. “Scoot in, push your way to the center. I’ll be right

back.”

Maggie clutched him by the arm, tears springing hot to her

eyes. A smile played across Tom’s lips. “I have to wipe our tracks,”