A FOSTER PARENT.
ADAM covered many a mile before the morning. Mindless of his hunger,
spurred by the thought that he must soon be back in Boston, he felt that
the further he went the more he must hasten. Thus he marched straight on
till noon.
He rested briefly at this time, filled his craving stomach with water,
and again made a start. In fifteen minutes he came upon a clearing, at
the edge of a little valley where up-jutting rocks were as plentiful as
houses in a city. Pausing for a moment, to ascertain the nature of the
place, and to prepare himself against possible surprise, he presently
approached a small log hut, of more than usually rude construction.
There appeared to be no signs whatsoever of life about the place. No
smoke ascended from the chimney; there was no animal in sight, not even
so much as a dog.
Adam glanced hurriedly about the acre or so of land, beholding evidences
of recent work. A tree had been felled, not far away, within the week.
In a neat little patch of tilled soil, green corn stood two feet high
and growing promisingly.
Going to the cabin-door he knocked first and gave it a push afterward,
for it was not latched, although it was nearly closed. There being no
response from the inside, he entered. The light entered with him. It
revealed a strange and dreadful scene.
On the floor lay a man, dressed, half raised on his elbow, looking up at
the visitor with staring eyes, while he moved his lips without making a
sound. A few feet away sat a little brown baby-boy, clothed only in a
tiny shirt. He looked up at big Adam wistfully. Strewn about were a few
utensils for cooking, a bag which had once contained flour, the dust of
which was in patches everywhere, and an empty water-bucket and dipper,
with all the bedding and blankets from a rude wooden bunk, built against
the wall.
In amazement Adam stood looking at the man. In the haggard face, with
its unkempt beard and glassy eyes he fancied he saw something familiar.
Memory knocked to enter his brain. Then, with a suddenness that gave him
a shock, he recognized a man he had known in England—an elder brother of
Henry Wainsworth, supposed to have died years before—drowned while
attempting to escape from an unjust sentence of imprisonment for
treason.
“Wainsworth!” he said, “good faith! what is the meaning of this?”
The man sank back on the floor, a ghost of a smile passing across his
face. He moved his lips again, but Adam heard not a word.
Bending quickly down, he became aware that the man was begging for
water. He caught up the bucket and hastened forth, presently finding the
spring, to which a little path had been worn in the grass.
Back at once, he placed the dipper to the dried-out lips and saw this
fellow-being drink with an evidence of joy such as can only come to the
dying. Wainsworth shivered a little, as the dipper left his teeth, and
jerked his hand toward the silent child, sitting so near, on the floor.
Adam comprehended. He gave more of the water to the small, brown baby.
It patted the dipper with its tiny hands and looked up at him dumbly.
“What in the world has happened here?” said Rust.
Making a mighty effort, the man on the floor partially raised his head
and arms. He looked at Adam with a hungering light in his eyes.
“I’m—done—for,” he said, thickly and feebly.
Adam hustled together the blankets on the floor and made a pillow, which
he placed for Wainsworth to lie on. “Shall I put you into the bed?” he
asked.
The man shook his head. “I’m crushed,” he said, winking from his eyes
the already gathering film that tells of the coming end.
“Tree—fell—killed the—wife. I—crawled—here.”
Adam looked at him helplessly. He knew the man was dying. He felt what
agonies the man must have suffered. “Man!” he said, “can’t I get you
something to eat?”
Wainsworth waved his hand toward the wreckage strewed on the floor.
“Nothing—here,” he said. Then he made a great effort, the obvious rally
of his strength. “Save the—boy,” he implored. “Give him a—chance....
Don’t—tell—about me. I married—his mother—Narragansett—God bless—her....
Give—him—a—chance.... Thanks.”
As he mentioned the child’s mother, his eyes gave up two tears—crystals,
which might have represented his soul, for it had quietly escaped from
his broken body.
Adam, kneeling above him, looked for a moment at his still face, on
which the shadow of a smile rested. Then he looked at the little, brown
youngster, half Narragansett Indian, gazing up in his countenance with a
timid, questioning look, winking his big black eyes slowly, and quite as
deliberately moving his tiny toes.
It was not a situation to be thought out nor coped with easily. To have
found any human being in this terrible plight would have been enough,
but to have found Henry Wainsworth’s brother thus, and to have him tell
such a brief, shocking story, and make of his visitor all the things
which Adam would have to become at once, was enough to make him stand
there wondering and wondering upon it all.
“You poor little rascal,” he said to the child, at last.
He selected a shovel and a pick, from some tools which he noted, in a
corner, and laying aside his sword, he went to work, on the preface to
his duties, out by the patch of corn where he found the pretty, young
Indian mother, clasped and held down to earth in an all too ardent
embrace, by an arm of the fallen tree.
When he had padded up the mound over the two closed human volumes, he
was faint with hunger. He carried the tools again to the house, and
stood as before, looking at the baby-boy, who still sat where he had
left him, on the floor.
“Well, I suppose you are hungry, you little brown man,” he said. “I must
see what there is to be had.”
There was little opportunity for extended explorations. The one room had
contained the all of Wainsworth and his Narragansett partner. Rust soon
found himself wondering what the two had lived upon. What flour and meal
there had been, the man, despite his two crushed legs, had pulled down,
from a box-like cupboard, on the wall, together with a bit of dried
meat. Of the latter only a dry fragment remained, still tied to a
string, while of the meal and flour, only the empty bags gave evidence
that they once had existed.
There was no way possible for Adam to know that in the forest, not far
away, the lone woodsman had set his traps, for squirrels and rabbits,
nor that fifteen minutes’ walk from the door a trout stream had
furnished its quota to the daily fare. He only knew that there was
nothing edible to be found here now. There was salt, a bit of grease, on
a clean white chip of pine, and a half gourd, filled with broken-up
leaves, which had doubtless been steeped for some manner of tea or
drink.
“Partner,” he said, to the child, “someone has been enforcing sumptuary
laws upon us. I hesitate in deciding whether we shall take our water
salted or fresh.”
With his hand on the hilt of his sword he regarded the youngster
earnestly. Nothing prettier than the little naked fellow could have been
imagined, howbeit he was not so plump as a child of his age should be,
for the lack of nourishment had already told upon him markedly. Adam
felt convinced, from various indications, that the tree which had done
its deadly work had fallen about a week before, and that Wainsworth had
not been able to do anything more than to crawl to the cabin, to die,
neither for himself or the child.
For a time the rover wondered what he must do. His own plans had nearly
disappeared from his mind. He reflected that a child so brown as this,
so obviously half a little Narragansett, would be ill received by the
whites. The Indians would be far more likely to cherish the small man,
according to his worth. He therefore believed the best thing he could do
would be to push onward, in the hope of finding an Indian settlement
soon. There were several reasons, still remaining unaltered, why it
would be wiser not to take the child to Boston.
“Well, our faces are dirty, partner,” he said, at the end of a long
cogitation, in which the baby had never ceased to look up in his
countenance and wink his big eyes, wistfully. “Let’s go out and have a
bath.”
He took the tiny chap up in his arms and carried him forth to the
spring. Here, in the warm sunlight, he got down on his knees in the
grass, bathed his protégé, over and over again, for the pleasure it
seemed to give the child and the joy it was to himself, to feel the
little wet, naked fellow in his hands.
The sun performed the offices of a towel. Without putting his tiny shirt
back upon him, Adam rolled the small bronze bit of humanity about his
back, patting his velvety arms and thighs and laughing like the grown-up
boy he was, till the little chap gurgled and crowed in tremendous
delight. But it having been only the freshness of the water, air and
sunlight which had somewhat invigorated the baby, he presently appeared
to grow a little dull and weary. Adam became aware that it was time to
be moving. He washed out the child’s wee shirt and hung it through his
belt to dry as they went. Then taking a light blanket from the cabin,
for the child’s use at night, he left the cabin behind and proceeded
onward as before.
He walked till late in the afternoon without discovering so much as a
sign of the Indian settlement he was seeking. By this time his own pangs
of hunger had become excruciating. It was still too early in the summer
for berries or nuts to be ripe, and the half green things which he found
where the sun shone the warmest were in no manner fit to be offered to
the child, as food.
Arriving at another small valley, as the sun was dipping into the
western tree-tops, the rover sat down for a rest, and to plan something
better than this random wandering toward the sunset. He had chuckled
encouragement to the child from time to time, laughing in the little
fellow’s face, but hardly had he caught at the subtle signs on the small
face, at which a mother-parent would have stared wild-eyed in agony.
Now, however, as he sat the tiny man on the grass before him, he saw in
the baby’s eyes such a look as pierced him to the quick. For a moment
the infinite wistfulness, the dumb questioning, the uncomplaining
silence of it, made him think, or hope, the child was only sad. He got
down on all fours at once.
“Partner,” said he, jovially, “you are disappointed in me. I make poor
shift as a mother. Do you want to be cuddled, or would you rather be
tickled?”
He laid the little chap gently on his back and tried to repeat the
frolic of the earlier hours. He rolled the small bronze body in the
grass, as before, and petted him fondly. But the baby merely winked his
eyes. He seemed about to cry, but he made no sound. Adam’s fingers
ceased their play, for the joy departed from them swiftly.
“Maybe you’re tired and sleepy,” he crooned. “Shall I put on your shirt
and sing you a little Indian lullaby? Yes? That’s what he wants, little
tired scamp.”
He adjusted the abbreviated shirt, awkwardly, but tenderly, after which
he held his partner in his arms and hummed and sang the words of a
Wampanoag song, which he had heard in his boyhood, times without number.
The song started with addresses to some of the elements, thus:
“Little Brook, it is night,
Be quiet, and let my baby sleep.
“Little wind, it is night,
Go away, and let my baby sleep.
“Little storm, it is night,
Be still, and let my baby sleep.
“Little wolf, it is night,
Howl not, and let my baby sleep.”
and after many verses monotonously soothing, came an incantation:
“Great Spirit, I place my babe
Upon the soft fur of thy breast,
Knowing Thou wilt protect,
As I cannot protect;
And therefore, oh Great Spirit,
Guard my child in slumber.”
Adam sang this song like a pleading. But his little partner could not
sleep, or feared to sleep. Then the rover looked at the tiny face and
realized that the child would soon be dying of starvation. At this he
started to his feet, abruptly.
He had undergone the pains of hunger often, himself; he was not
impatient now with the pangs in his stomach, nor the weakness in his
muscles. But he could not bear the thought of the child so perishing,
here in the wilderness.
He saw poor Wainsworth again, and heard him beg that the child be given
a chance. He thought of the man’s shattered life, his escape from
persecution, his isolation, in which he had preferred the society of his
Indian wife and child to association with his kind. Then he blamed
himself for coming further into this deserted region, when he knew that
by going back, at least he could find something for the child to
eat—something that would save its life!
But he could not forget that he himself was a refugee. Wrongly or
rightly, Randolph was still on his track. Nothing in his own case had
been altered, but the case was no longer one concerning himself alone.
He took the child on his arm, where he had carried him already many
miles, and faced about.
“Partner, let them take me,” he said. “I wish them joy of it.”
He started back for Boston, for in the child’s present extremity, the
nearest place where he could be sure of finding food was the only one
worthy a thought.
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