Very likely she would have died, if one day in June there had not come
through Hillsboro a trader on his way from "over the mountain" up to
Canada, looking for furs. That morning, when Hannah got up, she found the
fire in their big fireplace completely extinguished. She snatched up the
warming-pan--not a polished brass one with a smooth, turned handle, like
those you see in Colonial museums, but a common iron pan, fastened to a
hickory sapling; and she went as fast as she could, without running--for
girls never ran "before folks" in those days--over to the nearest
neighbor, to "borrow a handful of fire."
The neighbors were just getting up, and their fire was too low to spare
any, so Hannah had to wait until some hardwood sticks got well to burning.
While she waited, the trader, who was staying overnight in that house,
went on with a long story about an Indian herb-doctor, of whose cures he
had heard marvelous tales, three days' journey back. It seemed that the
Indian's specialty was curing girls who had gone into a decline, and that
he had never failed in a single case he had undertaken.
You can imagine how Hannah's loving, anxious heart leaped up, and how
eagerly she questioned the trader about the road to the settlement where
the Indian lived. It was in a place called Heath Falls, on the Connecticut
River, the trader told her; but he could not find words strong enough to
advise her against trying the trip.
The trail lay through thick woods, filled with all the terrors of early
New Englanders--bears and wolves and catamounts. And when she got to Heath
Falls, she would find it a very different place from Hillsboro, where
people took you in gladly for the sake of the news you brought from the
outside world. No, the folks in Heath Falls were very grand. They traveled
themselves, and saw more strangers than a little. You had to pay good
money for shelter and food, and, of course, the doctor did not cure for
nothing. He was a kind man, the trader, and he did his best to keep Hannah
from a wildly foolish enterprise.
But his best was not good enough. She went home and looked at her poor Ann
Mary, as white as a snowdrift, her big dark eyes ringed with black
circles, and Hannah knew only two things in the world--that there was a
doctor who could cure her sister, and that she must get her to him. She
was only a child herself; she had no money, no horses, no experience; but
nothing made any difference to her. Ann Mary should go to the doctor, if
Hannah had to carry her every step!
A spirit like that knows no obstacles. Although Hillsboro held up hands
of horror, and implored John Sherwin to assert his parental authority and
forbid his girl such a rash, unmaidenly, bold undertaking, the end of it
was that Hannah got her father's permission. He loved his daughters
dearly, did John Sherwin, and, although he could not see how the thing was
to be managed, he told Hannah she might go if she could.
Now it happened that the wife of one of their neighbors had long coveted
the two great feather-beds between which Ann Mary lay sweltering. Hannah
went to her, and said that she could have them if she would loan her son,
a sturdy boy of fourteen, and two horses, for the trip to Heath Falls. The
neighbor-woman hesitated; but when Hannah threw in the two pewter
candlesticks, which came from her mother's family, she could resist no
longer. In her own family they had only spike-iron candlesticks, and it
was her one chance of acquiring a pair of fine ones. So she wheedled her
husband into agreeing to the bargain; and there was Hannah with her
transportation provided.
As soon as it was definitely settled that she was to make the long
journey, people began to; take rather a proud interest in her grit. As
everybody liked her, they gave what they could toward helping her get
ready--all but the old women, who were furious that Ann Mary was to be
taken away from their care.
There was in town a saddle with a pillion back of it, and this was loaned
for Remember Williams, the neighbor's boy, to ride and carry Ann Mary
behind him. Hannah folded a blanket across her horse's back, and sat on
sideways as best she could. Behind her was a big bundle of extra clothing,
and food, and an iron pot--or, as she called it, a "kittle"--for cooking
their noonday meals. Her father brought out all the money he had--one
large four-shilling piece--and Hannah was sure that so much wealth as that
would buy anything in the world. The old women had prophesied that Ann
Mary would not be strong enough to sit upon a horse, even clinging to
Remember Williams's thick waist; but, judging from what grandmother says,
I surmise that Ann Mary, without being really aware of it, was a little
sick of being sick. At any rate, she took a great interest in the
preparations. She asked over and over again about the girls the
herb-doctor had cured; and when the day for their departure came she was
quite pleased and excited, and walked out through the crowd of sympathetic
neighbors. To be sure, she leaned weakly on her father, but there was a
little faint color in her cheeks.
"A very bad sign!" the old women whispered. "She'll never live the journey
out. If only Hannah were not so headstrong and obstinate! But then you
can't blame the child for it--all the Sherwins are that way!"
As for Ann Mary, she sat up quite straight and looked as pretty as
possible when the little company rode off. After all, she had been
"declining" only about a month, and people had vigorous constitutions in
those days.
You may think it odd that she was not afraid to make the long journey, but
there are advantages in being of a dependent nature. Hannah had always
done everything for her, and had kept her safe from harm. Hannah was with
her now, so there was nothing to fear. She left all that to Hannah, who
did it, poor child, with the greatest thoroughness!
Now that the excitement of overcoming Hillsboro opposition was passed; now
that they were really started, with herself as sole leader and guide,
responsibility fell like a black cloud upon her young heart. There was
nothing she did _not_ fear--for Ann Mary, of course--from wolves and
Indians to fatigue or thunderstorms.
A dozen times that day, as they paced slowly over the rough trail, she
asked her sister anxiously if she were not too hot or too cold, or too
tired or too faint, imitating as best she could the matter and manner of
the doctoring old women. However, Ann Mary surprised herself, as well as
Hannah, by being none of the uncomfortable things that her sister kept
suggesting to her she might very well be. It was perfect June weather,
they were going over some of the loveliest country in the world, and Ann
Mary was out of doors for the first time in four weeks or more.
She "kept up" wonderfully well, and they made good time, reaching by dusk,
as they had hoped to do, a farmer's house on the downward dip of the
mountain to the east. Here, their story being told, they were hospitably
received, and Ann Mary was clapped into the airless inner room and fed
with gruel and dipped toast. But she had had fresh air and exercise all
day, and a hearty meal of cold venison and corn bread at their noonday
rest, so she slept soundly.
The next day they went across a wide, hilly valley, up another range of
low mountains, and down on the other side. The country was quite strange
to them, and somehow, before they knew it, they were not on the road
recommended to them by their hosts of the night before. Night overtook
them when they were still, as the phrase has come down in our family, "in
a miserable, dismal place of wood."
Hannah's teeth chattered for very terror as she saw their plight; but she
spoke cheerfully to Ann Mary and the boy, who looked to her for courage,
and told them that they were to have the fun of sleeping under the stars.
Boys were the same then as now, and Remember Williams was partly shivering
with dread of bears and Indians and things, and partly glowing with
anticipatory glory of telling the Hillsboro boys all about the adventure.
Hannah soothed the first and inflamed the second emotion until she had
Remember strutting about gathering firewood, as brave as a lion.
Very probably Ann Mary would have been frightened to death, if she had not
been so sleepy from her long day out of doors that she could not keep her
eyes open. And then, of course, everything must be all right, because
there was Hannah!
This forlorn terrified little captain wrapped the invalid in all the extra
clothing, managed to get a fire started, and cooked a supper of hot
cornmeal mush in her big iron "kittle." Ann Mary ate a great deal of this,
sweetened as it was with maple sugar crumbled from the big lump Hannah Had
brought along and immediately afterward she fell sound asleep.
Soon the soft night air of June was too strong a soporific for Remember's
desire to keep awake and hear the catamounts scream, as he had heard they
did in those woods. Hannah was left quite alone to keep watch and to tend
the fire, her heart in her mouth, jumping and starting at every shadow
cast by the flames.
She knew that wild beasts would not come near them if a big fire burned
briskly; and all that night she piled on the wood, scraped away the ashes,
and watched Ann Mary to see that she did not grow chilly. Hannah does not
seem to have been much inclined to talk about her own feelings, and there
is no record of what she suffered that night; but I think we may be sure
that it seemed a long time to her before the sky began to whiten in the
east.
As soon as she could see plainly, she cooked a hearty breakfast of broiled
bacon and fried mush, and wakened her two charges to eat it. They made a
very early start, and there is nothing more to tell about their journey
except that at about seven o'clock that evening the two tired
horses crept into the main street of Heath Falls, and a very much excited
girl asked the first passer-by where the Indian herb-doctor lived.
They found him in a little old house of logs--the only one that looked
natural to them in the prosperous settlement. When Hannah knocked at the
door, he opened it himself. He was a small, very old, dark-brown, and
prodigiously wrinkled individual, who held up a candle and looked at
Hannah with the most impassive eyes she had ever seen--like little pools
of black water unstirred by any wind.
Hannah's breath came fast.
"Is this the Indian herb-doctor?" she asked.
"Aye," he answered.
When you remember that Hannah was only a little girl, and that she thought
she had come to the end of a nightmare of responsibility, it will not
surprise you to learn that she now began to cry a little, out of
agitation.
"I have brought Ann Mary," she said, "my sister, to be cured. She is in a
decline. Will you cure her?"
The herb-doctor showed no surprise. He set the candle down on the shelf,
and went out in the bright starlight to where Ann Mary clung to Remember
Williams's waist. When he put up his brown old hands to her, she slid down
into them and upon the ground. He still held one wrist, and this he
continued to do for some moments, looking at the white, drooping girl
without moving a muscle of his solemn old face. Then he turned to Hannah,
who had stopped crying and was holding her breath in suspense.
"Aye," he said.
At this Hannah caught her sister around the neck, sobbing joyfully:
"He will cure you, Ann Mary; he will cure you!" Then she asked the doctor:
"And how long will it take? We can stay but a few days, for the boy and
the horses must get back soon."
The herb-doctor considered for a moment.
"It is now the end of June month. By the end of September month she will
be cured--not before."
I think I know that that was a black moment for Hannah. She said nothing
at all, but the sick girl fell to weeping.
"But, Master Doctor, we cannot stay--we cannot! And now, after all, I
shall not be cured!"
Hannah could not bear to see her sweet Ann Mary in tears, and she cried
out stoutly:
"Yes, you shall, too! Remember can take the horses back without us, and
tell our father. Somehow--I can earn--oh, we _must_!" Then a new fear
sprang into her heart. "Oh, sir," she cried to the doctor, "is it dear,
your cure? Must one have much silver for it?"
The stolid little old gnome did not look toward her or change his position
as he said:
"It costs time--no silver," He moved toward the house. "Go to the
minister's to-night," he called from his doorstep. "It is the house of
brick." Just before he closed his door he added: "Come here to-morrow
morning."
When they reached the great brick house, the other two hung back, afraid
of so much grandeur; but three days of travel through the dangers of a
primitive forest had hardened Hannah to the lesser fear of strange people.
To the old minister and his wife she told their story very briefly, with a
desperate kind of self-possession, so concerned about poor Ann Mary, tired
and hungry, waiting out in the night air, that she did not remember to be
afraid of the minister's fine linen and smooth, white hands, or of the
laces and dark silk of his handsome, white-haired wife, or of the gold
braid and red coat of a dark young man with a quick eye who sat in the
corner.
The young man said nothing until after the old people had gone out to
bring in the wanderers. Then:
"You must be fond, indeed, of your sister, my little lass," he said
kindly.
"Sir," said Hannah, "you should _see_ my sister!"
And just then he did see her. Ann Mary came into the brightly lighted
room, her eyes wide and dark from the dusk outside, her long black hair,
shaken loose from its fastenings, curling up beautifully with the dew, and
making a frame for the pearl-like oval of her face. I have seen a
miniature of Ann Mary in her youth, and I can guess how she must have
looked to the young officer that evening.
The minister's wife gave them all a hot supper, and hurried them off to
bed with motherly authority. For the first time in her life, Hannah found
herself between linen sheets. She tried to call her sister's attention to
this astonishing magnificence, but fell asleep in the middle of the
sentence, and did not wake until late the next morning. Ann Mary had been
awake for some time, but did not dare get up, so overcome was she by
shyness and reverence for the grandeur of the room and of her hosts.
"Oh, Hannah! Would it not be like heaven to live always in such a place?"
she said.
Hannah could not stop to be shy, or to think about how she would like
mahogany beds all the time. She had too much on her mind. They must go at
once to the herb-doctor's--they should have been there before--and they
must hurry through their breakfast. It is, perhaps, worthy of note that
both girls came down the stairs backward, ladders having been, up to that
time, their only means of reaching elevations.
During their breakfast, the dark young man, who turned out to be a cousin
of the minister's, sat in a corner, playing with his dog's ears, and
looking at Ann Mary until she was quite abashed, although the younger
girl, at whom he glanced smilingly from time to time, thought he looked
very good-natured. After this, Hannah sent Remember Williams home with the
horses, giving him fresh and elaborate directions about the right road to
take. Then she marched Ann Mary to the herb-doctor's.
"Here, Master Necronsett," she said, "here is Ann Mary to be cured!"