The silver crown, p.9
The Silver Crown, page 9
So Ellen and Otto ate another meal with Mr. Carver, and when it was over, talked some more about wood sculpture. Mr. Carver showed Otto how to use one of his small, razor-sharp knives. Otto’s own hunting knife, he said, was too big and clumsy. Under his direction, Otto succeeded in making a small but respectable wooden cat. Its eyes turned out quite slanted and evil looking.
“That’s not the way I wanted them to look,” Otto complained.
Mr. Carver laughed. “That’s what I meant about wood having a mind of its own.” And he gave Otto the knife to keep.
The children made pallets on the floor of the cabin, and they all went to sleep. Ellen woke up frequently, for the floor was hard, and several times she heard the footsteps of the dog King as he walked around the cabin, checking it to make sure all was quiet before returning to his vigil at the road. He was a conscientious dog.
They were up by dawn the next morning. A feeling of urgency had settled over all of them during the night. Mr. Carver had risen first, and had cooked and eaten breakfast while Ellen and Otto still slept. Then, while they ate, he made several trips down to the road. As they packed and shouldered their rucksacks, he returned from the last of these, and they walked down the path together.
Mr. Carver had established a sentry post beside the road, hidden behind some bushes so that anyone approaching would not see it. He had brought down a chair and a sleeping bag. Against a tree near the chair leaned a long-barreled hunting rifle.
About a hundred yards up the road he had also set up an alarm system, ingenious in its simplicity. Across the road at knee height he had stretched a piece of thin black thread. It was hard to see even in the daylight, and would be completely invisible at night. One end was tied to a tree, the other to an iron pail placed on a large stone. Anyone who came up the road at night would inevitably knock the pail over with a loud clang.
One would think that such elaborate precautions would have been reassuring to Ellen and Otto, but the truth is, they had just the opposite effect. The rifle, particularly, seemed ominous. Mr. Carver was evidently taking this very, very seriously; he was now convinced the danger to them was urgent and grave.
The children felt the need to be gone quickly. But first they said good-bye to Mr. Carver and thanked him, and Ellen could not refrain from asking one question:
“Those two statues in your cabin—the two faces. Who are they?”
“I made them about two years ago, because I discovered, though I could hardly believe it, that I was beginning to forget what their faces looked like. Yet remembering the way they looked is one of the things I enjoy most. So, before the memory grew even mistier, I carved the statues. One is Eliza. The other is my wife.”
“Someday,” he added, “I would like to carve your face, too. When you’re safe again and with your aunt, come back and visit me.”
“I will,” said Ellen.
“I will, too,” said Otto.
They walked briskly down the dirt road, heading for the highest pass. As they reached the first bend, Ellen looked back. She saw that Mr. Carver had seated himself in the chair, facing the other way, and King was sitting beside him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Broken Road
THEY marched along now in a businesslike style. Their legs had become tuned to the steady pace, and their backs were used to the packs. After they had walked for about three hours, the road resumed its old unpleasant habit, bearing off in a huge arc to the right, and running steadily upward along the massive side of the highest mountain yet. Even this did not bother Ellen as much as it used to. She kept her eyes steadfastly ahead and ignored the steep cliff falling off on their right.
It was nearly midday when Otto, who was walking a few paces ahead, stopped abruptly.
“Hey,” he said. “The road’s gone.”
Ellen came forward to his side, and Richard fluttered to a crag overhead. It was true: for the next hundred feet or so the narrow ledge on which they stood had crumbled away and lay, as a collection of broken boulders, far below them in the valley. There remained only a few jagged outcroppings, not big enough for even a mountain goat to climb on. Ahead, on the other side of this gap, they could see where the road resumed. But the only way to reach it would be to fly.
As if to demonstrate this, Richard flapped his wings, soared along the rocky face of the high cliff, and settled on the very edge where the road began again. It was as if he were saying, “See, it’s easy. Just follow me.”
Ellen and Otto looked at one another in dismay. What were they to do now?
As far ahead as they could see, which was at least four or five miles along the mountainside, the road continued intact, except for this single gap. Then it curved off to the left and out of sight, into the highest pass. From there on it would be downhill to the highway. They were that close to success.
Ellen took off her rucksack, put it down, and sat on the road forlornly.
“It’s gone, all right,” she said.
“How do you suppose it happened?”
“A landslide, maybe. Or an earthquake.”
“That cliff is so steep. Otherwise we could climb across it.”
“But we can’t.” Just the thought made Ellen dizzy.
“No. We’ll have to go back.”
“We can’t go back. Mr. Carver said himself that he couldn’t guard the road forever.”
“We can’t stay here for long. If they catch us here, we’re trapped.”
That was a horrifying thought, and another one now occurred to Ellen. Could it be that the stranger, who had walked this way, also knew that the road was out? Was he counting on this to stop them?
“We’ve got to go on somehow.”
They sat for a few minutes, thinking painfully, but no ideas at all came to Ellen. Then Otto cried: “I know how! It’s simple!”
His voice was so confident that it automatically brought a surge of relief to Ellen. She was glad Otto had come with her.
“How?” she asked rather humbly.
“Look. We can walk back to where the road first starts out along this cliff. It’s only a couple of miles. Here, we can’t get off the road—it’s too steep. But back there we can. So let’s just leave the road, and head through the woods toward the pass.”
It was simple.
“You’re right,” she said. “Of course. Let’s do it now.”
“Shouldn’t we eat some lunch first?”
“Let’s get to the woods first. I don’t like to stop here. It does seem like a trap.”
“All right,” said Otto agreeably.
They started back immediately. Ellen felt a most urgent desire to get off the road, and quickly. Now that their way was blocked behind them, she kept fearing that she would see, approaching them on the road, a dark figure in the distance. Supposing that somehow the stranger—or someone else, for that matter—had gotten past Mr. Carver’s guard post? She felt like running.
But Otto was less concerned. He kept stopping and staring out over the broad valley far below them, toward the chain of mountains that rose on—the other side of it. These were so far off that they shimmered blue and hazy in the distance.
“Hurry,” Ellen said when Otto stopped again. “What are you looking at, anyhow?”
“When we first started back, I thought I saw some kind of a big stone building in the woods—way off, over that way.” Otto pointed in the general direction of the highpass, but somewhat to the right of it, toward the distant mountains. “But now I can’t see it anymore. It must have been just a big gray rock. But it looked too high and straight to be a rock. It looked like a tower.”
Ellen paused—very briefly—and looked where he pointed.
“I don’t see anything.” They walked on. “Anyway, who’d build a building way out there in the middle of the woods?”
“Mr. Carver did.”
“A log cabin. That’s different. You said a big stone building.”
“Well,” Otto said, “I said it was probably just a big rock.”
“Let’s hurry.”
They went on, and in about half an hour, to Ellen’s vast relief, they were back to the woods, which here reached up from the valley on a steep slope, but a slope they could easily climb down.
Now a new problem came up. Their object, of course, was to walk the whole length of the valley and rejoin the road at the far end, where it went through the pass. But from here they could no longer see the pass. It was completely hidden by the trees.
Ellen stopped. “How will we know which way to go? Once we get into those trees, we’ll be lost.”
“No we won’t,” Otto said. “I walk in the woods all the time without any path. I never get lost.”
“How do you do it?”
“The easiest way is to watch the sun. Ever since we started on this trip, we’ve been walking away from the sunrise in the morning and toward the sunset in the evening.”
When Ellen thought about it, she realized this was true.
“That means we’re heading west,” Otto continued. “And that’s the way the road was going on the cliff. So we walk toward the sun this afternoon, and away from it tomorrow morning.”
“What do we do when it’s straight overhead?” Ellen glanced upward. “Like now?”
“We eat lunch.”
So they did, as soon as they had walked a few hundred yards down the slope so as to be out of sight of the road. They stepped very carefully here, leaping from one big rock to another where they could, covering their footprints with leaves or pine needles when there were no stones. They left no trail to be seen from the road.
It was pleasant to be back in the forest, though the trees were not quite as big as those they had walked through before, and as a result there was somewhat more underbrush—patches of saplings, bushes, and brambles to walk around. Still, they were grateful for the shade, for the sun was hot overhead, and after they ate they rested and looked up at the leaves. They had to wait, as Otto had explained, for the sun to show them which way was west.
Otto knew the names of all the trees. The big one they lay under, with the crooked trunk, tattered bark and feathery fronds was a locust. The massive tall trunk next to it, looking like a gray stone column, was a beech. There were tulip trees, high and graceful and straight, with no low branches; and an aspen, with flat-stemmed leaves that fluttered constantly, even when the other leaves stood still. There were pines and oaks, and one short, wide-branched tree with bark like the scales on a snake: a dogwood.
“I bet Mr. Carver wouldn’t work on that wood,” Otto said.
“Why not?”
“Too hard. I think it’s the hardest wood there is. I tried to whittle some once and it broke my knife blade.”
They stood up now. Otto looked at the forest floor, put on his rucksack, helped Ellen with hers, and led the way through the woods.
“You can tell when to go by watching the shadows,” he said. “When they start to move, you move the other way.” By which he meant, Ellen figured out, that when the sun moves west, the shadows move east.
Otto certainly seemed to know where he was going. He led the way steadily and surely, and Ellen followed him without question. And as the afternoon wore on and the sun moved farther west, she saw that they were indeed following it, and had been all along. In the woods, Richard flew most of the time, fluttering from branch to branch ahead of them rather than riding their shoulders. If only he could speak English a little better, Ellen thought, we could send him up above the treetops. Then he could see the pass and let us know if we’re going straight toward it.
In midafternoon they paused by a brook to rest, drink, wash, and refill their water bottle. Then, as they started out again, Otto, who had been silent, said suddenly: “I really liked Mr. Carver. I wish we hadn’t had to leave so soon.”
“I did, too.”
“I wish I had a father like him. He knows all kinds of things. I bet he trained that dog himself.”
“I expect he did.”
“Anyway, I really am going back to learn woodcarving. I’m going to study drawing at school, and practice at home.”
“I thought it was sad,” Ellen said. “I mean about his wife and daughter both dying.”
“I know what. Maybe he could marry your Aunt Sarah.”
“That’s silly. They don’t even know each other.,’
“We could introduce them.”
“We could, but how do we know they’d fall in love? Anyway, he’s a lot older than she is.”
“It doesn’t matter if the man is older. It’s when the women are older that the men won’t marry them.”
This struck Ellen as a rather cruel way to put it, and also as an unfair situation. Still, she knew it was generally true, or at least it was generally accepted as being true, so she did not argue.
“If they got married,” Otto persisted, “Mr. Carver could adopt me for a son. Your Aunt Sarah could adopt you, and we’d be brother and sister.”
“But what about your mother?” Ellen asked, and immediately wished she hadn’t.
“What?” said Otto, rather absently.
“Nothing.”
If Otto was forgetting about Mrs. Fitzpatrick already, it was, after all, what she herself had hoped. But, of course, it might be that he was just easily entranced by his own daydreams. After awhile he asked: “What’s it like where she lives?”
“Where who lives?”
“Your Aunt Sarah. Where we’re going.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“Yes, but how?”
“She’s got a great big house, with about thirty rooms in it—a white house. There’s a garden behind it, with benches, and then a woods. And behind that there’s a hill, a big, wide, low hill, all grassy. That’s the Blue Hill. It’s a pasture, really. That’s where we ride sometimes.”
“Ride in what?”
“Ride horses. Aunt Sarah’s horse is named Othello—he’s black as night. I ride a gray one named Dapper.”
“I wish we’d get there. I’d like to ride a horse. Do you suppose she got your postcard by now?”
“I guess so. If she’s there.” Ellen began to wonder what Aunt Sarah would do when she did get the card. Nothing, probably, at first, since the card said that Ellen was on her way. Aunt Sarah would, right now, be expecting her to arrive any minute. But in a few more days… but they should be there by then.
Suppose they weren’t? Then, Ellen thought, Aunt Sarah would most likely call the police and start a search. She even had some pictures of Ellen she could show them. But search where? Along the road between her home and Oakstable. She wondered whether anyone—perhaps an attendant at the gas station—had seen her get into the car with Mr. Gates. That would be a clue for them. If they tracked her to Mrs. Fitzpatrick’s house, of course, then they would know where to go. But by that time she would be back down to the main highway, and surely they would be looking for her there in any case.
They walked on. The ground continued to slope downward, steeply at times, then more gently as they approached the valley floor. The sun moved farther ahead, and the shadows stretched out behind them. Finally, as the ground grew almost level underfoot, the sun disappeared entirely, and they knew it had set behind the mountain wall toward which they were walking. Sunset comes early in deep valleys, and the dusk is long.
They kept going a little longer, guided by a small stream that had come up and joined them, flowing the same way they were walking. Then it took a sharp bend to the right, and at this bend they stopped to camp for the night. There was no cushion of pine needles here, but they collected piles of dead leaves, and made their blankets comfortable enough.
It grew quite chilly after sunset, and Otto gathered a small mountain of firewood, enough to last the night and more. He made the fire so hot that Ellen’s hands and face turned bright red when she had to cook supper over it: dried meat and water from the brook, boiled with some fresh carrots and onions Mr. Carver had given them from his garden. He had also given them a dozen ears of new corn. They roasted four of these at the edge of the fire, leaving the shucks on and turning them frequently so they would not burn. Richard ate some of the roasted corn, some scraps of meat, and then flew off to find some bugs and berries of his own before it got dark.
When they had eaten everything, Ellen washed the dishes and the cooking pot at the edge of the stream. Then they sat by the fire and stared at the flames, not ready to sleep quite yet, though they were tired.
“I wish I knew how far we’ve come,” Ellen said. That was the advantage of a road. You could see far enough ahead and far enough behind you, most of the time anyway, so you got some idea of your progress. In the woods you couldn’t tell at all.
“I bet we’re halfway at least.”
“How can you tell?”
“Well, one thing—we’re not going downhill anymore. Not much, at least. Tomorrow, if we start going uphill, we’ll know we’re beginning to climb out of the valley.”
“It looked so long from up on the cliff. I couldn’t even guess how many miles.”
“I’ll tell you what. Tomorrow, after we’ve walked a little farther, I’ll climb a tree and see if I can see the pass. Or the road along the cliff.”
“That’s a good idea. If we can find a tree that’s higher than the rest.”
They rolled up in their blankets. Otto went to sleep immediately. Ellen stayed awake a little longer, thinking of the black immensity of the forest around her, listening for sounds but hearing only the occasional rustling of leaves in the wind and the faint swirl of the brook. She was glad of the fire. Most of all she was glad that Otto had come with her. When she finally went to sleep, she did not awaken until morning.
