Toliver's Secret (8 page)

“Oh, thank you,” said Ellen gratefully.

In all her life she never had been on a stagecoach, but she had seen them rolling along the streets in New York. She would climb up and get a seat on top beside the driver and she would ask him to stop in front of the Jolly Fox Tavern so she'd have no more searching to do.

As she picked her way through the crowds that filled the street, she was surprised to see so many men who looked different from the familiar redcoats. Some had short plaid skirts and bare knees and they marched to the tune of bagpipes. Grandfather had told her they were British subjects who came from Scotland. Highlanders, he called them. But she stared in surprise at the other big men with hard faces under great heavy hats who spoke in words she couldn't understand at all. They couldn't be British soldiers, for some wore blue coats and others green.

“And yet,” Ellen said to herself, “they have guns with bayonets and they carry knapsacks—so they must be fighting men.”

Carefully she edged her way past them looking up at their grim faces and clutching her bundle tightly
in her arms. She hoped none of them would notice her.

“Why,” she thought suddenly, “they must be the Hessians.” She had heard about the terrible Hessians after the battles on Long Island. Everyone at home resented the German soldiers who hired themselves to King George to fight his wars for him. They had come over here to kill colonists for money. She ducked her head and darted past them.

When she reached the inn, Ellen was dismayed to see that in order to get to the front door she would have to cross a yard filled with the restless horses of the Hessian officers and the grooms who took care of them. She stood at the fence and tried to summon enough courage to walk to the door to ask when the next stagecoach would leave for Elizabeth-town. But nothing in the world would induce her to go inside where the Hessians were.

Since there was no sign of a stagecoach in the yard, nor anyone there she could ask, Ellen slipped quietly along the street beside the inn where she spoke to the only person around who wasn't a soldier. He was an old man who was unloading firewood from a cart near the small taproom door of the inn. His boots were bundles of straw, tied round his legs with ropes, and his hat had once been an animal of some kind,
but it was hard to tell what sort now. The tail, which must have been bushy at one time, was worn to a scraggly rope.

“Can you tell me where the stagecoach starts?” she asked.

The old man turned around. He looked thin and tired and his face was so gnarled it seemed to be made from a dried apple. Little bunches of gray hairs grew from his ears. He sucked in his wrinkled lips and squinted at her with sharp beady eyes.

“If you wait for a stagecoach,” he said sourly, “you'll wait till Doomsday!”

“Why?” Ellen asked anxiously.

The man slammed four logs down on the ground before he spoke.

“Because there ain't none!”

“None at all?” Ellen cried.

“The British took them. Only officers ride in the stage now. No common people.” The man angrily yanked more chunks of wood from his cart and swore at his old horse.

“But how can I get to Elizabeth-town?”

“Can't.” The old man spat a long brown stream of tobacco juice against the tree trunk, loaded the firewood on his shoulder and shuffled on bowed legs to
the taproom door. It slammed behind him.

Ellen's heart fell to the soles of her feet. Her legs would no longer hold her up and she sank down on a bench under the gnarled old tree beside the door. She sat so stiff and straight she seemed to be carved from a piece of wood—except for her twisting hands. She felt like a fly in a spider's web. She couldn't go on to find the Shannons, and she couldn't go back. There was no way to go home now.

She couldn't even think. If only the noise would stop so she could think. There was so much shouting and playing of fifes and bagpipes it made her head whirl as fast as her mother's spinning wheel.

Why had Grandfather thought she could do this? Why had he sent her off across the Bay to a place she knew nothing about? With no way to get back home again. Why had he thought a ten-year-old girl could do a man's work? She stared at the company of Highlanders marching by in their plaid kilts and their bare knees, but she hardly saw them.

Her thoughts raced around and around like squirrels in a whirling cage. Round and round without stopping.

When the old man came back, Ellen saw that someone had given him a chunk of black bread. He was gnawing it with his gums and gulping it down as if
he were starved. He must be very poor to be so hungry.

She jumped to her feet. “Why, I could pay him to take me in his cart!” She was so excited the words tumbled out. “Look! I'll pay you—more—if you'll take me to Elizabeth-town.” She snatched the coins from her pocket and held out her hand. “Here! I'll pay you all of them!”

The old man looked greedily at the coins in her outstretched hand. His fingers twitched as he reached for them, but at the last moment he put his hands behind his back and shook his head.

“Nope,” he said firmly.

“But why not?” cried Ellen.

“Elizabeth's north. I go west to go home. Hardly get there before dark as it is.”

Her hopes fell to her feet like a china cup breaking in a hundred pieces.

“I suppose I could walk,” she said forlornly. But she knew she never could do that. Not ten miles—all alone. When she had walked ten miles before, she and Mother had kept each other company and given each other strength.

“Can't walk on that road!” cried the man. “That's a right busy road—out past the soldiers' camp. Lots of redcoats on horses. They'd run you down!” Ellen
remembered the officers on horses in New York. She was sure they'd run down anyone who got in their way.

“Perhaps,” she said stubbornly, “some woodcutter who goes north would give me a ride—”

“Small chance of that,” the man snorted angrily. “Nobody picks up strangers in these times.” He spat at the tree and wiped his mouth with a thin claw of a hand. “Too risky to pick up strangers who might rob you—or even kill you. Don't you know there is a war on, boy?”

“Yes, I know, but—” Ellen began.

“People around here used to be friendly. But no more.” He stopped his work and squinted at her. “You're a runaway, ain't you?” he said as he leaned over to look at her more closely. “Better go back home, boy. No good running away now. Things are bad everywhere.”

“I'm
not
running away from home!” Ellen was so angry her brown eyes flashed and her words came out like hot sparks. “My home isn't here! And I must go to Elizabeth-town. Can't you understand me?”

The man stared at her in surprise and bewilderment. Then he shrugged and said. “Well, can't be done. Not in these days.” He turned his back and bit off a huge
piece of bread. All Ellen could see was the scrawny tail that hung from his cap.

“Toliver!” she heard someone call out. “Hey, Toliver!”

It was Higgins. The men from the boat were marching past the inn with their muskets on their shoulders. They seemed like old friends in this town full of strangers. “How you faring, Toliver?” Higgins cried out eagerly.

Dow was marching by also. “Toliver!” she heard him shout. “Hope the old gizzard likes squashed bread.” He gave her a big grin and marched on laughing.

“Why,” thought Ellen, “Dow thinks this queer old man is the friend who had the birthday. This funny old man, with his toothless mouth so full he could hardly chew!”

Ellen started to laugh. Clutching the bread beneath her jacket, she ran to catch up with Higgins and march along beside him.

“You're a mighty cheerful little scamp,” he said as he smiled down at her.

“I'm so happy to see you, Mr. Higgins,” she said laughing. She thought to herself, “Higgins is my good friend—even if he is one of the enemy.” She felt
funny thinking it, but it comforted her to have a friend in this strange and frightening place.

“There are soldiers here wearing short skirts!” She could hardly stop laughing when she thought of them. “Their knees are bare and their legs are hairy. I should think they'd be cold when the wind blows.”

Higgins laughed to see her so merry.

“And there are Hessians too!” Ellen shuddered. “I know they are Hessians. They look so fierce they scare me.”

Suddenly she could feel tears splashing down on her jacket and all her efforts to be brave broke down. She was laughing and crying at the same time. Laughing and crying both together. What had happened to her?

Higgins's kind dark eyes were filled with concern as he looked at her. “What's amiss with you, Toliver?”

Ellen took a deep breath before she blurted out, “I wanted to go to Elizabeth-town and the boat brought me to Amboy instead.”

“So this is Amboy!” said Higgins, surprised. “How far away is Elizabeth-town?” he asked.

“Ten miles!”

“Whew!” Higgins glanced up at the sun. “Must be three o'clock. That's quite a march,” he said. “But
if you hurry you'll make it all right.”

Ellen was running to keep up with him. “But I'm afraid of going by myself.”

“Being afraid is nothing to hold you back,” said Higgins. “Just square your shoulders and start. Things aren't so bad after you start.”

He was fumbling in his pocket. “Hold out your hand, Toliver,” he said, and he pressed a coin into her mitten. “There. Go get on the stagecoach and you'll be there long before dark.”

Before she could tell him that she already had money in her pocket and there was no stagecoach, an officer on a big gray horse dashed up to her. “Be gone, boy!” he cried angrily as he flicked at her with his riding crop. “I'll have no boys begging from my men!” the officer roared at her.

Ellen ducked, but the horse kept edging her over to the side of the road and turned so she couldn't dodge around him. She couldn't even see Higgins as he marched away.

Very carefully she opened her hand to look at the coin—a fat silver coin—bigger than she had ever seen. And she couldn't even thank him for it. She might never see Higgins again, but she'd never forget him.

He had given her something more important than
money. He had been her friend. Now she knew she could do it somehow.

Back to the old woodcutter she ran to ask the way to Elizabeth-town. “I'm going to walk!” she said to the old man. “I'm going to walk to Elizabeth-town!” she said again when he did not seem to understand her.

He looked at her with a faint smile on his face. “Well,” he said as he gulped down the last of the bread, “I did it myself many a time when I was young and had young legs—like yours.” He took off his cap and scratched his head as he squinted at the sun. “Must be nigh on to three o'clock. But it's a good road. You can walk it at night.”

“At night!” cried Ellen. “I'm going to run most of the way to get there before dark. I've walked ten miles before,” she said to the old man. “I can do it again when there is naught else to be done.”

She sounded bold. She sounded like a person who could run ten miles and never stop for breath. But inside she was trembling.

“Well, start running then,” the old man said, and he turned back to his firewood.

R
unning was easy enough at first. Swinging her blue bundle at her side, Ellen followed a company of soldiers stepping along in double time to the fast beating of the drums. And after the men had come to the end of the town and turned into the fields to their campgrounds, she trotted behind the wagon trains. She could see that the wagons were piled high with things for the soldiers' camp—chests and canvas tents and great iron pots for cooking.

On either side of the road, soldiers were setting up
tents and building shacks. There was a bright red glow of campfires back in the fields as far as she could see. A pale blue haze of smoke drifted over the fields.

“It frightens me to see so many men getting ready to fight our army.” The thought of the message in her loaf of bread made her run all the more quickly. It kept her from thinking about how hungry she was now, and how the cold wind at her back cut through her wool jacket.

But after she had passed the noisy hubbub in the fields around the camp, Ellen slowed down, for the road was rough and there were no drums beating a quick march to help her hurry. “If I can't run all the way to Elizabeth,” she panted, “at least I can keep up a fast walk. I'll get there before dark.”

Except for a group of horsemen who dashed past her there was no one on the road that wound through the snowy countryside. “There is something queer about this road,” she thought to herself. “It looks like the roads back home, but it's different.”

As far as she could tell there were the same snowy fields and fences made of the gnarled roots of trees. The same brown houses close to the road, the same orchards with a few dried apples clinging to bare branches.