The Rideau River Mystery: A Billings Kids History Mystery Book One

By Leslie Smith Dow

The Billings Kids History Mystery series begins with 12-year-old Elkanah Stowell, who ventures into the wilderness with his uncle, Braddish Billings, to help found what will become the Billings Bridge settlement. He’s an orphan, so he has to grow up quickly. He helps his uncle build a log cabin, plant crops for the upcoming winter, and drive log cribs down the Rideau River into the Ottawa – and eventually to Quebec.
Then he’s left alone with a hired hand, William Blakey for a month, readying things for Braddish’s imminent return with his 17-year-old bride, Lamira Dow.
But while Uncle Brad is away, funny things start to happen. All the salt pork disappears, for instance, and is replaced by a heap of moccasins. Elkanah finds a dead beaver floating outside its lodge, unskinned, its head torn off. Then, one day, on Elkanah’s own special island in the Rideau River, he finds strange footprints. Are the Indians planning an attack? Or is someone else lurking around, someone who wants their land and the gold pieces they earned for taking the timber to Montreal. Elkanah knows Uncle Brad buried it somewhere, but he’s not sure where, so he doesn’t even know where to keep watch.
Then one night, William tells him the terrifying story of the Windigo – a huge stone monster that can shape-shift – and which eats humans! William warns him not to go out anymore at night, just in case. But Elkanah knows he has to find out who (or what) is lurking in the woods before Uncle Brad gets back with his new aunt Lamira.
Follow the clues and see if you can solve the Rideau River Mystery on your own!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leslie Smith Dow
• Release date: Mar 2, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370590773

Leslie Smith Dow

As a rock 'n' roll journalist for several years, I interviewed and reviewed acts like Alice Cooper, Iron Maiden, BB King, James Cotton, Supertramp, Axl Rose, Tragically Hip, Ria Mae, and many more. Somehow, the weirdness of writing concert reviews at 3 a.m. in an empty newsroom just never left me. That experience, combined with growing up in a very insular but sinful small town, and the strange events that occur during frequent travelling has left me permanently warped. My only outlet is the Badass Bingo gang, who figure prominently in the Badass Hippie Tales series. They have really got a hold on me! Check out Ricki Wilson's Indie Spotlight: http://rickiwilson.com/4/post/2017/03/indie-spotlight-on-badass-hippie-tales-by-leslie-smith-dow-lesliesmithdow.html I am the author of several print and e-books including the award-winning historical biographies Adele Hugo: La Miserable and Anna Leonowens: A Life Beyond the King and I. Adele Hugo: La Miserable has recently been re-released as an e-book, with a new Afterword detailing the fascinating mystery of a painting which could link Adele and the founder of French Impressionist painting, Edouard Monet. Read Elissa Barnard's review of the re-issued e-edition of Adele Hugo in www.localxpress.ca at https://www.localxpress.ca/local-arts-and-life/adele-hugo-still-haunts-author-443323. See details of the new Afterword, featuring the mystery of Adele and French painter Edouard Manet at https://gooselane.com/collections/e-books/products/adele-hugo. I am also a beekeeper, farmer and owner of Red House Honey, which produces all-natural raw, kosher honey on the shores of the St. Lawrence River. AWARDS/JURIES: I received the Canadian Authors' Association Air Canada Award for Most Promising Canadian Author under 30 and the Dartmouth Writers’ Award for Non-Fiction. I was a finalist for the Ontario Trillium Award, the Ottawa Citizen and Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton writing awards. I have received grants for my writing from the Canada Council, the City of Ottawa and the Regional Municipality of Ottawa-Carleton and I have been part of selection juries for writing grants and the on-line poetry magazine, ByWords.

Book preview

A Billings Kids History Mystery

The Rideau River Mystery

Book One

By Leslie Smith Dow

©Leslie Smith Dow, 2016

For Shaughnessy, who has had to wait a long time for a book of his own.

Author’s Note

Writer Joan Didion once said that …a place belongs forever to the writer who claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, and loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image. The Rideau River, with its waters, its banks, its animals, people and trees, overlay the old ghost of another, far-off place which still sleeps inside me.  I thought that ghost would haunt me forever, but now I can thank Elkanah for showing me different.

I also must thank my husband, whose constant support, encouragement, incisive comments as well as his editing skills, make all my projects possible.  Thanks, too, to Kyleakin, who snuck out of bed countless times to sit on my lap as I wrote, and who made his own unique editorial suggestions.

The staff at the Billings Estate Museum has also been invaluable – lending me books, answering myriad questions, and letting me wander around the Billings’ house and grounds.  Thanks, too, to Susan and Helene at the Ottawa Public Library; South Branch, for letting me know just what children like; and to Lesley Choyce, for assisting with points of uncertainty.

PREVIEW

The Billings Kids History Mystery series begins with 12-year-old Elkanah Stowell, who ventures into the wilderness with his uncle, Braddish Billings, to help found what will become the Billings Bridge settlement.  He’s an orphan, so he has to grow up quickly.  He helps his uncle build a log cabin, plant crops for the upcoming winter, and drive log cribs down the Rideau River into the Ottawa – and eventually to Quebec.

Then he’s left alone with a hired hand, William Blakey for a month, readying things for Braddish’s imminent return with his 17-year-old bride, Lamira Dow.

But while Uncle Brad is away, funny things start to happen.  All the salt pork disappears, for instance, and is replaced by a heap of moccasins.  Elkanah finds a dead beaver floating outside its lodge, unskinned, its head torn off.  Then, one day, on Elkanah’s own special island in the Rideau River, he finds strange footprints.  Are the Indians planning an attack? Or is someone else lurking around, someone who wants their land and the gold pieces they earned for taking the timber to Montreal.  Elkanah knows Uncle Brad buried it somewhere, but he’s not sure where, so he doesn’t even know where to keep watch.

One night, William tells him the terrifying story of the Windigo – a huge stone monster that can shape-shift – and which eats humans!  William warns him not to go out anymore at night, just in case. But Elkanah knows he has to find out who (or what) is lurking in the woods before Uncle Brad gets back with his new aunt Lamira.

Follow the clues and see if you can solve the Rideau River Mystery on your own!

CHAPTER ONE: ELKANAH’S STORY

My pa, Abel Stowell, died in 1805.  That was too bad, because it left me, ma and the little ones with less than the little we’d had.  But then Uncle Braddish came for us, and built us a house on his land in Elizabethtown near the St. Lawrence River. He was like a father to us in those days.  Then, after only three years, ma died.  That was in 1808.  I was only eight.  But Uncle Brad didn’t give me up.  I was named after his pa, another Elkanah, so I guess we are bound together by something.  I wouldn’t call it love.

Since I was so young, Uncle Brad couldn’t take me out lumbering in the forests with him.  Instead, he sent me to live with old Mr. Church, so I could go to school.  I didn’t learn much, for I was always dreaming of the wild places. I longed to go a-lumbering with the men, and it must have showed on my face.  Every time I daydreamed, the schoolmaster caught me at it.  It was as if he could read my mind.  And every time he caught me, he tanned my hide right good.  I had many a welt from his willow whip about my legs.  But I didn’t complain.  That was the way things were.

After spending nearly a useless year at Mr. Church’s, Uncle Brad must have been as frustrated as I was about my lack of progress in school.   He decided I needed to earn my keep.  I went to live then in Merrickville with Miz Jane Shirley and baby Sally.  They were the wife and child of Uncle Brad’s new partner, and they would have been all alone if not for me.  The men had gone back to the forests for the winter.

I fetched and carried for them without complaint, for I didn’t miss my life at old Mr. Church’s.  Who would?  Miz Jane was nice to me.  As nice as a lone woman with a baby running a boarding house could be, I guess, but I just couldn’t find it in me to be too nice back.  I did what I was bid, but I was still thinking of mama.  I still found it hard to be without her, and papa, and my younger brothers and sisters.  I thought about them all often.  Sometimes, if I found myself alone, I pretended we were all together again. I’d call their names, and play some of the games we used to play together.   Then someone would call for me, and my lovely dream would be gone.  There was only me left, and I was all alone.

Then last fall, in the year of Our Lord eighteen hundred and twelve (that’s how Mr. Church taught me to say it) Uncle Brad decided to head into the great north woods for good.  It was right after the navy confiscated his bateau (which is a kind of wide-bottomed shipping boat) on the St. Lawrence River.  Wartime it was, and still is.  The War of 1812, and such things happen, I guess.  I wonder why Uncle Brad never went for a soldier or a sailor, for he could take care of himself on land or on water.  But he is fed up with wars, he says, and he is bound and determined to make a better life for himself.  He’s different from other folks, is Uncle Brad.  He always knows where he is headed.

This time, Uncle Brad said I was old enough to come with him.  He and his partner had parted ways, and we had to leave Miz Jane Shirley’s house.  But I didn’t mind one bit.  It was not quite my dream come true, for I knew nothing could bring my family back to me, but it was almost as good.  I felt happy, I think.  I had just turned 12, and happiness wasn’t a feeling I was too familiar with.

So Uncle Brad, he sold his horses, for they were of no use in the thick woods, and bought a cow instead.  Together we built a snug little Durham boat, which we filled to the gunwales with barrels of salt pork, flour, some powder and shot for our guns, blankets, several axes and saws, some nails, two kettles (one big and one small), three crocks full of raisins and apples, a hundred weight sack of potatoes, and a couple of hunting knives.  There were also sacks of seed for next year’s crops, which would have to be guarded all winter from vermin. Lastly, there was a little tin-lined box full of tea that had come all the way from China.  I’ll never forget that little red box.  It had strong brass hinges, and a lock, for tea was as dear as gold then.  Still is.

Then, the day we left, Uncle Brad hired William Blakey as an extra hand.  We stowed his miserable gear in the bow, and without even a goodbye, set off for the land of the big timber.  Uncle Brad had a place already picked out for us a few days’ journey down the Rideau River.  The name given to our new home on the survey map was Junction Gore.  No one save Uncle Brad knew much else about it.

So off we went, with me walking the cow along the shore.  The men stood on the boat, poling it along the river.

It was no easy trip.  Fall had long since come, and winter was near.  The river had already started to freeze up, and we had to break the ice in many places to let the boat through.  The three days’ journey stretched to nearly two weeks, but finally, Uncle Brad said we had arrived.  There was not much to distinguish this place from any other bend in the river we’d passed along the way, except that maybe it was wilder, and farther from Merrickville.   There were no neighbours, and because of the shallowness of the Rideau, there were no travellers on it.  We might as well have gone to the moon to live.

We slept two nights on the open, freezing ground as we raced to build a shanty.  both mornings, I woke up with my eyes rimed in frost, and my head heavy and stiff with cold.  What we made, in our haste, was the simplest shack you could imagine.    It was made of round logs, with no windows.  There was plenty of daylight inside, though, for the logs were not chinked.  There was one opening, which did not have a door.  A hole in the roof took the place of the chimbley, but the thick smoke the fire spewed at least kept down the insects.  It was not much better than living in the open air, but it was something.  I knew we would soon fix it up better.

After the shanty was done, we had to begin feeding ourselves.  The stores of pork and potatoes were too valuable to begin dipping into yet, so we commenced to hunt and fish.  Fortunately, the shores and woods were abundant with life, not like they are now.  It hardly took any effort at all to catch enough fish for three hungry men (I thought I ought to be entitled to manhood by now) for dinner.  I merely reached a bucket into the water and pulled it out, as William had told me to do.  I was astonished to see that it was full of fine, fat trout.  They were lazy with cold, and barely struggled.  In ten minutes, I’d gutted and scaled them, breaded them up in a little flour, and had them sizzling in the bottom of the big kettle.

Then there were the woods.  Turkeys, deer and grouse started easily at the merest crackling of a twig, and I shot many fat trophies in those first weeks.  I made sure to collect the hips of the wild rose before the snow came, just as Miz Jane Shirley had shown me.  They are good for all the winter ills, especially when boiled up for tea, which is what I did with them.

Despite rationing the black China tea, we soon drank it all up, having nothing else but water.  William collected some other herb from the riverbank, which he boiled up.  Labrador tea, he said it was, and urged Uncle Brad and me to drink some.  It was terrible bitter, though, and I could not abide it.  Uncle Brad said it tasted like the Devil’s brew, and spat his into the fire.  It hissed and sizzled back at him, like some kind of evil spirit.  From then on, he drank only my rose hip tea, and I was sorely pressed to scramble through the winter woods to replenish our supply.

Winter was well on, and the snows unmercifully high.  We had hoped to clear at least 20 acres over the winter, but the snows were so heavy there were whole days we could not go out. Hunting was nearly impossible, and Uncle Brad reluctantly told me to open the pork barrel. Once, it took us two days just to dig our way out the front door and over to the woodpile.  It took another day to find the cow in her shed, and she nearly perished.  A bucket of snow melted on the fire, and a few spruce boughs soon put her right.

It was at the height of this winter of privation that the two travellers joined us.    William seemed to know them, but he didn’t welcome them.  Travellers are always welcomed to a hut in the woods, for anyone knows their situation could easily be reversed.  Still, there was something