The Voice of the Turtle

By Mary Mills Ulrich

Its 1850 when Edmund and Esther Allan and their young son arrive by river raft in the Fox Valley and Edmund stakes his claim on what he believes to be the perfect site for their homesteada beautiful hill overlooking 150 acres of valleys and forests. Little does he know that the Indians have already nicknamed the site The Hill of Many Sorrows.

Stubborn as ever, Edmund will never admit the drawbacks of living on the hill even after the Allan family loses their first crop to a drought. After a surprise blizzard, their provisions run low and Esther sinks into deep despair as the long, harsh Wisconsin winter drags on. But it is not long before Esther is befriended by Sleeping Turtle, an elderly Winnebago squaw who teaches her not only how to survive in the wilderness, but also gives her a new perspective on life. With the squaws help, Esther starts a business while Edmund harvests his first successful crop. But just as the growing family finally realizes prosperity, a fatal disaster reveals a devastating betrayal.

Now, with her family facing financial ruin, Esther must summon the courage to pull them through their worst crisis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 30, 2009
• ISBN: 9781440160349

Mary Mills Ulrich

Mary Mills Ulrich grew up in the Fox River Valley in Wisconsin and earned her Bachelor of Science degree from Central State College at Stevens Point. She has taught high school English and now lives in West Jordan, Utah, where she is preparing her second novel for publication.

Book preview

Part I

1850

My beloved spake, and said unto me,

Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.

For, lo, the winter is past,

The rain is over and gone;

The flowers appear upon the earth;

The time of the singing of birds is come,

And the voice of the turtle

Is heard in our land.

Song of Solomon 2:10–12

CHAPTER 1

A shriek on the other side of the island pierced the pristine stillness and echoed across the water. Esther Allan didn’t see the predator. She didn’t know its victim. The sun climbed through the dense fog shrouding the woods along the Fox River and glowed down through the mist like a bloodshot eye peering through a frosted window. As the small party shoved off from Devil’s Island, the raft swung out into the channel and drifted lazily with the current.

Clad in a faded blue cotton dress and poke bonnet, Esther sat on the small trunk with her hands clenched in her lap. She glanced down at her four-year-old son, Albert, who sat beside her with his legs dangling. When are we gonna get there? he asked. Esther gave him a sharp glance and laid a warning finger over her lips. The child scowled, then gazed over at the family’s possessions piled in the center of the raft, his mother’s chair perched precariously on top of the heap with its rockers arched against the sky.

There’s got to be some open land here somewhere, Edmund Allan said. He propped a booted foot on the handle of the steamer trunk and stroked his beard, his hungry dark eyes scanning the distant hills.

Hank Watson, their pilot, took his corncob pipe from his mouth and pointed its stem at the horizon. Oh, this here land’s got open prairie, all right, but you maybe got to climb some hills to get at it. He wore a greasy buckskin suit and a broken felt hat, and his gray beard bobbed when he spoke. Now you take these here hills, a body can’t tell if’n they’s comin’ or goin’. Some say they’s mountains that been knocked down and washed down ’til they’s just these here bumps left. And some say they’s just baby mountains waitin’ to grow up.

I don’t care how they got that way, Edmund grumbled. I just need a spot high enough to sight a good chunk of land.

The sky hugged the ground so low that he couldn’t see what lay over the nearest woods or the shortest hill. In the two days they’d spent on the river, plying every cross stream, he’d seen few adequate sites. A fish jumped close to the raft, snatched a dragonfly, and sank back out of sight.

Their pilot smiled. Walleye, most likely. This here’s a lazy river. Can’t support more’n perch and bluegill. Walleye’s about as big as it can handle. Up north is where the good fishin’ is. Don’t need bait or line. Just dip in the fryin’ pan and set it to the fire full of trout.

Esther forced a polite smile, her wary blue eyes darting from one side of the river to the other. To hear Hank talk, you’d think Wisconsin was the Garden of Eden. That there’s something in the atmosphere that makes things grow and replenish themselves so fast that you never run out of anything. Chop a tree down and three more grow in its place, almost overnight. Kill any game animal and ten more come to the funeral. Plow the soil, scatter your seeds, and then stock up on the bushel baskets.

Maybe his stories were true. Ducks and cranes skimmed along the edge of the marsh. White-tailed deer, wearing their red summer coats, leaped through the cattails and bounced into the underbrush. Raccoons, opossum, fox, and mink scurried out of sight as the raft glided past. Muskrats poked their ugly snub-noses up through the murky water, then dived into the liquid darkness again. None were critters she’d care to share her home with.

Edmund was certain they would have fine crops if they settled here. Nothing but green met the eye for as far as one could see—from the lime green of the new prairie grass and marsh hay to the dark forest green of the oak groves and pines. Even the river was green, marsh grass waving with the current at its edges, its surface layered with lily pads. Hank had told them there was more green in one acre of Wisconsin than in all the far West put together, and he ought to know; he’d been to the Rockies and back.

Can’t figure why a body’d want to go that far just to get sparse, he’d said over the campfire. You get out there in, say, Wyomin’ territory and a poor cow has to take a walk for ever’ blade of grass. Here she can stand in one spot and graze all day. You make camp out West and you got to tramp for an hour just to come back with an armful of kindling that ain’t hardly fit for burnin’ nohow. Here you can burn all night with just what you clear off to pitch a tent.

Hold up, there, Edmund said to the pilot. He pointed toward the western horizon. See that over there? Just over those trees. Looks like a big rock sticking up out of the hill.

Albert jumped of the trunk and tugged at his father’s sleeve. Let me see, too.

Edmund lifted the boy up to his shoulder. Right up there. From that rock we could see more land. Know what that means?

The boy’s eyes grew wide. No, Pa.

Edmund laughed and set him back down. It means we could stake a bigger claim. Now we have to find a way to get up there.

Esther stared at the small pink speck far up the slope. A wide stretch of marsh and red thicket lay between themselves and the hill where the rock stood. Its quiet isolation frightened her. Shouldn’t we turn back, Edmund? she pleaded. We’ve passed flatter land than this with less woods to clear.

Nonsense! he scoffed. This may be just the site we’re looking for.

Esther pulled Edmund aside and whispered, We can’t leave this man out of our sight with all our truck. He could sneak off and leave us out here with nothing. And I refuse to stay on the raft with him while you’re climbing around up there.

His surprised look told her that he hadn’t thought of that, and then his eyes narrowed with annoyance at her for getting ahead of him. You worry too much, he said. If we find a place to tie up, we’ll hide the raft and take him with us. We’re paying him to be our guide, so he may as well earn his keep. He turned his back on her and joined Hank at the other end of the raft.

Esther was tired of boats and rafts, tired of looking for just the right place. She wished Edmund would have taken a small parcel of flat land near Dudley’s Landing, but nothing small would ever make him happy.

The raft slid past a large grassy bog, and a new stream opened, leading back into the marsh. Well, this is luck, Hank drawled. Here’s a slough.

What’s a slough? Albert asked.

An inland stream. See how the water runs out into the river?

Albert pointed and called, Look, Ma! It’s a slough!

Cattails and marsh hay hemmed them in on both sides. A dead fish lay washed against a bog, a covey of bluebottles feasting on its bloated white belly. Esther held her nose against the stench, then noticed a clump of wild irises with delicate purple heads just beyond the fish. She glanced up at the strip of blue sky overhead. It doesn’t help, Lord, she thought. You can put all the rare flowers you want in here, but it’s still a stinking swamp.

As the raft moved on up the slough, the tall grass and cattails yielded to pussy willow. Here was the red thicket that could be seen from the river, and just ahead, a giant willow leaned over the water from the west bank. Hank pushed the raft through its curtain and out into the sunlight. A yellow clay bank stood like a stucco wall beside them, and beyond it was the hill.

Look at it, Esther! Edmund gasped.

June grass covered the hill, rippling like the fur on a cat’s back stroked by the invisible hand of the wind. And at its summit the red granite boulder bulged from the earth, shining like a beacon in the sun.

Tie up the raft and come along, Edmund said to Hank. When I stake my claim, you’ll be my witness.

By the time Esther and Albert caught up with him, Edmund was already standing on top of the rock, shouting, What a claim! Open valleys to the north, south, and west, with woods all around. A hundred and fifty acres easy!

The long walk up the slope had left Esther breathless, and her legs ached from the strain. She leaned against the cool rock and looked around at the valleys spreading out between wooded hills. God must have laid His hand here, she thought. When He sat down on the rock to admire what He’d done, He pressed His hand to the ground to steady Himself, and the mud oozed up between His fingers, leaving these valleys and the humps of woods between. Far in the distance, the twisted river lay as still and glossy as a blue satin ribbon dropped by a passing child.

Esther left the rock and wandered down the other side of the hill. The valleys were bare of trees but thick with waist-high June grass, mulleins, and milkweeds, splashes of purple vetch and orange dots of Indian paintbrush. The forest was so dark and dense that one would expect to see Pan himself cavorting about in it. Nettles, ragweed, and catnip reached up into a tangle of thorny berry bushes and grapevines, which spread into the branches of hickories, oaks, and elms. The prairie stopped short and the forest began as if God had drawn an invisible boundary that neither dared cross.

Along the edge of the woods, Esther found a footpath. She followed it far enough to see that it skirted the foot of the hill, avoiding the slope that led past the rock. Why would anyone walk so far around this beautiful hill when crossing it would be a shortcut to the slough and the river? The area was a perfect site for a homestead, an Indian village, or a fur trader’s camp. Her eyes scanned the valley, searching for the scattered remnants of a campfire, bare spots where lodges once stood, or a trapper’s abandoned shelter. But there was nothing.

Esther hurried back up the slope to the rock. Edmund and Hank stood in its shadow, discussing the merits of the site, while Albert splashed his hands in a spring at the foot of the hill near the slough.

My mind’s made up, Edmund said to her as she joined them. There’s no better site than this. He drove his heel into the ground and turned over a lump of sod. The soil is so soft I could pull the plow through it myself. We’ll have all the burning wood we need, and plenty of game, and there’s building wood in that pine grove to the north. We’ll put the cabin over there so this rock will sit right in the door yard. And Hank will help us haul our truck to the county seat to file the claim, and then come back with us to clear a road and raise the buildings. Laughing, he lifted Esther by her thick waist and swung her around until her feet flew off the ground.

Esther swallowed her apprehensions and laughed with him. If she objected to this site, he would only turn against her but not against his dream. She would have to end the tug-of-war in her head—the hope that he had chosen wisely, and the fear that he had not.

When he set her back on her feet, she folded her hands over her swollen belly and gazed at the spot where the cabin would stand, where this baby would be born, where she would probably have to live for the rest of her life.

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As the rafted headed back up the Fox River, a bald eagle carrying a struggling rabbit in its talons landed on the rock at the top of the hill.

Chapter 2

Esther stepped out of the cabin with the chamber pot and held her skirt in check against the wet grass alongside the path. It still amazed her that this land could be so wet and so dry at the same time. Fog lay over the river every morning like a white flannel blanket, and the sky was a heavy wet hand, the wind a hot moist breath. Their clothes stuck to their backs with sweat that never dried, yet the ground lay parched and cracked underfoot. How could the weeds thrive so during a drought while the corn burned up in the wind?

The August sun bulged over the hills across the river. Its vermilion rays reached through the marsh, up the hillside, and over the cabin roof to the huge boulder at the edge of the door yard. The grass wept, and the ragweed hung heavy with droplets reflecting the sun’s orange flame like miniature crystal chandeliers.

Esther emptied the pot into the privy hole and walked back to the cabin. She lifted the water bucket off the cupboard, tip-toed out, and headed for the spring. Redwing blackbirds trilled deep in the marsh, and sandhill cranes hooted. A pair of them sailed up out of the marsh, side by side in perfectly synchronized flight, their huge wings whistling as they flew over her head.

Esther dipped the bucket into the well that Edmund had built around the spring—split logs tightly fitted together so that the water filled it and dribbled over the top. She was about to turn away when she noticed a large paw print in the soft mud. As she watched, it slowly filled with water. She backed away, her scalp prickling, eyes darting about. From its hiding place at the edge of the marsh, the big cat yowled its protest; she had interrupted its morning drink.

Clutching the bucket, she hurried back up the path, water sloshing onto her skirt as she ran. When she reached the cabin, she set the pail on the stone slab outside the door and stopped to catch her breath and wait for her heart to stop pounding.

Albert’s little toy horse and wagon lay in the dirt. The marks they’d left caught her eye, and she stooped to look at the strange landscape her son had made—little roads in the dust that climbed his hand-made hills and wandered away into the weeds. Only two months, she thought, as she gazed around at the paths her own feet had carved to the spring, the privy, and the new barn. To the west, a wide swatch of flattened June grass showed where she’d dragged fallen limbs up the slope from the woods for Edmund to cut and chop.

She turned and looked east at the river and the wooded hills beyond. Several hundred miles past those hills was the home they’d left behind. Forever etched in her memory, Grandma and Grandpa Allan stood on the wide front porch of the old farmhouse, Grandma wringing her apron in her gnarled hands, Grandpa leaning stoically against the post as the wagon took their son and his family away. Farther down the road, Esther’s sister Bonnie, her husband Tom, and little sister Emily stood at the front gate, forever waving, Emily forever wiping her eyes.

Sometimes Esther watched the steamboats churning down the river, their black plumes hanging in the air long after they’d rounded the bend, and she wanted to run down the hill, crying, Wait! Take me home! But there would be no going home, no turning back. Life, and Edmund, had moved them well past the point of no return.

The bark of a fox nearby jolted Esther out of her reverie. She stepped back into the cabin. Albert lay curled on his cot, still asleep, but Edmund was beginning to stir. She crossed the small room to the lean-to, and, as she gathered an armful of wood, a fly buzzed frantically in a spider web in the corner.

Esther was glad now that Hank had come along to help raise the cabin, and she sometimes felt a twinge of guilt at her initial distrust of the strange man.

Allus put in a side door, he’d told them as he helped hoist the logs into place. Then glancing at Esther’s growing belly, he added, Some day you’ll want to add on a room, and the door’ll be there waitin’ on it. And put a door in that there gable big enough for a man to crawl through. That way, you git yourself a six-foot drift agin’ the front door, you won’t be trapped in here ’til spring.

By the time Hank was through, they had a sturdy one-room house with a puncheon floor and one glass window, and this attached lean-to.

When Esther stepped back into the cabin with the wood, Edmund was just pulling on his pants. She put a chunk into the cook stove, added tinder, and lit the fire. There’s a wild cat down by the spring, she told him.

Probably just a bobcat, he said. They don’t drink much.

Maybe not, but I don’t want to tangle with it every time I need a bucket of water.

All right, I’ll see if I can track him down, Edmund relented. Chances are he’s just passing through and won’t be back.

Esther filled the coffee pot and set it on the stove. Next thing he’ll be stealing the butter and eggs.

I said I’d take care of it, Edmund said, as if I don’t already have enough to do. It’s time you learned to shoot a gun yourself.

Never needed to shoot a gun in Ohio, she reminded him testily.

Edmund frowned. Forget Ohio. Until it gets more settled here and the game thins out, you’d better learn to shoot. Won’t be long and I’ll have to leave you home when I’m gone trading.

Esther flinched. She didn’t feel safe unless Edmund was close by, and she dreaded having to stay home while he went to the trading post at Cross Springs. The ride took most of a day, but it was her only chance to visit with other settlers and trade her butter and eggs for staples like coffee, sugar, flour, fabric, and tools.

She set their plates on the table and poured coffee. We need a dog to run off beasts like that cat and warn us when there’s danger about. I really miss old Buck.

Edmund’s thick brows puckered. Where are we going to get a dog?

Where did Will Dudley get his?

Probably brought it with him, he said between mouthfuls of fried biscuit.

Esther studied her husband’s face as he finished his eggs. He’d been clean-shaven when they started their journey but now sported the beard he’d grown on the way. She missed seeing all of the face she’d fallen in love with, the strong square jaw and firm mouth. Unlike most men, Edmund’s lips were more expressive than his eyes, which usually remained impassive. She had learned to watch his brows and his lips for clues to his thoughts.

Are we getting a dog? Albert was sitting up on his cot, his eyes bright, cheeks flushed from sleep.

I’m not promising anything, Edmund said as he pushed his chair back. I’ll look into it, that’s all. He took his musket from the rack on the wall and left the cabin.

Albert pulled off his sleeping gown. As he struggled into his overalls, Esther broke his morning egg into the frying pan. It would surprise her if he wanted a dog. He’d adjusted to their hardships with the resiliency common to young children, but he was still shy and suspicious of strangers, including strange dogs. He wouldn’t make friends with Will Dudley’s hound despite its repeated advances.

Would you like a dog? she asked as he took his place at the table.

Sure, if it was a puppy. I don’t like big dogs that knock you down.

Esther put the dirty plates into the dish pan and filled the teakettle. I found wild blackberries in the woods. After chores you can help me pick them.

Albert set his cup down and licked the milk mustache from his lip. Are they good to eat?

Very good. How would you like a blackberry pie for supper?

Is it as good as apple?

Just as good. Maybe better.

Then I guess I’d like it, Albert said as he scrambled off his chair.

Esther handed him the egg basket and picked up her milk bucket. After chores, she reminded him as she slipped her arm around his little shoulders and ushered him out the door.

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Edmund took the tin cup from its peg on the outside of the well, dipped it, and took a long drink. The water was ice-cold and delicious. Esther’s bucket of eggs and her butter crock still hung inside the well, undisturbed. Luckily, she’d scared the cat away before it discovered her cache.

He studied the soft mud where the water had flooded a set of tracks, making them larger than life. He couldn’t tell what had made them, so he followed the tracks the short distance to the creek bank where they became perfect imprints. It was a bobcat, all right; a big one. Its right front foot was missing a claw. Edmund stooped by the scar in the bank where Esther had dug out clay to chink the cabin. The cat had left a deep impression there with that front foot. Using his long blade, Edmund dug out the print and set the lump of clay up on the bank for the sun to dry. It would make a good ashtray if Esther would ever let him smoke inside the cabin.

She didn’t like him to drink liquor either, which reminded him that he had a cache of his own down by the willow tree. He followed the cat’s tracks toward the tree and then lost them in the tall grass. It had probably circled the hill and then headed into the woods to the south. There was no chance of finding him now.

Edmund pulled his jug out from under the roots of the big willow and sat down with his back against its trunk. It felt strange to sit here at sunrise instead of at sundown when he always came here for a wash after working in the dust all day. Cleanliness is next to godliness, Esther would say, and in that, Esther was as close to godliness as a body could get. It wasn’t easy to keep a cabin clean with the wind always blowing dust off the fields, but she managed it somehow. Already the puncheons were faded to white from all her sweeping and scrubbing.

Edmund tipped the jug to his mouth, then set it down. He rested his elbows over his upraised knees and glanced around at the clay bank. The slough had dropped with every rainless day until all that remained was a sluggish trickle fed by the spring. Dead marsh hay, sucked down by the receding water, clung to the banks. Just enough water left to breed mosquitoes, he thought, as he slapped one stinging his hand.

Was it the baby that made Esther so surly lately? He couldn’t remember her being this ornery when Albert was on the way. Maybe it was just the heat and drought and mosquitoes, and the loneliness.

Sometimes he wondered if he’d made the right choice, marrying Esther. When the banker’s daughter turned him down, he figured Esther would do just as well. But she’d brought nothing into the marriage except her endurance and proclivity for hard work. Her face was pretty enough, but only her husband ever saw her crowning beauty. He loved to watch her unravel that severe braid wrapped around her crown. It came apart like a hay rope and fell in shiny waves all down her back. It made his blood boil just thinking about it, so he shook the image away.

He hoped this baby was another boy, hoped for a whole family of boys, in fact, like his folks had. Of his three brothers, only Carl was still on the farm in Ohio. George and Charles had run off to California during the gold rush. He’d wanted to hit that trail, too, despite Esther’s pregnancy and the stories about Indian massacres and people and livestock starving to death crossing the plains. When news of what happened at Donner Pass reached Ohio, it convinced even him that California wasn’t such a good idea after all.

And then he’d learned that Wisconsin was opening up to homesteaders. Rich open land just waiting for the plow, woods full of game, marshes full of mink and muskrats and beavers, and rumors of riches in the ground as well—copper, lead, and zinc. If a man didn’t strike it rich here, he wasn’t trying.

Edmund smiled as he remembered the clerk at Cross Springs, the county seat, raise his eyebrows and say, Why, that’s the Hill of Many Sorrows!

Says who?

Says the Indians, and they ought to know; they been here longer’n we have. You’ll have nothing but bad luck if you settle there. If I was you, I’d look for another site.

I’m not changing my mind, Edmund had said. What’s bad luck for Indians is good luck for whites. Write it up!

Once the claim was filed, he hurried down the street to the livery stable and made a quick deal on a buckboard wagon and a large bay mare named Dolly. When he caught up with Esther at the general store, she was admiring an iron cook stove, and from the yearning look in her eye he knew that she wanted it badly. At first he thought it a foolish extravagance and a hard case to haul, but then gave in and bought it anyway to save himself the trouble of building a fireplace and an oven. He didn’t know if there were even enough rocks around the hill for a chimney.

Returning on the same road that took them from Dudley’s Landing to Cross Springs, they had come across an old couple sitting alongside the road with all their truck. He never did learn their names; he learned only that the wife, a scrawny woman with hands like claws, had sat down on the ground, refusing to budge except to go back home. For the price of steamer fare as far as the portage, he’d bought their cow and two crates of chickens.

Eventually they’d come to a rise where they could see the rock in the distance. Here’s where we start our own road, he told Hank. Straight through the woods to the homestead. With Hank on the other end of the crosscut saw, they’d cut the road in less than a week, with plenty of fresh milk and eggs to keep them going. Back then, Edmund had been grateful for all those rainless days; their truck had stayed dry, piled at the foot of the rock, while they hauled the logs back from the woods and raised the cabin and barn.

Edmund took another swig from the jug and replaced the cork. He stretched out his legs and crossed his ankles. Just beyond his boots, an ant hill shivered with the tiny red creatures. He watched them scurrying about, doing their chores. One was carrying a fly more than twice its own size. It reminded him of Esther lugging tree limbs up from the woods. Wouldn’t be long before she’d have to quit that kind of work.

Edmund glanced down the footpath along the bank of the slough. Shortly after they’d settled in, he’d ridden Dolly up that trail, just to see where it went. After winding through a mile of woods, he’d come out on the open prairie. A curl of smoke in the distance told him he was only a couple of miles from Dudley’s Landing. He should have cut a road through the woods there too, but it was too late now; Hank had moved on to God only knows where, probably guiding some other family down the river.

Edmund tucked the jug back into its hole under the willow root. The fog had burned off, and the sun winked over the trees past the edge of the marsh. He picked up his gun and walked back up the slope. When he reached the barn, Esther had just finished milking Daisy. I’ll carry that for you, he said.

Did you find the cat? she asked as they walked back to the cabin. I didn’t hear any shots.

No, I lost his trail, but it looks as if he’s gone.

What if he comes back? Is it safe to leave the butter and eggs in the well with him prowling about?

If it’ll ease your mind, I’ll cover it with some boards every night until I can get the well house built, he said as he set the milk pail inside the cabin door.

Albert looked up from his play in the door yard. We’re going to pick blackberries today, he said.

Edmund stooped beside his son. Now, where are you going to find blackberries?

In the woods. Ma said so.

Edmund smiled. She must be getting over the worries if she’d go deeper into the woods than the edge where she’d collected the wood. And it was about time she found something useful for Albert to do. If nothing else, a child can watch how a job is done. One of these days he’d set the boy on the horse and let him learn while they worked the fields. It might even help to toughen him up a bit; he was too skinny for his age and scared of his own shadow sometimes, just like his mother.

Albert shoved his toy horse along one of his little roads. Are we going to get a dog?

Would you like a dog?