Editor’s Note: This is an ongoing series which runs each Thursday morning titled the Richland Chronicles Volume 2, by author Paul Lintern. It is set in the summer of 1831 and tells the story of Richland County through the eyes of young people. This is the second in a three-book trilogy. Volume 1 was Amelia Changes Her Tune.
“Do you know what Ginseng plants look like?” Isaac asked Wolf Paw a little before dawn the next morning, as they fed the sheep and pigs and changed the bedding for the horses.
“Ginseng?”
“Yeah, do you know what it looks like?”
“Well, Grandmother says it looks like a May apple plant with horse chestnut leaves, you know, three large leaves and two small ones. I think they get little green and yellow flowers later in the summer.”
“So that would be yes, you do know what it looks like,” Isaac said.
“Except I don’t think I’ve ever seen it,” Wolf Paw replied.
“Why?”
“Because people pay a lot of money for the roots,” Isaac said. “A lot more than for squirrel scalps.”
“Grandmother says its valuable. I’ll bet she would sell it with her other herbs. She calls it the Plant of Life.”
“Then let’s go looking for it, soon as we’re done here. I heard some old fellows say to look near maple and beech trees,” Isaac said.
“Grandmother says it grows in the shade, on northern and eastern slopes,” Wolf Paw added.
“Then we know where to look. Hurry up and finish with the pigs,” Isaac said.
“Hey, why don’t you feed them like you did up in the village park? Turn around and back up,” Wolf Paw smiled.
Isaac glared.
“Very funny.”
The sun was just peeking through the trees to the east when the boys started their new hunting expedition. It had rained during the night and the temperature chilled them, after working hard in the barn where the animals and straw kept it warmer.
They had worked up a sweat and now shivered as they walked the northern side of hills, looking for maples trees. No, nothing here.
Not there, either.
No. Not there.
Nothing. Wait.
Is that? No, guess not, Isaac thought as he walked.
It was for nothing that they walked a big loop from Isaac’s home around to the Inn. Even though it was only a few hundred yards on a direct route by the road, the boys walked almost two miles along their paths before they emerged from a row of bushes that hid the path entrance and walked up to an inviting breakfast fire that his mother and aunts were preparing.
“Just in time,” Aunt Elizabeth said, as they approached. “Aunt Peggy’s biscuits can draw all sorts of creatures out of the woods in the morning.”
The boys were famished after the chores and that extra walk and just nodded as they reached for whatever food they could. Autumn had just finished her chores at the barn and the new girl was there.
Isaac mumbled something nice about her fiddle playing and then, remembering his manners, especially with his mother watching, he introduced her to Wolf Paw.
Amelia acted as though Wolf Paw was from another world and even asked Isaac if Wolf Paw could understand her. Everyone got a kick out of that, but Amelia recovered quickly, asking Wolf Paw if he got his name because of the way he wolfs down food.
Wolf Paw’s mouth was too full to respond, but everyone else responded for him with a laugh.
“She has you figured out, Wolfie,” Isaac’s mother said.
Katherine Zeiters was the only one who called him Wolfie, or was allowed to. After breakfast, the boys took Autumn and Amelia for a walk, all the way to their swimming hole at Brubaker Creek.
They toured their special attractions, including some hiding places even Autumn did not know. When they got to their swimming hole, and even though it still was a chilly morning and the rain had cooled down the creek, Isaac and Wolf Paw took off everything but their breeches and jumped in.
Autumn removed her vest and skirt and bloomers, then tied up her muslin shift to make a sort of suit and jumped in.
Amelia, apparently shy about swimming with boys, jumped in with all her clothes on. They sure do things differently in Boston, Isaac thought. It was a long walk home for Amelia, shivering in the still chilly morning and chafing from the wet clothes rubbing on her legs.
Then it was a long day for Isaac, Wolf Paw and Autumn, who were punished for letting Amelia be in that condition. They were sent to the woodpile, to cut and stack a month’s worth of cooking wood.
Isaac spoke, “That girl won’t last a week out here, if she doesn’t have enough sense to…”
“She’ll learn. She’s seen things we only dream of. She has things we only wish for,” Autumn said.
“She has ways of behaving we can only wonder about,” Wolf Paw said, and he grinned at Autumn before she could get mad.
“We should give her time; after all, she is a little wet behind the ears,” Isaac said.
“And everywhere else, too,” Wolf Paw said, and even Autumn smiled at that one.
The chopping continued all day, and the three met up with a dried out and warmed up Amelia about suppertime, as they returned to assist the guests. They apologized to Amelia for not doing better at looking out for her.
She apologized for being “a silly goose,” and for them having to cut wood all day.
“They would have found a reason to have us cut it eventually, anyway,” Isaac said.
“So where is Wolf Paw?” Amelia asked.
“Went back to his grandmother’s camp. He’ll help her in the morning then go back to his home in Upper Sandusky,” Isaac said. “I’m going to meet him in Mansfield about midday and go back with him for a few days.”
“Do you do that often?”
“A few times a year.”
“What is his home like?” Amelia asked.
“Not much different than the Inn, except smaller, and no second floor. It’s made of logs and has a fireplace, two windows and a door,” Isaac said. “Just Grandmother and him.”
“I thought all the Indians lived in cloth huts,” she said.
“Tepees? No, at least not around here. There are lots of different kinds of houses there,” Isaac said. “Just like here.”
