



Produced by David Widger






THE COBBLER IN THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN

From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899

By Mary Hartwell Catherwood


Early in the Mackinac summer Owen Cunning took his shoemaker's bench and
all his belongings to that open cavern on the beach called the Devil's
Kitchen, which was said to derive its name from former practices of
the Indians. They roasted prisoners there. The inner rock retained old
smoke-stains.

Though appearing a mere hole in the cliff to passing canoe-men, the
Devil's Kitchen was really as large as a small cabin, rising at least
seven feet from a floor which sloped down towards the water. Overhead,
through an opening which admitted his body, Owen could reach a natural
attic, just large enough for his bed if he contented himself with
blankets. And an Irishman prided himself on being tough as any French
voyageur who slept blanketed on snow in the winter wilderness.

The rock was full of pockets, enclosing pebbles and fragments. By
knocking out the contents of these, Owen made cupboards for his food. As
for clothes, what Mackinac-Islander of the working-class, in those days
of the Fur Company's prosperity, needed more than he had on? When his
clothes wore out, Owen could go to the traders' and buy more. He washed
his other shirt in the lake at his feet, and hung it on the cedars to
dry by his door. Warm evenings, when the sun had soaked itself in
limpid ripples until its crimson spread through them afar, Owen stripped
himself and went bathing, with strong snorts of enjoyment as he rose
from his plunge. The narrow lake rim was littered with fragments which
had once filled the cavern. Two large pieces afforded him a table and a
seat for his visitors.

Owen had a choice of water for his drinking. Not thirty feet away on his
right a spring burst from the cliff and gushed through its little pool
down the beach. It was cold and delicious.

In the east side of the Kitchen was a natural tiny fireplace a couple
of feet high, screened by cedar foliage from the lake wind. Here Owen
cooked his meals, and the smoke was generally carried out from his
flueless hearth. The straits were then full of fish, and he had not far
to throw his lines to reach deep water.

Dependent on the patronage of Mackinac village, the Irishman had chosen
the very shop which would draw notice upon himself. His customers
tramped out to him along a rough beach under the heights, which helped
to wear away the foot-gear Owen mended. They stood grinning amiably at
his snug quarters. It was told as far as Drummond Island and the Sault
that a cobbler lived in the Devil's Kitchen on Mackinac.

He was a happy fellow, his clean Irish skin growing rosier in air pure
as the air of mid-ocean. The lake spread in variegated copper lights
almost at his feet. He did not like Mackinac village in summer, when the
engages were all back, and Indians camped tribes strong on the beach, to
receive their money from the government. French and savages shouldered
one another, the multitude of them making a great hubbub and a gay show
of clothes like a fair. Every voyageur was sparring with every other
voyageur. A challenge by the poke of a fist, and lo! a ring is formed
and two are fighting. The whipped one gets up, shakes hands with
his conqueror, and off they go to drink together. Owen despised such
fighting. His way was to take a club and break heads, and see some
blood run on the ground. It was better for him to dwell alone than to be
stirred up and left unsatisfied.

It was late in the afternoon, and the fresh smell of the water cheered
him as he sat stitching on a pair of deer-hide shoes for one Leon
Baudette, an engage, who was homesick for Montreal. The lowering sun
smote an hour-glass of light across the strait which separated him from
St. Ignace on the north shore, the old Jesuit station. Mother-of-pearl
clouds hung over the southern mainland, and the wash of the lake, which
was as pleasant as silence itself, diverted his mind from a distant
thump of Indian drums. He knew how lazy, naked warriors lay in their
lodges, bumping a mallet on stretched deer-hide and droning barbarous
monotones while they kicked their heels in air. If he despised anything
more than the way the French diverted themselves, it was the way the
Indians diverted themselves.

Without a sound there came into Owen's view on the right an Indian girl.
He was at first taken by surprise at her coming over the moss of the
spring. The shaggy cliff, clothed, like the top of his cave, with
cedars, white birch, and pine, afforded no path to the beach in that
direction. All his clients approached by the lake margin at the left.

Then he noticed it was Blackbird, a Sac girl, who had been pointed out
to his critical eye the previous summer as a beauty. Owen admitted she
was not bad-looking for a squaw. Her burnished hair, which had got her
the name, was drawn down to cheeks where copper and vermilion infused
the skin with a wonderful sunset tint. She was neatly and precisely
dressed in the woman's skirt and jacket of her tribe, even her moccasins
showing no trace of the scramble she must have had down some secret
cliff descent in order to approach the cobbler unseen.

He greeted her with the contemptuous affability which an Irishman
bestows upon a heathen. Blackbird was probably a good communicant of
some wilderness mission, but this brought her no nearer to a son of
Ireland.

"Good-day to the quane! And what may she be wanting the day?"

Blackbird's eyes, without the snake-restlessness of her race, dwelt
unmoving upon him. Owen surmised she could not understand his or any
other kind of English, being accustomed to no tongue but her own, except
the French which the engages talked in their winter camps. She stood
upright as a pine without answering.

It flashed through him that there might be trouble in the village; and
Blackbird, having regard for him, as we think it possible any human
being may have for us, was there to bid him escape. With coldness
around the roots of his hair, he remembered the massacre at Fort
Michilimackinac--a spot almost in sight across the strait, where south
shore approaches north shore at the mouth of Lake Michigan. He laid down
his boot. His lips dropped apart, and with a hush of the sound--if such
a sound can be hushed--he imitated the Indian war-whoop.

Blackbird did not smile at the uncanny screech, but she relaxed her face
in stoic amusement, relieving Owen's tense breathing. There was no
plot. The tribes merely intended to draw their money, get as drunk
as possible, and depart in peace at the end of the month with various
outfits to winter posts.

"Begorra, but that was a narrow escape!" sighed Owen, wiping his
forehead on his sleeve. He was able to detect the deference that
Blackbird paid him by this visit. He sat on his bench in the Kitchen,
a sunny idol in a shrine, indifferent to the effect his background gave
him.

His mouth puckered. He put up his leather stained hand coyly, and
motioned her unmoving figure back.

"Ah, go 'way! Wasn't it to escape you and the likes of you that I made
me retrate to the shore? Nayther white, full haythen, half, nor quarther
nade apply. To come makin' the big eyes at me, and the post swarmin' wid
thim that do be ready to marry on any woman at the droppin' of the hat!"

Mobile blue water with ripple and wash made a background for the Indian
girl's dense repose. She could by lifting her eyes see the pock-marked
front of Owen's Kitchen, and gnarled roots like exposed ribs in the
shaggy heights above. But she kept her eyes lowered; and Owen stuck his
feet under his bench, sensitive to defects in his foot-wear, which an
artist skilled in making and mending moccasins could detect.

Blackbird moved forward and laid a shining dot on the stone he used as
his table; then, without a word, she turned and disappeared the way she
came, over the moss of the spring rivulet.

Owen left his bench and craned after her. He did not hear a pebble roll
on the stony beach or a twig snap among foliage.

"Begorra, it's the wings of a say-gull!" said Owen, and he took up her
offering. It was a tiny gold coin. Mackinac was full of gold the month
the Indians were paid. It came in kegs from Washington, under the escort
of soldiers, to the United States Agency, and was weighed out to each
red heir despoiled of land by white conquest, in his due proportion,
and immediately grasped from the improvident by merchants, for a little
pork, a little whiskey, a little calico. But this was an old coin with
a hole in it; a jewel worn suspended from neck or ear; the precious
trinket of a girl. On one side was rudely scratched the outline of a
bird.

"Begorra!" said Owen. He hid it in one of the rock pockets, a trust in a
savings-bank, and sat down again to work, trying to discover Blackbird's
object in offering tribute to him.

About sunset he lighted a fire in his low grate to cook his supper, and
put the finished boots in a remote corner of the cave until he
should get his pay. As he expected, Leon Baudette appeared, picking a
barefooted way along the beach, with many complimentary greetings. The
wary cobbler stood between the boots and his client, and responded with
open cordiality. A voyageur who gave flesh and bone and sometimes life
itself for a hundred dollars a year, and drank that hundred dollars up
during his month of semi-civilization on Mackinac, seldom had much about
him with which to pay for his necessary mending.

Leon Baudette swore at the price, being a discontented engage. But the
foot-wear he was obliged to have, being secretly determined to desert
to Canada before the boats went out. You may see his name marked as a
deserter in the Fur Company's books at Mackinac Island. So, reluctantly
counting out the money, he put on his shoes and crossed his legs to
smoke and chat, occupying the visitor's seat. Owen put his kettle to
boil, and sat down also to enjoy society; for why should man be hurried?

He learned how many fights had been fought that day; how many bales
of furs were packed in the Company's yard; that Etienne St. Martin was
trying to ship with the Northern instead of the Illinois Brigade,
on account of a grudge against Charle' Charette. He learned that the
Indians were having snake and medicine dances to cure a consumptive
chief. And, to his surprise, he learned that he was considered a
medicine-man among the tribes, on account of his living unmolested in
the Devil's Kitchen.

"O oui," declared Leon. "You de wizard. You only play you mend de shoe;
but, by gar, you make de poor voyageur pay de same like it