Girl in a Buckskin

Dawn-of-the-sky and made sign talk, telling her they had not run away from the tribe to marry but were brother and sister. The girl listened meekly but when Eseck had finished she lifted shining eyes to Becky and spoke.
    “She wishes you to keep the skirt anyway.”
    “Tell her thank you,” Becky said, and while Eseck related this the two girls smiled at each other shyly.
    Back at the campfire they rolled their few possessions into bundles again and in Black Eagle’s tent they ate a hearty breakfast of venison.
    “We have gifts for you,” Black Eagle told Eseck as they left the wigwam, and they found almost the whole village lined up outside to watch them go. From his squaw Black Eagle took a stone hatchet decorated with feathers and scarlet wrappings but this time Becky did not so much as blink at the sight of an Indian tomahawk. She was learning.
    “ K-tum-he-can-oo-wuh —your hatchet,” he said. To this he added two bags of shammonon, or Indian com, to be slung across Eseck’s shoulder, and a rusty iron file.
    “ Waun-theet-Mon-nit-toow guard you,” he told them, and with bows and smiles Becky and Eseck took their leave and walked across the meadow toward the great forest that rose at its edge, leaving Wnahtakook behind.
     

Chapter Eight
     
     
     
    THEY FOUND THE LAKE AT DUSK AFTER FOLLOWING ITS outlet up the valley. It was a peaceful lake, shimmering in the half light of the sunset. After the hot green tangle of the forest it rested their eyes to stare across the water, to feel space around them and a breeze on their cheeks again.
    Eseck said, drawing air deeply into his lungs, “This is where we’ll stay.”
    The sun, setting behind the range of mountains in the west had left clouds of fiery pink and orange in the water, such colors as Becky had never seen before in her life. The light faded while they watched and the lake slowly changed into a sheet of fiat, newly polished silver. Birches and poplars hugged the shores and in the middle of the lake a small island covered with pines jutted from the water.
    “We’ll camp here tonight,” Eseck said, lowering his knapsack.
    “Is it safe at last for a fire?”
    Eseck’s eyes roamed the tops of the trees encircling the lake and he hesitated, then nodded. “But only a small one. Here, let me show you,” he said, and propping his musket against a tree he began scooping a hole in the earth, finishing it off with the sharp edge of the tomahawk. When he had made a fair-sized hole he brought dried pine needles and twigs to it and after many false tries with flint and tinder a fire was lit. The light breeze from the west sent the smoke into their eyes but kept it close to the ground.
    With a nod at the fire Eseck shouldered his musket again. “I’ll look around,” he said, and disappeared along the shore.
    By rights Becky should have felt lonesome as soon as he was gone but in truth she couldn’t. The lake did not frighten her as the forest did, giving her a lonely shut-in feeling. As she shaped corn meal into loaves her eyes could lift up to skim the flatness of the water and take delight in its coolness and the sheen of its darkening silver. She had already promised herself a bath to rid herself of the Indian red that still clung to her face, and when the corn bread was baking to one side of the fire she walked down to the water’s edge and in the shadow of a leaning birch removed her clothes and went into the lake.
    She was soaking herself in the water when she heard the gunshot across the lake. It was a sound to make the heart stand still, even knowing as she did that it was Eseck’s musket finding food for them. In the quiet valley the sound of the shot was crisp and clean-cut as the lash of a whip, until the mountains picked up the sound and sent it crashing and reverberating down the valley. Up and down the hills the echo thundered until at last it died away, leaving a bottomless silence. In the water Becky shivered and made haste to gather up her clothes and put them on.
    When Eseck returned he was carrying a buck across his shoulders, but not even the sight of a week’s food brightened Becky’s eye. “It made a fearsome noise,” she told Eseck accusingly.
    Eseck nodded. She watched him deftly skin the deer and quarter it. He tossed her two steaks and with thin lips Becky spitted them and laid them across the fire to cook.
    “I’ll make a bow in the morning,” he said suddenly, over his shoulder. “We’ll lay up a store of