Girl in a Buckskin

walked self-consciously from the cave.
    But Becky did not care what Eseck thought. In womanlike fashion she looked only at Dawn-of-the-sky, who examined her critically from head to foot and then nodded.
    “She says to tell you,” Eseck translated, “that in your new clothes you have the color and look of a young doe in the summertime, for the skins and your hair are the same. She says that now you are truly Little Doe. What she means,” Eseck added lightly, “is that you look fine.” Full of contentment, Becky nodded and went in to cut up her tattered old clothes for tinder.
     

Chapter Ten
     
     
     
    THE TIME HAD COME, ESECK SAID ONE MORNING, WHEN she too must learn the ways of the forest. It was not enough for her to stay close to the hearth and cook the meat he brought in; she, too, must bring in meat.
    Becky looked at him in surprise. The idea pleased and yet alarmed her. It was a woman’s job to stay at home and cook for a man and mend his clothes and yet it had been apparent for some time that Eseck far outdistanced her in both of these matters. With Dawn-of-the-sky gone it was Eseck who showed her how to lace his winter buckskins and it was Eseck who had made them each two pairs of moccasins.
    “But I have plenty to do,” she said with spirit, lest he think her of no use at all. “There’s almost enough wood ash and fat for soapmaking and with what’s left of the grease I thought to make rushlights for the winter, since I’ve naught to spin wicks for candles. And the blackberries are ripe on the hill—”
    Eseck held up his hand. “No,” he said simply, and Becky stopped talking.
    She watched him take up his musket and powder horn, handing her his bow and the quiver of arrows. Pouring nookick into his small leather pouch he tied it to his belt, glanced around and nodded to her to follow. This time they walked up the hill into the deep woods and soon they had lost the lake behind them.
    And so it began, the endless schooling. “There is an Indian trail here,” he would say, drawing her a map in the earth. “It winds thus, into the valley. If ever one must make haste one can use this trail but only with caution because you and I are white people. Now lead me to the trail.”
    And taking her sights from the sun Becky would attempt to lead him to the trail she had never seen and which was no more than a hairline winding through the forest of trees.
    Or Eseck would simply walk away from her, bidding her find him, and she would plunge through the woods looking for him until her head reeled and she would call out to him in panic and he would appear from behind a bush not a yard , away from her.
    They would find the trail of deer and follow it, spending tedious hours lying on their stomachs in the grass until the buck or the doe showed itself and an arrow clove the air to send the deer leaping away into the brush again. This Becky did not like; it seemed to her that the limpid eyes of the , deer, so reproachful and sorrowing, were directed straight at her and that she would rather go hungry than wound him.
    “You must learn then to do what the Indian does,” Eseck told her. “No Indian would think of killing a friend of the forest without explaining to the animal why it is done.” I “Truly?” said Becky, surprised. “Then what would I say if ever I killed a deer?”
    Eseck said gravely, “You would ask him not to be angry ; with you, that you do not kill him for sport or because you hate him but because you need his skins and his flesh for clothing and food. You would tell him that the Great Spirit , made both of you but gave you cunning as well. Then you I would break the arrow that killed him and throw it away as a sacrifice.”
    Becky nodded thoughtfully. “You—do you do this?” I “Of course not,” Eseck said quickly, turning away. “I I am a white man.”
    Once they had meat to cook at their campfire Eseck gave his bow and arrow to Becky and sent her out to seek an- I other, but it was of no avail: try as Becky might her arrow ended in the trunk of a tree and the most she saw of any deer was its white tail disappearing into the woods. “I cannot handle the thing,” she told Eseck, looking with disdain at his double bow. “It springs from my hand.”
    “Very well,” Eseck said quietly, “I will make you a smaller bow.” And make one he did, so that Becky had no excuse but her own lack of skill.
    Sitting around the campfire at night Eseck told her many Indian stories.