Girl in a Buckskin

over and looked at him. “I meant every word of it,” she said. “Our parents were murdered by such as him. Oh, what have we come to, Eseck, our only friends a village of Indians!”
    “You did not care for Dawn-of-the-sky, then?”
    She stiffened. “I do not consider her an Indian. She is only a girl, anyway.”
    “And Blue Feather?”
    Becky shivered. “He is Dawn-of-the-sky’s sun and moon, I know, but when I look at him—when I look at him I wonder how many scalps he would take if given the chance—and if one of them would be mine—”
    There was silence while Becky had time to consider her confession and Eseck continued to whittle. Suddenly Eseck said, “Look at what I have here.” Holding up the stick he showed it to her. “What do you see?”
    She blinked at the stick in surprise. “Why, t’is rough bark, black, with seams running up and down. T’is a piece of poplar wood.”
    “And now?”
    He turned the stick and showed her where he had carved the bark away, leaving the clean, white shining wood. “That’s the lovely part,” she said, sitting up and hugging her knees. “As fair as corn silk.”
    “But different? Two-sided?”
    She nodded.
    “Then remember this,” he said fiercely. “There are two sides to each right and wrong. Think you that you are God?” She stared at him in horror. “Eseck! Mind your tongue! What are you saying?”
    “Blue Feather’s people gave us corn meal and a hatchet. They were kind to us when others were not, yet you call him a savage. Blue Feather has his own gods, Blue Feather is as religious as any white man. He places stones on the cairn at the mountaintop to thank his gods for each safe trip across the mountain, he blesses his corn and prays before he goes hunting. Think you he is completely heathen?”
    “But he is an Indian,” Becky said with a fierceness to match his own. “Indians have no souls, Eseck—why, Pastor Sewall says so himself, you know that, and no more learned man could you find. Are you speaking up for the Indians, Eseck, the very people who killed our father and mother?”
    He said brutally, “It is their custom to kill adult prisoners. At least they rarely kill captive children, which is more than can be said for the white man.”
    “Their custom!” Becky’s horror increased. “Eseck, what manner of talk is this?”
    Eseck tightened his lips. “It is their custom,” he repeated. “And far kinder than to be sold as a slave to the West Indies as the white man does with his Indian captives. I would a hundred times rather be killed than to become a slave.”
    “But sometimes the Indian does not kill,” gasped Becky. “He bums and tortures and—”
    “The Wabenakis do not torture their prisoners,” Eseck said. “Nor do they bum them. It is the white man’s custom to bum people alive at the stake—”
    “But only when suspected of witchcraft,” Becky cried. “You find the white man kind? Perhaps you remember Jeremiah Boggs,” Eseck said coldly. “Do you recall how his tongue was cut out for lying? Perhaps you have forgotten how Timothy Jewett’s hand was chopped off for stealing food when he was starving to death. And I have heard from your very own lips how during the last war men brought in the heads of Indians on poles and stuck the poles in the common for all to see and throw stones at. Think you white men are so different from Indians?”
    “They murder. They come in the night—”
    Eseck laughed shortly. “They fight the only way they know how. When Indians attack white people it is called a massacre. When white people attack Indians it is called a victory. Remember the Pequots, Becky? Five hundred men, women and children burned to death by white people. And when the survivors ran screaming from their castle they were shot down like cattle.”
    Becky stared at his fury in wonder. “You speak—you speak like a renegade!”
    “Aye,” he laughed, “I speak like a renegade. I little know what I am, I tell you, but this I do know: the savages are no worse than any white man and none of us has the right of it. I have lived among both and I know. Remember that when you speak of Indians as no more than a stone to be trod upon.” And dropping the carved stick in her lap he Picked up his bow and arrows and strode from the cave.
     

Chapter Eleven
     
     
     
    ESECK WAS GONE FOUR DAYS. BECKY METICULOUSLY counted them off on her birch-bark calendar and kept busy about the cave. She made two brooms of