Girl in a Buckskin

turkey feathers and added to their supply of nookick by parching more Indian corn in the hot ashes, sifting the ashes from the corn and beating it into a powder. She bound together birch-bark containers for their winter stores and sewed skins together to make robes for them both, for frost would soon be turning the ground white. And as penance to Eseck she practiced faithfully with her bow and arrow. Occasionally her eyes would stray to the stick he had whittled her and she would sigh heavily, for it was hard to set Eseck against Pastor Sewall in her thoughts, it was sinful and arrogant and wrong, but she loved Eseck with all her heart. If she were to think sinful thoughts she would never go to heaven. Pastor Sewall would go to heaven yet she held no warmth at all for him. What was she to do?
    In those four days the last of summer seemed to slip away from her like the early morning mists. Once Eseck had shown her the stars in Charles’ Wain and told her that to the Indians the stars were hunting a bear. All spring and summer they chased the bear, and wounded it in the autumn and that was why the leaves turned red. By winter they killed it and the snow was its fat, which melted with the coming of spring and turned into the sap in the trees. The leaves were turning red now, like the color of live coals in a dying fire, and there were other leaves as yellow as leaping flames. Each morning when Becky awoke the mountains were brighter against the cool blue sky and the heat was noon-late in coming. Autumn was here.
    When Eseck returned he was carrying the hide of a bear over his shoulders and there was bear meat wrapped in oiled skins around his waist. She stood watching him walk toward her along the beach and her eyes narrowed at the terrible scratches on his arms and the blood across his cheek. But he had caught a bear. He must have hunted it up and down the valley and across the hills but they would sleep warmly under its fur this winter.
    “I’m back,” he said, sliding his burden to the ground. “I practiced with the bow,” she told him. “Two out of three times I can hit the mark on the tree. Now let me dress your cuts.”
    He nodded and followed her into the cave, letting her pour boiling water over his arm without a wince. When the wounds were clean she dressed them with grease. “You should have taken the musket,” she told him.
    “You need the musket more than I.”
    “The bear might have killed you.”
    “She didn’t.” Hungrily he tore off a piece of cold venison and chewed it. “No corn meal?” he said, jerking his head toward the fire where usually a loaf or two baked in the ashes.
    “I made hasty pudding with the last of it.”
    He nodded. “It’s time to go to Wnahtakook and trade our skins for corn. There’ll be frost before the moon is full and the signs all point to a cold winter.”
    “Where did you go?” she asked.
    He was silent a moment. Then he said, “I wanted to find the Indian trail into the Connecticut Valley. Blue Feather said it lies to the north across the Hoosac Range. It leads the French Indians straight into the heart of the Connecticut River Valley.”
    Her eyes widened. “And did you find it, this trail the Wabenakis use?”
    “I found it.”
    “How far?”
    He looked at her steadily. “Perhaps half a day’s hard walking from here.”
    So, she thought, the hostiles were not so far away as one would think. “You did not tell me of this trail before.”
    “I tell you now,” he said.
    She thought about this without fear. “Would they be likely to come here, to the valley of the Housatunnick?” He shrugged. “There is nothing to bring them here.” Becky smiled faintly. “There is good hunting to bring them here if they grow hungry enough.”
    He glanced at her quickly, with respect in his eyes. “You are not afraid?”
    She met his glance calmly. “No, I am not afraid. But I want you to teach me more of this sign language and how to shoot straight with a bow so that I can kill a deer at twelve paces or more. ” And a man if need be, she added to herself.
    “Very well,” he said quietly. “But first I must sleep, for I’ve had none at all for two long nights.”
     
    Not even the war could dissipate Becky’s feeling of light- ? heartedness as they trudged to Wnahtakook. Across their shoulders they carried packs of skins and fur, the harvest of the summer’s hunting, and in return they would take home precious supplies for the winter. As she walked