Girl in a Buckskin

behind Eseck, bent almost double under her burden, Becky’s mind ran over what they needed: corn and salt, of course—com for bread and salt for preserving their meat—but Becky had a secret hankering for a piece of mirror glass and a hunting knife of her own. These the Mahicans might have if they had lately traded down country or with the Dutch across the mountains, and she thought of how some of their own furs and skins would travel even farther than Wnahtakook in return for treasures the Indians wanted, like beads and vermilion and tobacco and bolts of scarlet or gold cloth.
    At Wnahtakook they found no one idle. There were women picking late corn in the fields, women husking it in front of their lodges, women parboiling it in huge iron kettles before the fire, while down near the river groups were pounding the kernels into meal with mortars and rock, then sifting it over and over again through loosely woven baskets. Near the council house a new lodge was being built of saplings covered with bark and skins. “It’s for the corn dance,” Eseck said as they passed it. “They build a Great House especially for the feast.”
    “And tear it down again?”
    “Aye.”
    “What waste,” said Becky.
    “You want a wigwam such as this?”
    “No,” Becky said firmly, “I want a cabin of cut logs.”
    “You and your cabin of cut logs,” said Eseck, and stopped, because Black Eagle had emerged from the council house to begin the polite and intricate ritual of greeting them. As the men spoke Becky stood just behind Eseck, as a squaw should, and kept her head low but her eyes on the encampment so that she might look for Dawn-of-the-sky.
    “I will go and smoke a pipe with Black Eagle,” Eseck told her.
    She turned and tugged at his shirt timidly. “If you are going to talk trade now, Eseck, do you think—a hand mirror, or perhaps a hunting knife?”
    He nodded gravely. “I will see what I can do.”
    “And perhaps a few pumpkins. There is no waste to them. The shells we can use as gourds and I have a yearning for pumpkin bread.”
    “Aye.” He turned and went into the council house leaving Becky alone.
    Wandering about by herself Becky soon found Dawn-of-the-sky down near the river and they greeted each other like old friends. Then Dawn-of-the-sky carried her off to her mother-in-law’s lodge to display her and her mother-in-law gave them balls of popped corn to nibble on and there was a great deal of exclaiming over Becky’s yellow hair. Blue Feather was out hunting with the other hunters but he was expected home that night, and there was already a feast being prepared to which Becky and Eseck were at once invited.
    That night they sat down in Blue Feather’s lodge and ate of venison, wild turkey, succotash, dried pumpkins and ears of roasted corn. The talk was mostly of war. Blue Feather and Aupaumut had gone hunting in the mountains to the west, where they had encountered a solitary trapper who had lately visited Dorp Schenectady and had news of terrible fighting. In August, only two moons after the French Indians had assured the Long Knives they would remain at peace, they had made raids up and down the coast of Maine from Wells to Falmouth. It was said that a hundred and thirty people had been captured or killed and it was rumored that Maine was lost to the Canadians. New Hampshire had suffered as well. It was said that Governor Dudley was making up an army to go out and rout the enemy but that help was slow in coming from the other colonies.
    “What do you say of Deerfield?” Becky asked, having caught only a word here and there. “Twice you spoke of Deerfield in the Connecticut Valley.”
    Eseck said patiently, “Some Mohawks lately in Canada have reported to Colonel Schuyler in Albany that an attack on Deerfield is being planned.”
    Becky gasped. “And do they know at Deerfield?”
    “Aye, they are well warned,” Eseck told her. “There’ll be sentries posted aplenty you may be sure, and reinforcements sent.”
    Becky tried to shake off her feeling of dread and to think of something else, but listening her blood had run cold, for of what use were sentries when Indians came and went like shadows in the night? She thought of them in Deerfield crowded together in the blockade, fearful of each sunset, never daring to go out and work their fields lest Indians be watching from the forest. And thinking this a thousand memories rushed to her mind and she felt afraid. How did she come to be