Girl in a Buckskin

sitting here on the floor of an Indian wigwam, her legs tucked under her like a Mahican, when she was white and it was her people who were being snatched from their houses at night? It seemed to her that at any moment Blue Feather might pull out his knife and kill them, for was he not a cousin to the French Indians? The firelight sent strange shadows leaping across the roof of the lodge, shadows such as she had seen once before when she was a child, and the smell of pinewood was not unlike the smell of the woodbox where she had hidden. After the shadows and the fire came the war whoops—and death.
    With a stifled cry Becky leaped to her feet and ran from the lodge.
    Behind her Eseck said politely, “Such talk of war is bad for Little Doe. When she was a child the French Indians raided our village, killing our mother and father.”
    Blue Feather looked at him with interest. “Bad, very bad,” he said, shaking his head. “They harm you?”
    “They captured me.”
    Blue Feather nodded. “So that is how you speak our language and know our ways. You spend many days in the wee-ku-wuhm of my northern cousins?”
    “Five winters.”
    “That is a long time.”
    “Aye, a long time.”
    But Dawn-of-the-sky had jumped to her feet as if impatient with such talk while her friend was gone. Going outside into the black, starlit night she found Becky huddled against the wall of the wigwam, her face covered with her hands. Gently Dawn-of-the-sky pried away the fingers and smiled at Becky, her eyes full of compassion. “K-thu-whunin, I love thee,” she said softly. “We are your friends. You are Little Doe, my sister. Do not be afraid.”
    Becky understood only a few of the words but the softness of Dawn-of-the-sky’s words needed no translation. Dimly she realized how there were indeed two sides of the whittled stick, although not in quite the manner Eseck meant. She was only a girl and could not follow the reasoning of these rights and wrongs but here in this valley Pastor Sewall’s words were hollow and cruel, for surely Dawn-of-the-sky had a soul. She was the good side of the stick, shining and clean and lovely. Let the dark side remain forever in the shadows.
     
    * * *
     
    In the morning Becky and Eseck journeyed back to Shoonkeekmoonkeek with packs of com, corn meal and salt. Later Eseck would make other trips, bringing back more bushels of corn that had been set aside and saved for them. It would be a long hard winter but they had food now for many moons, and in the top of Becky’s pack lay a sliver of mirror glass and a hunting knife with a cutting edge as sharp as a sword.
     

Chapter Twelve
     
     
     
    BECKY LOOKED AROUND THE CAVE WITH CONTENTMENT. The beds were heaped with fragrant, newly-cut hemlock boughs and on the floor lay a fresh scattering of pine needles. Two fur robes were folded neatly at the bottom of each pallet and from the roof of the cave hung dried com, pumpkins, squashes and threaded blackberry and goldenrod leaves for tea. In the birch-bark pails stood roots, nuts, wild onions and stores of bear grease and wood ash. They had candlewood and rushlights for winter light, and beside the door stood the two pairs of snowshoes that Eseck had just finished making.
    There had been only a scattered snowfall as yet, a few quick, swirling flakes, scarcely enough to hide the sky, but already the cold was cruel and November scarcely begun. Ever since the storm that had overnight stripped the trees of their leaves the cold had been deepening until now a thin shell of ice encased the lake and no longer did the murmur of waves lull them to sleep at night. Now there were other noises, less pleasant: the sound of wolves quarreling over a kill, the sighing of bare limbs in the night when a savage wind tore at the trees, the rustle of rats in the woodpile outside the door.
    But inside there was warmth and coziness. The chimney of their fireplace drew uncommonly well and the fire illuminated the provisions that meant life to them for the winter ahead. And outside—Becky stood up and walked to the door. Pushing aside the barrier of hewn logs Eseck had tied together with rawhide she ventured out into the cold on her daily pilgrimage. For there in the frozen earth just beyond the cave lay the trenches Eseck had dug for the cabin of cut logs he would build in the spring. He had dug them deep and well before the ground had frozen and they lay there like a promise. When the winter was over he would bring in logs