Girl in a Buckskin

from the forest and they would raise the walls together, propping them from the inside to keep them firmly inside the trenches. Thinking of these things Becky let herself dream a little, of the dresser Eseck would build, and the wooden bottle he would carve, and how she would arrange the trenches and spoons and bottle on top of the dresser for Dawn-of-the-sky to see when she came to visit, and how in the spring she would plant Indian corn on the hill so that next winter the loft would be full of corn. She could think of how even Mrs. Leggett would be surprised if that great lady were given the gift to see them; not now, in their drab hole, Becky amended hastily, but next year in her own home with herself the mistress of it and the corn marching in straight rows across the hill.
    Hearing Eseck shout to her from the point Becky stepped down to the frozen shore and waved at him. He had been gone overnight to Wnahtakook to bring back the last sack of corn that was due them. She saw his figure dark against the gray ice as he rounded the point and then merged with the black trees along the shore. A cold wind flicked at her buckskins as she waited for him. She was not sorry she had remained at camp. They had decided it was best that one of them stay and guard the cave, but had she gone she would not have seen Dawn-of-the-sky. Dawn-of-the-sky was expecting a child now, and lived alone in a lodge where she was allowed to see almost no one or to touch even the hands that brought her food.
    “What news do you bring?” she called out when Eseck was in hailing distance.
    He lowered his pack to the beach and straightened. “You are all right?”
    “Of course. Are the hunters home yet from the big hunt? Is Dawn-of-the-sky well?”
    “Blue Feather is not back yet. Dawn-of-the-sky is well,” he said briefly.
    “But he is late in coming back, isn’t he? It will soon be two moons—two months,” she added hastily, lest she fall into Eseck’s manner of speech.
    “Aye, they are late but they must hunt enough meat for the whole village. A single buck is small game for forty mouths.”
    “Come in and warm yourself,” she said. “There is hotchpot in the kettle and corn bread still in the ashes.” She helped him carry the sack to the cave, and going in filled his trencher with meat. “What news of the war?” she asked.
    He shrugged. “Very little. But let us not talk of war. Ill play you a game of checkers when I’ve eaten.”
    “Oh, wonderful,” she cried, and taking her knife from her belt she cut kernels of whole corn from one of the cobs he had brought, and laid them in a pile for the game.
    “There’ll be snow before sunrise,” Eseck said, and pushing his trencher aside scooped up a handful of corn and prepared to win the game from her.
    Eseck was right: there was snow on the ground at sunrise and the mountains were scarcely perceptible against the bleached white sky. It snowed all day and the next, until they had to push the snow from the mouth of the cave to go outside. And when at last it stopped snowing the winds came, savage, shrieking, icy winds that heaped the snow in piles as high as Eseck, and when the winds ceased the cold turned cruel and the ice on the lake froze so thick it took half a day for Eseck to cut a hole for water. Soon there would be no more running water at all and they would have to melt the snow over the fire. The cave began to seem very small to Becky but she occupied herself as well as she could: it was never uncomfortable for the earth kept them warm and the kettle over the fire was always steaming, but when the door was opened the cold swept in and the draft would send smoke into their eyes until they were inflamed and raw.
    The good days were the days when a feeble sun shone for a few hours across the snow and the bitter winds abated. Then Eseck would take her hunting, schooling her over and over again in finding her way and covering her tracks. Becky grew accustomed to sliding along on snowshoes, the hooded fur cape billowing behind her, a bow in one hand, the quiver at her shoulder and a hemlock branch in her other hand to brush away the fine marks they left behind them. But there were deer. This part of the valley the Indians called Poontoosuck, meaning “haunt of the winter deer,” Eseck said, and it was not misnamed. At a nearby lake the Mahicans called Onota they found a place where the deer yarded under the frozen birches and one day Becky killed one at fifteen paces.
    Her