Girl in a Buckskin

Sabbath and I would imagine them down country walking to church, and in my mind I could see the brass-bound hourglass by the pulpit and the tithing-man walking about the pews with his long stick waking up those who napped. I would think of these things and when Eseck was gone I would sing a hymn and recite my catechism and say a prayer. But then I began to wonder. Is it truly the Sabbath today, or might it not be Monday, even Tuesday, and them not in church at all? And although it is admirable to sing a hymn and say a prayer on weekdays, still I somehow felt—cheated.”
    “Because you were pretending to be there with them,” he said, nodding his head.
    She looked at him gratefully. “Are you an educated man, Mr. O’Hara?”
    “I can read and write if that is what you mean,” he said ruefully. “Why do you ask, lass?”
    “Because you seem to know so much.”
    He laughed heartily. “Bless you, I know only what I see with my eyes and feel with my heart, which is the way of any man.”
    “Then you must have a bigger heart than most. How long have you been gone from Ireland?”
    “I?” He looked at her with amusement, this girl who asked questions without conscience yet would answer none herself. “I came over eight years ago. Sixteen I was then. Ireland is no place for the young these days, with the English grinding the fair country under its heel. I thought to make my fortune in the Dutch colonies but the fates brought me here instead, and while I’ve made no fortune, an Irishman loves the land and I’ve land enough to satisfy my soul.”
    “Then you are indeed fortunate,” she said, and rising went to stir their dinner in the pot.
    “Venison again?” he said, with a smile.
    “No—rabbit stew tonight,” she said, and smiled back at him, feeling wonderfully human and civilized again from so much talk. Ah, but speech was a marvelous gift, she was thinking, when a body had known only silence for so many days.
     
    There were many words exchanged now in the cave, for O’Hara did not measure his speech as Eseck had done. He told her wild, dark stories of Ireland, he talked of his farm in New Hampshire and in return Becky told him stories of the Indians that her brother had related, of Shoonkeek and Moonkeek, of Man-ni-to, the good spirit, and Mton-toow, the evil spirit. But she did not tell him of Eseck.
    He teased her often of the breeches she had ruined when she set his leg and one day she measured him for a new pair. “Anything will do,” he said, smiling. “Rabbit fur, rawhide, anything to make a man decent. I’m thinking when I can walk these tatters of mine will no longer hold together.”
    “Nor will they,” she said, regarding them with dismay. “But I shall have to kill a buck for new ones, for there’s nothing here to fit you.”
    “You’ll live to rue the day you sliced them up so cheerfully,” he said.
    “T’was your life or your breeches,” she reminded him.
    “The Lord deliver me from a woman with a frank tongue!”
    “Never mind, if the sun comes up tomorrow I will go hunting and you will have your skins,” she promised, and the next day when the sun came out to dazzle the ice and snow she remembered her promise and took down the double bow and filled her quiver with arrows.
    Dragging himself to the edge of the cave O’Hara said over his shoulder, “With many more suns like this the ice will soon be breaking up—and a good sound it will be.”
    “Aye, we’ve had enough of winter,” she admitted. “But see where I’ve chopped away the ice along the shallows—-there’s running water underneath and the ice is no thicker than my arm.”
    “I wish I might hunt with you,” he said wistfully, staring out at the lake. “This sitting tires me more than a day’s plowing.”
    “Think instead of a good Irish fairy story for me,” Becky told him. “I’ll look for one when I come back.” She helped him hobble back into the cave again, and brought him his musket and powder horn and plenty of wood for whittling. “What will it be today?” she asked.
    “Something for your home,” he told her gravely. “A spoon? A bottle?”
    She turned away abruptly. “I’ve always wished for a bottle,” she said with a catch in her throat, remembering how Eseck had promised to whittle her one.
    “Then a bottle it will be,” he said, and wetting his finger ran it along the edge of his Barlow jackknife.
    Becky watched him a moment, glad at seeing color in his face and