Girl in a Buckskin

strength growing back in his body again. Slinging her bow across her shoulder she said, “I’ll be back,” and went outside into the sparkling cold air. Its freshness made her feel clean, and the realization that spring must already be moving northward gave a lift to her spirits. By rights the snow should be melting by now and green things pushing their way up through the earth, for it was March, almost April, but the cold was a stubborn thing, gripping the earth like a wild beast and freezing every night what the daylight sun had thawed. It was a merry game all right, but someday the cold would lose and there would be no one sorry to see the end of it.
    At the beach Becky paused a moment to tighten her snow-shoes and consider where to go. Usually she went south down the valley to hunt, or west into the mountains, but deer had grown scarce in those directions for Black Eagle’s hunters roamed these woods. Remembering a deer trail she had seen when she went north to rescue O’Hara Becky shouldered Eseck’s musket and set out to look for it again.
    All day long Becky walked the north of the valley. Late in the afternoon she tracked down her kill and kneeling over the buck said softly, “Do please forgive me but I need your meat for food and your skins for O’Hara’s breeches.” Then breaking the arrow in two she buried it in the snow and deftly skinned and quartered the deer, fastening its hide and the meat in packages around her waist.
    She was on her way back to the cave when her ear picked up the sound of running deer. Hesitating, Becky saw half a dozen deer race silently across the clearing ahead and take to the woods a quarter of a mile away from her. She stood watching in amazement, never having seen such a sight before. But their panic could mean only one thing, and Becky hastily looked for cover. She had no sooner lain down between two closely-knit trees than she saw the reason for the herd’s flight. Not many yards west of her a thicket stirred in spite of there being no wind, and an Indian stole forward wearing snowshoes and a thickly-beaded jacket and leggings. He carried a knife ready in his hand and his bow slung over his shoulder so that Becky guessed he was trailing one of the herd that he had already wounded. Seeing him walk to the clearing Becky’s first instinct was to call to him, thinking him a Mahican in spite of his rich clothes, but an inborn caution made her hesitate. She watched him sprint across the clearing and disappear into the woods and she sat up, puzzled.
    A moment later she heard the tread of horses. Scarcely believing her ears she lay down again, wriggling deeper into the snow so that all but her head and shoulders were covered. From between the trees twelve horses rode out of the forest in single file, all but one of them mounted by an Indian wearing grotesque paint on his face. They passed not ten yards from Becky and her blood chilled as she peered from behind the tree and recognized their war paint and the feathers fluttering from their coupsticks.
    Wabenakis, she thought in horror, and put her head down.
    Without speaking the French Indians passed from her sight, almost as silent as the forest itself, while Becky lay too frightened to move. The scarcity of game must have led them into the valley—but Shoonkeekmoonkeek lay dead ahead of them and she had grown increasingly careless about leaving signs. Should they keep going they might see the smoke from the cave, and if they encountered none of her trails and did not see the smoke against the sky there were still the drying frames Eseck had hung between the trees and the snow scooped away from the mouth of the cave and the water pail standing beside the door—and O’Hara inside, unable to hobble more than a few paces on his mending leg.
    Was he to die in that cave like a treed squirrel, she wondered?
    With a little whimper Becky stood up, shaking the snow from her furs. There would be only minutes left to hide the man—if she could reach him. There was need for stealth but more need for speed, for the Indians lay between her and O’Hara. The swiftest way was to follow in their tracks and pray they swerved away from the hill atop the cave.
    As she walked her mind churned with plans, none of them good. She might pull the cave down about their heads, burying herself and O’Hara until danger passed, but she could never disguise the fact that a cave had existed, for there were footprints around the door and along the