Girl in a Buckskin

beach. The dugout was of no use with the lake still frozen over. The best place to hide was among the rushes in the inlet but it lay too far away. Something desperate was needed, and Becky began to perceive that to save their lives they would have to come close to losing them.
    Near the hill the tracks of the horses turned toward the east shore of the lake and Becky’s heart lifted, for now there was hope. Once she had mounted the hill behind the cave she let caution fly to the winds and slid down the icy slope on her buckskins.
    O’Hara was asleep. “Wake up,” she cried. “A war party—headed this way—”
    He was instantly awake. “With or without muskets?”
    “I saw none.” She snatched the tomahawk and ran to the shore. The ice—her mind kept returning to the ice and to the running water underneath and to the holes in the shallows she had chopped. It was only natural for holes to be there, there was no other way to draw water and the Indians would not wonder at them—and under the ice the water ran cold and deep.
    The daylight was fast fading into dusk, which was strongly in their favor. What Becky looked for was the stump of an old tree that rose out of the lake a few yards off shore and to the west of the cave. It was a black, ugly, tortured-looking thing and in the summer a huge snapping turtle sunned itself on its hump but now it was icebound and frozen. Stumbling toward it on her snowshoes Becky chopped a hole in the ice behind it so that the hole would be unseen from the cave. When she had done this she returned to the beach, smoothing away each track she had left behind her.
    O’Hara had dragged himself from the cave to the shore and his tracks, too, she covered. “Why not the forest?” he said, guessing what she planned.
    Becky mutely shook her head. The Indians would know they were nearby; they would know from the smoking ashes and the fresh venison in the pot, and she could never find a hiding place in the woods helping O’Hara along beside her. “No,” she said breathlessly, “we must swim for it.”
    All this had taken no more than five minutes. By now the French Indians would be coming out on the east shore but the dusk would cover them for a few more minutes. Taking O’Hara’s musket she threw it with hers into the brush and gave him a pleading glance. “It will be cold,” she said. “Have I done right? Would you rather fight them off?”
    “Fight them! T’would be no fight but a slaughter, for they’d rush us before we could reload our muskets. Come now, keep up your courage, lass.” And while she hesitated he drew himself up to the edge of the lake where the ice had been chopped away and slid headfirst into the water.
    Erasing the last sign of their footprints Becky followed. “I’ve swum to the stump many times in summer,” she said. “We’d best clasp hands.” With one last deep breath Becky dipped her head under the ice and began to swim through the water with O’Hara’s hand in hers. It might well be the last of them both, she thought, with her eyes wide open and streaming and the two of them prisoners under the thick roof of ice. But she thought it would be better than the feel of tomahawk or knife. There was a moment of panic when her breath gave out and she feared she had misjudged the direction of the stump, but then her hand came into contact with slimy roots, and a second later they emerged behind the stump, both of them sucking in air with deep breaths.
    Beside her O’Hara gasped as his hand slipped from the stump and he plunged under the ice for a moment. Then his head appeared beside her in the narrow cut she had made and they tread water, their hands tight on the stump. The icy water would at least numb the pain in his legs, Becky thought grimly, if it did not numb them forever.
    When the Indians came it was not across the ice from the east, as Becky had thought, but over the hill above the cave. It startled her until she realized they must have picked up old trails of hers that led into the fresh trail. Now they realized that only a few moments earlier she had slid down the hill in panic, and seeing them from the water she was given a grim lesson in their tactics. She saw their dark shadows separate and fan out in a long, curved line that nearly covered the hill. Then with sharp, terrifying war cries they began their charge.
    “Steady, lass,” O’Hara whispered, seeing the terror on her face.
    Becky closed her eyes to keep out the memories