Girl in a Buckskin

Seeing O’Hara still asleep she got to her feet and hobbled up and down the beach until the terrifying numbness of her legs began to go away. Then with great care she inched her way back to the cave to see what the Indians had left them.
    She found their muskets still hidden in the brush where they had been tossed. Eseck’s extra store of powder remained untouched behind a stone in the chimney but there was nothing else left to them except O’Hara’s knapsack which lay across the hearthstones but had only been scorched.
    But they had weapons again, and enough powder to use them if the Indians should return. With a lighter heart Becky walked back to O’Hara and found him sitting up massaging his legs. “Look,” she cried, waving the rifles, “they did not find them!”
    “Praise be,” said O’Hara, and taking his musket ran his hands over the barrel. “She’s in good shape,” he said. “A bit of cleaning and she’ll do. Let me see yours.”
    She watched him inspect Eseck’s musket, thinking how good it was to be alive this morning. She would not have given a shilling for their chances of survival last night but here they were safe and sound. “You’re right, Mr. O’Hara,” she said happily, “t’is a beautiful world. The snow, the ice, the sun, the dawn—we came so close to losing them.”
    O’Hara glanced at her with a twinkle. “You’ve saved my life twice now, lass. Who taught you to think like an Indian?”
    “My brother.”
    “The one who was captured by such as they?”
    “Aye,” she said, sobering. “By such as they.”
    There was no breakfast and there would be no dinner for them, either, unless they could catch it with their bare hands or club it to death or dig it from the frozen ground. While Becky tried in vain to spear a fish through the ice with her hunting knife tied to a stick O’Hara set out to make a clumsy crutch, padding it with his tunic. When he had finished Becky helped him across the ice to the island, for this, said O’Hara, was the only safe place to camp. Hidden by the screening of trees the two of them could easily keep watch against the Indians’ return, and if they did return there would be no chance of a surprise attack, not when the redskins must first cross a mile of frozen white ice to reach them.
    On the island they built two crude lean-tos, covering over the roofs with birch bark, and having no blankets Becky gathered evergreens to lie on. O’Hara would not let her return to the cave again. “Nor will I have you heading north to see where the Injuns have gone,” he said sternly. “For all ye know they may have camped on the other side of the hill and you’d walk right into their arms. Ye’ll not go risking your life again.”
    And so they lived as if the Indians had gone no farther than beyond the hill. They made a fire only at night, well hidden in a hole, and they did much of their sleeping by day, taking turns at keeping watch. Once every night, with O’Hara covering her with his musket, Becky crept across to the mainland and set snares, then crawled back across the ice carrying whatever meat had been caught the day before. They were cold and always hungry but O’Hara had begun carving a new bow for her and Becky sharpened pieces of flint for arrow tips. When eight days had passed and they were almost famished, having eaten nothing but roots and an occasional rabbit, Becky found a deer caught in one of the snares and they were so starved they ate the meat only half-cooked.
    But once they had the deer they had also a drawstring for the bow and enough bone for many arrows, and again Becky could start work on breeches for O’Hara.
    Slowly the ice was thawing and on the hill patches of brown showed here and there in the snow like worn spots. One day a harsh wind blew the burden of snow from the trees and that same night when Becky was on watch she was startled by the sound of the ice cracking and splintering in the lake. In the morning O’Hara stood beside her and they looked out at huge, jagged pieces of ice moving sluggishly past them. “If we don’t leave the island soon we’ll have to swim,” O’Hara said, “and I’ve had enough of wetness.” She looked up at him quickly. “I’ll go and bring back the dugout.”
    He shook his head, smiling. “No, lass, it’s not what I mean. Spring’s coming and I can walk tolerably well now with a crutch or a cane.”
    She looked away, not wanting to meet his eyes. So he would be leaving