Girl in a Buckskin

soon. And why not? He was no more than a wounded bird that she had taken in to care for, and like a bird he must fly away home now that his wounds were healed. But it was curious how forlorn she felt at the thought of his leaving. What would it be like, she wondered, not to find him waiting by the fire when she came back, nor to hear his gay voice teasing her. “Yes,” she said, “of course you must go.”
    “But not alone,” he said firmly. “I’ll not be leaving a lass like yourself here. Have ye no relatives, Miss Rebecca?” She shook her head. “I’m not going back, Mr. O’Hara.”
    “Now, now,” he admonished, “d’ye think I’d leave you here all by yourself—you, a white woman? Why you might be taken with fever, or break your leg out there in the woods with no one to bring you home. Indeed no. You’ll go down country with me if I have to carry you on my shoulders.” She broke out laughing. “You have excessively broad shoulders, Mr. O’Hara, but I must remind you that your underpinnings are so weak as to be wobbly.”
    “Then I’ll hold my musket at your back and order you to march.”
    “Indeed you are very masterful,” she teased, “but I know that your heart is too tender to shoot anyone. That would be a fine way to repay me for saving you once from the wolves and again from the Indians.”
    “Aye, it would.” He looked at her with troubled eyes. “Is it that you cannot go back or do not wish to, lass?”
    “I’m a runaway.”
    “Aye, that any man could guess. I’ve lived in your cave for almost eight weeks by the calendar you keep and I’ve asked few questions, but this I must ask: why do you stay here?”
    “Because I did not run away alone.”
    “That, too, I guessed,” he said, looking at her levelly. “But if it was for love, Miss Rebecca, then you have been dealt a poor hand for I see no sign of man about your camp.”
    “Love!” She looked at him in surprise. “Indeed you misunderstand. It was my brother who came with me.” He had been sure of this but was relieved to hear it from her own lips. “Then where is he?” he countered bluntly.
    She sighed. “I don’t know,” she said, staring down at her hands.
    “He’s alive?”
    “I think so. And he will come back, I know he will, because—”
    “Aye?”
    She lifted her face and stared at him defiantly. “Because he loves me. He brought me here—he cared enough to leave everything for my sake—to become a fugitive. This thing that took him away was a sickness like a fever—”
    “A fever—to leave you here defenseless?”
    She waved this aside in such a careless manner he saw her loyalty was unassailable. “I’m scarcely defenseless,” she told him. “You could not understand him as I do. Eseck is different from most—he loves the forest, you cannot wall him up in a town, he needs room. The death of—of a friend of his—stirred him up until he could not abide the long winter and the smallness of the cave. It was like a fever with him, I tell you.”
    He said drily, “I am not familiar with this type of fever. Perhaps you will enlighten me further?”
    She looked at him with anger. “Indeed I will not. I knew you would never understand. I love my brother, Mr. O’Hara.”
    O’Hara saw that he had taken the wrong tack. He said sympathetically, “Indeed you must. You are sure he is alive?”
    “I feel it. And Aupaumut and Redfoot found no signs of death.”
    “Where—how did he go?”
    “He went hunting, north of the valley.”
    O’Hara pursed his lips thoughtfully. “He could have been captured by a band of Wabenakis.” He saw her glance at him quickly and she said carelessly, “Yes, he may have been.”
    He changed the subject and began talking of his departure, and of the best trail to take, whether he should go west, over the mountains into Dutch country, or south to Connecticut. If he went south, he wondered if she would give him some message to Black Eagle so that he might pass safely through the camp, and Becky scarcely noticed that before the subject was exhausted he had extracted from her the whole story of Blue Feather’s death and a great deal of information about Eseck...
     

Chapter Eighteen
     
     
     
    In THE END BECKY PROMISED O’HARA THAT SHE WOULD go with him down the valley to Wnahtakook and remain there until the trees were green. “T’is a small promise,” he said, “but I cannot leave you here. Look about you at this desolate place, your cave empty of