Girl in a Buckskin

stores, your deerskins gone, the kettle stolen. You need time to put color back in your cheeks and meat on your bones. If Dawn-of-the-sky is your friend she, too, will need you.”
    “It is true I would like to see Dawn-of-the-sky again,” Becky conceded wistfully. “Her baby will have been born and she will no longer be living separated from the others.”
    “And you will stay a while?”
    Becky nodded. “I will stay a while.”
    On a sparkling day in April she and O’Hara set out for Wnahtakook, arriving just as the sun was setting behind the hills. The Indian encampment had come to life again after the long harsh winter. Spears and arrows were being sharpened for the great spring hunt, which would take the men into the mountains for two moons hunting moose and beaver and deer. A great many had already left to set up a camp east of the river for maple-sugaring. The Indians were pleased with O’Hara and remarked at his size. They promptly named him Three Legs because of the cane he carried and Black Eagle promised him a scout on the morrow to escort him safely to the edge of the valley.
    While O’Hara sat and smoked a pipe with the woh-weet-quau-pe-cha in the council house Becky hurried eagerly to Dawn-of-the-sky’s lodge. She found her friend kneading corn meal in her wigwam with the baby strapped to her back on a board.
    “It has been born,” Becky cried.
    “His name is Blue Feather,” Dawn-of-the-sky told her gravely. “He is eleven suns old.”
    “ Wnis-soo ,” Becky said in a hushed voice. “He is beautiful!”
    Dawn-of-the-sky looked at the child with sad eyes. “Another Blue Feather will roam the forest hunting deer. That is all I know.”
    Becky hesitated. “Do you blame the Long Knives so much?”
    Dawn-of-the-sky shook her head. “I blame no one,” she said quietly. “But the sun no longer shines in this lodge.” Later Black Eagle said to Becky, “All is not well with Dawn-of-the-sky. Her spirit still cries out in mourning for her man.”
    “She’s terribly thin,” Becky told him indignantly.
    Black Eagle shrugged. “It has been a hard winter here. It takes many deer to keep the village in meat. The meat sent to Dawn-of-the-sky’s wee-ku-wuhm is not eaten.”
    “Then she is sick?”
    “She is sick with grief.”
    Becky hesitated. “I wonder—I wonder if she might go back with me to Shoonkeekmoonkeek when I go. She is my cousin, isn’t she? Nduh-whu-nuw. One deer cannot feed your village for a day but one deer will keep two people in meat for a week.”
    Black Eagle smiled. “You are indeed a cousin to her, Little Doe. I will speak to my woh-weet-quau-pe-cha and tell you what they say.”
    “Thank you,” Becky said gravely. “And have you heard anything of Indian-with-the-white-scalp?”
    She had caught him unawares and for a moment a very odd expression shone in Black Eagle’s eyes. “Nothing,” he said quickly, dropping his glance to the ground. “Nothing at all, Little Doe.”
    But she was surprised, having asked of Eseck only as a formality, thinking that if the faintest breath of news reached his ears a runner would have been dispatched to Shoonkeek-moonkeek at once to tell her. Now she was not so sure. “You have not even heard a whisper on the wind?” she asked, searching his face intently.
    Black Eagle’s face was blank now. “Nothing, daughter,” he said.
    She wanted to tell him that she did not believe him, but it would be a terrible breach of etiquette and he was her friend. Indeed, the only friends she now possessed were here at Wnahtakook and when O’Hara left the next day her friends would all be Mahicans. She thought ruefully of Mrs. Leggett; would that lady be surprised, after all, if she were given the power to see her? Once Becky had dreamed of a cabin of cut logs and a field of corn behind it, but now there was nothing, nothing but the wilderness and the empty lake. There were moments when she wondered if the Mahicans’ evil spirit Mton-toow, had come to live with her at Shoonkeekmoonkeek.
    “Very well,” she murmured in English, and turning from him fled from the lodge.
    O’Hara found her down by the river staring straight ahead with blind eyes. He glanced at the river, seeing nothing to be studied but a swollen, muddy stream of water and judged that she had come here to be alone.
    “Well, my lass,” he said cheerfully, lowering himself to the ground beside her. “Tomorrow we part, eh?”
    “Tomorrow we part and I am not your