Girl in a Buckskin

whispered.
    “You really wish to know, lass?”
    She steadied herself against the mantel, her back straight as a sapling. “Is it so bad, then?”
    “I believe it is what you have feared from the first.”
    “That he is dead?” she asked, watching his face closely. “I never believed him to be dead.”
    “I know that, lass—and he is not dead.”
    “Thank God,” she whispered.
    “T’is only a rumor,” he said, turning suddenly away from her and walking to the other side of the small cabin. “They say a man called Indian-with-the-white-scalp lives on the Kennebec with a tribe of French Indians called the Canibas. They say he is a white man once captured by the Indians who has recently come back to them to live. They say his Christian name is Pomeroy or Pumroy or Pollyroy.” Becky felt for the table with her hands and sat down. “No,” she whispered, “it’s not Eseck, it cannot be.” She turned to him pleadingly. “You said—you said t’was only a rumor?”
    He came and stood by her, his hand on her shoulder. “I said that, but you know in your heart it is true. He did not leave you to go hunting. Nor was he captured. He left you to go back to his people.”
    “They are not his people,” she cried out at him.
    “They have always been his people.”
    She stared at him with huge, tearless, horror-stricken eyes. “That is not so,” she whispered, “I cannot believe it.” And turning away she covered her face with her hands, not wanting to meet his glance.
    “He loved you,” O’Hara said, not looking at her but at the fire. “He loved you, lass, but the Indian in him was stronger than you. Perhaps it always was.”
    She wheeled on him in anger. “Little do you know,” she cried. “You cannot understand. He will be back. It was Blue Feather’s death—the anger—”
    “Have done with this loyal heart of yours, lass,” he said sternly. “You have known where he went ever since he did not return. He is no longer a white man, he is an Indian.” She shrank away from him. “You presume too much, Mr. O’Hara! My brother Eseck—my brother Eseck—oh, Eseck,” she cried, and laying her head on her arms broke into terrible sobs.
    O’Hara was silent, letting her weep her sorrow away. Tears were better for wounds than silence. He waited, thinking of this man he had never seen who had spent the years of his boyhood in a sachem’s lodge and had never felt at home again in a white man’s town. He must have tried with all his heart, for the sake of a loyalty as staunch as Becky’s, but in the end he had had to go back. “Poor lass,” he said gently, and crossing to the fire poured hot tea into his noggin and brought it to her. “Drink this,” he said. “I’ve never seen a woman yet who was not the better for a sip of tea.”
    Becky raised her tear-stained face, pushed back her hair and took a long sip of the hot drink. Slowly she straightened her shoulders. “I did not mean the words I said,” she told him in a low voice. “Nor can I rail at you again when you bring me the truth. You are quite right, I have guessed this truth ever since Redfoot and Aupaumut told me his trail led north. But guessing is different from knowing.” She shivered. “I could not believe—and yet your words shocked but did not surprise me. Do you know how that can be?”
    “I know,” he told her gravely.
    She placed the noggin carefully on the table. “You were kind to bring me this news. Perhaps you felt you owed it to me but t’was a dangerous trip to come again, and I am beholden to you for such kindness.”
    “It was selfishness that brought me back, lass. I could not rest nights thinking of you here alone. I’ve come to take you back with me.”
    “I scarcely know what to do,” she said, locking her fingers and unlocking them. “What—what will happen to him? He is my brother, Mr. O’Hara.”
    “I do not know,” he said gently. “But he has chosen, lass, and you, too, must choose.” He watched her fight for control, straightening the shoulders that had been thinned by hunger and had already borne a man’s burden, and he smiled at her tenderly. “I could wish you a little less proud, my girl. Do you truly believe I came only to bring this news to you? I knew long ago I would be back, and went away only to find word of your brother. T’was not easy to leave you, and my fields are still unplowed for I traveled far to learn of your brother, but I knew you’d never leave the valley