Girl in a Buckskin

O’Hara she was frowning.
    “Any signs?” he asked, his eyes narrowed.
    “Aye,” she said uneasily. “There have been Indians here.”
    “Recently?”
    “Since the rain yesterday.” It was a good place for them to hide, she was thinking. A day’s ride west would take them into Dutch country where they could pounce upon the outlying farms and steal horses and food. A day’s trip east and they could strike terror into Westfield or Springfield.
    “I curse the years I’ve spent on tilled land,” O’Hara said suddenly. “They come to naught in this wilderness. But I’m a mean man with a musket, and between us we’ve plenty of powder.”
    Becky nodded but her eyes were troubled. She did not point out to O’Hara that two muskets would be of little use if they were jumped in the woods. T’was more likely their muskets would be used to club them to death as soon as the Indians laid hands on them. “I’d feel better if we were on foot,” she said unhappily. “In the dark there’s no knowing what we might stumble upon.”
    “You think they may still be up ahead?”
    “I don’t know,” she said, worried.
    “Then we’ll camp here the night,” O’Hara said, and going to the horses began unsaddling them. “We may need the horses to make a run for it and the daylight will show us what we’re up against.”
    Becky looked at his broad shoulders gratefully. No man but O’Hara would have deferred to her, or for that matter asked her opinion. A man such as Mr. Leggett would have ridden on in the dark without heed to any woman’s advice, no matter how sound he might think it if it came from a man. This was a rare person, O’Hara.
    They sat and ate cold meat from their knapsacks and talked in whispers as darkness closed in around them. It was agreed they would take turns staying awake and O’Hara claimed the first watch, but even so Becky slept only fitfully. She had never shot off a musket in her life, while she knew O’Hara handled his like a man born to it; she made a sorry picture on a horse, while O’Hara sat his more gracefully than any man she had seen. But Eseck had taught her to know the forest as well as she knew the lines in the palm of her hand and she could not but feel that for the next few hours both of their lives lay in the palm of that hand. To O’Hara the forest was green and hushed, but to her the forest was alive with sound. By listening with both ears and all of her senses she could hear the quiver of each leaf and know whether it was moved by the wind, an animal or another human. Thus Eseck must have felt on the trip into the valley when his face had closed against her and she had wondered what he saw and what he listened to when there was only silence.
    It was still dark in the forest when she woke O’Hara. “It’s almost dawn,” she said softly.
    He nodded and stood up, his eyes watchful. While he saddled the horses she absently ate pieces of cold meat, her eyes sweeping the woods. When they mounted there was still no sign of dawn but the trunks of the trees had begun to emerge imperceptibly from the shadows.
    O’Hara leaned over and grasped her hand. “You’re worried, lass.”
    “Aye. It’s the silence. It’s dawn and still the birds are quiet. It’s as if they had all gone away. Oh, Mr. O’Hara, if anything should happen to you—”
    “Hush, lass,” he said tenderly.
    “T’would have been better for you to have left me in the valley and never come back.”
    “What, and never seen you again, lass? Come, it’s time to go.”
    She nodded, swallowing her bitter panic, and sharply pulled her horse in behind his. They began to climb now from the valley along a gently swelling foothill. The floor of the forest here was of dried brown pine needles, with here and there a patch of green moss. They took care to keep away from dark thickets and hollows, guiding their horses where the trees were thinner and sunshine reached through to dapple the ground. After climbing for an hour they reached the flatter land of the plateau and through the trees they saw the sky. When they came out on a rock-bedded clearing near the summit they could look back and down and see wisps of fog still lingering in the valley where they had spent the night.
    Becky said suddenly, “I feel we should go faster.” O’Hara turned in his saddle to look at her. “I’ll go ahead on foot if t’will make you easier,” he said. “I’ll signal every few paces for you to follow with the