be lost--lost, I say.'
Chapter II
Come daylight, we had distance behind us. We took a back trail up through the rocks behind our cabin so no chance watcher would know we had gone, winding through the rocks and the rhododendron. We were all mounted, and it was the first time I'd ever seen an Indian a-horseback. The old Indian's name was Tenaco.
Horses were scarce in the colonies, and we had bought ours from a Spanish man who wished to return to Spain and had to sell what horses he owned. The Spanish men of Florida were not permitted to trade with the English, but people will be people, and we had much they wished for, so the trading was done. We paid in gold, of which we had found a little, and had more we kept by us from pa's dealings.
There was Indian country before, behind, and all about us, and any stranger was fair game for any Indian. Yet some of them were moved by curiosity and the desire for trade, and we were wishful of no trouble.
It was far we had to go, through terrain wild with strange trees and vines, a country of lonely paths, and the awareness of death rode with us, Tenaco no less than we, for Indian forever killed Indian long before the coming of the white man. We rode the Warrior's Path, three mounted men and a pack horse to carry our necessaries.
A witch woman, they said! Well, I put no faith in witches, although both Welsh and English had stories enough of witches, elves, gnomes, and haunts and such. Pa had the gift, it was said, and to some it was the same thing, but not to pa or to me or to Lila, who was said to have it, too.
Yet being thought of as a witch would be held against her, and it was unlikely any would wish to go to the rescue of a witch even if the child with her was liked. It was likely they'd feel the Indians got what they deserved when they took her.
We saw no fresh track of moccasin or boot. We passed among the dark leaning poles of the pines into the shadows and beyond, wondering what memories these slopes held and what peoples might have been here and gone before our coming.
Half of our teaching had been from Sakim, the scholar from far-off Asia, and Sakim lived with the awareness of lives he had lived before.
We carried long bows made English style, for pa and several of the others amongst our lot had understood the bow. It was a saving of lead and powder, which now we mined for ourselves or made. Also, it was silent hunting and left no echo upon the hills for unfriendly ears.
How lonely were these silent hills! How reaching out for the sounds of men, for I believe a land needs people to nurse its flesh and bring from it the goodness of crops.
As we looked upon the shadowing hills, I saw a red bird fly up, a bit of the sunset thrown off by a soundless explosion, and then there were a dozen flying, then gone.
'It is an omen,' Tenaco said. 'There will be blood.'
'Not ours,' Yance replied grimly. 'It is Temperance's sister they have taken.'
'Do you recall her, then?' I asked.
'Aye, and a lovely lass. She would be ten now, I think, perhaps eleven. Gentle, sweet, and graceful as the wind. She was the first of them to accept me--after Temperance, of course.'
'You knew the other girl?'
'Ah, she is almost a woman, that one! A woman? But of course! She was strong, quiet, remote.' He looked at me. 'You would like her, Kin, witch or no.'
'I put no stock in witches.'
'You will when you see her. There's a strangeness about her and a difference. A kind of stillness and poise. She has a way of looking at you that makes you uneasy, as if she could see all you were and were meant to be. Yet there's a wildness in her, too.'
He chuckled suddenly. 'The young men are afraid of her. She sews well, spins well, does all things well, but she looks on them with no interest, and lovely as she is, they become speechless when with her.'
At night we left our cooking fire and went on, then bedded down to a cold camp in the woods, not all together so we might not all be taken at once if the worst came.
Day after day retired behind us, and night after night we gave our smoke to the sky. We left tracks and dead fires behind us, moving on into the days, knowing there was little time and at the end, the Pequots.
We had fought other Indians, but these had a bloody name, a reputation for fierceness. Yet a man cannot think of death at such a time; he simply tries to do what needs to be done. Women of our kind had been taken, women of our family, since Yance was wed to Temperance.
I thought of the other one. The silent one who stands alone in the wind. There was something in the way Yance looked at me when he spoke of her.
We wore buckskins and wide-brimmed hats and Indian moccasins, for they were best for the woods, and we had not been back to Shooting Creek for some time. There was one of us there who could make boots, but we thought them not as well for the forest.
In a moccasin a man can feel a twig that might crack before he puts his weight upon it; he can feel the rocks with his feet, take a grip with his toes if need be. And each of us was skilled, as were the Indians, in the making of moccasins, which was essential, for they wore out quickly.
Each night we plied Tenaco with questions about Plymouth, but he knew little of it. He had been there but spent most of his time with white men at Cape Ann or some of the outlying settlements or farms.
There was peact with his people, the Massachusetts. Before there was any settlement in his country, there had come a terrible sickness, which men called the plague, and it swept away most of his tribe, leaving them helpless before the attacks of their deadly enemies, the Narragansetts. Knowing their lands would be taken from them bit by bit by the Narragansetts and that his people would be destroyed, the chief of Tenaco's people went to the white men and invited them to come and settle in his land, and he gave them choice land between his people and the Narragansetts.
It was a cool, clear night when we came at last to the edge of the settlement. There were only a few cabins. 'Show me their house,' I said to Tenaco. 'I will speak with them.'
He showed me the house. It looked square, strong. 'It's built of stone,' Yance said. 'Her father was a stonemason in England.'
'Watch for me, but stay out of sight. I don't want you back in the stocks again.' A thought occurred to me. 'Tenaco? Do the others in the settlement know they sent for us?'
He shrugged.
We squatted on our heels, watching the houses. Our horses were well back in the forest, picketed on meadow grass.
All was still. Nobody moved. It was not a good thing to go among such houses at night, particularly wearing buckskins, which Indians wore up here but no white man. It was a risk to be taken.
'All right,' I said, and was gone.
The Penney house was the garrison house, built with a slight overhang to fire upon Indians who came to the doors or windows or tried to fire the house. Here was where the others would gather if trouble came.
A few chinks of light showed where other houses were. Doors were barred now, shutters closed against the night. I saw few corrals, a few fenced gardens. Walking swiftly, I came to the door and stepped lightly on the two boards that did for a stoop. I tapped lightly.
There had been a murmur within, suddenly stilled. Behind me in the woods an owl hooted. Nothing moved, then a fault rustle of clothing.
The latchstring was not out, nor had I expected it to be. I waited, then tapped again.
'Who comes?' A man's voice, low and a little shaken.
'Sackett,' I said, and I heard the bar lifted. The door opened a crack, and I stepped quickly in.
'You be not Yance.' The man was heavyset, not tall but a solid-looking man with an honest, open face.
'He waits,' I said, 'with Tenaco.'
'Ah!' The man let his breath out, in relief, I thought. 'We heard he was dead. Killed by the Pequot.'
'He was shot,' I said, 'I cut out the musket ball myself. Do your Indians have muskets, then?'
'Not many.' He turned, gesturing toward a bench by the table. 'Sit you. Will you have something?'
'Whatever,' I said.
'We expected Yance,' the woman said. She was a pleasant-faced woman, but there were lines of worry on her face now.
