The Light in the Forest (11 page)

True Son stirred uneasily.

“Cousin. You said there was another story.”

“That was very happy, too. It was about a Shawano who owed the white man he gave his trade to. The trader said he must pay up. He daren’t even wait for winter when his pelts of the beaver and fisher fox would be prime. The Shawano asked if cattle hides taken in the summer time would be good in trade, and the trader said, yes he would salt them down. So the Shawano settled his debt with cattle hides, and not till the Shawano was gone did the trader find out the hides were from his own cattle. Cousin, it was a very happy story. I heard it once at home in the village and the squaws had to hold their sides with laughing.”

True Son stirred again. This was the bold, full-flavored Indian humor he had longed for. But he couldn’t laugh tonight.

“Did the men at my white uncle’s laugh?” he asked.

“Cousin. They didn’t laugh. When we left your white uncle, Little Crane said to me, the white men
are beyond Indian understanding. No matter how happy we talk, they won’t laugh with us.”

Half Arrow lifted the blanket from the body and True Son saw with horror that his friend had been scalped. His cold savage rage rose and consumed him.

“First let us give Little Crane rest,” he said. “Then we go to my white uncle and ask him who is the murderer.”

With Half Arrow’s knife and tomahawk, they cut out a shallow grave. On the mound they laid branches from the bushes in Indian fashion. Weak with exertion and covered with sweat, True Son led the way to the two-story house with the cooperage beside it. A shed was piled with hoop poles and stacked with new barrels and kegs shining white as skeletons in the moonlight.

The cooper shop was dark but light still showed in the house. True Son knocked and the short thick form of Uncle Wilse came to the door. At the sight of him, the boy’s hate for this man who had slapped him rose and his voice with it.

“Where’s Little Crane?” he accused shrilly.

His uncle stood stocky and untouched, peering out at him.

“If that’s one of those Indians that was here,”
he said, “he’s where he won’t do any more mischief.” He suddenly recognized the caller. “So it’s you, boy! I thought you were sick and going to die. Does your father know where you’re at? I reckon I better keep you till I tell him.”

His quick stubby fingers shot out and caught hold of the boy. True Son struggled to free himself but the powerful hairy hands easily held him fast.

“
Itschemil!
Help me!” he gasped and, with a rush, Half Arrow came out of the shadows.

He struck with such force that the unprepared man went down. Even so, he was more than a match for the two boys. Half rising, he threw Half Arrow back with one hand while he choked the kicking and writhing True Son into submission with the other. Things were going black before the boy’s eyes when he saw Half Arrow return with a rush. The good Indian hate was on his face and a hoop pole swinging in his hands. It struck the heavy head of the white man who grunted and fell forward. True Son felt his own breath and sight come back as the death grip on his throat relaxed.

Quickly Half Arrow threw down the pole and pulled out his knife.

“
Pennau!
Now watch me cut out his black heart!”

“
Matta
. No,” True Son said with regret. “He calls himself my uncle.”

“Then let us skin him like a beast.”

“
Tah
. It takes too long.”

“Well, anyhow, we will take his hair like he took Little Crane’s.
Lachi!
Quick!” Half Arrow gave him his tomahawk and the two set to work together, one cutting, one hacking. At the pain, the heavy white man stirred, groaning loudly, and before they had got very far, steps sounded on the floor above them. One of the cooper hands who boarded with his master appeared suddenly on the stairs. With an exclamation of dismay, he hurried back.

“When we are done with this one, we will scalp him too,” Half Arrow declared confidently.

“No, he goes for his gun,” True Son said. “
Kshamehellatan!
Let us run together.”

Giving up their trophy with regret, the two youths faded into the night. True Son led the shortest way across fields to his father’s farm. The big stone house, the small house and barn all stood dark.

In the pitch blackness of the barn floor, he felt his whispering way to a mow where he burrowed deep under the hay. From here he brought mysterious
articles that out in the moonlight became a bag of meal, a tow wallet of lead balls, a knife, a horn heavy with powder, his old bearskin and a long rifle with the brass patch broken off.

“Ju!”
Half Arrow exclaimed with delight at the sight of the rifle. He took it admiringly in his hands. “What a pity we did not have this at your white uncle’s. Then we could have got his scalp and the other white devil’s too. Now we could dance around the scalps. We could spit on them and sing revenge for the murder of our brother.”

“Listen!” True Son said. “Somebody goes for help against us.”

They could hear plainly the gallop of a horse across the valley. Most of their way to the wall of the First Mountain the sounds followed them, of other horses pounding the roads, raising the alarm in Paxton township.

W
HEN
True Son woke, he didn’t know at first where he was. All he could remember was his sickbed in the house of his white father. He had expected he would die. Could this be the bright land of death, where all was made right? He remembered he had been weak. Now he felt strong. He had been bound. Now he was free. He had lain for days sealed in by the white man’s plaster. Now he lay in the infinite open with green leaves moving over him and fresh air blowing on his face. His father,
the Sun, had already risen. Around him his sisters, the Birds, sang. His brother, the Black Squirrel, coughed at him. His mother, the Earth, bore him up on her breast, while all his small cousins that stood or ran upon the earth spoke their scents to him—the Fox and the Pine, the Hemlock that men used for tanning, the Medicine Plants, the aromatic Spice Bush that bloomed in the spring and the Hazel that bloomed in the fall.

Then he thought he couldn’t be dead, for somebody snored beside him. He turned his head and found Half Arrow’s coal black hair close to his face. Seeing that coarse hair sent the love for his cousin through him. He had come all the long way across mountains and rivers through a dangerous land just to reach his side. Through the night they had lain like brothers, close as chestnuts in a burr for warmth. His old worn bearskin below served them both, Half Arrow’s blanket above.

And now he remembered what had happened last night and that where they camped was the top of the Kittaniny Mountain he had watched so long from his white father’s farm. Joy rose in him at the thought that he couldn’t go back, for, if he did, they would surely put him and Half Arrow in irons. And if his white uncle died, they would hang
them by the neck in the barbarous custom of white people. Even if freed, the friends of his white uncle would never let him live. He and Half Arrow would be ambushed and scalped, their hands cut off like the young boys, Shalekaha, Exundas and Tonquas of the Conestogo.

“Cousin!” he breathed, and he knew by the quickly halted breath that Half Arrow was awake. “We waste daylight. Let’s go before the white men catch us.”

Half Arrow sat up instantly.

“Where are the white devils?” he demanded.

“They’re not here yet but they soon will be.”

“
Elke!
That’s good. Then I can sleep again.”

“No, we have many hundred miles to go.”

Half Arrow gave him a look. He jumped to his feet like a deer.

“Cousin. You mean I don’t go back all that long way alone?”

At True Son’s answer, he broke off two branches of hemlock. Holding one in each hand above his head, he began to dance around his cousin chanting foolish Lenape words of triumph.

“
Sehe!
Not so loud,” True Son cautioned. “They will hear you down in the valley.”

“They are too deaf,” Half Arrow boasted. He
stopped, as if with contempt for the whites, to make his water far over a log. “They can hear only the war whoop and money rattle.” He finished with alacrity and a flourish of drops. “Maybe we better go just the same,” he said and started to scoop up his carrying share of the belongings.

Down the north side of the mountain, they avoided white hunters’ paths. Their moccasins sought to disturb no leaves or sticks, stepping from stone to stone. Now and then both boys stopped to listen. At the first run they clapped palms of meal from the sack to their mouths, washing it down with water in Indian fashion.

Half Arrow smacked his lips.

“Now I can go till evening,” he promised.

Under cover of trees and brush they crept among the next valley’s clearings. They climbed the second mountain, fording the second creek when they came down on the other side. Always they avoided the river trail. The third mountain they did not have to climb. As the old basketmaker said, it stood drawn back from its companions like a noble chief aloof from his fellows. True Son pointed out to Half Arrow the pile of rocks at the top where Bejance said the old Lenni Lenape lived. But they had no time to look for him now.

Cutting northwest, they crossed the trail, forded the third stream at a cliff red with rock flowers and pressed on toward the point of the fourth mountain where the great river broke through. Here True Son’s strength gave out, and the rest of the day they lay in the woods. Twice they heard parties of white men crossing the valley, some on horseback, calling to each other and talking noisily. Once the sound of a rifle echoed from mountain to mountain.

For a while Half Arrow was gone to spy. He said on his return he had seen half the world from a tree on the mountain. A large creek flowed into the other side of the river, and a ford of rocks led to it. Before daylight both boys were at the river’s edge, wet by the heavy mist, trying to peer across. At the first streaks of daylight they set their feet in the water. They found the rocks wet and slippery, tilting up sharply from the foundations of the mountain that once must have stood here. It was a hard crossing. Where the rocks failed, the boys had to wade. When the friendly screen of mist dissolved, most of the wide river lay behind.

True Son shivered with wet and cold. Since day before yesterday he had tasted no food save raw meal and water. And yet now as he climbed out on
the western Saosquahanaunk shore, he felt around him a golden and purple brightness as if the sun had risen over the mountains behind him. He had escaped from his Peshtank prison at last. The very trees of the forest looked different over here. The unknown creek from the west flowed brown and primitive as a naked Lenni Lenape.

His only shaft of regret was leaving Gordie. He could see him in his mind now, lying alone on their wide bed, a chattering squirrel by day, a bed-warming stone by night, only a little minny of a fellow waiting for his Indian brother who would never return. For a long count while Half Arrow watched silently, True Son stood on the point of land between the two streams, gazing down the broad watery road through the mountain gaps that opened like majestic gates toward his white father’s house.

“You sorry! You don’t want to go?” Half Arrow asked.

“Cousin. Nothing holds me now,” True Son told him. “Cousin. I leave a small white brother. Out along the Tuscarawas I have only sisters. Cousin. From today on, you must be my brother.”

For a long time they traveled blind, for there were high cliffs, thick woods, and no paths. Then
suddenly they broke out on a narrow well-worn trail coming over the hills to meet the small river. Their feet took to it like wings. The very breath of the path was Indian. It dipped through the dim pungency of pine groves where hardly would you know the season, and it broke out into the bright new greenness of the hardwoods where even the blind could tell that this was the Month When the Deer Turns Red.

Always the endless Indian forest stood above them. When it thinned, there were the crimson Indian Hearts that white people call strawberry and the purple swords of Indian raspberries. Fish leaped from the creek and pheasants made thunder through the trees. Not often was Half Arrow silent. He pointed out the meaning of signs and droppings as if his companion so long among the whites had forgotten. Oh, never, True Son told himself, would he forget this path, this westward, ever westward path, deep in their Indian forest, with his cousin tramping before him, pointing and talking, giving thanks to every spring that ran across their path, for hadn’t this water they cupped to drink lain deep in the dark caverns of their mother, the Earth, to be brought out just for their refreshment as they passed!

Only once, when the forest gave way to the cleared fields of a colony of whites, did Half Arrow’s good humor leave him.

“
Lennau!
Look at them. Cutters down of the Indian forest! Stealers of the Indian land. Let’s give them a present of Indian lead. In return we’ll take presents for our Indian brothers.”

But all the time he talked, Half Arrow kept to the path, berating the thieving whites, regretting there were only two against so many and that he and True Son would have so far to carry booty.