The Light in the Forest (12 page)

“Ah well, lead is scarce,” he said. “We will let them breathe this time. But didn’t we fix that old
schwannack
of your white uncle who scalped Little Crane! He won’t forget us in a hurry. If he lives, he is rubbing his head right now.
Yuh allacque!
What a pity we didn’t finish him when we had the chance.”

It made them a little uneasy when their path joined a deeper and wider path. It came pouring down through a mountain gap. You could see that white men and their horses had trod this path. But its makers must have been Indian, for it looked as if long before white men came it had been here. His own people, the Lenni Lenape, must have traveled it, the Shawanose, the Nanticokes, the Ganawese
and Saosquahanaunks. Even distant nations had helped to pack it, the Sankhicani or Gunlock people that the whites call Mohawks; the W’Tassone or stonepipe makers, called the Oneidas; the Onandagos or hilltop people; the Cuyugas or lake dwellers; the Meachachtinny or mountaineers that the whites call the Senecas; and the Tuscarawas, called by all Tuscarawas, for the word rolls easy from the tongue so that wherever they go mountains, streams and valleys are called after them. All these latter were the Mengue which the whites called the Mingoes or Six Nations, and the French, the Iroquois. But many others must have tramped this path, too, the Cherokees and Catawbas, the Kanahawas who should be called the Canai; the Mohican or River Indians, the Wyandottes that the French call Huron; and perhaps even the far eastern Abenakis who are brothers of the Lenni Lenape and speak a dialect of the Lenni Lenape tongue.

And yet for all those red peoples and nations who had trod it, not an Indian did they see that day. So far had the whites driven them from this country. Only twice did the two boys have to lie in the woods while parties passed, once when three white men came suddenly on foot, and another time
when a train of nineteen pack horses slid down the mountain. Armed traders guarded them. Every bale of pelts on the horses’ backs was a message from home. Surely, Half Arrow chattered, they were on the right track, for those pelts could only have come from Indian country, perhaps even from the Forks of the Muskingum and their own village on the Tuscarawas.

That night they lay on the western side of a mountain. Now not a river alone but a great wall was between them and the Peshtank country. Next morning their legs put a still bigger mountain behind them, and now they went on the path with less caution. Freely they baked cakes of Indian meal over their fire and roasted game shot by the striped rifle. Oh, they hid quickly enough from any armed men they saw who might take a fancy to their hair. But the deeper they went in the forest, the nearer they felt to home. They tramped a deep, long valley; saw sleeping cabins for white traders; drank from a spring around which you could see great numbers of red and white men had once camped; passed the Shades of Death where two mountains stood close and dark with ancient pines and hemlocks between.

At a fork in the trail, they took the north
branch. Always they kept apart from the Bedford road to the south where the Peshtank men might seek them. Three times in one day the trail forded the same river. They passed an old Indian town and traversed the longest Narrows either of them had ever seen, stopping to see a curious stone as high as three men and only a few inches square, pointing to the heaven.

“I have heard of this stone,” Half Arrow said. “Now if those that spoke knew the truth, only one mountain stands between us and the Tuscarawas.”

They came on that mountain next day. Their breath grew short on the way up, for this was the tallest hill of all. But when they reached the top they found this was no mountain like the others, a steep way up, a steep way down and a sharp summit. The top of this mountain was very wide, stretching on and on, a high country with immense timber. They passed a few cleared fields, old Indian cabins, some beaver dams and a deer lick many miles long. So they kept on for two days until they met a river flowing strong and deep through the forest.

An Indian track went up and down, and on the bank stood the log buildings of a trader. A few Indians loafed in front. Through the open door the
eyes of the two boys caught the glitter of much goods. Once the trader himself came out to take oars from one of the smaller of two dugouts bobbing at the landing. The two boys did not venture close but sat on the roots of a buttonwood at the edge of the water.

“I have heard of this river,” Half Arrow told. “They call it the Alleghi Sipu. From here, it is said, a fish can swim to the Forks of the Muskingum.”

“Maybe it is so,” True Son agreed, “but we are not fish.”

“No, but if a fish can swim, a boat can float, and the Father of Heaven has already provided two boats at the landing.”

True Son considered.

“I see the two boats. But they belong to the trader.”

“Cousin. You have been too long among the whites. They have corrupted you in your thinking. You have believed their false claims that justify their plunder and pillage. Now, all we Indians know it is not stealing to take back from the whites what they took from us. Cousin. What have they taken from us? Land, woods, game, streams, fish and our happiness. Cousin. Look at the white
trader’s fine house and all his possessions. Think how much he must have stolen from the poor Indians who trade with him.”

“He is only half white and half Indian, I think.”

“Then we will take only half of his boats,” Half Arrow answered brightly. “I think we will choose the larger, for there are two of us and only one of him. He will thank us tomorrow morning for leaving him any boat at all.”

“The trader has dogs,” True Son reminded him. “The dogs won’t thank us for coming to the landing at night.”

“Only a white man would go up on a trader’s landing at night,” Half Arrow said. “First my father would cut a dry wind-fallen pole. Then he would float down the river like two sticks of wood in the night. His knife would cut the boat’s thong. The dugout would float willingly downstream with him till out of scent and hearing. Then my father would climb in. I wonder that the trader never lost these fine dugouts before.”

Later True Son went down the river trail alone. He carried the packs, the almost-empty sack of meal, the powder horn and the rifle. Far out of sight of the post, he cut a pole and waited in the woods. At sundown he piled his things on a point
of land at the bend of the river. When it grew dark, he waded in like Half Arrow told him. The water was cold and he did not go far. After a while he called the call of the Schachachgokhos as they had agreed. But there was no reply, only the faint gurgling sounds of the river.

He had given up calling and almost hope when the impatient whoo-haw of the barred owl sounded in the river. Quickly he answered and waded farther out. Presently in the darkness he made out a shadow approaching over the water. When it reached him, he found a wet and dripping Half Arrow in a dugout but it was not the larger.

“The big one has an iron rope,” Half Arrow told him.

“Let’s be glad the trader hadn’t two iron ropes,” True Son said. He pulled the boat to shore and made haste to load it with their things. Then quickly he climbed in and they shoved off.

All night they lay floating on the current of the Alleghi Sipu, listening for falls ahead, peering through the darkness to avoid rocks and logs, poling quickly to the side at shallows and Indian fish weirs. Before daylight they pulled the dugout into hiding on the thickly wooded shore, smoothing the telltale marks in the mud. All day they lay hidden,
resting, watching the boats that went up and down. When no one was in sight, they split strips from a fallen pine and whittled them into paddles. After nightfall they were on the river again.

It was just before daylight when Half Arrow woke him with a sharp word of caution.

“Nechi!”
he said.

Looking ahead, True Son glimpsed a dull red campfire winking from the western shore. Then suddenly to the east there came into view the dark outlines of a settlement dotted already at this early hour with two or three burning candles and wood fires. Almost at once it flew into True Son’s head where they were. Every moment he felt surer from the gleam of more water beyond.

“It’s the great fort of the Plantscheman that is now of the Yengwes!” he whispered to Half Arrow.

It was risky to pass, they told each other, but still more risky to stop and camp. Here the half-white, half-Indian trader and even the men from Peshtank might be waiting. Lying tense and low in the boat, they rode the gauntlet through. Never, True Son told his cousin, would he forget this morning in the Month That the Deer Turns Red, with the sight of Fort Pitt standing bristling on the point of land between the two rivers, its lights
small and few, its strong stockade, redoubts and houses dark and sinister against the faint murky streaks of red and orange in the eastern sky.

“The last time I saw it, I was heavy and a prisoner,” he said. “Now I go light and free.”

Then their dugout sped silently to the great meeting of the waters and passed into the sweep of the Ohio beyond.

O
NCE
the ominous point of Fort Pitt was past, they hid their boat and selves by day no longer.

“Indian world now,” Half Arrow said. “Nobody comes after us here.”

All that day they drifted with the current, paddling a little from either shore where white land-spies, travelling where they had no right, might covet their dugout. Most of the time they lay back dozing in the sun, for last night they had little
sleep. Opening their eyes, they feasted on the passing richness of the Indian forest. Mile after mile it stood, untouched as the Great One had made it. Here were no roads bringing a plague of Yengwe carts, no prison fields, no unjust fences, no clocks enslaving the sun. Once a flock of noisy paroquets with the bright feathers that warriors coveted flew overhead. Where small rivers flowed into the larger, they saw the good bark shelter of Indian camps and villages. Twice canoes shot out to hail them in their own tongue for news from the English fort. All the while, there was before them the constant, wheeling unfoldment of the river.

At sunset the deserted mouth of a creek drew them in. Cautiously they paddled up to find a place for the night. The great butts of the forest stood on either hand guarding the watery glade. It was utterly still. Only the drip from the lifted paddles ringed the glassy water. The last slanting rays of their father, the Sun, laid a red benediction upon them. Then suddenly the thick darkness of the forest fell.

What kind of place it was they could not be sure of till morning. When it came, they found themselves lying on a ferny bank looking up through a lofty network of branches. Their father, the
Sun, was back, smiling on them. The whole beautiful day lay ahead. There was no mist. All their little world stood in the crystal clarity of early forest morning. Their sister-in-law, the Creek, crept slowly past them. Their brother-in-law, the South Wind, rippled her with his breath.

“It’s a place prepared for us,” True Son said. “We mustn’t offend the Preparer by going away without tasting it.”

“I think the Preparer knows our corn meal is gone from the sack,” Half Arrow agreed.

They set to work on a brush net at once. Often had they seen their fathers at the task. First they laid down the pliant new whips of the soft maple. Then they gathered vines from the forest grape, the Five Fingers and other creepers. Weaving them in and out of the branches, they tied each with a knot as it passed through. It took most of the hungry day. Then their brush seine was ready. It was not so large as they had hoped. It looked still smaller dragged behind the dugout. The little fish swam through it. But the second time they drew it out, two longish white moons came rising from the watery depths, and soon a pair of big and shiny fish threw themselves about on the ferny bank.

Half Arrow’s fierce shout of joy whooped through the woods.

“Now already I am strong!” he cried.

They didn’t leave next day or the next. As boys in the village, this was the fortune they had dreamed about, the greatest boon the Lord of Heaven could give them, a life of fishing and hunting, forgetting all else and by all else forgot, abandoning themselves to the forest and the bounty of its wild breasts. Always up to now they had gone as wards and lackeys of their fathers. Now at last they were their own masters. No one stood between them and life. They took their joy and meat direct from its hand.

They passed their days in a kind of primitive deliciousness. The past was buried. There was only the present and tomorrow. By day they lived as happy animals. Moonlight nights in the forest they saw what the deer saw. Swimming under water with open eyes, they knew now what the otter knew.

The change in the weather was always foretold them by their uncle, the Moon. They could hear the rain before it reached them, a fine unmistakable roar in the forest. They lay snug under the upturned dugout, watching the trees drink in the
wetness. Sometimes it thundered on their wooden roof. Then they knew it was a shower and soon over. But some days it fell with a long, soft, beautiful sound through the woods, so light at times they only knew it continued by the leaves on trees and bushes delicately nodding. The great butts turned darker with the wet. The mold under foot grew browner. Roots above ground were always black enough. Now they looked blacker. Nothing but their brother-in-law, the East Wind, moved among the trees. After a long day of rain it seemed that this small dry spot where they lay was the only place left on earth. All the rest of the world did not exist, had never been.