The Light in the Forest (3 page)

“True Son! Look! Not yonder. I am here.”

The boy’s eyes found a young Indian in leggings, breech clout and strouding. He was moving in the woods abreast of him. Never had he believed that such a feeling of joy and hope would sweep over him again. He would know that form anywhere.

“Is it you, Half Arrow? Do you still live?” he called.

“No, it’s Between-the-Logs,” Half Arrow called back in delight, for Between-the-Logs was very old and lame and that was a joke between them. “I wait a long time. I think you never come. Then you come but I see you bound up. How is such a thing? I thought you were among friends and your people!”

“I am not among my people, but my enemies,” the boy said bitterly.

“Well, anyway, I am your people and am with you,” his cousin cheered him. “If Little Crane
marches with his white squaw, I can march with you and keep you company.”

“I cannot believe it. What will my father say?”

“He says plenty, but let’s talk of pleasant and cheerful things. How we can kill these white devils so you can come back to the village with me.”

“
Jukella!
If only I could! But there are too many for us.”

“The more they are, the more scalps and loot we get!” Half Arrow declared eagerly.

“
Sehe!
Watch out. Some can understand our language,” True Son warned him, but Half Arrow laughed, and True Son knew he was talking as he always did, just for Indian cheerfulness and companionship, half in joke and half in earnest, but mostly in joke, for there were nearly two thousand armed white men, and not all the Delaware and Shawanose warriors in the woods had dared attack them.

Most of the day Half Arrow kept up his talking and calling to him. The pair had been apart for three days, and now his chatter ran on to make up for it. All the time he talked he kept tirelessly leaping over rocks and logs and brushing limbs aside. To see and hear him did True Son good like medicine. It seemed an age since he had heard an
Indian joke and seen a dark face break into a wonderful Indian smile. Even Little Crane went sad as a bear near his white bride. But Half Arrow was bright and full of village and family news.

True Son did not notice now when they passed the bare and withered stalks of the May apple. At midday he could even joke a little.

“Half Arrow. Come out of the woods. You’re burned too red for the white man to want to take back to Pennsylvania.”

“But not too red to shoot me and take my scalp back,” Half Arrow said quickly.

“They could have shot you any time all day,” True Son pointed out.

“Yes, but not so easy. They might have missed me with all the trees and bushes between. They are poor shots anyway, especially at Indians who jump and dance. But if I came in close to you like a cousin, they could reach me with their tomahawks and long knives.”

“They haven’t tomahawked Little Crane.”

“Well, then, in that case I’ll take a chance on the white devils,” Half Arrow said and started to edge a little nearer. When at last he came cautiously out of the timber onto the trace, True Son looked with interest at the pack on his back, although
it wasn’t polite to acknowledge its existence. Half Arrow ate greedily the bread True Son shared with him. At the same time he made a wry grimace over the meat.

“What kind of flesh is this they give you?”

“White man’s beef.”

“So that’s why they’re so pale and bandy-legged,” he nodded, “having to eat such old and stringy leather while Indian people have rich venison and bear meat.”

All afternoon the two cousins marched together, and at times True Son could almost forget the bitterness of his destination. At supper they ate together, but the red-haired guard would not let them sleep side by side. You couldn’t trust an Indian. Half Arrow would have to go off in the woods by himself to sleep, like Little Crane.

“I will sleep in the wood,” Half Arrow said with dignity. “But first I bear presents to my cousin.” He lifted from his pack a small buckskin sack of parched corn. It was so True Son would go well-fed with the whites and remember his uncle who sent it. After that, he fetched out moccasins embroidered in red by True Son’s mother and sisters so he would go back to his white people newly shod and remember his mother and sisters. Finally
all that was left of the pack was its covering, the old worn bearskin that had been True Son’s bed in the cabin.

“Your father sent it so you could go warm at night to your white people and remember your father,” Half Arrow told him.

In a concealed rush of emotion, True Son held it up in his hands. With the feel of it against his body and the familiar smell of it in his nostrils, he could almost believe that he was back home again in the beloved cabin.

“But what will you have on such a cold night for yourself?” he asked.

“Me! I’ll have plenty and more!” Half Arrow boasted. “I have my strouding. Then I’ll scrape myself a hill of leaves, yes a whole mountain to crawl inside of. I’ll have a soft bed of leaves below me and a thick blanket of sweet-smelling leaves above me. I’ll bounce and flex my muscles till I sweat. Then I’ll be snug and warm as Zelozelos, the cricket, in a wigwam.”

A
LL
the way to the ominous-sounding Fort Pitt, True Son tried to keep his mind from the gloomy hour when Half Arrow must turn back and leave him. Only rarely did his cousin mention it.

“I think now I have tramped enough toward the sun’s rising,” he would soberly begin the subject.

True Son would put on a strained and formal face.

“Yes, tomorrow you must go back.
Elkesa!
What does your father say?”

“He doesn’t say because he doesn’t know how far I am,” Half Arrow would remind him.

“He knows you’re not home yet.”

“Yes, but he knows Little Crane must come back too, and we can travel together.”

“Little Crane might not come back. He’s lovesick for his white squaw. He would like to stay with her.”

“Then I’ll go back by myself. Never could I get lost on such a wide road. All I need do is follow horse droppings.”

“Some white devil might ambush you.”

“Never could he hit me,” Half Arrow boasted. “When he shoots, I jump. Let me hear his rifle, and Achto, the deer, has no legs like mine. Ten jumps from campsite to campsite. My feet won’t even get wet in the rivers. I’ll fly over, like Ploeu, the turkey.”

Now that the subject of Half Arrow’s return had been duly mentioned, it could be put away till another time. To keep it covered up and out of sight, they talked of many things. One was the respective qualities of the white men’s horses and which ones they would steal and ride home on if they got the chance. Another pleasant subject was the white guards they disliked and with what
strokes, if they met them alone in the woods, they would kill and scalp them.

Sometimes Little Crane left his white squaw to walk with the cousins, and then they talked of the foolish ways of the white people.

“The reason they act so queer,” Little Crane pointed out, “is because they’re not an original people. Now we Indians are an original people. The Great Being made us from the beginning. Look! Our hair is always black, our eyes and skin dark, even True Son’s here. But the whites are of colors like horses. Some are light, some are dark, some are in-between. Some have black hair, some have light hair. Some have hair the color of a rotting log. Some have hair like the Colonel’s horse, and some have even red like his blanket. Their eyes are fickle as their hair. It’s because they are a mixed people, and that’s what makes them so foolish and troublesome. The Great Being knows their disposition. He had to give them a Good Book and teach them to read so they could learn what is good and bad. Now we Indians know good and bad for ourselves without a book or the cumbersome labor of reading.”

“I think,” Half Arrow said, “they are all nearsighted. Do you notice how when we come upon
them they crowd close to stare at us? They almost tread on our toes. Now an Indian’s eyes are keen and far-sighted. He can stand at a distance and see all that he wants to.”

“They must be hard of hearing too,” True Son mentioned. “They talk loud though they stand close enough to each other to touch with a stick.”

“And they all talk at once like waterfowl,” Half Arrow declared. “How can they understand what is being said? Why don’t their elders teach them to keep silent and listen till the speaker’s done?”

“It’s because they’re such a new people,” Little Crane explained. “They are young and heedless like children. You can see it the way they heap up treasures like a child, although they know they must die and can’t take such things with them. It would be no use anyhow because the next world has plenty of everything a man wants. Their house isn’t big enough for all they gather, so they have to build another house they call the barn. That’s why you find so many thieves among the whites. All white people must put what they call a lock on their door. It’s made of iron and you must carry another piece of iron with you to open it.”

“If they shared with their brothers like the Indian, they wouldn’t have the work of building a
second house,” Half Arrow said. “Don’t they see the sense of this?”

“Oh, they’re a peculiar race and no sensible man can understand them,” Little Crane answered. “Have you never noticed them on the march? What do we Indians look for? We look for game or tracks or how the Great Being made our country beautiful with trees for the forest, water for the river, and grass for the prairies. But the white man sees little of this. He looks mostly at the ground. He digs it up with his iron tool to see how black and deep it goes. Sometimes he makes a fuss of the trees. He says, look, here are walnut and hickory and cherry and white ash and locust and sugar trees. But it’s not for the trees, only because the ground is black and deep that such trees stand in. Yet if there is much white oak and beech that feed the squirrels and bear and turkey, he makes a face. He says such country is good for nothing.”

“I’ve noticed the white men’s foolishness in the woods,” Half Arrow nodded. “When the time grows near to camp for the night, they keep their eyes half closed. They don’t look for a high and dry place but set themselves down in any wet and dirty place, just so it’s under some big trees. They
don’t even look which way the wind blows before they make their campfire. When the smoke blows on them, they try to hit it with their hands and caps like mosquitoes.”

“Bischik!”
True Son agreed. “And they hang their kettles right away before the blackest of the smoke has passed. They burn any kind of wood that’s handy. Green oak or cherry or walnut or chestnut that throws many sparks. You can see their blankets and clothing always have holes burned in them.”

“All you say is true,” Little Crane declared. “But one thing they do I would not like to change. That’s the way they lie down at night. They never look up first to see if heavy dead branches hang over their heads. Some time I hope the Great Being sends a big wind to knock down the dead wood and kill them in their beds.”

The three laughed. True Son didn’t know what he would do when Half Arrow and Little Crane weren’t there to keep him company. And now there were signs that they wouldn’t be with him long. A Mohawk from the north fell in with them that day. He said soon they would meet a large river and that Fort Pitt was on this river. The very next day it happened as he said, but the waters were swollen
with rains. They would have to wait for the flood to go down before crossing.

Next morning when Half Arrow and Little Crane came back from the forest, they found the body of the Mohawk near camp. He had been tomahawked and scalped. Now a Delaware sheds no tears for a Mingo, and especially a Mohawk, but though dogs may fight among themselves they are one against the wolf.

“I think white soldiers did this,” Little Crane said. “One of them made friendly talk to him in front. Another came up and tomahawked him from behind.”

Inside of him, True Son felt bitterness for all the white soldiers. The Mohawk might be ugly, but he was an Indian. It was hard to hold in his feelings next morning when the red-haired guard said that this was the day True Son and Half Arrow must part. In a little while they would be crossing the river, and his cousin must stay on this side.

“Why do you spit on my cousin?” True Son asked.

“Little Crane can’t come either. We’re getting close to white people now. Some of them have suffered from the Indians and might kill him.”

“They could kill him just as easy on this side, like they did the Mohawk.”

“It’s the Colonel’s orders.”

“He’s not Half Arrow’s colonel. Why does he have to obey him?”

The guard flushed. He said nothing more. But when the column started to move toward the ford, he took his rifle and, holding it at Half Arrow’s breast, forced him out of line. True Son felt fresh hate for the white man. His arms had been freed to let him carry his pack above the water. Now he dropped his belongings and made a lunge at the guard. He knocked him down, tried to pull out first the guard’s knife and then his hatchet. Over the ground they rolled, while a second soldier drew a bead on Half Arrow and others came running to pull True Son off.