The Light in the Forest (9 page)

“Is not true!” the boy cried. “I see many scalp but no children scalp in our village. My father says men are cowards who fight children.”

Aunt Kate had stepped up quickly to stop the boy, but the parson deterred her. His face was white. Despite that, he lifted his glass to his lips with great self-control. Sipping the whiskey coolly from time to time, he talked with strong earnestness to the boy of the brotherhood of man and the duties of Christians, red and white, to each other. He asked no questions that required answer, made no provocative statements and brooked no interruption.
He closed with a long fervent prayer and then dismissed the boy.

When the latter was gone, the veteran parson wearily asked if he could have another glass.

“Living here near the frontier, we have our own particular trials and tribulations,” he said. “This case of Johnny is not an easy one. But I don’t think we should be too discouraged. It seems fairly natural under the circumstances for the boy to act this way. He’s been in the hands of heathen for more than ten years. He’s been virtually raised by them. Their character and philosophy was above the average savage, I’m glad to say, and you can be thankful for that. Just the same they were not white people, certainly not Christians, and you’ll have to bear with their influence for a while. Ten years’ teaching takes a long time to break down. You know what Proverbs says, ‘Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it.’ John has been brought up in the way he was not intended by his Maker to go, and it will take some effort to make him depart from it. But time is on our side.”

“What can we do, Parson?” Myra Butler asked piteously.

“Just what you have been doing. Be grateful
that God has given Johnny back while he’s still a youth with a pliable mind. Teach him daily. Don’t get discouraged. You see him every day and don’t notice his improvement. But I see him only on the Sabbath or once in a while when I come here, and I can see a great change in him already. Despite himself, his English is better. Already he walks and gestures less like an Indian. You can’t expect him to turn into a seraph or saint overnight. Don’t push him too hard. Guide him little by little. Spring is here and soon he’ll be working in the fields, getting up an appetite for the table. One of these days he’ll notice some pretty and desirable girl. Pray God he takes a fancy to her. Then it won’t be long till he’s settled in our white way of life.”

H
ARRY
B
UTLER
stood just inside the door. This was his son’s room. It seemed curious that he hadn’t been here since Johnny was back and probably wouldn’t be now save for the boy’s sickness. What that sickness was none of them exactly knew. Dr. Childsley had been here twice, the last time this very day when he had bled the boy’s feet into a wicked-looking gallipot from his saddlebags.

But he wouldn’t diagnose the trouble. The
brusque Lancaster County doctor only looked grim, and muttered as he did the other time that the boy had lived too many years among the Indians, subject to their uncivilized fare, hardship and mode of life. Indians were liable to mysterious forest miasmas, he said, and at times they died like pigeons. Despite all curative knowledge, white physicians didn’t know very much about these savage ailments. Cut them up, and the heathen had the same organs and muscles as civilized peoples, even to the exact shape and size of their bones. The blood they hemorrhaged was as rich and red as any white man’s, but there were obscure primitive tendencies and susceptibilities in the aboriginal race, and they weren’t helped by the superstition lurking in the dark and hidden recesses of the untutored mind. All he knew definitely was that the boy had some unknown fever, probably a result of his long unhappy captivity. This fever had remained unchanged now for nearly a week. It had refused to yield to powerful teas and powders. Sooner or later it would reach a crisis, and send the boy either into slow recovery or the grave.

The latter statement had shaken Harry Butler. He wished he could do something. The boy had
been the victim of unhappy chance. If he hadn’t taken him that day eleven years ago to play at the side of the wheat field, the Indians would never have got their heathen hands on him. Today he would be a different being, brought up on Christian precepts and the nourishing food and drink suitable to his race.

He wished he could talk to the boy, expressing these thoughts. It might release the burden long on his breast. Of course, he himself had really not been guilty, only the unwitting means that evil had used. Just the same if he bared his heart, it would relieve him and Johnny might bare his in return, expressing filial regret for his persistent and unhealthy passion for Indian ways and for his stubborn antagonism toward the decent thrifty ways of his white people. He might even confess his part in the disappearance of the curly maple rifle and ask forgiveness. In that event Harry Butler would completely pardon him and tell him that he meant to make him a present of it anyhow.

But for all the eager anxiety in the father’s mind, the boy remained deaf to him, lying flat in bed without benefit of a bolster, the dark eyes in his flushed face gazing straight up at the ceiling.
When his father spoke to him, he gave no sign except eventually to answer. But there was little warmth or affection in it, only a kind of brief and mechanical response. The older man might as well have been a stranger with no right to invade the boy’s solitude and privacy.

It was curious how at such a time in the shadow of death all the belongings of the helpless victim affected a father to a degree he dared not speak of even to his wife. There from a row of wooden pins on the wall hung the still and mute clothing Johnny had worn in the sunlight of health—the weekday coat and pants made over from a suit the Reading tailor had cut for the father when he was still a young man—the boy’s Sabbath clothes in which he attended divine service and listened to the word of God—also the miserable and pitiful Indian dress in which he had come home from captivity. Since the boy’s illness, Aunt Kate had hurried to take it out of hiding and put it back, hoping it might console him and her own conscience as well.

In the end, the father left the bedside saddened and unrelieved. Going to a small room downstairs which had once been used as a cloak room but was now his office-room, he stood at the high desk and opened his heavy leather-bound account book.
Hardly had he begun to set down the day’s entries when he heard someone ride up to the house. There was a knock and Kate called him. When he got to the hall he found Parson Elder’s son standing there in restrained excitement. He waited till Aunt Kate had gone.

“My father sent me over. There’s Indians around and he wanted to warn you.”

At once Mr. Butler took the younger man to his office-room and closed the door. Here he turned around, shocked.

“Indians! Why, we’re at peace!”

“Maybe we are but they aren’t,” the other said. “One was shot tonight at Mehargue’s pasture. He’s lying down there now. Since Papa’s head of the militia, Mr. Mehargue came right over.”

“Any of our people attacked?”

“We don’t know yet. They’ve seen only two of the savages so far. They stopped first down at the mill asking for the white boy that was taken from the Indians. The men at the mill sent them to Mr. Owens’ cooper shop. At least, that’s where the Indians went. My father thinks the men at the mill told them Mr. Owens was Johnny’s uncle and that the Indians couldn’t understand English very well and thought that Johnny lived there. But some
think the men at the mill did it on purpose, for devilment. They know how much your brother-in-law hates Indians. But evidently Mr. Owens was very kind and hospitable. When one of the Indians asked for ‘lum,’ Mr. Owens gave him some. I believe the Indian had two or three mugs. Then he started boasting about himself and abusing the whites. There were some cronies with Mr. Owens and they said the Indian told degrading stories on the white people. Anyhow about sundown the two Indians left. It was just getting dark when the Mehargues heard two shots. Some others heard them, too. When the Mehargues investigated, they found the Indian lying dead and scalped in their pasture. Mr. Mehargue said it looked like somebody had ambushed him from behind the trees because the Indian had been shot from the side and back. My father said he’d have him buried in the morning.”

Harry Butler heard all this with a mixture of emotion. Troubles seldom came singly. Never had he known it to fail.

“Did your father say who he believed shot him?”

“He didn’t say, sir.” The younger man moved uneasily and declined to meet Mr. Butler’s eyes.

“Did he say what happened to the other Indian?”

“Nobody’s seen him since. If there were only two, my father thinks he’s back across the river by this time and still going. But you never know how many might be hiding in the mountain. My father thought you ought to hear right away. He said you’d likely want to keep it from Johnny. It might aggravate his sickness.”

For a while after the rider had gone, Harry Butler stood thinking. If he told Kate, she would invariably tell Myra and that would upset her. Let her hover around for news. He would confide in no one for the present but keep his guns handy and loaded. When he heard Gordie trotting downstairs from his mother’s room, he went back to his office. It was a relief at such a time to stand at his desk and straighten out his business affairs, to reckon up his accounts and property. When he opened the heavy brown-leathered book, the double pages with their solid lines of physical and financial items looked back at him, stable and reassuring. Presently the rough nib of his quill scratched roughly over the smooth blue and red lined surface of the thick page.

May 31, 1765

Opened last Kag of Cydar. Very Potent

Sow Campbell sold me has Litter of 11

He wished there might be more things to set down. Dealing with valid material things seldom failed to calm him. For a while he occupied himself counting the paper pound notes and silver shillings. The considerable sum steadied him. A pity his eldest son hadn’t been raised to evaluate and enjoy the satisfaction and benefits of honest work, the solace and support of ready cash, and the remuneration and accumulation of active property.

F
OR
a long time True Son had felt the sickness coming on. The pain in his forehead refused to be wiped away. It was just his eyes, at first he told himself, and came from looking too hard for word from his Indian people. All winter his eyes had stared down the road and to the far hills across the river, straining for sight of a word-bringer from his people.

Now and then letters duly came for his white father
and mother. His Indian father, he remembered, would get messages, too, mostly by messenger. His white parents’ letters were quickly broken apart, read and thrown aside. His Indian father had more respect for words that somebody went to such trouble to send him. First the messenger was received and welcomed. He was made comfortable after his long journey and his wants supplied. Then when all was meet and ready, perhaps in the presence of others who had been called to hear, the message was given in words and dignity sometimes noble as an oration.