Girl in a Buckskin

their words a sense of outrage filled Blue Feather’s heart, for there had never been white men before from the south. They were too frightened and clung to their settlements planting their fields and working in them like women.
    He half turned to double back and tell his people of this strange invasion. To go home without moose would bring doubt to the faces of the councilors who trusted him to keep the village in meat, but to go home with news of white men would bring honor to his lodge.
    Then he caught sight of the musket lying beside the man with the white scalp and Blue Feather caught his breath. He knew very well what it was. Many of his tribe had muskets. It was true they had no powder for them and they had grown rusty with age but they were handsome things and could be used as a club when needed. But this man with the white scalp had a powder horn beside the musket, which meant that he could make fire with it. Seeing the musket Blue Feather knew that he must have it.
    Lightly he shinnied down from the tree and crept over the moss and pine needles toward the clearing. Seeing him a blue jay flew abruptly from an old oak, beating his wings against the leaves. Blue Feather paused, but there was no other sound from the forest. At the edge of the clearing he knelt and peered through the screen of leaves.
    The young one was still asleep but as he watched the man with the white scalp arose and walked with his musket into the brush behind his companion. Blue Feather squatted on his haunches to wait for his return. He would not be gone long. He would come back to his friend and when he had fallen asleep again Blue Feather would creep to him and steal the musket.
    Blue Feather smiled faintly, thinking of how Dawn-of-the-sky would look at him with great admiration, and of how Redfoot would glower with envy.
    The man with the white scalp was a long time coming back. Blue Feather settled himself to wait, thinking how the palefaces must have come here, tiring themselves so deeply on the way they must make themselves beds of hemlock in the middle of the day. Blue Feather’s lip curled. An Indian did not need hemlock boughs under him to sleep; these palefaces were soft and womanly. Taking the musket from them would be as easy as plucking a berry from a high bush.
    Still it was odd, thought Blue Feather, how long the man with the white scalp was gone. What was he doing? And now that he thought of it the man was very silent for one who had made so much noise a few minutes ago. He had cut hemlock without caution at all, yet now the forest had swallowed him up without a sound. A queer coolness moved across Blue Feather’s scalp, like the first chill breeze at sunset after a stifling day. He shifted uneasily, telling himself he was a fool to doubt himself. And so he sat, too stubborn to turn around, until a hand stole around his throat and suddenly Blue Feather was gasping for life.
    “A-a-a-a-ah,” he snarled, trying to bite the fingers that pressed his throat. His powerful muscles strained to throw off the hand but the fingers made a ring of iron.
    Then abruptly the pressure slackened and Blue Feather whirled with a snarl to face the white man and the long barrel of the musket. Blue Feather hesitated; he was very brave but he had heard that when the musket made fire it cut a hole in a man that let evil spirits inside. As Blue Feather stood frustrated by rage and doubt the white man said calmly, “I will not kill you.” Lowering the musket a few inches he made sign talk with his fingers so that Blue Feather would understand.
    Blue Feather looked at him uneasily, and the man with the white scalp said, ”To what tribe do you belong?”
    Blue Feather cleared his throat. “Muhhekaneok.” He watched the man with the white scalp closely for this was no woman of a paleface but a man who walked like an Indian and fought like one, and now he was speaking to Blue Feather as Indian to Indian. It was a thing of great wonder.
    ”Where is your tribe?” the man with the white scalp asked.
    Blue Feather made a gesture, showing that his people camped not many miles away to the north. “At Wnahtakook.”
    The man nodded. “You come alone?”
    “I come alone,” Blue Feather said. “I hunt moose.”
    “There are no moose here.”
    Blue Feather only shrugged. He was far more interested in the man.
    “Becky,” called the man with the white scalp. “Becky, wake up.”
    The other white man stirred and presently Blue Feather heard