Girl in a Buckskin

him?”
    She turned. “Why, sir?”
    He flushed at her directness. “Mr. Smeed is a man who might be dangerous as an enemy.”
    She straightened from the fire and looked at Mr. Leggett directly. “Dangerous to whom, sir?” she asked innocently. “To me or to you?”
    He gave her a quick, reproachful glance and turned away. “It would be an enviable match,” he said, taking a candle down from the wall.
    Rebecca smiled. “Then if I refuse him, sir, I trust you will not hesitate to recommend your daughter, Adah Ann, to him.”
    Mr. Leggett whirled on her, his eyes shocked. “Rebecca, this is unpardonable insolence!”
    “How, sir?” asked Rebecca sweetly.
    “The situation is entirely different. Entirely.”
    “Really, sir?” said Rebecca, and moving past him she went into the kitchen to light her own candle. She had never been so bold before. Taking up the candle she opened the door of the lean-to behind the kitchen and set her candle on the rough bunk that had been built into the chimney. Once the lean-to had been the Leggetts’ kitchen, and the kitchen their living room, but the prosperity of the Connecticut River had given the Leggetts a prosperity of their own, so that now their house was a grand one, with bedrooms upstairs and four-poster beds for everyone. Everyone except herself, she amended, but she did not mind her crude bedroom. On a fine night she could see the stars through the seams in the wall, and the chimney kept her warm until dawn.
    Leaning over she dragged out the trunk from beneath her bed. It was a shabby old trunk but in it was everything that she owned or ever would own. From the top she took a book entitled: Some examples of Children in whom the fear of God was remarkably Budding before they died; in several parts of New England. She laid it to one side and digging further brought out the clothes which Eseck had worn on the long walk from Canada and which he had long since outgrown. She had washed and mended them and holding them to the light she saw that they would fit her tolerably well. Pulling her dress over her head she dressed herself swiftly in the threadbare boy’s tunic and leather breeches. For shoes Eseck would make her moccasins. Her hair she could tie in the back with the only piece of good ribbon she possessed.
    Then from the bottom of the trunk she brought her mother’s cooking utensils and the little treasures that she had saved and put away. Heaped on the bed they made a pitiably small pile but even so she would have to leave many of them behind.
    In the end she halved the pile. There was the copper kettle that her mother had been cooking hotchpot in the night she was killed by the Indians.
    There was Becky’s bearing cloth, to prove she’d been christened Rebecca Patience Pumroy sixteen years ago, and loved like any other baby.
    There were two horn spoons and the one of worn pewter that was badly in need of recasting.
    There was a cup of leather, waxed and bound by her father.
    There was a piece of steel, a piece of flint and an old shred of cambric to serve as tinder.
    There was a collar of bone lace made by her mother with pillow and bobbins.
    And last of all she added the small gourd of Daffy’s Elixir, in case, heaven forbid, they should grow sick.
    These things Becky wrapped in her mother’s huckaback tablecloth and shifted to her shoulder. Going to the door she stopped and listened, then blowing out her candle quietly opened the door. Through the rafters she could hear Mr. Leggett addressing his wife, stalking back and forth across the floor boards, and she knew he would be talking about her. Mrs. Leggett would never stand for such boldness; in the morning there would be a whipping—but ir> the morning she would be far away.
    She tiptoed down the hall, avoiding the board that creaked, and stealthily drew open the door. It made a terrible groaning noise and overhead Becky heard Mr. Leggett’s footsteps pause. From the woods she heard the cry of a grackle and knew it was Eseck signaling to her. Closing the door behind her she tiptoed across the high grass and fled into the shadows.
     

Chapter Four
     
     
     
    THE MOON WAS RISING WHEN THEY HEARD THE SOUND OF horses behind them. Eseck had said that speed was more important than caution for these first few hours and so they had kept to the roads, not caring who might see them. Hearing the horses Becky remembered the sound the door had made as she left the Leggett house, and how Mr. Leggett had ceased