Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink Page A

themselves lying in such queer places. Caddie had given her bed to old Grandma Culver, and she was as stiff and tired as any of them. But the good cows had not been frightened out of giving their milk, and Robert Ireton, humming a tune, brought in two foaming buckets of it for the children to eat with the big bowls of meal mush which Mother and Mrs. Conroy ladled out of a great iron pot. The stiffness and queerness vanished like magic with the comfort of hot mush and milk—even if one did have to stand up to eat it.
    But the second day was worse than the first. People were restless and undecided. Should they go home or should they stay on? The food supplies they had brought with them were giving out. They could not let the Woodlawns exhaust all their supplies in feeding them. Yet the redskins might only be awaiting the moment when they should scatter again to their homes to begin the attack. It was a gray, dark day, not designed to lift anybody’s spirits. A fine mist, almost but not quite like rain, hung in the air and curtained all horizons in obscurity.
    The women and little children, crowded into the farmhouse, were restless and tired of confinement.The men paced back and forth in the farmyard, or stopped in groups beneath the four pine trees that sheltered the front of the house, and which Father had named for Clara, Tom, Caddie, and Warren. The men polished and cleaned and oiled their guns, smoked their pipes, and spat into the mud which their boots had churned in the tidy dooryard. Everyone felt that the strain of waiting had become almost unbearable.
    In the afternoon a few of the men went to get more supplies. Tom, Warren, and Father went with them. The others watched them go, fearful and yet somehow relieved to see any stir of life along the road.
    Caddie felt the strain of waiting, too, and she was impatient with the people who had no faith in the Indians. The Indians had not yet come to kill. Why should they come at all? Indian John had never been anything but a friend. Why should he turn against them now? Why should his people wish to kill hers? It was against all reason. Good John, who had brought her so many gifts! Why should not everyone go home now and forget this ugly rumor which had started in the tavern?
    â€œCaddie,” said Mrs. Woodlawn, “go fetch me a basket of turnips from the cellar, please.” Caddie slipped on her coat, took up the basket and went outside where the cellar door sloped back against theground at the side of the house. She had to brush by a group of men to get into the cellar. They were talking earnestly together, their faces dark with anger and excitement.
    â€œIt is plagued irksome to wait,” one of them was saying as Caddie brushed past.
    She went into the cellar and filled her basket. “Yes, it’s irksome to wait,” she said to herself, “but I don’t know what they mean to do about it. They’d be sorry enough if the Indians came.”
    But what they meant to do about it was suddenly plain to her as she came up the stairs again with the turnips.
    â€œThe thing to do is to attack the Indians first,” one man was saying. It was the man Kent, who had ridden out on the first night to spread the alarm. Caddie stopped still in her tracks, listening unashamed.
    â€œYes,” said a second man. “Before they come for us, let us strike hard. I know where John and his Indians are camped up the river. Let’s wipe them out. The country would be better without them, and then we could sleep peacefully in our beds at night.”
    â€œBut the rumor came from farther West. Killing John’s tribe would not destroy the danger,” objected a third man.
    â€œIt would be a beginning. If we kill or drive theseIndians out, it will be a warning to the others that we deal hard with redskins here.”
    Caddie set her basket down upon the stair. It suddenly seemed too heavy for her to hold. Massacre! Were the whites to massacre