fork of antlers looking like some of the dead, bleached, barkless trees that stood around the edge of the white beach. The elk’s tawny flank was still heaving.
A few yards away lay a white-tail doe, slim and slight and still, its blood staining the sand crimson. Beyond it was a huge dark-brown bulk of a beast unlike anything Mary had ever seen. It had a glistening mantle of darker hair over its shoulders and its blunt, short-horned head.
The horses, growing nervous near these carcasses, were led to the far edge of the beach and unloaded. The captives were herded together, and Henry Lenard explained to them that this had been a highly successful hunting foray instead of an attack.
“It’s a salt spring,” he said. “That sand’s half salt, it is. Look at all the tracks here’bouts. Game comes here to lick. All kinds. That yonder, lookin’ like a mangy bull: I do b’lieve that’s what they call a buffalo. Colonel Patton tol’ me he saw one once that had strayed a way up the New.” He stood staring at it. One of the braves came near, noticed their curiosity and pointed to the beast.
“P-thu-thoi,”
he said.
“P-thu-thoi.”
There was movement in the brush behind them. Two warriors emerged, each pulling at one hind leg of a small buck deer. They dragged the dead animal to the center of the beach clearing, leaving a narrow track of blood, which was dribbling from its nostrils. Tommy and Georgie pressed close to Mary, but watched with wordless fascination as the skinning and butchering began. She saw Bettie watching, pale, as knives ripped along through tough hide to lay bare white tendon and red meat, and by the look of her eyes knew she was thinking back to the massacre twelve days ago at Draper’s Meadows.
As was Mary herself.
* * *
The baby girl sucked and pulled at the nipple as the sun came up. Little shocks of hurt and pleasure spread like ripples from Mary’s breast through the rest of her body; the pleasures and pains became longings and regrets, became a total bittersweet emotion.
A large brown spider with black-banded legs had built a perfect net of web between two branches a few inches above Mary’s head sometime during the night. Now the spider sat in the center of the web, its legs touching the radiating strands, waiting for vibrations that would signal the entrapment of some small insect in the far filaments.
The rising sun illuminated the web. Dew had covered everything during the night, and the spider’s web looked like a piece of lace ornamented with a thousand tiny diamonds. Mary had seen a diamond once, in Philadelphia when she was a little girl, and had never forgotten that it had looked like a shattered rainbow. Now each dewdrop in the web was like a tiny trapped rainbow.
As Mary watched in her nursing trance, a small fly blundered into the margin of the web. The brown spider left its station in the eye of the web and raced out to the struggling insect, examined it, then with swift and industrious motions of its forefeet began rolling it in a shroud of filament until it was entirely immobilized. Then the spider went back to the center of the web and resumed its vigil. Mary shuddered.
She tied the fifteenth knot in her belt this morning. They had worked hard here at the salt spring. There was always the smell of woodsmoke in her hair and clothing. Fires burned day and night. The Indians had cut the lean flesh of the game animals into strips and hung them on frameworks of green saplings to smoke them into jerky. And they had put the captives to work, over another bank of fires, boiling down the waters of the salt spring in the stolen kettles to make salt. Thus far, working from dawn until dark, they had produced almost a peck of the white treasure.
Jerky and salt were being wrapped and packed with care, apparently for an imminent resumption of the trek toward the Indians’ homeland, where it would be a part of the winter’s food hoard. The pack train, which already had been
A few yards away lay a white-tail doe, slim and slight and still, its blood staining the sand crimson. Beyond it was a huge dark-brown bulk of a beast unlike anything Mary had ever seen. It had a glistening mantle of darker hair over its shoulders and its blunt, short-horned head.
The horses, growing nervous near these carcasses, were led to the far edge of the beach and unloaded. The captives were herded together, and Henry Lenard explained to them that this had been a highly successful hunting foray instead of an attack.
“It’s a salt spring,” he said. “That sand’s half salt, it is. Look at all the tracks here’bouts. Game comes here to lick. All kinds. That yonder, lookin’ like a mangy bull: I do b’lieve that’s what they call a buffalo. Colonel Patton tol’ me he saw one once that had strayed a way up the New.” He stood staring at it. One of the braves came near, noticed their curiosity and pointed to the beast.
“P-thu-thoi,”
he said.
“P-thu-thoi.”
There was movement in the brush behind them. Two warriors emerged, each pulling at one hind leg of a small buck deer. They dragged the dead animal to the center of the beach clearing, leaving a narrow track of blood, which was dribbling from its nostrils. Tommy and Georgie pressed close to Mary, but watched with wordless fascination as the skinning and butchering began. She saw Bettie watching, pale, as knives ripped along through tough hide to lay bare white tendon and red meat, and by the look of her eyes knew she was thinking back to the massacre twelve days ago at Draper’s Meadows.
As was Mary herself.
* * *
The baby girl sucked and pulled at the nipple as the sun came up. Little shocks of hurt and pleasure spread like ripples from Mary’s breast through the rest of her body; the pleasures and pains became longings and regrets, became a total bittersweet emotion.
A large brown spider with black-banded legs had built a perfect net of web between two branches a few inches above Mary’s head sometime during the night. Now the spider sat in the center of the web, its legs touching the radiating strands, waiting for vibrations that would signal the entrapment of some small insect in the far filaments.
The rising sun illuminated the web. Dew had covered everything during the night, and the spider’s web looked like a piece of lace ornamented with a thousand tiny diamonds. Mary had seen a diamond once, in Philadelphia when she was a little girl, and had never forgotten that it had looked like a shattered rainbow. Now each dewdrop in the web was like a tiny trapped rainbow.
As Mary watched in her nursing trance, a small fly blundered into the margin of the web. The brown spider left its station in the eye of the web and raced out to the struggling insect, examined it, then with swift and industrious motions of its forefeet began rolling it in a shroud of filament until it was entirely immobilized. Then the spider went back to the center of the web and resumed its vigil. Mary shuddered.
She tied the fifteenth knot in her belt this morning. They had worked hard here at the salt spring. There was always the smell of woodsmoke in her hair and clothing. Fires burned day and night. The Indians had cut the lean flesh of the game animals into strips and hung them on frameworks of green saplings to smoke them into jerky. And they had put the captives to work, over another bank of fires, boiling down the waters of the salt spring in the stolen kettles to make salt. Thus far, working from dawn until dark, they had produced almost a peck of the white treasure.
Jerky and salt were being wrapped and packed with care, apparently for an imminent resumption of the trek toward the Indians’ homeland, where it would be a part of the winter’s food hoard. The pack train, which already had been
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