Follow the River by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom Page B

the seventeenth day and continued northward on the right bank. The river ran broad and smooth now, curving less tortuously around the steep mountainsides. There were wooded islands in the river, and sometimesthe party could travel an hour at a time along narrow bottomlands without having to climb into the hills.
    Bettie’s horse had been employed to carry some of the meat and salt produced at the salt lick, and so she and Tommy were afoot. Georgie was put on Mary’s horse, to ride behind her as she carried the baby girl in her arms.
    Mary wished she herself had been permitted to walk—not because she really wanted to, but because of the resentment this new arrangement was aggravating in Bettie. She plodded and stumbled through the brush and cane a few feet in front of Mary’s horse, leading Tommy with her good hand, her dark hair and her slim figure in its torn dress and her splinted right arm right in Mary’s view as a reminder of the inequality of their treatment. Bettie would look back over her shoulder now and then, her face unhappy and her stare full of accusation. Then she would face forward again, and for a while would seem to stumble more often and more heavily, lurch more violently, crash more clumsily into bushes, moan and mince more pathetically at the pain of gravel underfoot, as if to increase Mary’s guilt at being the Indians’ favorite. At least, so it seemed to Mary, and she was bothered by it.
    “Bet,” she began calling every so often, “Bet, I can walk, Would y’ like to ride a spell?” Bettie would respond by not looking back. And Mary hurt inside, and was confused. But she suspected that the Indians would not have let them change places anyway. They had made a point of assigning the horse to her.
    By evening Bettie would be sulking and silent, giving in only reluctantly to let Mary dress her arm. “Bet, darlin’, don’t y’ see it?” Mary hissed to her one evening, believing she understood it now. “They
want
to divide us up. They
want
us to resent each other. Why … why … see how they’ve kept poor Henry off by himself. See how they’ve mollycoddled my boys, and lured ’em off from me with games …” It seemed so obvious now, now that she had seen it. It made sense to her. “Now, Bettie,” she said in a confidential tone, “we must all stay one in heart, like the family we truly are. No suspicion, please, hon? We’re us, and they’re our enemy, I knowthat as sure as you. I’m sure Henry would agree with me, that’s what they’re a-doin’.”
    They were given no opportunity to discuss it with Henry Lenard, though. He was kept always at a far side of the camp or at the other end of the column. But from a distance, he watched Mary’s special treatment and Bettie’s discontent, and in his eyes, too, Mary thought she saw accusation.
    It was distressing. Through no conscious fault of her own, she felt herself being isolated from her dear ones.
    On the morning of the nineteenth day. Mary refused to mount her horse. She held the baby in her right arm and took Georgie’s hand, turned away from the brave who was prepared to help her up with the children and started walking forward along the column. She walked up to Bettie and said, “That horse is free. I want you to ride it. I sh’d rather walk a hundred leagues than have y’ look at me the way y’ do. Come, Tommylad. Will y’ walk wi’ me?” Tommy glanced at his aunt, then fell in behind his mother.
    The Shawnee chieftain watched Mary Ingles coming forward with her lips compressed and her head held high. He shrugged. Then he rode back and told the brave to help Bettie onto the horse.
    All day they went that way. For Mary it was a great effort to walk and carry the baby and lead her two sons. She had to shift the infant from one arm to the other at increasingly frequent intervals. She panted and was drenched with sweat. Her shoes were falling apart. The soles flapped loose and threatened to trip her, and her toes