Into the Wilderness by Sara Donati

believed all was lost. While he was
telling this story, Elizabeth watched Nathaniel from the corner of her eye,
seeing that he was distracted and that his attention wandered between herself
and his adoptive grandfather.
    "And
there I made a vow to these two that they should have property rights on
whatever land I owned, for themselves and their families. And now finally
Chingachgook comes to take what I offered him."
    The
judge wound up with a great flourish, and lifted his tankard.
    Nathaniel
and Hawkeye exchanged glances. "Might as well make it clear now,
Judge," said Hawkeye. "My father did not come up from Genesee on his
own."
    "Well,
I hardly thought he traveled alone in the dead of winter," said the judge.
    "Falling—Day's
children came along, too," said Nathaniel.
    "Otter,"
said Hannah, speaking out to the table for the first time. "And Many-Doves
."
    "Well,
Hannah," said the judge kindly. "It must be good to have your aunt
and uncle come to visit."
    With
a grin to his granddaughter, Hawkeye answered the judge. "That ain't all
of it," he said lightly. "She'll have to put up with them a sight
longer. They come to stay."
    The
judge glanced at Richard, but before he could respond, Chingachgook held up one
hand, much like a battered and seasoned split of oak. His wrists were ringed
with faded tattoos in geometrical shapes.
    "There
is no peace in the Northwest Territory," he said. "Little—Turtle has
unfinished business with Washington's troops, and I for one am too old to fight.
I come to my friend the judge for myself, and for my family, and for my son's
family. We will settle together on Hidden Wolf, and be good neighbors."
    "You
and your families are welcome for as long as you want to stay," said the
judge, but he glanced uneasily at Richard Todd.
    Chingachgook
blinked slowly. "I come to ask something from the judge which is more than
his hospitality."
    There
was a small silence.
    "We
are grateful for your friendship and your generosity. But we are a people who
must fend for ourselves. It seems that the only way we can do that, and live as
we must live, is if we own the land we live on, as the whites do."
    While
Elizabeth had been following the conversation closely, she still missed much of
the meaning because the names of these people they discussed were new to her.
But now she sensed Richard still suddenly: the tension rose in the room like a
sudden blast of heat, and Elizabeth knew that something terribly important was
happening. Her father was flushed and perspiring, and Richard sat with his
hands in a fist on the table. But Hawkeye, Chingachgook, and Nathaniel were as
calm and easy as they had been from the beginning.
    "It
is not our way to lay claim to land with pieces of paper. We have never
understood this manner of the Europeans. But now it seems we must accept this
practice if we are to have any chance of surviving."
    Chingachgook
paused and looked around the room, his dark eyes under their hoods of flesh
sharp and observant.
    "The
judge has more land than he can use. I ask him as our friend, as a man who has
always treated the Kahnyen’keháka and the Mahicans fairly, I ask him as I would
ask a brother who has hunted and fought with me for thirty years, to sell us
the mountain called Hidden Wolf, where my son and his son's family live and
hunt. So that we can sustain ourselves in these forests, not as his guests, but
as his neighbors."
    * * *
    As
tired as she was, when she finally had found refuge in her own room after the
party, Elizabeth found that sleep eluded her for a long time. There was so much
to consider that her thoughts collided and bumped together in a crazy quilt of
images and colors: Anna Hauptmann's broad arms and the moon over the forest;
the feel of Nathaniel's hands on her face and the shimmer of his daughter's smooth
golden skin in the candlelight; the smell of burning sugar and spiced rum; the
look on her father's face when Chingachgook had made his purpose known.
    Uneasy,
Elizabeth