Long Hunt (9781101559208) by Cameron Judd

all else that followed she had more heard than seen from her elevated hiding place. The sounds alone had been terrible: her father being shot and cursed at with English-American vulgarities the Indians had picked up from white men—cursed because he had no hair and therefore no scalp to take—and then the sounds of her mother and older brother falling victim to belt ax and scalping knife, her older brother fighting hard and screaming at his attackers before he died, her mother dying quietly with a prayer on her lips.
    Mary did not know why the raiders had not climbed to the loft to seek her, because they had seen her in the doorway and surely knew she was hidden somewhere. “I wish they had killed me, too,” she said to Titus and Micah. “My family is dead. I should be dead, too.”
    â€œThat’s no way for you to speak, Mary. God has spared you,” said Titus. “He’s got something ahead for you, so he has saved you. Something good and happy, not bad and sorrowful like today.”
    She cried again, and went to the corpse of her father, which was clad only in trousers and moccasins. “They took his shirt,” she said. “Why did they take his shirt? I had decorated it for him. I stitched a red flower into it for his birthday. It was here.” She touched her chest. “He said it was the finest flower he’d ever seen. Why did they take his shirt?”
    â€œI suppose they thought it was a pretty flower, too,” said Micah. “But they shouldn’t have took it. And they shouldn’t have done this to your kin.”
    She was crying again now, and Titus wondered whether the child would ever grow past this and be free of the ghosts of this terrible day.
    â€œMary, where is your mother’s body?” Titus asked. “And your brother’s?”
    â€œThey dragged her out when they killed her,” Mary said weakly. “My brother they killed outside, in the back. I saw them cut off his scalp through a crack in the wall up in the loft.”
    â€œPut those visions out of your mind as best you can, Mary,” Titus said. “You are alive and now you must do your family’s living for them, since they can no longer do it themselves. Do you understand me?”
    She nodded, staring at her father’s dead face.
    â€œMary, Micah and I are good men, friends, men who will help you and get you to a safe place. We can’t bring your family back, nor make you able to forget all that happened here, but we can be good to you and give you protection and friendship. But you must be willing to come with us, to go away from here.”
    Titus wasn’t at all sure the child would be willing to do that. He knew of many cases in which individuals inexplicably clung to the site of calamities and loss. But Mary was differently inclined. She seemed pleased to hear that she could leave this scene of horror.
    â€œI’ll go. I’ll go now.”
    â€œTitus,” Micah said, “what about the dead ones?”
    Titus pondered the matter, then felt Mary’s gaze upon him. He asked, “Mary, I’m going to leave this up to you. Me and Micah can bury your family here, and leave here later on, or we can leave now and send somebody else back to do the burying. But if it would make you sad to think of them left lying here for a time, we can bury them now.”
    Her chin shook and eyes welled. She shook her head. “I want to go now,” she said. “They aren’t really here. This ain’t them. . . . This is what used to be them, but ain’t anymore.”
    Titus hugged the little girl. “You are a wise young woman, Mary. Wiser than many who are a lot older than you. Have you got kin anywhere else, Mary?”
    â€œNo, sir. No family at all now.”
    Titus said, “Don’t worry, Mary. We’ll take you with us, back to a safer place, and we’ll find you a home and a family. I promise you