The Meeting Place by T. Davis Bunn Page A

soldiers so close at hand. Not until that winter. The young lads were kept busy shoveling and clearing the trails from house to house, farm to fort, hitching chains and drag-poles to horses and walking them back and forth, day in and day out. Carving valleys through drifts so high they looked like mountains to my young eyes. Walking from my door to church for the Christmas service was like hiking through white canyons taller than my pappy.”
    When she stopped to rethread her needle with trembling fingers, a young voice finally piped up, “What about the Injun, Miz Riley?”
    She turned and squinted at the watchful faces. “What’s that, young’un?”
    â€œThe Injuns.” This time a half dozen voices joined the first. “You saw ’im,” and “What happened?”
    â€œSee ’im I did. See and touch both.”
    Catherine waited with the others as the widow counted her stitches, her fingers moving at a snail’s pace. And she had the sudden impression that Widow Riley had known all along what effect her story would have.
    â€œThree days after Christmas, I woke to the first clear dawn in what seemed like years. I was the first out of bed those days. Moved a sight more sprightly than I do now, and I took pride in being the one to light the fire and warm the cabin. I had to use the tinderbox that morning, for the ashes were stone cold—see the things I remember? I chipped and chipped and finally drew a light, and I blew on the tinder until I was near red in the face. By the time I got that fire drawing strong, I was all in a lather. So I took the bucket from the kitchen and went out to gather snow, since the well and the creek had both been froze for nigh on three months. Well, I’m here to tell you, I threw back the door and walked straight into the biggest, foulest-smelling man I’d ever seen in all my born days.”
    When she stopped yet again, a tiny voice piped, “Did he eat you?”
    â€œNo, child, I still got all my fingers and toes—the Injun didn’t eat me. Though he could have, for I fell back straight onto the ice and just sat there, too astonished and scared to even draw a good breath. And he didn’t move neither. A stiller person I’ve never seen, not one who ain’t been laid out for the final wake. Tall and dark and strong. And hungry. I remember that clear as the day itself, how his cheeks were sunk in so far they looked like caves a squirrel could’ve used for his winter sleep.
    â€œBut I couldn’t lie there forever. I finally got my wits about me enough to realize I was looking a real-life Indian square in the face. I leapt to my feet and hollered like a stuck pig, then raced back inside. Straight back to the bed I shared with my sisters, and I leapt in there and burrowed deep as I could go, screaming all the while.”
    A child cried, “What did he want, Miz Riley?”
    â€œFood, child. He was starving. Whole Micmac village was down to almost nothing. Which was passing strange, for there ain’t much better a body for seeing the winter through comfortable than a Micmac Indian. But the summer before they had not had much in the way of game. We didn’t have much food either, since the summer’s crop had been bad, but we gave ’em what we could.” The widow sewed on for a time, then said, “For three years after that we didn’t have a single attack on our market wagons. Not a single solitary one. Only good thing that came out of that winter, far as I can recall.”
    â€œHmph,” the grandmother by the fire snorted. “I wouldn’t have given them nary a thing. Thieving Injuns, the lot of them.”
    There were a few nods from about the quilt but most frowned at the words. Mrs. Patrick gave her head a single shake, nothing more. Widow Riley kept on with her sewing, commenting only, “Maybe things were different back in those days. The times, they surely do