The Trees by Conrad Richter Page B

slipped out of her single garment and lay white and cool on the ancient brown carpet of the place. She lay on her young belly with her chin propped up in her hands, looking out into this bright new world the like of which she’d go into some day. This was the door through which her true love would step in her life. He would carry no long woods rifle like her father but a fine government musket. No buckskins would he wear but bright green regimentals or those of blue and gold. He would take her by her lily white hand and lead her out of these dark woods. Not on foot would they go but riding a horse like the Covenhovens’ or a river boat likeGeorge Roebuck’s pole batteau. And when they got to the settlements they would stop. Here they would live where folks smoothed their stools and trencher with an adze. On toward evening she would dress like the other women and sit on her street porch to see those that went by. When she got tired she could lie on a lounge with a panther skin coverlet. And on the Sabbath she would prank herself out in a fine check apron and go to church.
    All afternoon she lay in this mortal sweet place while a pheasant stretched its neck this way and that above a log, trying to make out this white patch on the brown ground. It strutted up and down with its neck ruffed and its tail spread out, and all the golden spots on its feathers stood out brighter than they ever did on the birds that Worth fetched home in his hunting shirt. The pheasant got close as it dared. Then it clucked like a settlement biddy and ran to put trees between itself and this white thing before it rose.
    It was dusk when Genny came down the cabin path, shy as a young she-fox. Through the open door she could see the bound boy and the young ones fooling in the cabin. Sayward and Jake were gone. After while they came through the early darkness together from the direction of the post. Genny felt herself harden toward Sayward. She didn’t see how her eldest sister could do this and then go about getting supper like nothing had happened.Once in a while Sulie or Wyitt would come to the door and yell “Ginnee!” but Genny never stirred from her bush.
    “She’s a hidin’ out’ar behind a log,” Achsa told them.
    Only when Jake and the bound boy had gone down the path with their shellbark flambeau bobbing in the black night did Genny come in.
    “You’ll git no supper now,” Achsa jeered.
    “I ain’t a hungry,” Genny said.
    Wyitt fetched a lick of something yellow and sticky from the shelf and laid it in front of her on the trencher.
    “Will Beagle brung it fur you but you wouldn’t wait.”
    “What fur thing is it?” she wanted to know.
    “It’s a present he give you.”
    “What’s it good fur?”
    “It’s a kind of sweet bob. It comes from Chiny or some far place,” he said.
    “You kin have it,” Genny said and turned away while the others fought for it.
    Neither would Genny eat any of the cold leavings Sayward offered to get for her this evening. That night she lay far from her oldest sister as she could in their bed together. It felt almost like she was laying down with Jake Tench herself. She twisted first on one side and then on the other but she couldn’t sleep.
    “What’s a ailin’ you?” Sayward broke out at last.
    Genny turned her back.
    “You needn’t talk to me after what you done.”
    “Now I done something and don’t know what it was,” Sayward complained.
    “You know good enough,” Genny told her. “Jake Tench!”
    She could feel Sayward shake with quiet laughter.
    “Don’t you fret about Jake. He mought make free with a Shawanee wench but he kain’t with me.”
    “He mought marry you,” Genny said.
    Sayward’s voice hardened.
    “Not him,” she told her shortly. “Nor any other man where spits in my fire when I got bread a bakin’.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
CORPSE CANDLES
    T HIS would be a strange summer, Worth gave out. All signs the past winter had been hindforemost. It had black frost