“Long ago, or not so long ago, there was a woman who was jealous of another woman, and so she started a gossip about her. Later the gossip teller saw how wretched the other woman had become and so she was no longer jealous of her, but pitied her. So great and sincere was her pity that she went to her and said, ‘I am sorry I lied about you. I beg you to forgive me.’
“The lied-about woman said, ‘I would like to forgive you’. But I can forgive you only if you can do this: Pluck the downy feathers from a goose’s breast. Go about and lay one of those little feathers at the door of every wikwam everywhere.
“ ‘Wait a year then and go back and collect every one of those little feathers. Only if you can do that, only when you have gathered every one of those little feathers, can I forgive you. You cannot, because the lies you told about me are like those feathers, they have gone everywhere on the wind and you cannot bring them back.’ Now the story is finished. Remember it.”
A morning bird chirped. The breeze of dawn whispered. Across the fire from Good Face in the pale light, there was no old woman, nor was there a bear. There was only the smoke from the fire drifting off through the tree trunks.
Another bird spoke. Again it was an ulikwan, a flicker. It said, “Weekah! Weekah!”
And then she saw her mother, Flicker, standing before her in the smoke, holding a basket and a newly made deerskin dress. Her old face looked young compared with the face she had been seeing all night. And it was more kindly. Good Face realized that the old huma had not smiled all night because of the gravity of the lessons she had been teaching. It was good to see a smile, and it was so good to see Flicker that her eyes blurred with tears.
“We are through here, my daughter. You are a woman now, no longer a girl.” Flicker was looking about on the ground. “The old auntie came to me this morning and said she was through teaching you. But I do not see her tracks. I see only your tracks, and dog tracks, and bear tracks.”
“Yes, Kahesana. My Spirit Helper was here. It—”
“Se he!” Flicker hushed her, with an outstretched hand. “You saw your Spirit Helper and it is to be known only by you. I am full of joy that your Spirit Helper revealed itself to you. To some, no vision ever comes, and because you were born wapsini, I feared it might not bring forth for you. Add thanks for it to your prayers every day, for if you do not tell the Creator that you are grateful for a power, it will turn bad and you will have then even more trouble than an ordinary person who is without it. Always remember that everything is equally bad and good, so to balance you, but if you are not thankful for gifts, the bad will weigh more.”
“Yes, Kahesana,” she groaned, more tired than she had ever been. “It is as you have told me before, and I will remember.”
“Now, come. We will go and bathe you and wash your old clothes. I have made for you a woman’s dress. You will wear this and your corn necklace and the head-cracker button, when we stand you before the village and introduce you as a woman among them. I will paint the Creator’s red dots on your cheekbones and vermilion in the part of your hair—though it will hardly show in the red of your hair!—and the women will give you gifts of the things a woman needs, and the men will be told they must respect you. Come, daughter. You are a woman and I am proud.”
CHAPTER NINE
Summer 1789
Tioga Point, Pennsylvania
Ruth Slocum had never in her life been among such people, and it required all her courage and composure to keep her sons from seeing how intimidated she was. She suspected that Giles and William too were more frightened than they appeared, being apparently the only two unarmed men in the camp, and perhaps also the only sober ones.
Ruth and her sons had traveled the hard, dangerous road to this place on horseback, keeping their hopes high, because here, at the insistence of the United States government, Indians of many tribes were to assemble and bring with them the captives they had taken during the late war, so that their families might have an opportunity to identify them and reclaim them.
Ransom and compensation monies for the cooperating Indians had been promised, to give them an incentive to yield their prisoners up. But under the influence of rum and whiskey, many of these frontier whites were sniggering and blustering that if the savages did produce their relatives, they would be paid not in gold or silver but in lead and cold steel. This kind of ugly talk made the assemblage seem as menacing as a powder keg decorated with candles.
Giles muttered, with un-Quakerly rancor: “If these off-scourings of mankind start shooting and brawling, those Indians’ll vanish so quick with their captives, we’ll not get even a glimpse to see if Frannie’s among ’em!”
“Then let us pray,” said Ruth, “that a sight o’ the poor things will bestir pity and gratitude in their bosoms and there’ll be no violence.”
“Yes, let’s pray so,” said Giles. “But just look at these murderous riffraff and tell me there’s pity or decency in any of ’em.”
“Remember,” she admonished him, “it’s our belief that the Light is in everyone.”
William just then touched Giles’ elbow and pointed toward a snag-toothed, one-eyed, slouching giant passing down the tent row, so festooned with pistols, daggers, and powder horns that he clanked and clicked with every step. Following him were four others of villainous aspect. Giles looked at them, then glowered, his jaw set hard, and nodded.
“What is it?” Ruth Slocum said, having noticed.
“Well,” Giles said, “o’ course it’s been five years or there’bouts since we came up through these parts and got our horses stolen from us, but it takes about twenty years to forget a real devil’s visage like that one, which was the last one we saw before our horses decamped.” His big shoulders were hunching and his huge, work-hardened hands were clenching into fists and then unclenching. “Lord,” he growled. “The curse of havin’ a pacific creed! Thee will excuse me, Ma,” he said, rising, “I do believe I’ll follow those gents about and see what sort o’ horses they’ve got.”
“Don’t ’ee dare!” she exclaimed, rising from the log she had been sitting on, then almost falling to the ground from the kinks and pains she had from days on a sidesaddle. Both her sons swiftly caught her and eased her back down to the log. “Goodness,” she groaned. “Fifty-three years old and I’m hitched up like an old granny! Now, Giles, I’m begging thee don’t go getting in trouble over horses thee’s done without for five years. We’re here to find Frances, not horses.”
“I won’t get in trouble,” he said. “I’ll just walk down to the corral and see if I recognize any beasts. Though I doubt anything’d five this long under churls like them.”
With misgivings, Ruth watched her son go. Though he had forsworn violence on leaving the militia, she had little faith in his equanimity. He did have courage, and was strong and sinewy enough to feel the equal of anybody who might try to provoke him. Will watched him go too, but apparently had decided not to leave his mother here by herself. They sat gazing down through the sprawling, makeshift camp, which was made up of tents and brush huts and rickety lean-to shelters, aswarm with settlers, woodsmen, half-breeds, Indians, traders, and slatterns, as well as the officers of the prisoner exchange commission.
Will pointed across the valley at a ruin on the other side of the Susquehanna. “That was Fort Sullivan,” he said. “Built the year General Sullivan rampaged up through here, when I came up with that colonel … Proctor, wasn’t it? I’ll tell thee, Ma, this place was like the gate to Hell. Armies and warriors passing through, prisoners bein’ dragged away toward Canada … And this has been a war road for a long time, Ma. I reckon this Tioga here’s about the best place to exchange prisoners, since most of ’em were carried through here back in those days. Everybody knows the way to Tioga. Shouldn’t be many days before the Indians start coming in. They’ll take their time, look things over first before they show any captives at all. No trust. Can’t blame ’em, really …”
He trailed off, gazing up and down the valley
he had traversed so many times in the years since his little sister’s capture. Ruth Slocum knew he had little hope. He had tried to tell her that even if Frannie were still alive, she would be so Indian by now that she probably wouldn’t want to return to the whites, and that whatever family had adopted her probably wouldn’t bring her here anyway. He had told her all that, and she knew that it might well be true. But she felt in that deepest part of her soul that Frannie was still alive, and that if by chance she knew her mother was looking for her, she would want to return. Even though she had now been among the Indians more than twice as long as she had lived with her real family, the Slocums were still her real family, and who would not want, with all her heart and soul, to be with her true family?
“Eleven years!” she sighed. “Will, we’ll have to remember to be a-looking for a young woman, not the little redhead waif we’ve been seein’ in our heads ever since that day. Well, when they start bringing them in, the red hair’ll narrow them down a good bit. Then that really bright red on top, I’d suppose that’s still the same … and that poor mashed finger that lost its nail. And I just feel so sure I’ll know her face the moment I see her. All us Slocums, we all have somewhat a same look to us, doesn’t thee think, son?”
He turned and looked at her with wistful amusement. “Well, I can usually name off everyone at the dinner table. Especially Ebenezer. He’s the black one.”
“The bla …? Oh, thee means his coal dust! Ha ha!”
“Ah, good, Ma! First smile I’ve seen on thee in days.”
“Yes. Well. And does thee believe for a minute that Frannie wouldn’t recognize us? She’ll have grown up and changed a lot, but I’ve not changed much, just grayer and wrinklier. And can hardly stand up ’cause I’ve perched on a horse too long. But she’ll recognize me at once, surely she will.”
“Ma, listen. It’s not whether she’ll recognize us, or we her. The doubt is whether she’ll even be brought here. I’ll be surprised if any Indian brings anyone in.”
“Don’t thee say that! We simply must have faith.”
“I’ve hunted ten years, Ma. This is thy first time on this cold trail; thee hasn’t seen how things are, so thee has faith.”
“Yes, I do have. And enough for all of us, if thee has no more.”
“Here comes Giles. No knives or bullets in ’im, that I can see. But no captive horses repatriated either.” Will turned and looked at her, took a deep breath, shook his head, and said, “I don’t expect any more luck repatriating a little sister either. But I look in the face o’ thee, Ma, and I’ll pray with’ee. And I’ll keep on a-hunting, as long as thee’s got the faith in it.”
Thank God, Will was wrong, Ruth Slocum thought.
The Indians were coming to Tioga Point, and they were bringing their young white captives, who had been children when they were carried away.
Since they started coming, ten days ago, Ruth Slocum’s heart had been like a kite in a whirlwind every day. Whenever she heard the shouts that heralded the arrival of another tribe or band, she hobbled out of the tent and down to the clearing with her heart soaring and her vision blurred by prayerful tears.
Then she would prowl, with scores of other trembling, haunt-eyed parents, along the row of sun-browned, half-naked captives who stood with their Indian families. Names would be said in timid and expectant tones, but there was hardly ever a response from the captives. The Indians seemed terribly anxious. Ruth went from day to day without seeing a red-haired girl, but sometimes she would keep going back to some adolescent with sun-bleached auburn or brown hair as if believing that somehow little Frannie could have changed that much, and would peer into her eyes, saying, “Frannie? Frances?” until Will or Giles took her arm and led her away.
By the tenth day there had been very few reunions, and Ruth was beginning to understand how slim were the chances for anyone to find anyone in this vast country after so many years. Each day most of the Indians would depart, and the white fathers and mothers reluctantly wandered back to camp, grim, teary-eyed, like herself, to wait for the next day. The heavy drinking went on in the camp every evening, and men filled the air with profanity and the sounds of brawling and retching, but during the days, at least, the gravity and expectancy of the search was so intense that it was almost like the quiet religious fervor of a prayer meeting. Every evening one of Ruth’s sons would remain near her while the other went through the camp talking to traders and woods runners, even going into the Indian camps, to ask questions, to offer rewards for information. Giles would say, “Even if nobody’s brought Frannie here, why, they have come from as far as Canada and Ohio, and we’d be fools not to test the wind while they’re here.” Ruth realized now how efficient and thorough they had become in this desperate business, and now and then the mere thought of their efforts made her throat knot up and tears leak.
There were here, among the ruffians and bootleggers, some decent families looking for their offspring, and Ruth had come to know some of the mothers, and to marvel and weep at their tragedies. And she had even had opportunities to talk with some Indian women, a Munsee, a Seneca, and a Nanticoke who spoke English well enough to tell their own tragedies, of husbands and brothers killed in battles, of children bayoneted and burned to death in villages by the Town Destroyer soldiers. The Seneca woman, about Ruth’s age and very handsome except for burn scars over the whole left side of her face, had been living in this very town of Tioga the two consecutive years it was burned to the ground by Patriot generals, first one named Hartley, and then the one named Sullivan. Each time, she had lost a child. The Munsee woman’s only son had been run through with a bayonet while trying to escape through a line of soldiers; immediately afterward her husband had gone down the river with a band of raiders and brought home a white boy to replace her son. “He is grow to be good son to us and we hope no one take him from us.”
“Why then did thee bring him here?” Ruth asked.
“Fear your war chiefs. They threw English king and generals on their back and must be so mighty. We are afraid not to bring this boy back when they say.”
And Ruth had prayed then that whoever had Frannie would one of these days respond just as that woman had. She thought it a shame that people had to do anything out of fear of mere men’s power, but since that was the way the world functioned, let it bring her daughter back.
And now on this tenth desperate day, overcast and stifling, Ruth and Will Slocum were moving down the line looking over the captives. Giles had stayed at their tent to guard their meager belongings against the thievery that had grown more serious every day. The “half-human buzzards,” as Giles called them, always descended on any frontier gathering, and blame could always be put on the Indians for the thefts and other felonies. Already, it was creating a tension and suspicion that threatened to dissolve this captive exchange. Thus Ruth Slocum knew that if Frannie did not show up soon, there would be no hope of finding her here at this assemblage, which had in its beginning seemed more promising than anything in a decade.
Just before her in line was a short, stout man in a clean linen shirt. Part of his right ear was missing, and at the crown of his head, in the midst of his thick brown hair, was a conspicuous, tender-looking scar where no hair grew. Will had noticed it and whispered to Ruth that there stood a man who had been scalped and lived to tell about it. It was fascinating but morbid, and Ruth tried not to let her eyes fall upon it or her mind think about it. As the short man moved along, he kept saying loudly, “Is there a Peggy Smith here? Peggy Smith? I’m your father Isaac Smith, if you’re here! Peggy Smith?”
And then a female voice just ahead answered, “Me! Peggy Smith me!” The man stumbled forward eagerly. Then he stopped short.
The girl who had answered was about sixteen years old, wearing only a doeskin skirt and moccasins and a puzzled expression. She was ebony-black, one of several Negro captives who had been brought to Tioga in these ten days. The short man blushed as white men nearby began laughing. He shook his head. “Not
my Peggy,” he mumbled, and moved on, leaving people laughing, including the girl.
Then a tall, sinewy Indian man standing near the black girl peered at the man and called out to him:
“Eh, hey, you man Shuh-mith, you look to me!” When the little man turned to the voice, the warrior, grinning handsomely, bowed far forward and laid his finger on his black hair to point to a scalping scar just like Smith’s. Then he straightened up, still grinning, and reached out his long right arm. Smith paused, and extended his, smiling now, and they shook hands, the tall Indian nodding and smiling and saying, “Brothers, brothers we, e heh?” He put his fist on top of his head and jerked it up, making a popping sound with his lips, and Smith, nodding and grinning, did the same. “A huh! A huh!” the warrior said, and then waved as Smith went on. Ruth quailed inside at the gruesome joke, and yet she herself could not keep from smiling at that momentary display of understanding between the two survivors.
She moved on, now and then saying, “Frannie? Frannie Slocum? Oh, please, is there a Frannie Slocum here?” She passed two more pretty adolescent girls, their faces sun-browned and freckled, but their hair was not red. One had a fingertip-size dot of vermilion on each cheekbone and more red in the part of her hair, which Ruth thought made her look like a hussy, and over her breasts she wore only strands of beads and claw necklaces. It was not Frances—her eyes were the wrong color—but Ruth thought: Wherever my girl is, they likely have her gaudied up all cheap and lewd like that and half bare, a shameless temptress who just doesn’t remember the modesty she was taught. Oh, dear God, let me find my Frannie ’fore they make a slut of her!