New York - The Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

just eaten her first cookie when she turned to him and asked: “Do you think I should get a tattoo?”
    Van Dyck paused. What an enchanting figure she was. Her little feet were encased in moccasins, her long, dark hair tied back with a thong.Like most Indian girls of her age, in the warm months of the year, she covered only the lower part of her body with a deerskin skirt that reached to her knees. Her chest was bare, except for the little hanging pendant; her breasts had not started to grow yet. Her skin—protected from the sun and from mosquitoes by a light smearing of raccoon oil—was perfect. When she was older, she’d probably put a little red paint on her cheeks and darken the area round her eyes. But until then, he hoped she would remain exactly as the perfect little girl she was. Not that the Indian women went in for big tattoos like the men. But even so …
    “I think you should wait,” he said carefully, “until you are married, and then choose a tattoo that will be pleasing to your husband.”
    She considered, and nodded.
    “I will wait.”
    She sat quietly, but it seemed to him that she was thinking about something. After a while she looked up at him.
    “Did you ever kill a bear?”
    The rite of passage. To become a man, among her people, every boy had to kill a deer—and rightly so. It was proof that he could feed a family. But to prove that he was truly a brave, he must accomplish the far more difficult and dangerous task of killing a bear. When a man had done that, he was truly a warrior.
    “I have,” he answered. Seven years ago, out in Iroquois territory, the local Indians had warned him that some men had been attacked recently on the mountain path he was to travel. Bears did not usually attack, but when they did, they were formidable. He had gone prepared. But when the beast suddenly appeared and came at him with a rush, he had been lucky to kill it outright with a single shot from his musket. “It was a black bear,” he told her, “in the mountains.”
    “You killed it alone?”
    “Yes.”
    She said nothing, but he could see that she was pleased that her father was a proper warrior.
    It was still early afternoon. The sunlight was cascading through the leaves onto the grassy banks where the wild strawberries grew. He felt at peace, and leaned his head back. The plan that he had so suddenly formed was to spend all day with her. In the morning, the Indians and the canoe would meet them at the north end of the island and take Pale Feather back upriver. Then he could go back by Smit’s bouwerie and be homelong before dark. It was a good plan, and they had plenty of time. He closed his eyes.
    He might have dozed a few minutes when, sitting up, he realized that Pale Feather had disappeared.
    He looked around. No sign of her. He frowned. Just for a foolish moment, he felt a little pang of fear. What if something had happened to her? He was about to call her name when a tiny movement caught his eye. About a hundred yards away in the trees, a deer had raised its head. Instinctively, he kept still, and silent. The deer stared in his direction, but did not see him. The deer lowered its head.
    And then he saw Pale Feather. She was away on the right, upwind of the deer, standing behind a tree. She put her finger to her lips, signaling: Silence. Then she stepped out from her concealment.
    Van Dyck had often seen the stalking of the deer; he’d done it himself. But never like this. As she carefully slipped between the trees, she seemed lighter than a shadow. He listened for the softest sound of moccasin on moss. Nothing. As she worked her way closer, she sank down almost to a cat’s crouch—slower and slower, each pace forward hovering, weightless as a whisker, over the ground. She was behind the deer now, only fifteen yards away … then ten … five. Still the deer did not sense her. He couldn’t believe it. She was behind a tree, three paces from the animal, which was cropping the grass, head down.