Shadowbrook Read Online Free PDF Page B

beside people who were different from themselves, and to following their own rules in a place where they need want for nothing.
    The Patent was a land of incredible riches, folded between the Adirondack Mountains to the west and Hudson’s River to the east. It was dotted with countless lakes, most small, but a few wide enough so a man needed a day to row from side to side and a week to paddle the full length. There was more hardwood than could be cut for warmth or shelter in a dozen lifetimes. The brooks and streams teemed with fish, and there was every imaginable kind of game in the forests. Thepresence of the lakes and the river gentled Shadowbrook’s harsh northern climate. Between them was the rich black earth of the rolling lowlands and broad alluvial flats where summer wheat grew tall and thick with seed and barley and rye and corn thrived, as did the tender hops necessary for ale.
    At one of its many corners the Hale Patent rolled up to the big lake English-speaking people called Bright Fish Water, a translation of the name given it by the People of the Great River, the Mahicans, who had been scattered by the Kahniankehaka many years before. The French who lived at the distant other end of the lake knew it as the Lac du St. Sacrement. At another place the Patent folded itself around a long, curved sweep of watercourse fed by the rushing brooks and streams of the mountains. It emptied into Hudson’s River which flowed south from Albany to the harbor of New York City.
    By the time he was nine the land of Shadowbrook had entered Quent’s blood. Then, on the frozen-in-white December day when he stood with Solomon the Barrel Maker near Tenant Mountain, near the crevasse they called Swallows Chil dren, he saw the first thing in his young life that he neither expected nor understood.
    Quent’s father appeared out of the dark shadow of the snow-laden conifers that rimmed the crevasse, a treacherous wedge-shaped split in the earth, seductively narrow at the top edge with a rushing underground river below. Ephraim Hale rode a big brown gelding and a squaw sat behind him. Her arms were wrapped around his waist, and before the riders became aware of Quent and Solomon watching them, her cheek was pressed to his spine.
    Ephraim saw his son and reined in his horse. He murmured something to the woman and she straightened. A small gray horse behind them stopped as well. Quent paid it no attention; he was busy examining the squaw. She didn’t look to be either Kahniankehaka or Mahican. She wore leggings made of pure white skins laced tight with white thongs. The skirt of her overdress was white as well, and the thick jacket that covered the top half of her was fashioned of a sleek white fur and had a hood rimmed in long-haired white fur that might be fox, except that Quent had never seen a white fox.
    “This here’s my youngest boy, Quentin,” Ephraim Hale said. “Goes by Quent. And that nigra with him, that’s my slave. Goes by Solomon the Barrel Maker.”
    The squaw threw back her white fur hood and her black braid fell over her shoulder and shone in the midday sun. Her features were delicate and her black eyes enormous. She said nothing but she smiled at Quent; her teeth gleamed white against her honey-colored skin.
    “This is Pohantis,” Ephraim continued. “She’s from Singing Snow, a Potawatomi village a ways north and west of here. She’s come to stay with us for a time.” He half-turned and gestured to the small figure on the gray. “That’s herboy, Cormac Shea. A year younger than you. He’ll be staying with us as well. Never been in these parts before. You can show him the lay of the land.”
    Quent looked at the other boy. He wore ordinary fawn-colored buckskins the same as Quent’s. The fur of his jacket—dark brown like the boy’s hair and his eyes—was probably beaver. The surprise was his skin. It was white, the same as his name. Quent felt his father’s eyes watching him. Solomon’s large hand