Soft Rain Read Online Free PDF

what this is for. We don’t have outhouses here.” He looked down at Soft Rain. “And also to get sick in. Tell the others to use mess buckets when they’re sick. Keep this stockade cleaner than the other one.” To Big Boots, he added, “They ought to know that much.”
    “They’re only Cherokees!” Big Boots sneered.
    “There weren’t enough buckets and no place to empty them,” Mother said angrily in her language.
    Soft Rain sniffed when she passed the soldier at the gate.
All the soldiers stink
, she thought.
Why don’t they bathe? They could, but they don’t
.
    They found a place along the wall under a narrow roof. Mother arranged their few belongings and greeted the women on each side of them. Soft Rain went to look for another crack. She had to keep watching outside the pen while she waited inside.
    A few mornings after their move, Mother suggested that Soft Rain find some other children. “Talk with them. Start a game or tell a story,” she said.
    Soft Rain walked around the stockade, looking at the hot, sad faces of sick children, and she decided it wasn’t the time for games or storytelling. Would it ever be? Then she felt a stillness around her, and the gate opened.
    More people were coming. She squeezed through the crowd until she could see each new arrival. There were no men, but two people looked familiar. Her mouth dropped open when she was sure she recognized her aunt and Green Fern.
    Rushing toward them, she shouted, “Aunt Kee, Green Fern! Here I am!”
    At once Aunt Kee dropped her bundle and threw her arms around Soft Rain. “My heart is glad!” she exclaimed. She took a deep breath and asked, “Where is your mother?”
    “She’s over there,” Soft Rain told her excitedly. She led the way, dragging Aunt Kee’s pack.
    When the two sisters saw each other, they shrieked with joy, hugged each other, hugged the two girls, laughed, and then cried. Soft Rain cried, too; tears of happiness, though, not of sadness.
    Green Fern didn’t cry and barely smiled. Soft Rain touched her hand, thinking,
She looks very skinny. She must be tired and hungry
.
    Mother quickly unwrapped the huge piece of bacon she had carried from home. Soft Rain’s mouth watered as her mother sliced it. “Chew slowly,” Mother warned, handing each of them a thin slice.
    Soft Rain did, until her piece was gone. My
stomach likes our food best
, she thought. Inside she felt warm, calm, and almost full.
    Green Fern could not be persuaded to eat her share. Mother carefully packed it away with the rest of the bacon. She quickly hid the knife, for they had seen the soldiers take away even small knives. “No weapons,” they said.
    Soft Rain listened while Mother and Aunt Kee talked of being captured; of where Father, Hawk Boy, and Uncle Swimming Bear could be.
    When darkness came, she slept next to Green Fern. Once when she awakened, Green Fern was shivering and moaning. Soft Rain covered her cousin with part of her own blanket.
    The stirring of people and the heat of the dayawakened her early. She lay motionless and content, thinking about having found Aunt Kee and Green Fern.
But will we ever find Father? Is he still at home, picking our corn with Hawk Boy?
She wished the soldiers would let her outside the stockade to bathe in the river. If only she could go back to their cabin and bathe. She missed playing in the cool creek water with Pet. She missed Father and Grandmother, and Hawk Boy’s laughter.
    As the sun grew in the sky, the stockade became busier and noisier with people and with flies. All day the flies buzzed and bit. All day Soft Rain complained of the heat and the sweat. “We smell like Big Boots,” she told Green Fern, who replied by holding her nose.
    There were other bad smells, too. Every day many people were sick and could not always get to a bucket in time. Mother tried to comfort some of the sick children whose mothers were also ill. Two small ones died in her arms.
    “What makes them ill?” Soft