The Light in the Forest Read Online Free PDF Page A

eyes and blowing noses with a great fluttering of red, blue, white and other colored cloths. Even many of the white soldiers showed their feelings. Only the captives took it dry-eyed and restrained. True Son thought their Indian fathers and mothers would be proud of them.
    At the end a very few were left unclaimed, including himself and two girls of twelve or fourteen years. The boy felt relief and hope creep over him. His white father didn’t want him after all. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. Now perhaps they would let him go back to his far off home along the Tuscarawas.
    But presently above the murmurs of the departing crowd he heard the hoofbeat of horses in thestrange town. Soon afterward a rider approached and the boy saw a small man on a sweated bay horse leading a saddled but riderless gray. In front of the Colonel and his staff, the rider dismounted. The Colonel shook hands with him and, smiling, led him over to where True Son and the unclaimed girls stood awaiting their fate. A chill ran up the boy’s backbone. Surely he had nothing in common with this insignificant man with black boots, a face colorless as clay and a silly hat on his head. He came up anxiously and his very light blue eyes misted into the boy’s face while the ashen hand he held out visibly trembled.
    True Son stood rigid and unmoving.
    “Put out your hand and shake his,” Del Hardy ordered in Delaware.
    Reluctantly the boy gave his hand. The man spoke a stammer of strange-sounding words.
    “Your father welcomes you back,” Del translated. “He thanks God you’re safe and sound.” When the boy’s lips compressed, “Can’t you say you’re glad after all these years to see your own father?”
    True Son’s heart felt like a stone. How could this fantastic and inferior figure in a long fawn-colored garment like a woman be possibly anythingto him—this pallid creature who revealed his feelings in front of all! In the boy’s mind came the picture of his Indian father. How differently he would have looked and acted. With what dignity and restraint he could conduct himself in any situation, in peace or war, in council or the hunt, with pipe or tomahawk, rifle or scalping knife. This weak and pale-skinned man was nothing beside him.
    “He’s not my father,” he said.
    Del Hardy made a face. When he repeated it to the white man, the latter seemed to recoil. The Colonel had been standing by following intently with his foreign eyes. Now he began to talk. The boy couldn’t understand much of his mixed-up Yengwe tongue, but it looked and sounded like the Colonel was giving an order.
    When they finished, the red-haired guard turned to the boy with a scowl.
    “I thought I was rid of you,” he spoke in Delaware, “Now I’ve got to go along and translate you to your own family.”
    The boy said nothing. His eyes gave a hard unwelcome. He knew instinctively that translating wasn’t the chief reason for Del’s going. No, the armed soldier was being sent along mostly toguard him, perhaps also to protect this slight presumptuous white man who claimed to be his father. Bitter disappointment came over the boy. Now he wouldn’t be able to carry out his plan as soon as he had expected.

W HEN Del Hardy saw Fort Pitt through the trees, he threw his cap in the air. For weeks he had lived among savages in the wilderness. Now, thank God, he was laying eyes on a white man’s settlement again. Sight of chimneys, of the certain slant of roofs with the British flag flying over them, stirred him deeply inside. These walls of mortared stone bespoke his own people. English or French, they had built to stay. This might be their farthestoutpost now, but it wouldn’t be long. He had heard a dozen soldiers say they were coming back to clear and settle the rich black land they had found along Yellow Creek beyond the Ohio.
    His feet felt light as deer hooves climbing the mountains and jogging down the eastern slopes. He reckoned one of the pleasantest