The Light in the Forest Read Online Free PDF

feelings a white man could have was, after tramping days in the everlasting forest, to come out on cleared land and look across open fields. Same way with a road. He had marched nigh onto three hundred miles on savage trails and traces, stumbling over roots and logs, slopping through runs and bogs. Now the hard firm ground of a cartway under foot lifted him up. His eye ran warmly over the good ruts, and the familiar zigzag of rail fences. Tame cattle in the fields stood quiet and decent as they passed. Here neither man nor beast had to be afraid of his shadow. The log barns and sheds on the land had an air of white man’s industry and their houses of peace. From all of them young folk and old came to the road to rejoice as the army and its delivered captives passed.
    That had been a day or two ago. Yesterday at Carlisle the freed white captives had been given back to the bosom of their families. You’d reckonby this time they’d learned to appreciate it. Yet, look at this Butler boy on ahead riding with his father, sullen as a young spider, making as though he didn’t understand a word his father said. To watch him and listen to his Indian talk, you’d reckon English a bastard tongue and Delaware the only language fit to put in your mouth. You could see he still reckoned himself a savage and all those were blackguards and slavers who had anything to do with fetching him back to his own people. But then Indians were a strange lot. Del himself had lived neighbors to them as a boy. He knew their ways but never could he make them out.
    Thank the Lord, he told himself, when they came to the home river. It would take his mind off the boy for a spell. The great stream flowed south from the mountains, a noble tide a mile wide. Just to let his eye roam over it gave him peace and wonder. The ferry pushing off from the far shore was a mark of civilization and the white race. To the north a squadron of islands swam like ships pointing down stream, and still farther northward were the majestic gaps of the Blue Mountains, one after the other, where the great river poured through.
    It was to Del the greatest sight in his world. The narrower if deeper Ohio couldn’t compare to it. And yet when he looked at the boy, he found him sitting his saddle unnoticing and unmoved. Not till they were on the ferry did he wake up to it. That was when his father called the river Susquehanna. Quickly, as if he had heard that name before, the boy lifted his head. His eyes took in the great stretch of water with the fields and houses on its far shore. Then he poured out bitter words in Delaware.
    “What’s he saying?” his father asked.
    Del made a face.
    “He says the Susquehanna and all the water flowing into it belongs to his Indian people. He says his Indian father lived on its banks to the north. The graves of his ancestors are beside it. He says he often heard his father tell how the river and graves were stolen from them by the white people.”
    Mr. Butler looked weary.
    “Tell him we’ll talk about that some other time. Tell him he’s getting close to home now. If he’ll look up at those hills across the river, he’ll see Paxton township where he was born.”
    Even before he translated it, Del was sure the boy had understood. He gazed at the far bank with a sudden look of terror.
    “Place of Peshtank white men?” he asked in thick, Indian English.
    His father looked pleased. He put an affectionate hand on the boy’s shoulder.
    “That’s right, son. Peshtank or Paxton. It’s the same thing. We call them the Paxton boys. Many of them, I’m proud to say, are your own kin.”
    The boy looked as if a whiplash had hit him. He stared wildly up at the facing hills. The ferryman pushed by with his pole. The water curled around the flat bow of the scow. On the eastern bank, the sycamores and maples grew steadily nearer. Suddenly, before the boat touched shore, the boy kicked his moccasin heels into the sides of his horse and plunged with