The Light in the Forest Read Online Free PDF Page B

him into the shallow water. At once he was urging the gray with sharp Indian yells up the high steep bank. By the time Del and Mr. Butler reached the shore level, all they got was a glimpse of horse and boy vanishing into the northern forest.
    “They’ll stop him at Fort Hunter,” the boy’s father said.
    But before reaching the fort, they came on theboy’s horse standing riderless in the trail. Del jumped from the saddle and bent over the ground. In the thawed earth he could make out where the gray had shied at a white rag tied to a bush at a fork in the trail. In the ground were marks where the boy had landed. His tracks on foot were harder to follow, but Del ran down a path that led to the river. In a tangle of alders and sweetbrier he stopped and soon pulled out the kicking and biting boy. Mr. Butler had to help drag him back to his horse and lift him on the saddle. Then, with the gray firmly tethered between the two men, they rode back down the river trail.
    They passed a mill, open fields, log and stone buildings. Their road climbed the rising hills. Now they could see rich, cleared farms with solid-looking houses and barns. The boy’s father turned in to a lane lined with young walnuts. Ahead of them a barn with stone ends had the greatest space between them that Del Hardy thought he had ever seen in a building. Nearby was a limestone tenant house and, beyond the spring, a stone mansion house with a wide front door. As the riders approached, a boy and servant girl came out on the porch with a determined-looking woman beside them.
    Del glanced at Mr. Butler. His face was uneasy. Likely he had looked forward to a time when his son would come back to him. But hardly had he counted on a homecoming like this. It would be an ordeal they would all have to go through.
    The two men swung to the ground in front of the house, but the boy had to be ordered from the saddle. Del took him by the arm and led him to the porch steps.
    “Your brother is home,” the father said uncomfortably to the small boy standing there, then to True Son, “You never saw Gordie. He was born while you were away. But you ought to recollect your Aunt Kate.”
    The older boy stood silent in his Indian dress, ignoring all. The servant girl had started toward him. Now she stopped painfully, while Aunt Kate stared in frank disapproval and disbelief. Only the small boy seemed to see nothing unusual in the scene, gazing at his brother with open delight and admiration.
    “Well, let’s go in,” the father said, clearing his throat, and they moved into the wide hall.
    “Harry!” a lady’s voice called eagerly from upstairs.
    Mr. Butler and Aunt Kate exchanged glances.
    “Harry!” the voice called again. “Aren’t you bringing him up?”
    The father gave a look as if there was no help for it.
    “You better come along,” he told the soldier significantly, then with the small boy running ahead and the aunt coming after, they urged True Son toward the stairs.
    It wasn’t easy to get him up. Plenty of times, Del knew, this boy must have shinned up cliffs and trees higher than this. But he eyed the stairs and bannister rail as an invention of the devil. For a while the guard figured this short distance from floor to floor might be the hardest part of their journey. Then Gordie, running ahead, turned the tide. He bounced up those steps so easy, looking around as he ran, that his brother shook off the hands that tried to help him. For a moment his eyes measured this white man’s ladder, wide enough for two or three men abreast, the oaken treads shaven smooth as an axe handle and polished with a kind of beeswax. Then half crouching and taking two steps at a time, he climbed to the second-floor hall. It ran from one end of the house to the other, with doors branching off on both sides.
    “This way, son,” Mr. Butler said, and took himtoward an open doorway where his small brother stood waiting.
    The room they entered was large and sunny, with