The Trees Read Online Free PDF

ladder and that was an end to it. When the Delaware was out, she pushed the axe under the leaves where she and Jary would lie. She piled logs on the fire to give light till morning. Then when he came in she barred the door and lay down beside her mother in her shortgown. If this fellow had any red cronies hanging around outside, he would have to get up to let them in.
    Overhead in the loft she could hear the young ones restless and wakeful. But Jary could doze off the minute her head touched the bed leaves. She lay there on her back with her mouth open. Her quiet snoring served to quiet those in the loft. Littleby little their whisperings and turnings played out. After while the clapboards overhead lay silent for all the firelight that ran back and forward across them.
    Now, Sayward told herself, there were only two left awake in the cabin. Oh, that red body on the hearth could lie there still as it pleased him. He could suck his breath in and out like he was dead to the world. But he couldn’t pull wool over her eyes. She was shy of believing that a woods Indian would drop off to sleep like a baby in a white man’s house.
    The wind was coming up, driving sleet and hard snow like fine bullets against the cabin, hunting for holes, but it couldn’t get in. Sayward lay there thinking of all the folks she had heard about who had taken in strangers on some cold or rainy night when they shouldn’t. From the loft she could hear the young ones’ soft breathing. In her mind she could see them lying close together with their arms around each other. Achsa or Genny would be on the outside. That one would be the first a tomahawk would reach from the ladder.
    Once or twice she caught herself breathing heavy and mighty near asleep. After a long while a shadow told her that their company was moving. She lay still as a log, save for her breath, watching through her merely shut lashes. He was raising up like a possum that had played dead. Now he lookedover at the bed with sharp black eyes. He took his knife out of his belt and Sayward’s hand found the axe helve under the leaves, sweating around it.
    When she was a little tyke, Sayward recollected, Jary would tell her not to fret if an Indian came around the cabin. No, she could shut her eyes and go to sleep. Like as not the Black Hunter of the Juniata was outside in the bushes, watching over them like he watched over all mothers and young ones, and his ball never missed. But across the Ohio it had no Black Hunter. She would have to do this her own self. Should he climb for the young ones first, never would he know what struck him. But if he came first for her and Jary’s bed, then she would rise up and cleave him straight between the eyes like the woman back on Dunkard’s Creek in Pennsylvania. Oh, she wasn’t as big as Experience Bogarth who had hacked out the brains of one red devil and the insides of another and cleaved the head of the third who tried to push himself in the door when she would shut it. But if a lone woman could do that much, she could drive her axe in one shaved head so it would take Worth to pull it out when he came home.
    She flexed her muscles ready to raise up and that’s the last she had to till morning. Now who would have thought this Delaware didn’t like her roast? That big heavy body had pulled a hunk of meat black with dried blood from his hunting shirt andwas cutting it in two on the hearth. Now he sat there big as you please roasting a piece to suit himself on a long sharp stick of kindling from the chimney corner. Oh, you could see he could hardly wait to gobble it down. He ate with the blood running down his chin, smacking his lips and licking his fingers. Then he lay down belching like one who had to wait a long time for a supper he liked, but now he was well fed and these white squaws with their burned cooking weren’t any wiser.
    Sayward wouldn’t have felt surprised to find the door open and him gone next morning, but the snow was still coming