Free Girl in a Buckskin by Dorothy Gilman Page B

limb and had looked out across the valley and seen Shoonkeekmoonkeek lying miles away looking like a coin tossed among the hills. When Eseck returned he had not found her at once and from the tree she had watched with amusement as he studied the ground for signs of her. When at last she called to him he had given her a quick, inscrutable glance; she read in it that he was pleased with her, that she was learning to move carefully and lightly without thinking wherever she went.
    But she did not kill a deer.
    As they filed down the hill toward the cave the sky was dark with thunder. It began to rain just as they reached the cave, ending the long days of hot sun. Becky drew back the flap of deerskin at the door and when they went in, the cave was as dark as the thunderclouds, for the fire had long since died.
    “The wind is changing,” Eseck said, standing in the doorway. “We’ll have several days of rain.”
    Becky, crouched over steel and tinder, only nodded. “The wood is wet,” she said crossly. “Throw me some dry hark, will you?”
    Still Eseck remained at the door. When at last he turned he said lightly, “There are footprints of an Indian in the grass. Someone has been in the cave while we were gone.” Whoever had visited the cave had left without trace. Stones could show no marks and a few feet away the footprints vanished into the rocks on the shore. But for the next few nights, in spite of rain and northeasterly winds, Eseck slept on the beach in the overhang of the bank, and during the day he remained at home with his musket close at hand. He cut down the pine he had marked for their dugout and bringing it to the shore set fires under it to hollow it. He made new arrows and cut fringe for his winter leggings and helped Becky gather rushes from the inlet to dip into grease and make rushlights. But all of this was woman’s work and Becky knew he longed to be gone.
    On the third day it cleared. A brisk little west wind wrin- : kled the surface of the lake and the sun danced and sparkled across the water. Staring at the blue sky Becky came to a firm decision. “This,” she told Eseck, “is the day I shall make soap.”
    “What a housewife you are,” Eseck said with amusement. “Are we so dirty, then, with a lake at our front door and new buckskins on our backs?”
    Becky shook her head. A man would not understand. She could do without a house of chopped logs, without salt and milk and pickled meats, she could wear boy clothes and eat venison seven days a week. But soap she must have.
    She had already prepared a rough barrel of birch bark. I Eseck helped her fill it with their store of wood ash, saved ; carefully from their many fires. Over the wood ash she poured water until the water began to trickle from the hole at the base of the barrel, carrying with it the precious lye. She had no egg to test the strength of the lye, but used a knot of wood instead, judging it to be of equal weight and buoyancy, When the pine knot rose floating to the surface she set the lye and grease to boiling together in the copper pot, waiting eagerly to see the soft, clean jellylike soap emerge from the ugly mixture of bear’s grease, deer fat and lye.
    Eseck, coming from the cave with his bow and arrows, hesitated beside her. “There's a hive of wild honey not far away,” he said. “I won’t be long.”
    In her impatience Becky only nodded and when she glanced up again he had disappeared along the west shore. He had been gone only a few minutes when the faint, unmistakable smell of an Indian reached her nostrils, a not unpleasant odor of damp logs, wet buckskin and bear grease, and with a sinking heart Becky realized that her enthusiasm for soap had dulled all of her senses. Indeed she might have been down country, so negligent and fearless had she been.
    Without turning she knew that Eseck’s musket was no longer propped against the tree. Yet she knew, too, that he always left it for her. It would be in the cave, then,