Free Caddie Woodlawn's Family by Carol Ryrie Brink

troubles on the Lord, you will have no fear.’
    “Well, no doubt they prayed well; for they passed through the Indian encampment without fear and without difficulty, the Indians only looking at them with dark, forbidding faces.
    “‘My friend, you see how easy it becomes,’ said my father.
    “‘Right you are, Parson,’ replied the farmer, ‘but I wouldn’t go back through that Indian camp again for a hogshead of salt pork and a dozen sugar loaves.’
    “They rode on in silence for perhaps a mile, their horses sometimes floundering in deep snow, sometimes slipping on bare ice. The breath of their mouths whitened the dark air like smoke.
    “‘A man would soon freeze on a night like this, did he not keep moving,’ said the settler over his shoulder, for he was riding ahead.
    “‘Aye, you are right,’ said my father.
    “As he spoke, the settler’s horse suddenly shied at something dark which lay beside the trail.
    “The man rode hurriedly by, calling back to my father, ‘Take care! There’s a dead Indian by the wayside.’
    “‘Dead?’ said my father. ‘How do you know?’
    “He drew in his horse’s bridle rein and prepared to dismount.
    “‘In God’s name, Parson Tanner, you’re not going to get down off your horse on a night like this for a dirty Indian, are you? He may be lying in wait to stab you or, if he is dead, the other savages may find you with him and kill you too.’
    “But my father got down and tethered his horse, saying to himself,
’They looked on him, and passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him he had compassion on him …’
    “‘I don’t know what you are mumbling, Parson,’ said the settler, ‘but I beg you not to stop now in these woods on such a night.’
    “Still my father would not be dissuaded. He knelt beside the Indian and found that he was still breathing, but that he was in a drunken stupor from the white man’s firewater. Another half-hour lying in that bitter cold and he would freeze to death, nor ever wake again in this world.
    “‘There is only one thing to do,’ said my father, ‘and that is to lift him up before me on my saddle and carry him back to the encampment, where his friends can look out for him.’
    “‘Parson!’ cried the settler. ‘And you so mad againststrong drink! Leave the fellow, I tell you.’ Twill be one less bad Indian.’
    “‘Come here,’ said my father, ‘and give me a hand with him.’
    “Well, grumbling all the way, the farmer came back and helped my father lift the unconscious savage and lay him across my father’s saddle, and back they went the long dark way to the unfriendly encampment.
    “The Indians looked at my father in astonishment as he rode among them again; but when they realized that he had saved one of their number from death, their scowling faces grew less hostile.
    “It was late that night when my father reached our cabin. But we children heard him and came helter-skelter out of our makeshift beds.
    “‘Pap, have you brought us something to eat?’
    “‘The sorghum and salt are used up, Pappy, and there’s only a few handfuls of meal. Mother said you’d bring it all with you when you came, and money for new shoes too.’
    “My father sat down by the table, and he looked played out with his long journey.
    “‘Get back to your beds, young ones,’ Mother said. ‘Can’t you see he’s tired out?’
    “I think already she must have known what we found out the next day, that his pockets were as empty as when he had left us in the early fall.
    “Well, it’s hard to go hungry and without shoes in the wintertime. In summer you don’t need shoes and there are berries and nuts and wild plums in the woods even if the crops are poor. But winter is a bitter time. My poor fatherwas not even a very good hunter and game was scarce that year. Later we boys grew into mighty hunters, as clever to stalk a deer and catch him with an arrow