Free Miracle in the Wilderness by Paul Gallico Page A

for supplies to maintain his outpost home, tools, plowshares, gunpowder, lead for bullets.
    Young wives were at a premium in those days in the colonies and Dorcas was sought by many brave young men but once she laid eyes on Jasper there was none other for her and for Jasper it was like a dream of having found an angel from heaven. They were wed in Albany in accordance with the rites of their beliefs; they were simple God-fearing people and the sole book tucked away amongst the goods carried by the pack mule was the Bible. Dorcas rode Jasper’s farm Percheron. Strong Jasper marched on foot. Thus they moved north and westward through the wilderness in advance of the wave of colonists that was to follow and which, unsettling the French, in the already half-century old struggle for the New World, was turning that nation to a renewed policy of intimidation.
    It was unusual for the Algonkin to attack in December, yet that winter the alarming westward spread of the English threatening the Ohio Valley decided the French upon the political necessity of recourse to terrorism to stem the flow and they sent surprise raiding parties burning farms and carrying off captives as hostages or to torture and death to provide cards of diplomacy to be played back and forth across the English Channel.
    Now such a party was pushing northward, returning single file through the moonlit woods. Quanta-wa-neh, the leader of the expedition, rode at the head of the procession on a shaggy Indian pony and the rest of the party with the captives in the center, surrounded by some dozen warriors bundled in furs and blankets, marched on foot. At Quanta’s side trudged fat Nyagway, the Seneca renegade who spoke English. Quanta had thrown out scouts on snowshoes to the side and rear against any sudden surprise ambush. Nevertheless, he was uneasy. The speed of his retreat was limited by the capacity of the captives.
    One of the raiders carried the eight-month-old child Asher over his shoulder wrapped in a blanket from whence its head emerged every so often to gaze about—silent, solemn, interested, unafraid.
    Close behind, the mother followed, her dark eyes rarely leaving the bundle over the Algonkin’s back except for an occasional fearful glance at the craggy features and deep lines seaming the countenance of her stern, tall husband who limped and sometimes staggered beside her, his hands bound behind his back with buckskin thongs. She stumbled along the trail in shock from the calamity and the manhandling to which she had been subjected, close to the point of exhaustion, ameliorated only by the occasional rest periods.
    The procession came to a halt for a moment and Nyagway, the Seneca interpreter, obese, short of breath and waddling like a bear, came down from the head of the line. Peering with beady eyes out of a cloak of muskrat fur he looked more Eskimo than Indian. He spoke to Jasper Adams: “Quanta say you go faster or you, woman and young one die now.”
    Jasper glanced at Nyagway out of eyes glazed with pain and nodded. “I will try.” Then he uttered aloud a prayer: “Oh Lord! Thou art my staff and support in time of need. Give me the strength.”
    Nyagway regarded the white man for an instant but without hostility and then shuffled unhappily back to his position. He was too old and adipose for this sort of work. A vain and lazy man, he had originally defected to the Algonkin in the hope that his knowledge of English would prove useful to the French and bring him a sinecure. Instead, the northern tribe, with contempt for the turncoat, used him on missions involving long and arduous journeys.
    Forcing himself to renewed effort, Jasper quickened his pace and the line moved more swiftly through the forest to carry out the cruel and horrid paradox the Indians had set their prisoners: march quicker lest you die now so that you may the faster reach the place where you will die then.
    The fearful irony of the command and their situation was plain to