Free Night of the Full Moon by Gloria Whelan Page B

warn them.”
    “Papa, let me come with you,” I pleaded.
    “Why not,” Papa said. “You won’t see a better day for a walk in the woods.” He was trying to keep me from seeing how troubled he was, but I saw him exchange a worried look with Mama.
    You learn more walking in the woods with Papa than you do in a dozen book lessons. We followed the trail the Indians made walking back and forth from their village toours. The path led through a stand of pines so tall you had to tilt your head to see to the top of them. No sun could find its way through their thick branches. “Maybe we’ll see some deer,” I said. Early in the morning and at twilight the deer came and drank at our pond.
    “Not here,” Papa told me. “There is so little light, no shrubs or grasses can grow for the deer to browse. The only animals we’ll see here are squirrels after pine cones.” He looked up at the trees. “Some of these pines have been here for hundreds of years with no enemy but a bolt of lightning. Now I hear talk these woods are going to be bought up by a lumber company. Every tree will find its way to the Williams’s sawmill. They won’t leave a one. Those who come after us will never know what this land was once like.”
    We had moved the thousand miles from Virginia to Michigan because Papa loved the trees. “If the trees around us are all cut down, will we have to move again?” I held my breath, for I didn’t want to leave ourcabin and our pond. And I would miss Fawn.
    “I don’t think your mama would like moving, Libby. Especially with a new baby coming. She’ll want to settle down for a while.” Papa’s words were comforting, but the dreamy sound of his voice when he said them wasn’t. That was the way he sounded just before he decided to leave Virginia.
    I felt something scrape at my ankle and claw at my dress. “Papa, look at all the wild blackberry bushes. We can get enough berries to make jam and have some left over for pies.”
    Papa had made a discovery as well. “See this tree, Libby? Do you notice anything?”
    The bark had a big chip. “An Indian has marked this tree as a bee tree,” he said. “By August it will be filled with honey, and the Indian will come back to claim it.”
    “What if another Indian gets here first?” I asked.
    “No Indian would rob another man’s bee tree,” said Papa.
    In the distance we could see the Indiancamp. It was a small settlement with no more than five or six families. The families lived in wigwams. Fawn told me once that these are made from sheets of birch bark or mats of woven reeds laid over bent saplings. When the Indians moved to their northern hunting grounds, they just rolled up their reed mats and took them along. If we lived in a wigwam, I thought, Papa would be moving every week.
    The Indians didn’t pay us much attention, but all the village dogs ran out to sniff at us. They were skinny, which was just as well. Fat dogs got eaten. We found Fawn and her mother, Menisikwe. She welcomed us into their wigwam with the few words of English she had. A small fire burned inside. “To keep the mosquitoes away,” Fawn said.
    Their new baby was strapped to a board on Menisikwe’s back. “You baby, too,” Menisikwe said to Papa and me.
    Fawn explained, “I told my mother about your baby. She is weaving a basket for the cradle.”
    “I hope our baby looks just like yours,” Isaid. Their baby had a perfect round face. His hair was glossy black like the wing of a crow. His eyes were like the black pebbles you see shining in a streambed.
    While we admired the baby, Fawn ran to find Sanatuwa. Her father came to greet us dressed in a calico shirt and long buckskin leggings. A bright length of calico was wrapped around his head like a turban. In his belt were a knife and a small axe. Like Fawn, Sanatuwa spoke English well. He and his family had lived near Detroit, where Sanatuwa had traded with white people. Fawn had gone to a missionary school there.

    There were