Eleanor Mercein Kelly

“ He strutted a little, boyishly, his eye on Polly, trying to make her smile; but she did not smile. “Perhaps,” he added, sobering, “it was the Indian form of christening—but we are not savages.”
Granny put a quick, warning finger to her lips, and Ezra added, more gently:
“There, there. I do not wish to be always scolding, only to make my little wife more like other women. People are happier when they are like to those about them—isn’t it so, Granny? And sometimes I have a fear that my Polly is not as happy with us as I had hoped to make her. ”

“ And no more wandering for wife and mother of men like ours, Polly, my darling. They’ll do the wandering—with us to come back to in their own good time. ’Tis a fine, thrilling life out there in the wilderness—but ’tis a happier one, here under our own apple trees at home, eh? ”

“ Perhaps the child knows better than us. It may be there are things of which it is better not to speak, more especially to the man you’ve married. Two to brood then, instead of one. Give her time, Ezra! She’s but a girl; things pass. The christening was a mistake, perhaps, so soon; too many people watching her, looking to see how she behaved after living among red savages, whispering about her, as neighbors will. That’s why I advised you to take her out of the settlement and win her back to civilized ways alone, with the things she knows best to help—woods and water and the open places. ”

“ He turned to the door again, saying, “Come!”
Polly, with a gasp of relief, bent quickly to pick up the child, but he stopped her with a stern gesture.
“No. It is not my son. Gray Eagle is no thief.”
She moaned. “You mean, I am to leave him? But how can I, how can I? Not yet! He will be hungry.” Her two hands went with a piteous gesture to her breasts.
Gray Eagle said: “Choose.”
He stalked to the door and out. The other Indians followed. Polly stared after them, wringing her hands, whimpering like an animal. She met the intent gaze of her grandmother fixed upon her. ”

“ Too little speech in a wife is better than too much, they say.”
“She is a still woman, Ezra,” said Granny. “Some are born so. It does not mean that they are always sad women.” She added in a low voice to Polly, as the girl passed, “Speak to him, child! You will not let your man go into the wilderness without a word?” ”

“ Her voice was musical, but shy and hesitating, as if she had not the habit of using it.
“Ah, let be!” said Granny again, protectively. “’Tis cruel to try to make a child into a woman all at once. Dearie me! How well I mind that I used to slip away to play with my wooden doll-baby weeks after I wore the cap and shawl myself—till my husband caught me and teased me out of it, because a live one was coming. Polly has had so little childhood, poor lamb! ”

“ We grow foppish! What say, Polly mine—shall I return to you tricked out in fancy headgear with a feather in it, like the fellow in the song folks are singing nowadays?” He smiled at her as he sang gaily: “‘Yankee Doodle, bow-wow-wow, Yankee Doodle Dandy⸺’”
Granny Estill looked up quickly from her knitting—a gray, bent creature, twisted with rheumatism, older than women are nowadays at her age, yet with the youthful, laughing eyes of a girl. ”

“ Granny interrupted. “Let be! A woman likes to wait on her man, son, especially so fine and proper and upstanding a man as you.”
He chuckled. “’Tis easy to see how you managed to capture four husbands for yourself, Mistress Estill! But I did not marry a wife to be a servant to me. I buy my servants,” he added, proudly, “or at least I shall be buying them as I sell the crops. Here in this rough life you women have your full share of the work, without mollycoddling an able-bodied husband into the bargain. I cannot make of our Polly a fine lady—not yet. ”

“ The old woman made a wide gesture of surrender. “If I had heard it, I should have risen up out of that bed, mother to many that I was—ay, and grandmother, too—and I should have gone to him, gone to the love of my youth, my Dan’l. For I knew by then that he was my man—he and no other. A woman belongs to the one mate only, no matter how many take her after⸺”
“Yes!” Polly had risen to her feet, her face alight. “‘A woman belongs to the one mate only,’” she repeated. ”

“ He stopped by the cradle, gazing down, his natural orator’s voice sinking to an abrupt pause.
“Eh, have they not?” asked Granny, innocently. “It seems that the red folk may have suffered somewhat, too.”
Ezra glanced at her uncomfortably. “You’re old, and the old get queer notions. The savages have suffered no more than they deserve to suffer; as none should know better, surely, than Mistress Estill!”
The old woman’s head drooped over her knitting. “I have no love for the Indians, God knows! ”

“ A woman has no chance to mourn her dead in peace in this country—we’re too skeerce. So I promised at last to marry the man that wanted me worst. But on the day set for the wedding, what should I hear but a musket shot, in the woods beyond my clearing—a musket whose voice I knew well! It was my Dan’l’s Betsey-gun.”
“Ah-h!” Polly took the corner of her apron, and wiped the old woman’s eyes. ”

“ Sit like a civilized body, do, not squatting on your haunches like one of them squaw critters. There, that’s better! Sometimes you give me a turn, with your savage ways. Polly, do ’e know why I’ve come out to live with you and young Ezra here, me that’s got a good home of her own, and had thought to be done forever with the border life? You see, I kind of lost my courage, that time the savages got your pa and ma, and took you captive—not that I hadn’t plenty of other children left, but Johnny, your father, was my first—Dan’l’s boy; and nobody has their first but once. ”

“ He went to the cradle and stood gazing, his face a-quiver. Suddenly he stooped and took something out of the baby’s clenched fist; a long, gray feather. “What is this?” he asked, dully.
Granny started. The Indian, then had left his sign, his warning! But she managed to answer, carelessly:
“Oh, that? Why, he must have pulled it out of his mother’s feather duster, strong little man that he is! Come, Ezra, make up the fire, son. ’Tis time for the child’s nursing bottle.”
For Mistress Estill, builder of empire, had little energy left to waste on grief. ”

“ Well, about my wildcat, child. Get your knitting; a good housewife never sits idle. We won’t need lights for that. I don’t hold with this newfangled way of lighting a dip as soon as you’d say jack-robinson. Rank wastefulness, I call it. Get you a stool and sit beside me—no, closer. I like to be able to touch your pretty hair now and then, just to be sure you’re here. For so long—you weren’t.”
The girl seated herself between Granny and the cradle, facing the window, toward which the other’s shoulder was turned.
“’Tis a long story,” began the old woman, “but then all of mine are that. ”

“ Remember there are neighbors within gunshot, and you have Granny for company—Granny and our son. Polly!” He was eying her closely, and asked again, “You are not afraid?”
“Don’t you see,” suggested Granny, “’tis you she fears for, son, you going, out alone into the wilderness? Ah, ’tis the hardest thing a woman has to bear, the waiting!”
“But things are not as they were in your waiting days, Granny,” he said gently. “The wilderness has shrunk away from us, back to beyond the Ohio water. There are cabins and farms and settlements now, all along the road to Harrodsburg ”

“ Better than I knew myself, perhaps.”
“Better than—your children?” whispered Polly.
Granny’s head drooped. “I’m afraid so. Women can’t help their feelings, even when they do their duty—or what seems to them such. Once, he was gone so long that folks said he wa’n’t coming back. A hunter told me he was dead, that he’d seen Dan’l’s curly red scalp drying at the door of an Indian tepee. And so he had! Only some folks are tough enough to outlive even a scalping. They pestered me to be marrying again ”

“ It happened afore we come over the mountains, Dan’l and me—your real grandfather, you know, the first of my husbands. He was away at the time—he was mostly away, being that sort—and I had your father Johnny in the cradle, and another coming, as usual; when one evening toward dusk, like now, I heard a commotion in the hen yard. I seized my musket and run out. And there in the midst of the fowl crouched a wildcat! I outs with a screech and ups with my gun, not having time to take aim; and then I started to the cabin at a run, the critter after me. ”

“ You’ll not stop me yelling until you kill me. Ezra-ah-h!”
They gagged her with her own knitting, but still she strained at her thongs, spluttering, glaring, cursing them with her fierce eyes. The Indians laughed among themselves. One said: “Old Long-knife squaw heap big fighting brave—ugh!”
They began to run about rapidly, picking up everything in sight, always with a cautious eye on Gray Eagle, however. One tied an apron around his waist, so that it hung down behind; one spied the moccasins Polly had sewed for Ezra, and appropriated them with a grunt of satisfaction ”

“ He put her aside, and leaned over to look, frowning.
“Ho!” he muttered. “A man-child. The Moonmaid’s son?”
She nodded, fearfully.
“A white child,” he said, still gazing. “And too young. It is not mine. The Moon-maid has lied!”
His hand went to the tomahawk at his belt.
Polly cried out, sank to her knees, her arms embracing his legs.
“No, no! Listen! The baby is mine, mine! But you did not come, they were my people, what was I to do? I but one and they so many! In my heart I waited. Granny! Granny, tell him⸺”
The Indian looked down at her, his face slowly relaxing. ”

“ My Dan’l, your own grandfather, was like that. But women are different, Polly. They’ve got to be! They’ve got to mind the house, and see that the fire don’t go out; see that the courage don’t go out in their men folk, either, because it takes more than tinder to light that again. Else there soon wouldn’t be any homes to mind, all of us wanderin’ round loose in herds, like the wild beasts. Sometimes, since we got you back, Polly, I’ve been scared you might have inherited a sort of hankerin’ for the wilderness, from your grandfather, dearie⸺”
The girl had stopped spinning. ”

“ What shall I do! You tell me! I knew it would be so. He will not come again—unless—to kill! And how shall I find him? How shall I ever go to him? Yet my baby, my little son—”
Slowly, stiffly, the old woman’s head turned until her eyes indicated the door through which the Indian had gone. Polly covered her face with her arms. “You mean, I am to go? You tell me that?” She went to the old woman, stroking the wrinkled cheeks, the hands, desperately. “It is good-by, then! Ezra—you will make him understand, remind him of what he said about the prior claim? ”

“ Sometimes I’ve thought—maybe it’s because I’m old, getting into my dotage—but I’ve thought there might be things you didn’t want to forget! I know how it takes ahold of men, that wild, free life. It sort of spoils ’em for houses and folks and duties, and such as that. They keep wanderin’ off, further and further off, till some day they don’t never come back. ”

“ It may be I was wrong there. Perhaps they only remind her. Well, well, she has her baby now, and there’s nothing to tame a girl like her babies. Be patient!”
“But do you help us if you can, out of your wisdom,” he urged. ”

“ Unless,” she murmured, “’twere the red men’s, maybe—do ’e think?”
“Stuff and nonsense! What put that thought into your head? The Cherokees and the Iroquois have no real rights here. They’ve used the land merely, enjoyed it—free of cost. And for long enough. ”