The Frontiersman’s Daughter Read Free Page B

lifted linen-clad shoulders in a shrug. “With the British paying bounties for settlement scalps, it might prove a formidable temptation.”
    “But I thought—” She paused, pushing into uncharted territory with her next words. “I thought since you . . . knew them, lived with them . . .”
    A flash of something inexplicable crossed his face, and she sensed she’d gone too far. Never had they spoken of the past or the Shawnee, and doing so now seemed to bring about a wall that shut her out. Stung, she sought for words to soothe the strained silence, but her mind emptied of anything but a simple “sorry.”
    Her lips parted, but before she could utter another sound, he said, “Stay close to the cabin.”
    With a warning look he was gone, leaving her alone with all her anxiety. She sat down hard in her churning chair, near tears, forgetting the crock of butter. Oh Pa, I’m sorry, truly sorry. But there are so many things I long to know. She watched him disappear into the woods leading to the river, fighting the urge to run after him. Reaching into her pocket, she removed the aged newspaper she’d meant to make into a fan for Ransom. Just this morning she’d remembered it, wedged as it was between the trunk and a wall, forgotten. Before she’d pocketed it she caught sight of three arresting words: The White Indian. Beneath this, in bold print, was her father’s name.
    Now, unfolding the paper, her own hands seemed to tremble. The Virginia Gazette was widely circulated in the settlement, Kentucke being thought of as an extension of that state. Sometimes Pa left copies of it about the cabin. But never before had she seen this. Dropping her head, she read quickly, hungrily, not wanting to be discovered, vowing to return it to the trunk when she was through. The entire front page was devoted to her father with a detailed sketch that was remarkably his likeness. Was this why Ma had kept it?
    The headlines presented the story of his captivity with startling simplicity. Though it had been well over six years since he’d disappeared, she knew the facts by heart. The day their world was upended, her father had been on a salt-making expedition for the settlement. This was tiresome, sweaty work, the steam of the huge kettles competing with the suffocating heat. But salt was survival, necessary for preserving meat and curing hides, and the salt-rich Licking River provided plenty.
    It had been summer and twilight, her father’s favorite time of day. She knew just how the river had looked then—a beguiling blue before giving way to silvery white to match the moon. Without so much as the rustle of a bush for warning, the Indians had surrounded them. Her father had been the first to lay down his rifle. Rather than fight, he’d surrendered .
    The very word seemed at odds with everything Pa was, yet that’s what he’d done. She fought the urge to ball the paper into her fist. What choice did he have when faced with ninety-three Shawnee? He’d been but one of twenty men from the settlement. Her father was no fool. She read further without wanting to, a hard knot forming in her throat.
    He soon learned the Indians were planning to attack Fort Click. With most of the settlement men away making salt, the stockade was easy prey. Certain all within would be killed or captured, her father had struck a bargain. He assured the Shawnee the fort was at its strongest and the planned siege would be a costly mistake. If the Indians would take him and his men prisoner instead, and assure them fair treatment, they could be ransomed to the British in the north for bounty.
    She stopped suddenly, the words a blur of black ink. All she remembered of her father’s absence was the hollowness of hunger and a loneliness she couldn’t name. The fort’s corn crop soon ran out and there were too few men to supply meat for all the women and children within. Babies died. An old man shot himself in the blockhouse. With the first snow came much sickness.