The Light in the Forest Read Free Page B

LL the way to the ominous-sounding Fort Pitt, True Son tried to keep his mind from the gloomy hour when Half Arrow must turn back and leave him. Only rarely did his cousin mention it.
    “I think now I have tramped enough toward the sun’s rising,” he would soberly begin the subject.
    True Son would put on a strained and formal face.
    “Yes, tomorrow you must go back.
Elkesa!
What does your father say?”
    “He doesn’t say because he doesn’t know how far I am,” Half Arrow would remind him.
    “He knows you’re not home yet.”
    “Yes, but he knows Little Crane must come back too, and we can travel together.”
    “Little Crane might not come back. He’s lovesick for his white squaw. He would like to stay with her.”
    “Then I’ll go back by myself. Never could I get lost on such a wide road. All I need do is follow horse droppings.”
    “Some white devil might ambush you.”
    “Never could he hit me,” Half Arrow boasted. “When he shoots, I jump. Let me hear his rifle, and Achto, the deer, has no legs like mine. Ten jumps from campsite to campsite. My feet won’t even get wet in the rivers. I’ll fly over, like Ploeu, the turkey.”
    Now that the subject of Half Arrow’s return had been duly mentioned, it could be put away till another time. To keep it covered up and out of sight, they talked of many things. One was the respective qualities of the white men’s horses and which ones they would steal and ride home on if they got the chance. Another pleasant subject was the white guards they disliked and with whatstrokes, if they met them alone in the woods, they would kill and scalp them.
    Sometimes Little Crane left his white squaw to walk with the cousins, and then they talked of the foolish ways of the white people.
    “The reason they act so queer,” Little Crane pointed out, “is because they’re not an original people. Now we Indians are an original people. The Great Being made us from the beginning. Look! Our hair is always black, our eyes and skin dark, even True Son’s here. But the whites are of colors like horses. Some are light, some are dark, some are in-between. Some have black hair, some have light hair. Some have hair the color of a rotting log. Some have hair like the Colonel’s horse, and some have even red like his blanket. Their eyes are fickle as their hair. It’s because they are a mixed people, and that’s what makes them so foolish and troublesome. The Great Being knows their disposition. He had to give them a Good Book and teach them to read so they could learn what is good and bad. Now we Indians know good and bad for ourselves without a book or the cumbersome labor of reading.”
    “I think,” Half Arrow said, “they are all nearsighted. Do you notice how when we come uponthem they crowd close to stare at us? They almost tread on our toes. Now an Indian’s eyes are keen and far-sighted. He can stand at a distance and see all that he wants to.”
    “They must be hard of hearing too,” True Son mentioned. “They talk loud though they stand close enough to each other to touch with a stick.”
    “And they all talk at once like waterfowl,” Half Arrow declared. “How can they understand what is being said? Why don’t their elders teach them to keep silent and listen till the speaker’s done?”
    “It’s because they’re such a new people,” Little Crane explained. “They are young and heedless like children. You can see it the way they heap up treasures like a child, although they know they must die and can’t take such things with them. It would be no use anyhow because the next world has plenty of everything a man wants. Their house isn’t big enough for all they gather, so they have to build another house they call the barn. That’s why you find so many thieves among the whites. All white people must put what they call a lock on their door. It’s made of iron and you must carry another piece of iron with you to open it.”
    “If they shared with