Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink

Author:Carol Ryrie Brink [Brink, Carol Ryrie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

13 Scalp Belt

The day after Caddie's ride to the Indian camp, life settled into the old routine. The neighbors went home again. No charred black ruins awaited them. The sturdy wilderness houses were just as they had left them, only dearer than ever before, and in the log barns hungry cows bawled lustily for food.

Everyone recognized now that the "massacree scare," which had started in the tavern, had been a false alarm. But the terror which it had inspired was not easily forgotten. Many people left the country for good, making their slow way eastward, their few possessions piled high in wagon or cart, their weary cows walking behind. Tales of bravery or cowardice during the "scare" were told and retold around the winter fires and, at last, people were able to laugh at them instead of trembling. One of the tales the people of Dunnville loved best was of the fiery old man upriver, who, although past sixty, left his old wife to defend the homestead with the only gun they owned, while he set out empty-handed to fight the Indians.

But, although it all came to nothing and folks could laugh at the "massacree scare" at last, still it left with many people a deeper fear and hatred of the Indians than they had ever felt before. The Indians themselves understood this. Now that the excitement was over, they were safe from even the most cowardly of the white men, But, nevertheless, they prepared to leave their bark huts and move westward for a time. They felt the stirring of the sap in the trees. A smell of spring in the winter air lured them. The old women made bundles of their furs and blankets and cooking pots and put them on pole and buckskin litters. The ponies pranced, the dogs barked. The Indian men refitted bowstrings, polished knives and guns, and prepared the canoes for a long portage over the ice.

One day, soon after the "scare," when Caddie came home from school, she saw an Indian pony tied to the rail fence near the kitchen door. Clara ran out of the front door to meet her.

Oh, Caddie," she said, "do hurry. Indian John's in the kitchen and he wants to see you. He won't say a thing to the rest of us.

Father's away and Mother and Mrs. Conroy are nearly frightened out of their wits. He's got his horrible old dog with him and his scalp belt, too."

Caddie ran around the house and opened the kitchen door. Between the cook stove and the table sat John, bolt upright, with a large piece of dried apple pie in each hand. Solemnly he bit into first one piece and then the other, Mother and Mrs. Conroy peeping timidly at him from the dining-room door the while. His scalp belt lay on the kitchen table beside the empty pie tin and the clean fork and plate which city-bred Mother had laid for him so daintily. At his feet lay his dog, licking its front paw with a slow red tongue.

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