Follow the River by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

Author:JAMES ALEXANDER Thom
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780307763112
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-04-24T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

15

They ran out of corn. They ate the last of it on the O-y-o River bank at a place where the river course came down from the north and went a long way west. Mary recognized the place, even though the foliage of summer was now gone and the evening sky was full of marching black clouds instead of sunset: It was the place where the Indians had stopped to gaze down the broad valley and she had caught Captain Wildcat staring at her in that strange and smug way as if she had been a good possession of his. She did not try to tell Ghetel about it. Ghetel cared about nothing now but that they had eaten the last of their corn.

They had detoured around two more rivers and two creeks since the one where they had lost the horse two days before. Now they sat looking down the great, slate-gray river and held their blankets over their heads and clenched tight at their throats to keep them from being blown off by the relentless wind. Finally, unsettled by Ghetel’s dark and lifeless stare, Mary ventured:

“I know where we are.” She forced a smile. “We’re just about exactly halfway home, accordin’ to my reckonin’.”

Ghetel said nothing for a while. Then: “Eh. Half.”

“Y’d not’ve thought we could come this far, would ’ee?”

“Nor go farder.”

“Oh, yes.” She tried to be cheerful. She knew that Ghetel was now blaming her for their unspeakable circumstances, and she could see that the old woman was nurturing that resentment with every painful step they took and with every hollow twinge of hunger she felt, and that the resentment would surely only get worse from here on because food was getting to be almost impossible to find, and within a day or two they would be leaving the relatively easy terrain of the O-y-o valley and turning up into the steep and boulder-strewn valley where the waters of the New River twisted through the towering mountains of the Allegheny range. “I reckon we’ve walked all in all about three hundred fifty mile in less’n three weeks,” she went on. “Don’t that make ’ee feel some’at proud? It does me, I’ll say as much!”

“Eh!”

“Come on, then. There’s still an hour o’ light. Then we’ll find us a nice cozy place out o’ this wind, an’ we’ll get all snug an’ I’ll do the kindness to y’r feet, eh? What say’ee t’ that?” She rose, hurting in every joint but making herself smile. She stood leaning on her hickory spear. Under her blanket, in her knotted rope belt, hung the tomahawk. Its cold steel head against her naked flank made her shudder. But she did not want Ghetel to carry it. Since the loss of the horse, she had little faith in Ghetel. Ghetel would probably lose it, as she had lost her lance, and as she had lost them the horse. And they could not afford to lose the tomahawk. They simply would be out of all luck if they lost the tomahawk.

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