Read Ebook: The prior claim by Kelly Eleanor Mercein Wilford L F Louis F Illustrator

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Ebook has 207 lines and 13394 words, and 5 pages

"Granny! Get her to talk while I'm gone, will you? I've been thinking she might open her heart to another woman, easier than to me. That's why I sent for you to come. Has she spoken at all--of those missing years, I mean?"

"Neither of them nor of aught else, except now and then a sentence, more like a word or two. 'Tis as if, being among the savages so long, she had forgotten the use of her native tongue."

"She was in the tribe of Gray Eagle, who speaks English well, confound him! Still, Indians are by nature a silent folk; even the squaws do not chatter. But, Granny, 'tis worse than dumbness. Listen! Many a time I've come in from the fields at sundown and found her with nothing done, no food prepared, the wheel idle, sitting here on the doorstep, gazing. Just gazing. Other times she was not to be found, high or low, had gone off somewhere into the woods, and would not come to my calling. More than once she's been away well into the night, and me searching till the hair stood up on my head with fear of what I should find. She's brooding--or bewitched, I tell you! I've been sick with the worry of it, fearing there might be summat wrong here." He touched his forehead. "Now and then women with child are took that way, I'm told."

Granny nodded.

The old woman rose and put her hands on his shoulders.

"There, there, boy, don't fash yourself! Just shut your eyes and love her. 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. 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.

Granny blushed. "My wisdom, is it? Think shame how you mock an ignorant backwoods woman that's never had the time nor the chance for a word of it!"

"I'm not talking about learning," he said, earnestly, "though when it comes to that, you've got more real learning out of life than I'll ever get out of all the books in Richmond town. Ssh! Here she comes."

Polly re-entered from the lean-to with a pair of white, new moccasins in her hand. She offered them to Ezra, still without speaking.

Polly nodded shyly, smiling for the first time.

"Why, how fine they are! All the beading and the stitchery and the soft doeskin! I declare, they might have been made by a squaw."

Again Granny hushed him with a quick gesture, and Ezra bit his lip.

Polly watched him wistfully. "You--you will not take them?"

Ezra laughed. "No, no, they're too fine for this journey; the old ones are good enough. I'll save them for special occasions--more christenings, perhaps!" He laughed again, slyly, kissed her close, and went out of the door with a backward wave of the hand.

Granny hobbled to the threshold and watched him over Polly's shoulder.

"There, he's turned to wave again. What a foolish, loving, dear lad it is! Answer him, girl, quick! You might never see him more." She checked herself. "Whatever am I croaking about? Such days are gone."

Polly waved a listless hand, closed the door, looked a moment at the moccasins on the shelf, and seated herself at the spinning wheel.

"Now you've shut the door, and shut out all the light with it," Granny said rather testily. "'Tis nearly dark, and candles are skeerce. Besides, the sunset's pretty, I like to watch it. Let the door stay open!"

"Too pretty. It hurts," said the girl very low, her hand at her breast.

Granny looked at her curiously.

"Humph! You're over young to be having a sunset hurt you, my dear."

Polly, at the spinning wheel, was having rather poor success. The thread broke.

Polly shook her head, uncertainly.

Polly said, in a very low voice, "The moccasins--"

Granny laughed aloud, relieved but sympathetic.

The girl gave her a queer, beseeching look, and did not answer.

"Eh, well," sighed the old woman, "'tis your own business, sure! Reckon I'm getting to be a right meddlesome old fool."

She resumed her knitting, the spinning wheel whirred again, the room grew darker--would have been quite dark except for a flickering light from the pine knot on the hearth. Granny's voice came presently out of the shadows, with a dreamy quality unusual to its brisk accents:

The girl at the spinning wheel lifted her head with a sharp movement, as of pain, which was not lost on the old eyes watching her.

"Tell me, dearie--I've often wanted to ask: were they so terribly cruel to you, those ugly savages?" Granny asked quietly.

"They were not all cruel," the girl said. "Nor ugly."

"No?" repeated the other, encouraged. "Not the women, perhaps? One of them would have mothered you, I dessay? Surely even red savage women would want to protect a poor little motherless thing like you, just coming into womanhood? And--and save her from the wickedness of the men?"

"The men," said Polly, "were not all wicked."

Granny winced. But she spoke again, very gently, "Sometimes cruelty from men is--is better than too much kindness. Eh, Polly, my girl?"

There was no answer. The spinning wheel whirred unevenly.

Granny sighed. "Of course you needn't talk to me unless you've a mind to. Only, remember, if you've got something to forget, that ain't the way to do it, keeping it all to yourself; that ain't the way to do it!"

After a pause she spoke again, haltingly:

"It means 'Beloved,'" answered the girl, very low.

"Oh, just a pet-name," said the other, mollified, "and a right pretty one, too! Is it hungry, then, poor little starved lamb?" she added, for the baby was whimpering urgently.

The mother ran into the lean-to and returned after a moment, bringing an old-fashioned nursing bottle with a long rubber tube, which Granny eyed with great disfavor.

"I asked him for it," said Polly.

"Asked him! Whatever for?"

"Nonsense!" interrupted Granny, briskly. "None of that, my girl! No silly thoughts. You're peaked, to be sure; but tain't as if you coughed, nor run a low fever, nor looked to be sickening up for something. You'll live to see the little tad followin' at your heels like a puppy, and another of him lying in the cradle. That's right!" she went on, as Polly dropped to her knees beside the baby, and bent low over him, her face hidden. "That's the place to forget what's troubling you, there with him at your breast. No more foolish fancies! 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?"

The room was growing quite dark.

"Better put a fagot on," added the old woman. "Never neglect your fire, child, 'tis bad housekeeping. And then come here. I want to talk to you." Polly crouched obediently at her knee, turning up a face full of trust and love.

"No, not like that!" said the other sharply. "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.

"It went sort of hard with me, dearie. I heard it all, you see, though I wa'n't in it, Johnny having put me under the floor at the first yell--always taking such care of his mother, that boy! I heard poor Annie shrieking as they killed the other children--she was always sort of pore-sperrited; I heard your father strugglin' and cussin' every foot of the way as they drug him out to the bonfire in the yard--a very cussin' man was John, and he wanted to make them mad enough to kill him and be done with it. But they wouldn't. And then, at the last, I heard him singing."

The old woman was trembling violently, and Polly stared at her.

"Ay, can't you remember? Can't you remember even that? I'd like you to remember that! But maybe they'd carried you out of hearing. I couldn't stand it any more, I had to see what they were doing to my boy. So I crept along under the floor till I found a chink in the logs I could peep out of. They had him marching round and round a stake, with the fire licking at him already; and this was the song he sang"--Granny's face was lifted, with eyes closed, like some old sibyl's, and she raised a quavering voice to the tune of "Wearing of the Green"--

"Oh, you who are in hiding, Lie low just where you be, And don't you stir or whisper No matter what befalls."

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