“DISTANCES ARE DECEPTIVE,” DANE said, and swung his chair to point toward the range off to the northwest. “If you rode to the base of that nearest butte on horseback, you might make a fairly accurate guess as to how far it was from this cabin. But let us say you had gone there as a child of ten, and now twelve years later you start out again, it will seem a much shorter distance, don’t you know. That was what happened to Grandmother Mary. She first made the journey to Menewa’s village when she was ten—an age when distances and time are long. A dozen years later, they were shortened for her. “Not until the third day of her journey did she start looking in earnest for the old Creek Path to the west. She should have reached it on the second day, but missed it somehow. Probably turned off for shade and water, and missed it.” He laughed. “Lucky for me, she did miss it, or I would not be here to tell you about her. Maybe she was just riding along with her face to the sun, so gladdened by her new freedom that she would not have seen the trail if it had been as wide as the Yellowstone at flood time.”
About midmorning of the third day, Creek Mary was surprised to see a small cluster of buildings across the river. It was not an Indian village, but a white man’s outpost, a crude fortification built there by the Carolinians for trade and defense. She turned off the trail at once, keeping behind a meadow of high canes so that she would not be seen. Since the second day she had been alert for strangers, but had met no one, and only once had sighted what appeared to be a trader’s pack train moving far ahead of her.
After an hour or so she turned the Choctaw pony back to the trail and was surprised to see rapids running in the river. By the time she reached a roaring waterfall she suspected that she might have passed the trail. She was not certain of this, however. She thought that perhaps the fort might not have been there when she had made that childhood journey and perhaps she had forgotten the waterfall. She had no compass, of course, but she knew that if she turned west she would eventually come to either a Lower or Upper Creek village and could then find her way to Menewa. And so she urged the pony on up the rocky winding path, but by sundown she had found no sign of any diverging trail.
She slept that night in high country, hidden among a thicket of scrub cedars. A strong wind blew incessantly, making musical sounds in the needlelike foliage, but chilling her under the single blanket. Opothle was awake at first dawnlight, crying from cold and hunger. Fog hung over the earth thick as water, forming droplets on her deerskin cape. She chewed some dried venison and a piece of biscuit, tonguing the masticated food into the child’s willing mouth. She still had enough food left for three or four days, but she could find no water on the rocky height and both she and the boy were thirsty.
By the time she got the pony saddled, the mists were lifting. A pale red sun appeared and the clouds took on the shape of an enormous winged creature outspread above her, black and menacing. She shivered. The day was not starting well.
The trail twisted, growing narrower and rockier as it seemed to climb to the sky. During the morning there were two more bad signs. A coachwhip snake came flying along the trail, its black and shiny head held upright as though to stop her passage. At the last moment, it turned aside and vanished into the brush. Soon after that a black turkey buzzard began gliding in circles just above her, dropping lower and lower so that she could see its reddish eyes fixed upon the horse, the woman, and the child.
As the sun rose in a metallic sky the three grew thirstier, the child crying, the pony snuffling and reaching for green shoots of shrubbery at every opportunity. By midday the heat and humidity were almost unbearable. Suddenly the pony halted, its ears quivering. It tried to lunge into the undergrowth against the pull of the bridle. She held the animal steady. Off to the right she could hear water running over stones. She let the pony go then, through the brush and a narrow stand of tall pines, and there a spring gushed from a ledge of rock to form a pool before foaming off the side of a hill. Around the edge of the pool were recent moccasin tracks.
While the pony drank she used her hand as a cup, dribbling water into Opothle’s mouth and over his face until he began laughing joyously. From the ledge she could see across a series of timbered ridges that turned from green to purple in the farthest distance. Along the western horizon thunderheads were piling up and lightning was playing across the blackest of the storm clouds.
Although the water was like ice, she bathed Opothle quickly and then undressed and plunged in, forcing herself to stay under until she could feel the cold penetrate her flesh. Then she and the child lay naked in the sun, nibbling at their dry rations and listening to the trickling water and the hum of insects until they felt warm and sleepy.
A roll of thunder brought her wide awake. As she dressed the child and herself, she watched the storm clouds moving toward them, a white scud racing out in front. The only shelter was the ledge, a few feet beneath the slant of rock. She led the horse there and tied him to a hickory sapling, and then turned with Opothle in her arms to watch the wind tearing at treetops on the nearest ridge. The sun was darkened abruptly. Close around her everything turned suddenly still, birds and insects falling silent, and then a burst of wind swept across the hillside, thrashing the great pines. For the first time since leaving Bluff Village she felt fear, and when lightning crashed upon the rocks to create thunder that shook the earth, her imagination fed upon this fear to create terror. She wanted to run, run, but a sheet of rain struck her with the force of an ocean wave, drenching her completely. She turned her back and tried to calm her frightened son and warm his wet body. The pony, beset by its own fears, struggled madly to break away from the rawhide that held it to the hickory sapling.
It seemed to Mary that the ordeal would never end, the hissing of the chill rain against the gray rocks, the shrieking of wind in tortured pines, the sheets of water cascading upon her back. But at last it ended, and she felt the exultation of survival. For a while, rain dripped from thinning clouds and then suddenly the sun was out again, scorching hot, raising curls of steam from the wet rocks. Again she undressed Opothle and herself to dry their clothing before the sun was gone. She also cleaned the child’s cradleboard, and dried some moss and grass to reline it.
Next morning she was awakened by a cheerful mockingbird, which she considered a good sign until she discovered that the tender parts of her body were covered with insect bites. She ignored the itching and was in the saddle by sunrise. An hour or so later she found a branching trail, heading straight away from the rising sun. It was very narrow, and did not appear to be much used, but when she dismounted and studied the hooftracks and half-dry dung she guessed that four horses had passed along it the previous day. As she settled back into her saddle, a dark blue hawk appeared suddenly above her, circling and darting, screaming a piercing call. “Go back, go back!” it seemed to be crying. Her skin quivered and she felt that same terror of the imagination that had gripped her during the storm.
“But where can I go back to?” she asked aloud, and Opothle tried to reply to her question, using the four or five words that he had learned from her. She started the pony forward, and the hawk became more agitated, diving and screeching until at last it sped away in a straight course toward the highest of the distant hills thrusting up beyond the thick forest below.
She soon forgot the hawk; she was entranced by the wild grandeur of the country through which she was passing. In open meadows she sighted large flocks of turkeys and herds of deer. She wanted fresh meat, but her only weapon—the pistol—was useless for hunting.
By late afternoon the trail had shrunk to little more than a pathway covered with green moss, showing no signs of recent passage. It brought her to a wide stream swollen by recent rains, but she could see the pebbled bottom and forced the reluctant pony into the swift waters. About halfway across, its front feet plunged downward, almost throwing her from the saddle, and then the pony was afloat. She had to swim three or four yards with Opothle in the cradle on her back. As soon as she reached the bank, she rushed downstream to catch the frightened pony’s bridle and lead it ashore. She was dismayed to discover that the saddlepack was gone. She searched along the bank but found only the sodden blanket which contained her pistol, extra moccasins, mirror, and knife. Her food supply was gone. Worst of all, the trail she had been following seemed to have ended at the stream.
She found a pine log, recently downed by a windstorm, and used it as a drying place for wet clothing and the blanket and its contents. The child was fretful, being afflicted with numerous insect bites also, and the drying effect of the sun made the red spots itch like fire. She sat on the log with the half-dried blanket around her hips, disconsolate because she no longer had a trail to follow and acutely feeling pangs of hunger. She knew she had nothing to eat and would soon have to search for berries and roots. She was scratching at insect bites under her knees and watching a dragonfly skimming across a pool of water when she heard the snapping of a twig behind her.
Before she could turn, a strong arm encircled her breasts and held her tight. At the same instant a hand covered her nose and mouth. Her first thought was of the hawk keening to her that morning: “Go back, go back!” The next moment she feared for Opothle; the boy was in his cradle, propped against the log, crying himself to sleep.
“Akusa?” a deep voice breathed behind her. “Creek?”
She managed to nod her head. The arm that was crushing her breasts was encircled with a silver band bearing an eagle design.
“Where are the others?” the male voice asked in Cherokee.
She shook her head violently, pulling away as the hand released her. The man’s face came into her view. “Tsalagi, Cherokee,” she said, looking him straight in the eyes. She found no warmth there. His eyes were those of a hunter regarding a captured animal.