Was it dust or the mist of tears that made the British general wipe his eyes? He reached out one ungloved hand and grasped Prudence’s little one.
“Give my sympathy to your mother, my child,” he said kindly, “and tell her that I hope she will soon be better. Little soldiers, remember that never before have I surrendered, but now I do, in the name of the King. March on!” he ordered to his men. Looking back he saw Prudence and William standing in the gate and waving him good-bye until the trees and the distance shut them from his view.
[The Boy Who Had Never Seen An Indian]
“I saw Painted Feathers this morning,” the boy said as he threw himself down on the rude log settle in front of the fire and stretched out his hands to feel the blaze. “He seemed angry about something,” he went on, “but he and the young braves were glad to see me. They like us, mother. Painted Feathers remembers how you took care of his little daughter, Laughing Eyes, when she strayed away from the camp up in the Blue Ridge, and he still wears the beads you gave him around his neck. Heap big chief, Painted Feathers, but I guess we’ve made him our friend.”
The woman in homespun, who bent over a savory stew brewing in a kettle that hung from the crane, smiled as she looked down at the boy’s manly face. He was the counterpart of his father, who had gone over the Blue Ridge hunting, and had never returned—lost in the trackless wilderness of the woods, they feared. He wore the same kind of rough suit of tanned skins, hide boots, and fur cap. His eyes were just as deep and fearless as his father’s had been. He was his mother’s mainstay now in the little cabin set so far from any other habitation in the depth of the wilderness. There were Indians near, but, so far, they had been friendly to the two settlers.
“I tried to understand what Painted Feathers was angry about,” the lad continued.
“What was it, Eli; nothing that we have done, I trust?” the boy’s mother asked, her voice trembling a little as she peered out through the window at the gathering dusk and the gloomy forest that surrounded them.
“Oh, no, mother,” Eli hastened to assure her. “As nearly as I could make out, Painted Feathers and the tribe are afraid of losing their land. They pointed toward the direction the Shenandoah takes, beyond the Blue Ridge as it flows into the Potomac. They say that the land in that valley is being measured off with strange instruments and by white men who are going to bring their own tribes and build their own camps there. You can’t blame Painted Feathers, mother, for his tribe settled here first. I thought as I came home what a pity it would be to take the land away from the Indians; such lofty trees, and the silver river, and the buds of the wild flowers opening everywhere. I never saw the mountains look so blue as they did in the sunshine this morning, and Painted Feathers has lived here for years and years,” he said, his clear, boyish voice full of sympathy.
“I know, too, how Painted Feathers feels about this valley,” Eli’s mother said. “He knows every deer track and every spring and partridge call for miles around. But I think this is all talk about surveyors being near, son. No one has marked out the lands in all this time, and they would scarcely begin now. How much longer the days are!” she added, turning toward the door to open it and let in the earth-soaked wind of the evening. It was early spring and the twilight was long and mellow.