Granny’s head drooped. “I’m afraid so. Women can’t help their feelings, even when they do their duty—or what seems to them such. Once, he was gone so long that folks said he wa’n’t coming back. A hunter told me he was dead, that he’d seen Dan’l’s curly red scalp drying at the door of an Indian tepee. And so he had! Only some folks are tough enough to outlive even a scalping. They pestered me to be marrying again; they would not let me be. A woman has no chance to mourn her dead in peace in this country—we’re too skeerce. So I promised at last to marry the man that wanted me worst. But on the day set for the wedding, what should I hear but a musket shot, in the woods beyond my clearing—a musket whose voice I knew well! It was my Dan’l’s Betsey-gun.”
“Ah-h!” Polly took the corner of her apron, and wiped the old woman’s eyes.
“Eh, was I crying? I didn’t know. Well, the time come when Dan’l really was gone, for good and all. I couldn’t believe it at first, though since he’d lost his scalp he was always off hunting for it, had got sort of queer-like. Two, three years I waited, the men pestering me nigh out of my wits, for I was a comely wench then, and a good cook, too. And at last I married the poor soul I’d had to disappoint before. After his death—he died in his bed, for a wonder—I took me another, and come on over the mountains with him; hunting for Dan’l, I do believe, though I wouldn’t have told it to myself. And when the Indians got that one, I wedded my fourth—all good men and true, they were, who gave me their love, and my children, and something to do for, you know. But still”—the old voice sank to a whisper—“many’s the night I lay awake beside the man I was married to at the time, with his baby asleep in the crook of my arm, listening, listening for the sound of Dan’l’s Betsey-gun—”
“And if you had heard it?” demanded the girl, with strange eagerness.
“Ah!” The old woman made a wide gesture of surrender. “If I had heard it, I should have risen up out of that bed, mother to many that I was—ay, and grandmother, too—and I should have gone to him, gone to the love of my youth, my Dan’l. For I knew by then that he was my man—he and no other. A woman belongs to the one mate only, no matter how many take her after⸺”
“Yes!” Polly had risen to her feet, her face alight. “‘A woman belongs to the one mate only,’” she repeated. “Now I will tell you, now you will understand. Grandmother! They took me from my mate. Only one moon we had together—and they took me away. I tried to tell them, but they would not listen; they thought me crazed. I tried to hide from them, but they found me. I tried to slip away and go to him, but they brought me back. And now they have given me to another, and tell me I must forget. How can I forget? What right have I to forget? You think that my man forgets? No! It would not be hard to love this other one, he is young, kind, handsome—but Indians do not mate often, like palefaces. To them that is shame. The moon looks at me sternly, so that I cannot sleep; the forest calls to me and I cannot go; when there is rain on this strange roof I close my eyes and think it is beating upon our tepee beyond the water. But I have not known where I shall find him again, nor how.”
Granny was gasping. “My girl, my girl! Light the candle, quick! I cannot see you. What are you telling me? A red man, a savage, the murderer of your own people? You would bring such disgrace as this on decent folk? But no, no, you are mad, my poor lamb! Ezra was right—the horror has turned your wits. There, there, my pretty! We will protect you. Ezra will not let them take you again. And the baby will comfort and heal⸺”
A sudden cry of terror from without drowned her speech, a savage yell, the negro’s voice panting as he neared the cabin:
“Injuns! Injuns! Lemme in, miss, open de do’! Fo’ Gawd’s sake, lemme in! Aie-e-e!” A shriek died into silence.
Again the savage yell, much closer.