Caddie Woodlawn

by Carol Ryrie Brink

  Indian John’s tall figure came toward her from one of the huts. His step was unhurried and his eyes were unsurprised.

  “You lost, Missee Red Hair?” he inquired.

  “No, no,” said Caddie, “I am not lost, John. But I must tell you. Some white men are coming to kill you. You and your people must go away. You must not fight. You must go away. I have told you.”

  “You cold,” said John. He lifted Caddie off her horse and led her to the fire.

  “No understan’,” said John, shaking his head in perplexity. “Speak too quick, Missee Red Hair.”

  Caddie tried again, speaking more slowly. “I came to tell you. Some bad men wish to kill you and your people. You must go away, John. My father is your friend. I came to warn you.”

  “Red Beard, he send?” asked John.

  “No, my father did not send me,” said Caddie. “No one knows that I have come. You must take your people and go away.”

  “You hungry?” John asked her and mutely Caddie nodded her head. Tears were running again and her teeth were chattering. John spoke to the squaws, standing motionless about the fire. Instantly they moved to do his bidding. One spread a buffalo skin for her to sit on. Another ladled something hot and tasty into a cup without a handle, a cup which had doubtless come from some settler’s cabin. Caddie grasped the hot cup between her cold hands and drank. A little trickle of warmth seemed to go all over her body. She stretched her hands to the fire. Her tears stopped running and her teeth stopped chattering. She let the Indian children, who had come up behind her, touch her hair without flicking it away from them. John’s dog came and lay down near her, wagging his tail.

  “You tell John ’gain,” said John, squatting beside her in the firelight.

  Caddie began again, slowly. She told how the whites had heard that the Indians were coming to kill. She told how her father and she had not believed. She told how some of the people had become restless and planned to attack the Indians first. She begged John to go away with his tribe while there was still time. When she had finished John grunted and continued to sit on, looking into the fire. She did not know whether he had yet understood her. All about the fire were row on row of dark faces, looking at her steadily with wonder but no understanding. John knew more English than any of them, and yet, it seemed, he did not understand. Patiently she began again to explain.

  But now John shook his head. He rose and stood tall in the firelight above the little white girl. “You come,” he said.

  Caddie rose uncertainly. She saw that it was quite dark now outside the ring of firelight, and a fine, sharp sleet was hissing down into the fire. John spoke in his own tongue to the Indians. What he was telling them she could not say, but their faces did not change. One ran to lead Betsy to the fire and another brought a spotted Indian pony that had been tethered at the edge of the clearing.

  “Now we go,” said the Indian.

  “I will go back alone,” said Caddie, speaking distinctly. “You and your people must make ready to travel westward.”

  “Red Hair has spoken,” said John. “John’s people go tomorrow.” He lifted her onto her horse’s back, and himself sprang onto the pony. Caddie was frightened again, frightened of the dark and cold, and uncertain of what John meant to do.

  “I can go alone, John,” she said.

  “John go, too,” said the Indian.

  He turned his pony into the faint woods trail by

  which she had come. Betsy, her head drooping under a slack rein, followed the spotted pony among the dark trees. Farther and farther behind, they left the warm, bright glow of fire. Looking back, Caddie saw it twinkling like a bright star. It was something warm and friendly in a world of darkness and sleet and sudden, icy branches. From the bright star of the Indian fire, Caddie’s mind leaped forward to the bright warmth of home. They would have missed her by now. Would Katie tell where she had gone? Would they be able to understand why she had done as she had?

  She bent forward against Betsy’s neck, hiding her face from the sharp needles of sleet. It seemed a very long way back. But at last the branches no longer caught at her skirts. Caddie raised her head and saw that they had come out on the open river bank. She urged Betsy forward beside the Indian pony.

  “John you must go back now. I can find my way home. They would kill you if they saw you.”

  John only grunted. He set his moccasined heels into the pony’s flanks, and led the way onto the ice. Betsy shook herself with a kind of shiver all through her body, as if she were saying, “No! no! no!” But Caddie’s stiff fingers pulled the rein tight and made her go. The wind came down the bare sweep of the river with tremendous force, cutting and lashing them with the sleet. Betsy slipped and went to her knees, but she was up again at once and on her way across the ice. Caddie had lost the feeling of her own discomfort in fear for John. If a white man saw him riding toward the farm tonight, he would probably shoot without a moment’s warning. Did John understand that? Was it courage or ignorance that kept John’s figure so straight, riding erect in the blowing weather?

  “John!” she cried. But the wind carried her voice away. “John!” But he did not turn his head.

  Up the bank, through the woods, to the edge of the clearing they rode, Indian file. Then the Indian pony stopped.

  Caddie drew Betsy in beside him. “Thank you!” she panted. “Thank you, John, for bringing me home. Go, now. Go quickly.” Her frightened eyes swept the farmstead. It was not dark and silent as it had been the night before. Lanterns were flashing here and there, people were moving about, voices were calling.

  “They’re starting out after the Indians!” thought Caddie. “Father hasn’t been able to stop them. They’re going to massacre.”

  She laid her cold hand on the spotted pony’s neck. “John!” she cried. “John, you must go quickly now!”

  “John go,” said the Indian, turning his horse.

  But, before the Indian could turn back into the woods, a man had sprung out of the darkness and caught his bridle rein.

  “Stop! Who are you? Where are you going?” The words snapped out like the cracking of a whip, but Caddie knew the voice.

  “Father!” she cried. “Father! It’s me. It’s Caddie!”

  “You, Caddie? Thank God!” His voice was full of warm relief. “Hey, Robert, bring the lantern. We’ve found her. Caddie! My little girl!”

  Suddenly Father was holding her close in his arms, his beard prickling her cheek, and over his shoulder she could see Robert Ireton with a bobbing lantern that threw odd shafts of moving light among the trees. John, too, had dismounted from his pony, and stood straight and still, his arms folded across his chest.

  “Oh, Father,” cried Caddie, remembering again her mission and the last uncomfortable hours. “Father, don’t let them kill John! Don’t let them do anything bad to the Indians. The Indians are our friends, Father, truly they are. I’ve been to the camp and seen them. They mean us no harm.”

  “You went to the Indian camp, Caroline?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “That was a dangerous thing to do, my child.”

  “Yes, Father, but Kent and some of the men meant to go and kill them. I heard them say so. They said they wouldn’t tell you they were going, and you weren’t there. Oh, Father, what else could I do?”

  He was silent for a moment, and Caddie stood beside him, shivering, and oppressed by the weight of his disapproval. In the swaying lantern light she searched the faces of the three men—Robert’s honest mouth open in astonishment, Father’s brows knit in thought, John’s dark face impassive and remote with no one knew what thoughts passing behind it.

  Caddie could bear the silence no longer. “Father, the Indians are our friends,” she repeated.

  “Is this true, John?” asked Father.

  “Yes, true, Red Beard,” answered John gravely.

  “My people fear yours, John. Many times I have told them that you are our friends. They do not always believe.”

 
“My people foolish sometime, too,” said John. “Not now. They no kill white. Red Beard my friend.”

  “He brought me home, Father,” said Caddie. “You must not let them kill him.”

  “No, no, Caddie. There shall be no killing tonight, nor any more, I hope, forever.”

  Over her head the white man and the red man clasped hands.

  “I keep the peace, John,” said Father. “The white men shall be your brothers.”

  “Red Beard has spoken. John’s people keep the peace.”

  For a moment they stood silent, their hands clasped in the clasp of friendship, their heads held high like two proud chieftains. Then John turned to his pony. He gathered the slack reins, sprang on the pony’s back and rode away into the darkness.

  “Oh, my little girl,” said Father. “You have given us a bad four hours. But it was worth it. Yes, it was worth it, for now we have John’s word that there will be peace.”

  “But, Father, what about our own men? They meant to kill the Indians. I heard them.”

  “Those men are cowards at heart, Caddie. Their plans reached my ears when I got home, and I made short work of such notions. Well, well, you are shivering, my dear. We must get you home to a fire. I don’t know what your mother will have to say to you, Caddie.”

  But, when they reached the farmhouse, the excitement of Caddie’s return was overshadowed by another occurrence. Katie, who had sat pale and silent in a corner all during the search, rushed out of the house at the sound of Caddie’s return.

  “Caddie!” she cried, “Caddie!” Then suddenly she crumpled like a wilted flower, and had to be carried away to bed.

  In the excitement of fetching smelling salts and water, Mrs. Woodlawn had only time to cry: “Caddie, my dear. You ought to be spanked. But I haven’t time to do it now. There’s a bowl of hot soup for you on the back of the stove.”

  In the kitchen Tom, Warren, Hetty, Maggie, and Silas, all the children, crowded around Caddie as she ate, gazing at her in silent admiration, as at a stranger from a far country.

  “Golly, Caddie, didn’t they try to scalp you?”

  “Did they have on their war paint?”

  “Did they wave their tomahawks at you?”

  Caddie shook her head and smiled. She was so warm, so happy to be at home, so sleepy. . . .

  13. Scalp Belt

  The day after Caddie’s ride to the Indian camp, life settled into the old routine. The neighbors went home again. No charred black ruins awaited them. The sturdy wilderness houses were just as they had left them, only dearer than ever before, and in the log barns hungry cows bawled lustily for food.

  Everyone recognized now that the “massacree scare,” which had started in the tavern, had been a false alarm. But the terror which it had inspired was not easily forgotten. Many people left the country for good, making their slow way eastward, their few possessions piled high in wagon or cart, their weary cows walking behind. Tales of bravery or cowardice during the “scare” were told and retold around the winter fires and, at last, people were able to laugh at them instead of trembling. One of the tales the people of Dunnville loved best was of the fiery old man upriver, who, although past sixty, left his old wife to defend the homestead with the only gun they owned, while he set out empty-handed to fight the Indians.

  But, although it all came to nothing and folks could laugh at the “massacree scare” at last, still it left with many people a deeper fear and hatred of the Indians than they had ever felt before. The Indians themselves understood this. Now that the excitement was over, they were safe from even the most cowardly of the white men. But, nevertheless, they prepared to leave their bark huts and move westward for a time. They felt the stirring of the sap in the trees. A smell of spring in the winter air lured them. The old women made bundles of their furs and blankets and cooking pots and put them on pole and buckskin litters. The ponies pranced, the dogs barked. The Indian men refitted bowstrings, polished knives and guns, and prepared the canoes for a long portage over the ice.

  One day, soon after the “scare,” when Caddie came home from school, she saw an Indian pony tied to the rail fence near the kitchen door. Clara ran out of the front door to meet her.

  “Oh, Caddie,” she said, “do hurry. Indian John’s in the kitchen and he wants to see you. He won’t say a thing to the rest of us. Father’s away and Mother and Mrs. Conroy are nearly frightened out of their wits. He’s got his horrible old dog with him and his scalp belt, too.”

  Caddie ran around the house and opened the kitchen door. Between the cook stove and the table sat John, bolt upright, with a large piece of dried apple pie in each hand. Solemnly he bit into first one piece and then the other, Mother and Mrs. Conroy peeping timidly at him from the dining-room door the while. His scalp belt lay on the kitchen table beside the empty pie tin and the clean fork and plate which city-bred Mother had laid for him so daintily. At his feet lay his dog, licking its front paw with a slow red tongue.

  “Why, John, I’m glad to see you,” said Caddie. She stooped and patted his dog. The dog stopped licking his paw for a moment and looked at Caddie with affectionate eyes.

  “Him hurt,” said John. “Him caught foot in trap.”

  Caddie bent closer over the foot. “Why, so he did. Poor thing!”

  “You like him dog?” asked John. Absently he opened a square of calico which he had tied to his belt, disclosing an odd assortment of bones, bits of fat, and odds and ends of food. To this collection he added the last scrap of the dismembered pie, folded up the cloth, tied it again to his belt, and then knelt down to examine the dog.

  “Of course, I like him. He’s a good dog.”

  “Missee Red Hair got no dog?”

  “No,” said Caddie slowly, her eyes filling with tears. “Nero, our dog—he’s lost.”

  “Look. John he go ’way. John’s people go ’way. John’s dog no can walk. John go far, far. Him dog no can go far. You keep?”

  “Yes, John,” said Caddie. “I’ll keep him for you. May I, Mother?” Mrs. Woodlawn nodded at her from the dining-room door. “Oh, I’ll be so glad to keep him, John. I love to have a dog.”

  “Good,” said John. He straightened himself and folded his arms.

  “Look, Missee Red Hair. You keep scalp belt, too?”

  “The scalp belt?” echoed Caddie uncertainly. She felt the old prickling sensation up where her scalp lock grew as she looked at the belt with its gruesome decorations of human hair.

  “Him very old,” said John, picking up the belt with calm familiarity. “John’s father, great chief, him take many scalps. Now John no do. John have many friend. John no want scalp. You keep?” John held it out.

  Gingerly, with the tips of her thumb and first finger, Caddie took it. “What shall I do with it?” she asked dubiously.

  “You keep,” said the Indian. “John come back in moon of yellow leaves. John go now far, far. Him might lose. You keep?”

  “Yes,” said Caddie, “I keep. When you come back in the moon of yellow leaves, I will have it safe for you, and your dog, too.”

  “Missee Red Hair good girl,” said John.

  He drew his blanket around him and stalked out. From the doorway Caddie watched him go. His dog limped to the door, too, and Caddie had to put her arms around his neck to keep him from following.

  “Good-by, John,” she called. “Have a good journey!” John was already on his pony. He raised an arm in salute and rode quickly out of the farmyard.

  “Well, of all things!” cried Mrs. Woodlawn, bustling into the kitchen with a great sigh of relief. “You do have a way with savages, Caroline Augusta Woodlawn! I declare, this kitchen smells to heaven of smoky buckskin. Let’s open all the windows and doors for a minute and let it out. And, for mercy’s sake, Caddie, put that awful scalp belt somewhere in the barn. I couldn’t sleep of nights if I knew it was hanging in my house.”

  Caddie took the scalp belt and the dog out to the barn. She hid the scalp belt in a safe, dry place, where she
could easily get it to show to the boys. They had gone part way to Eau Galle to meet Father. Wouldn’t they be green with envy when they knew what they had missed?

  There was an empty box stall in the barn. In it Caddie made a nice bed of hay for John’s dog. She washed his hurt foot in warm water and brought him a bowl of warm milk. Then she covered him with an old horse blanket, and sat beside him, stroking the rough head. He was an ugly dog, without Nero’s silky coat and beautiful eyes, but he licked her hand gratefully, and already Caddie loved him.

  “I’ve got a dog,” she whispered to herself. “I’ve got a dog of my very own to keep until John comes back.” And she was unaccountably happy.

  So the boys found her, when they burst into the barn a few moments later.

  “Ma says you’ve got Indian John’s scalp belt! Let’s see it! Let’s see it!”

  “All right. But no snatching. I’ve got to keep it nice for John when he comes back.”

  “Keep it nice,” jeered Warren. “I never knew a scalp belt could be nice.”

  “Well, this one is, Master Warren,” said Caddie, displaying her treasure, “and we’re going to keep it so.

  Hetty and little Minnie crowded after Tom and Warren. It was a simple buckskin belt ornamented with colored beads, and from it hung three long tails of black hair, each with a bit of shriveled skin at the end.

  “Ooh! ooh! ooh!” said Hetty. “Is it real hair off people’s heads?”

  “Sure,” said Tom, lifting a lock of Hetty’s hair and pretending to amputate it. “Just like this. Bing! bing! and you’re a dead one.”