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CHAPTER ONE
November 1778
Valley of the Susquehanna, Pennsylvania
A gunshot and one angry shout sounded from outdoors, startling Frances from her daydream. The little girl glanced up from the glowing hearth embers to see whether her mother was alarmed. All of Ruth Slocum’s children had learned to read the face of their mother, who feared little.
But Frances realized that her mother was not in the room. She must have carried the baby upstairs or out into the gray afternoon. Frances saw no one here but her lame brother Ebenezer and the took-in boy Wareham Kingsley; they both were standing stock-still by the staircase, mouths open, eyes boggling. Then Wareham Kingsley crouched and trembled. “It’s Indians!” he moaned. His father had been captured by Indians in a battle, and the boy was afraid all the time.
“No,” Ebenezer said, hobbling toward the door to look out. Several voices were yelling and screaming out there now. “Indians don’t bother us. We’re Friends.”
Frances’ heartbeat was racing, and Ebbie’s statement was no comfort; she had hardly heard him, the screams from outside were so piercing. She clambered off the hewn-log bench beside the table and ran to be near her brother. The drafty puncheon floor was rough and cold under her bare feet. The boy Wareham, rather than going toward the door, was skulking wild-eyed into the staircase nook.
Frances, five years old, had been raised in serene faith that her family, being of the Society of Friends, were liked by all men, even Indians, and would never be hurt by them. But such faith was shaken by the sounds of terror beyond the door, and she was desperate for her mother.
The log house had no windows; heavy plank doors front and back were its only lookouts onto the gray clearing, dead trees, river, distant forested hills. Ebenezer thumbed up the wooden latch, Frannie just behind him.
Outside the front door was a sight so ghastly it stopped the breath in her throat.
Wareham’s older brother Nathan, in his soldier suit, was lying facedown on the door path beside the grinding wheel. He was all reddened with blood.
An Indian man was hunched over him slicing off the top of his head with a butcher knife.
Ruth Slocum had actually smiled at the three Delawares when they first trotted into the clearing, because Indians had always come as peaceful visitors. Now, mere moments later, she was running from them, carrying her infant son Jonathan clutched to her side. She dodged stumps and tried to get away, but also hoped to draw the warriors’ attention away from her children. One of her first impulses was to flee around the cabin and up to the woodlot, where her husband and her father were cutting firewood, but they were unarmed, and she must not lead the warriors to them. So instead she raced down the long slope toward the river, where there were thickets and piles of brush to hide in.
After the three warriors had come straight out of the woods, she remembered, one had paused to raise his musket and shoot Nathan Kingsley. The youth had lurched and fallen beside the grindstone. The warrior had snatched up the very knife Nathan had been sharpening, straddled his body, and cut off his scalp. It had been as bloody as a hog-butchering, but stunning in its quickness. It must have been because Nathan was wearing army clothes, she thought. Those who live by the sword …
Ruth Slocum had run, even though she hoped that by killing the one in uniform they might have satisfied themselves, as all the Delawares knew her family were Quakers.
But she saw now, off to her left, two of the warriors pursuing her nine-year-old daughter Mary, who was shrieking and running toward the woods in the direction of the distant fort, dragging behind her little Joseph, the three-year-old. Ruth Slocum stumbled to a halt and cried after them, “Joey! Mary!” but they seemed not to hear her over their own screaming, and ran on into the autumn-yellow woods.
In the corner of her eye Ruth saw her one married daughter, Judith, running crouched toward another part of the riverside thickets carrying her baby brother Isaac; Ben, seven, ran ahead.
Now the Delaware men were laughing. Ruth Slocum, panting, mouth agape, glanced around and saw that they had stopped near the cabin and were pointing in amusement at Mary and Joseph, who were thrashing so recklessly into the woods that the boy’s little breeches had torn loose and come down around his knees.
In this curious pause in the midst of terror, Ruth Slocum, heart still slamming, baby squalling under her arm, tried to make an instantaneous tally of her children.
Only two were in doubt; she had not seen Ebenezer or Frances. She seemed to remember that they had been in the cabin before the warriors came. Wareham Kingsley had been inside too. Surely they would have fled out the back door at once if they had seen Nathan Kingsley slain right out front. Perhaps all her children were safe, for this moment. The two warriors were returning to their comrade, who had tied Nathan’s scalp to his sash and was reloading his musket. Hoping not to attract their attention, Ruth Slocum muffled the baby’s shrieks against her bosom and sidestepped toward the thickets, trying to be invisible, craning to get a glimpse of her red-haired Frances and Ebenezer slipping away somewhere unharmed. Surely these Indians bore no malice to the Slocums. Surely they were only after soldiers—as soldiers should expect.
Frances was whimpering in the darkness under the stairs, feeling the waves of tremors in Wareham’s body under her. She was still seeing in her mind the terrible scene of scalp-cutting. Then she became aware of her brother Ebenezer’s voice, sounding breathless and frightened.
“… if thee wants anything, come take it … thee’s always welcome, but … please don’t hurt anyone …”
And there were men’s voices and laughter, but Frances could not understand the Indian men’s words. She clutched her face with both hands to keep from crying aloud in terror.
The Indians really were in the house! She could feel the thump of their footsteps through the wood of the floor, as well as Ebenezer’s scraping limp. He must be so brave, she thought, walking about with them and talking to them, after what they had done to Nathan. She did not know whether Wareham, huddled here in the dark under her now, had seen what they did to his brother.
“… sugar in that crock there,” Ebenezer’s quavery voice was saying. “Does thee like sugar? There’s salt too …” And still the thumping footsteps. Now the stairs creaked, mere inches above her. Wareham groaned aloud, and Frances was sure the Indians would hear him. “Up there’s only clothes and bedding,” Ebenezer’s voice went on, “but thee’s welcome to whatever fits ’ee …” The Indians were talking in their own tongue, deep-voiced, occasionally laughing, and Frances could hear heavy things being scooted and dropped on the floors. She could hear no voices from outside the house, and she wondered where her mother could be. The little girl began trembling even harder with a new onslaught of dread. She remembered something that had lately been in her bad dreams: some weeks ago one of her boy cousins from a distant farm had been carried away by Indians. Did they mean to do that to her?
Now the stairs were creaking again right above her.
“A heh!” one of the voices exclaimed.
And then a hard hand grabbed her ankle and she was pulled roughly, feet first, from her hiding place. She saw just above her a painted face with no hair or eyebrows and a metal ring in the nose. At that moment Wareham wailed in terror right next to her.
Her terror was so numbing that she wet herself and was flung out of her senses.
