A S MARY had grown older she had been allowed to stay up late at night and converse with her parents and other visiting adults, one of whom had told of his brother who had been tortured by Indians and had somehow later escaped. Small cuts had been made all over his body; into these slits pine splinters had been stuck and then set afire.

In the nights at home she heard wild animal noises and worried that these sounds came from the throats and cupped hands of Indians. When the next day her family would find entrails, the remains of owl or bobcat pillage, she would be relieved. The noises had come from real animals.

At the same time, her relief made her feel guilty: was not the bobcat as an Indian to the possum; was not a great owl an Indian to the vole? Did not the possum and the vole feel terror and pain?

THE NEXT morning the Shawnee and French parceled out bread and a little meat from the Jemisons’ own provisions. Thomas received his portions into his hands, but then opened his fingers and finally turned his palms down so that the morsels fell to the ground.

“Thomas,” his wife said. She looked at his piece of meat, at his piece of bread; after a moment he moved his head and followed her gaze, but his expression did not change.

His eyes, Mary thought, are as fixed as the eyes of a newly dead person. She positively didn’t know him, she decided. This man, whoever he was, meant to die and leave them. What good was he to them anyway? What good could come of a man who in mere moments had turned passive, a man who had mentally abandoned his family?

In her contempt, she felt more capable of pity. He had become a child. He was almost her child now.

“Thomas?”

He looked at his daughter. She had called him “Thomas.”

“Thomas. You should eat.”

And Thomas, as he had been ordered to do, picked up the piece of meat and began to lick it with the approach and in the manner of a cat.

One of the Shawnee stepped out of the woods and spoke a sentence. He had backtracked, scouting: the whites from the valley they had just raided were in pursuit. The Shawnee spoke again, this time a mere phrase.

Another Shawnee thrust corn husk moccasins into Mary’s line of sight. Then he bent, pulled off her shoes, and replaced them with the moccasins. When he had straightened, he gave her a look which said that what he had done was significant.

She turned from his look. How dare he? Whatever he meant by it was secondary. What she hated was that he was there at all, that he was real and meaning anything by such an expressive look.

But the Shawnee turned also from her and was already placing moccasins on Daniel’s feet.