And her mother suddenly stiffened, sensing impending separation. She spoke out in a rambling way, saying that it might have been better if her child, Mary, had been stillborn; that had the infant girl died, the loss would have been sweet compared to this capture and this manner of parting.

Then Jane seemed to recover herself and, whispering, she addressed Mary directly. “You will have to be strong now. Remember three things.”

A Frenchman and a Shawnee gestured to Thomas to get up.

“Do not,” Jane said, “forget your English.”

Now the raiding party had roused all the whites.

“Carry us,” her mother continued, “in your heart with your English and the Scriptures. And, Mary. Do not cry.”

After they were led away—the father, the mother, Matthew, Robert, Betsey, the neighbor woman and two of her three children—one of the Shawnee squatted. He became fully absorbed in regarding Daniel, and then Mary.

IN A marshy area about a mile from where Mary and Daniel were under scrutiny, the party of whites led off by the Shawnee and the Frenchmen were brought to a standstill.

Since the light was going, both the bodies and the long knives being thrust into them were silhouettes, as were the captives’ heads and the rifle butts which hit them and the tomahawks which sank into them. It would have been hard to see that the long hair a Shawnee finally wrapped around his hand was a rich auburn color.

MARY opened her eyes and saw that it was morning. All were asleep—Daniel, the Shawnee, the Frenchmen. Her mother’s blue shawl lay on the ground. Where her mother had left it? Where the Shawnee who was wearing it had left it?

SETTING downed grasses up as he went, one of the Shawnee ran backward. Forward of him, Mary and Daniel were forced to run through the reaches of underbrush.

ABOUT a year earlier, on a cloudless day, she had climbed up a hill and then had decided to try walking backward on the top of it. Her dog, Molly, had noticed and had evidently hated it, had barked in great anger to see what seemed an unnatural and unexcellent aspect showing itself in the young woman who was her mistress: this walking backward. Shaking herself, Molly had barked: stop this, stop this; stop this thing, these doings.

ON THE third night out they were among thickets and drank a dense, cornmeal-like liquid which did not taste of cornmeal. She pinched the skin above her thumb to try to stop her tears. She pinched again and again and harder and harder until she drew in a breath with each sharp pinch. Her mother had told her not to cry.

But she had cried anyway and now she felt ashamed; she must redeem herself in her absent mother’s eyes if not in the Indians’, who, surprisingly, seemed not to care if she cried. They only wanted her to hurry.