Read Into the Wilderness for Free Online

sashes.
    "Done
and done," said the judge with a sigh. "If costs can be kept to a
minimum." He was relieved to have two sticky matters resolved at once.
Elizabeth
would have her
school; his debt to Hawkeye's son would be eased.
    * * *
    "You've
got your eye on that woman," Hawkeye said to Nathaniel when they were
finally on their way.
    Nathaniel
shrugged. "And if I do, what's to come of it?"
    His
father laughed softly. "She's fine to look at, sure enough. And smart.
Smarter than her father and brother put together, I'd wager."
    They
were making their way up Hidden Wolf, walking the horse the judge had lent
them. The doe was strapped over the mare's back, and the dogs trotted along
behind wearily, glad to be headed for home, but still, with short bursts of
enthusiasm, setting off after any sign of a rabbit.
    Nathaniel
took his time answering. He knew his father approved of
Elizabeth
; he wouldn't be bothered talking to
anybody he didn't like, and he had found plenty to discuss with her. He had a
weakness for women with tongues quick enough to match his own.
    "She's
content to remain a spinster, she says."
    Hawkeye
grunted. "Well, look at her menfolk. If those are the only husbands she's
ever seen at their work, who could blame her?" Then, with a sideways glance:
"Todd will have her if he can get her."
    Nathaniel's
shoulder was aching; he rubbed it with the heel of one hand. "If she
brings the land along with her, he will," he agreed. "But it don't
look as though she'll be easily got. She calls herself a spinster, and proud of
it."
    "You
had a conversation with her about her spinsterhood right quick, I'd say."
    "She's
the kind that provokes me, I won't deny that." The mare threatened to lose
her footing and Nathaniel chirped to her calmly. "Maybe I scairt her
off."
    "Or
got her interested."
    Nathaniel
nodded. "There's that possibility."
    They
walked in silence for a few minutes.
    "It
would solve some problems," Hawkeye pointed out.
    "If
she brought Hidden Wolf into the match, it would."
    Hawkeye
grunted. "I saw you looking at her, and it ain't the land that got your
attention. You looked at her like you looked at Sarah, once upon a time. Now
don't get that face on you. Sarah's been dead five years. She wouldn't have
begrudged you a new woman."
    "You
trying to marry me off to the judge's daughter? Right now, with Chingachgook on
his way here with a proposition that's going to make every white man in this
valley howl?"
    Hawkeye
shrugged. "I don't deny the timing's bad. But there's some things can't be
ignored, and that woman is one of them. You best keep your wits about you, or
Todd will beat you to it."
    They
were silent for a while as they scrambled up a steep slope, urging the horse
along behind.
    "Can't
see a woman like that scraping hide and hoeing corn," Nathaniel said.
    "True
enough. But there's others to do that work. She's a schoolteacher."
    Hawkeye
said this last in a respectful tone. It was something Nathaniel had never
understood about his father, his willingness to believe absolute good of any
schoolteacher—until evidence to the contrary came to the front.
    "Well,
say for a minute she decides she's interested and I make her an offer. The
judge wouldn't like it. Nor her brother," said Nathaniel.
    Pausing
to catch his breath, Hawkeye turned to look out over the village tucked into
the elbow of the mountain. The evening was coming fast; long shadows of
deepening dark blue moved down over the forest, reaching over the snowy fields
to curl fingers around the scattered cabins and barns. Half Moon
Lake
glittered softly in the last of the evening light
like a silver hand mirror thrown down carelessly on a rumpled white coverlet.
    "Her
daddy is white," Hawkeye said quietly, as if he and his son were not; as
if they were of a different universe. "He thinks he owns the sky. The sky
won't give him much of an argument, but that daughter of his will. He don't
know what's coming his way." He shook his head and grinned. "That's