Chapter 5

When she opened her sleepy eyes just before daylight the next morning, the captive white girl Margaret was bothered by the fact that it was so deathly quiet all around her in every direction. She didn’t even hear the measured breathing of her captors or any of the other women they had stolen from the French traders looking to make a nice profit on the sale of the remaining white women.

She could still see the stars shining down from the blackened sky and the faint rays of daybreak off to the east where the Sun always started to brighten into daylight.

When she heard the sound of the birds in the woods nearby, she knew right away they were not birds but two-legged hunters signaling their compatriots that they had discovered the hiding place of the bold tribe that had stolen the women right out from under their noses.

She was naked under the thin covering of some kind of animal hide but there was no sign of the brave that had poked her good and proper just before she had given into sleep so deeply that her breast barely moved visibly to a casual observer.

Her hidden handgun was still buried under the pile of clothing under her head and she grasped it knowing she only had two bullets for the thing and she was saving them for only the direst emergency to save her life.

They had not made any campfire to stay hidden in the tall grass and she could barely make out the outline of their canoes resting in the shallow water for them to make their getaway as quickly as possible. Since she did not hear any other noise from the remaining captives, her assumption was that they had their throats cut to prevent them from crying out and alerting their pursuers that they were hidden in the grass. She figured her brave was obliged to do the same but for some reason he had reneged on his duty and slid away into the woods with the other braves to fight another day. That meant she was the only living person to meet up with the surrounding captors and she knew it meant a beating for sure just for her being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There was more daylight now and she saw the forms of the French and their Indian partners in crime searching the canoes for anything of value. They had probably already found the other women sapped of life and thought her to be in the same category as the murdered females. She entertained the thought of pretending to be dead and hope that the Indians didn’t want to take the long women’s hair as trophies of their expedition. It was about a fifty-fifty proposition and the odds made it worthwhile for a least a try.

She saw them put holes in the canoes used in the escape so that the other tribe could not swing back and use them to go further up-river. Then they tossed burning sticks into what remained of the camp and she had to covertly slide out of the way of danger from the fire and watched them paddling away to return to the French settlement and the safety of the Fort’s walls.

Margaret knew there were British patrols out also in the wilderness and she thought it best to take her chances by continuing on her own rather that chance the British, the French or the savage tribes that wandered hither and yon surviving as they always had by using their wits and staying hidden when they were outnumbered by their enemies.

She thought about the brave’s huge cock and the fact that he seemed to be taken with her in a way unusual for the heathen out in the wilderness. For all she knew, he could have a wife and little ones back in his home camp or relatives that thought all white women were a bunch of dirty sluts that opened their legs for anyone with enough coins to pay their fee for loving.

The first thing she did was to search the bodies of the murdered women for any articles of clothing or shoes she could use to back up her meager supply of female clothing available to her after her period of captivity. She found one woman’s bundle contained several pairs of clean bloomers that were like finding gold nuggets to a lone white woman in the wilderness. One woman had hidden some gold coins in her shoe and she took them as well as the shoes because they fit her feet although one of them had a fairly large hole in the sole of one shoe. A layer of leather should solve that problem without any difficulty and she had a great pair of shoes to back up her worn-out pair that was ready for the trash heap and that was a fact.

She pulled one of the canoes up from beneath the surface of the water and discovered that the holes were not that bad that they could not be repaired. Her only problem was that the canoe was a bit too big for her to paddle on her own and she needed at least one other person to keep it on a straight course in the fast moving river. Besides she didn’t think it was a good idea to stay with the river because she could hear the sound of the falls up ahead and she would have to carry the canoe on her shoulders to portage around the swift water to re-enter the river above the steep drop to the rocks below.

There was a deer trail of sorts that ran adjacent to the river’s edge and she figured it was safe enough for her to follow at least for a short distance until she could get far enough away from the camp to consider herself safe from re-capture by the same band of hostiles.

She followed the trail stopping now and then to pick blackberries that grew wild in abundance along the side of the trail.

Margaret stepped in bear shit picking the berries and it made her grab hold of her tiny handgun just in case. It was not much of a defense but it made her feel better and she promised that she would liberate a long gun as quickly as possible to arm herself properly for a journey to the northwest. The bear droppings were sufficient warning for her to stay on her toes and not let down her guard for an instant because danger was all around her.

Northwest was the only direction that she felt secure in following because she was literally surrounded by enemies in every other direction and she did not feel safe.