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Dorey stood at the door of the garita. She had been awakened by a commotion in the village. Afraid that it might be something that would put her in danger, she had crept to the door and peered outside.
The moon had slid behind clouds just as she looked out, making it almost impossible to see.
But the glow from the huge outdoor fire had at least given her a view of a tall Indian carrying a woman to a lodge.
She had seen others, as well, but it was too dark to make anyone out.
She could only conclude that someone in the village had been injured, or had become ill.
Perhaps the hut the woman had been carried to was the home of the village doctor, or the wife of the man carrying her.
The one thing that puzzled Dorey was that when the Indian carried the woman past the huge fire, it had looked as though her skin and hair were pale.
But Dorey had quickly discounted that impression, for she knew, from having heard it said, that no whites were welcome at the Seminole village on Mystic Island.
That was what frightened her. When she made herself known to the inhabitants, which she knew she must do tomorrow, since she had no idea how to get back to her home, how would she be treated?
Would she be sent away with no guidance as to which way to go?
There were so many waterways through the swamp, she was afraid that one of them might lead her into even more dangerous territory than this Indian village. Was she going to die, alone and afraid, amid the Everglades?
Tears of regret filled her eyes. Why had she recklessly traveled so much farther than her mother ever allowed?
Dorey hung her head, wiped her eyes, and went back to hide inside the food hut again.
She curled up in the warm pelts and blankets that she had found in the garita. She gathered them all around her, shivering when she recalled that more than one mouse had come up and sniffed at the blankets while she was lying there.
She had to place a hand to her mouth to stifle a scream when she had seen a mouse dreadfully close to her face. When the moon was not hidden behind clouds, she had seen the mouse’s beady eyes staring into hers.
She had been so relieved when it lost interest in her and found its way into a storage bin of grain.
So tired, so displeased with herself and the predicament she found herself in, Dorey sighed.
She again closed her eyes and welcomed escape in the black void of sleep.
Not far away, in a hut where soft flames burned in the firepit, a snack of corn cakes was being eaten by Joshua and Twila. Twila sat beside her father, looking slowly around her.
“Pappy, this house the Seminole gave you is so nice, and you say it is yours for as long as you wish to remain on Mystic Island?” Twila crunched on a corn cake, filling the empty void in her bell
y. She had missed the evening meal when she and Lavinia had left the mansion so hurriedly to look for Dorey. “Chief Wolf Dancer is a kind man,” Joshua said. He stretched his long, lean legs out before him; the new buckskin breeches fit him snugly. “He took me to his shaman, who made me well, and he gave me this home and as much food and as many blankets as I want. They are all free, Twila. I doesn’t have to pay anything fo’ them. It’s like heaven, ain’t it, daughter?”
“Pure heaven,” Twila sighed, as she looked around her at a bed made of blankets and pelts, enough for her father to give her some for herself when they were ready to sleep.
There were other things of comfort, too: benches upon which to sit if a person so desired, and mats of various colors spread over the wood floor.
There were eating utensils, and jugs of water.
And there was even a bow and a quiver of arrows! That alone proved how much these people trusted and cared for her pappy!
“I still can’t believe that this is all yours, Pappy, for as long as you wish it to be,” Twila said. She swallowed her last bite of corn cake. “Can I stay with you? Can we be a family again? Or will it be forbidden? Will I be sent away? Will I have to return to that horrible plantation? With Dorey no longer there and Lavinia ill, perhaps too ill to return there herself, I want to stay here with you, Pappy.”
She shivered, then reached for a blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders. “If’n I return to that place where Massa Hiram is in charge of every-thin’, I don’t think I’ll last long, Pappy,” she murmured. “Without you and Lavinia there to protect me, I ’magine I’d not last for long. Massa Hiram sho’ nuff likes his whip and usin’ it on we poh slaves.”
She broke into hard tears. “Oh, Pappy, where is sweet Dorey?” she cried. “Where could she be? Those mean boys. They did this to our Dorey. They should be the ones at the end of Massa Hiram’s nasty whip. I’d laugh while they were bein’ whipped, I would.”
“Now, now, daughter, don’t talk like that,” Joshua scolded. “No one deserves to be at the end of that horrible man’s whip.” He laughed throatily. “But that whip did do one good deed. It took the evil man’s eye, it did. I saw it happen. I had to fight off laughin’ out loud when I saw that eyeball pop from its socket. What a sight. Yes’m, what a sight.”
“I saw it, too,” Twila said. “Lordie be, I thoughthe’d wet his breeches right on the spot like I’se seen the poh chillen he’s whipped do.”
