Heart of the Wilderness

by Janette Oke

  They had not gone as far from the cabin as Kendra might have guessed. Their search had been leisurely paced, with frequent stops. Now on their way home, though unhurried, they walked steadily and soon the cabin came into view. Kendra was almost glad to see it, for she suddenly felt tired. Yet she could not hide the sigh that escaped her lips as they neared the door.

  “You like sit?” asked Nonie, pointing to a grassy place in the shade of a tall spruce tree. Kendra nodded.

  “You stay,” said Nonie softly.

  Kendra nodded again and dropped down on the grass. It was so nice and cool. So soft beneath her. Above her head, clouds floated across the sky and birds darted here and there among the branches. She heard one call across the small clearing and another answered from the other side. But Kendra did not know what bird was calling. She clamored quickly to her feet. She would run and ask her mama. And then Kendra remembered. Mama was gone.

  Her face puckered and she threw herself back down to the ground and buried her face in her arms. Nonie found her crying when she returned with their simple meal.

  “Tush,” she said, laying aside the plates. “Tush.”

  “I don’t know the bird,” wept Kendra, not able to explain to Nonie the full meaning of her tears.

  “Bird?” replied Nonie.

  “I don’t know which bird—that sang,” she sobbed.

  “One does not cry—over birds that sing,” said Nonie, still sounding bewildered.

  “Mama would tell me.”

  For a long moment Nonie puzzled over it, her brow knit in a frown, her eyes intent upon the small girl’s face. Then a sudden light seemed to brighten her eyes. She nodded and reached to draw the little girl into her arms.

  “Nonie tell,” she said, her hands gentling and soothing. “Nonie tell—everything. Nonie be here. Always. You see.”

  Gradually the tears stopped and when Kendra had ceased crying and had wiped her eyes on the hem of her skirt, Nonie offered the plate.

  The bird called again and Kendra lifted her head, tilting it to one side as she listened.

  “That mountain bluebird,” said Nonie without being asked. “Someday I show you. Maybe we find his nest.”

  Kendra smiled.

  It wasn’t the name of the bird that brought the smile. Though Kendra already had a deep love for all things of nature—it was the fact of being comforted after the death of her parents. It was the renewed feeling of security after the terrible shattering of the world she knew. And it was especially the sense of being cared for after having lost the people she loved the most.

  It was almost sunset when Kendra heard dogs barking and ran to the cabin window.

  A team of dogs was coming quickly down the trail that led up the creek. They pulled a strange sleigh that ran on small wheels instead of runners. A man ran behind them calling out orders. Kendra wondered if they could even hear above their yapping. But they stopped suddenly and lay down in the harnesses, tongues dripping and sides heaving.

  It wasn’t until then that Kendra noticed who was driving the team.

  “It’s Papa Mac,” she squealed. Already she had forgotten that he was coming home, back to them. In her little heart she had expected him to be gone just as her parents were gone. Without realizing it, she had accepted the fact that now it was to be she and Nonie in partnership.

  For one moment she stood—torn. She loved her Papa Mac. But already she felt drawn to the kind woman who had held her close and comforted her with such understanding. She looked over her shoulder at Nonie. Which one would she choose? Which one could she choose? Confusion filled her heart and showed in her eyes.

  She turned again to the window. Papa Mac was unharnessing the dogs and tethering them about the clearing. The wagon-sleigh stood deserted—empty.

  Kendra swung back to Nonie, her green eyes wide with fright. Was her world to be one of constant change?

  “Are you—you goin’ to go?” she asked the Indian woman, fear making her voice tremble.

  Nonie, not understanding the full import of the question, nodded her head matter-of-factly and answered, “I go now.”

  The terror deepened in Kendra’s eyes and with a loud wail she threw herself at the woman and wrapped her small arms around the pungent-smelling skirts. “No,” she wailed. “I don’t want you to go.”

  Gently Nonie unwound the arms and lifted the child up against her shoulder. Understanding filled her dark eyes as she stroked the soft blond head and crooned her soft “tush” in the child’s ear.

  “I go tonight. I come in morning. You see. You see. I come in morning. Didn’t Nonie say, ‘I here always’? You see. You see. Tush. Tush.”

  What was Nonie saying? Kendra hushed her crying so she could listen more closely.

  “Papa Mac here. Nonie go. Papa Mac go. Nonie here. You see. You see,” promised Nonie over and over. “Tush. Tush.”

  Kendra’s tears stopped. Was this really a promise? Would she be able to keep both Papa Mac and Nonie? Dare she hope that Nonie could keep her word?

  Kendra pressed more closely against the woman and wrapped her arms tightly around her neck.

  The door behind them opened and Kendra knew that Papa Mac had entered the cabin. She felt more than saw the exchange of glances between the trapper and the Indian woman. A message seemed to pass between them without a word. Then Papa Mac spoke, his words sounding loud after the soft voice of the woman.

  “Kendra—I’ve missed you. How about a big hug?”

  Kendra eased back slowly, studying the face of the woman before she was lowered to the cabin floor. With one last glance at the dark face she had already claimed for her own, she turned and looked at Papa Mac. He offered outstretched arms and Kendra smiled and ran to them.

  “So, did you and Nonie have a good day?” he asked as he settled her on his knee.

  Kendra nodded. Then she turned to her grandfather.

  “I don’t want Nonie to go,” she stated simply.

  “Nonie has to go,” he said, and Kendra saw a look pass between the two again.

  “Look,” said her grandfather, sweeping the entire cabin with a wave of one long arm. “Where would Nonie fit? There isn’t room for three people here. It was all I could do to squeeze in your little bed in the corner. There isn’t room for another person.”

  Kendra frowned. “Nonie can have my bed,” she offered generously.

  Her grandfather laughed and gave her a hug.

  “Nonie has to go home. Back to her own cabin,” he explained further. “Nonie likes her home. She wouldn’t want to leave it to live with us.”

  Kendra looked at Nonie, her big eyes questioning the woman, challenging her.

  Nonie dropped her eyes to the cabin boards. She moved silently toward the potbellied stove that stood in the corner of the cabin and pushed more sticks of wood into the firebox.

  “Nonie will come again tomorrow,” promised the grandfather. “Whenever I am not here—Nonie will be here.”

  That was what Nonie had said. Nonie had promised. One or the other of the new people in her world would always be with her. Dared she believe them?

  The strong arms of her grandfather tightened about her. Kendra snuggled down against his chest and studied Nonie who moved a stew pot back over the hidden flames.

  This arrangement wasn’t what Kendra would have preferred. She would have liked it much better if both her grandfather and Nonie could be with her constantly. But perhaps she could accept them—one at a time. She laid her head against her grandfather’s chest. She could hear the gentle rhythmic beating of his heart. It was a comforting sound. Slowly her head began to nod in assent. If that’s the way it had to be, then she would accept it. Just as long as they kept their promise. Just as long as she had one or the other. Kendra felt secure.

  “I brought the dogs back home,” her grandfather was saying. “Would you like to see them?”

  Kendra’s attention was quickly diverted. She loved dogs.

  “Are they yours?” she asked her g
randfather.

  “Ours,” he answered. “Ours.”

  Kendra grinned as she took his hand and led him from the cabin.

  Almost daily, Nonie and Kendra took treks through the woods. Patiently Nonie taught the young child to recognize the plants that were useful and would be placed in the gathering basket. Over and over the lessons were repeated until Kendra began to understand just what it was she was looking for. Always she was rewarded by an enthusiastic Nonie. Kendra tried hard to mimic the soft clicks of the tongue that expressed approval and soon had the little sounds added to her own vocabulary.

  “She’s a bright little thing,” her Papa Mac informed Nonie, and Nonie nodded her agreement, her eyes, though turned to the floor, sparkling with the thoughts of Kendra’s quick achievements.

  There were many days over the summer when Papa Mac did not go away and Nonie did not come. Kendra never knew when those days were to be. She sometimes wondered how the two people in her life knew. How did they get their message from the one to the other? Would the day ever come when there would be confusion and they would both be there at once? The thought made her little heart skip with anticipation. And then a chill passed through her. What if, in confusion, they both would be gone at the same time and she would be entirely on her own? It was a frightening thought and it made her heart pound within her.

  But as the days passed and those fears were never realized, Kendra forgot them. Perhaps—perhaps her world was not about to turn upside down again, after all.

  Chapter Six

  Wilderness Child

  Kendra’s fourth birthday was not spent as a child would normally spend a birthday—but it was not forgotten. Papa Mac even made her a cake. A rather lopsided, strange cake with no icing and no candles, but a cake. No four-year-old could ever have been more excited than Kendra as she looked at the simple creation.

  Then Kendra was given a birthday gift. Papa Mac told her to close her eyes and not open them until he told her. She felt something soft and furry in her arms. A puppy! Her very own dog. It was from the litter of one of the dogs in the Indian village. Her grandfather had paid the man dearly for the choice of the pups.

  Now as Kendra held the squirming puppy in her arms and squealed over the fact that he was really hers, Papa Mac felt the price he had paid was a fair one after all.

  Kendra called the small pup Oscar. A strange name for a sled dog. But Papa Mac did not argue with her choice. He named his dogs as he desired. He saw no reason to deny Kendra the same privilege.

  “That not good,” said Nonie, pointing to one of the berries in Kendra’s basket. “Make sick.”

  “It was right there with the other berries,” she argued.

  “Not good. Make sick,” Nonie insisted. Then spit out her word, “P-f-f-t.”

  Kendra picked up the berry, studied it for a moment, then let it fall from her fingers into the grasses at her feet.

  “Guess a bird can have it,” she said, hating to give up the red plumpness.

  “Bird know better. Make sick,” Nonie said and turned her attention back to her picking.

  They had spent many of their days together picking berries. Kendra had already learned to recognize most of the berries that were “good.” She had also been taught to recognize many of the berries that were “bad.” Now she had added another one to the list. She did not want a berry in her basket that “made sick.”

  A bird called.

  “That’s a loon,” spoke Kendra without lifting her head.

  “Brother loon,” said Nonie.

  Kendra was becoming used to Nonie’s family references to the woodland creatures, but when she told her grandfather he just chuckled.

  “Nonie trying to put silly notions in your head? Trying to make a Cree out of you?” he had asked the young girl.

  “Uh—uh. Nonie’s not Cree,” Kendra had said.

  “I really have no idea. I wonder if Nonie knows. She was born mixed blood. Mother was Peigan. I don’t know what tribe her father was. She was raised by the Blackfoot and then married into the Stoney tribe. Now she lives with the Cree. She speaks several languages. I’m not sure if Nonie has figured out just what she is.”

  Kendra was far too young to understand all that her grandfather’s words implied. She shrugged her shoulders and said simply, “She’s Daughter of the Earth. She told me.”

  Papa Mac had laughed good-naturedly. Kendra had said the words the same as if she were announcing her own name as Kendra Marty.

  Now as the young girl and the Indian woman picked berries together and listened to the mournful cry of the loon from the nearby lake, Kendra was quite willing to accept the bird as Nonie’s brother loon. Just as the sleek mountain lion was her brother lion and the marauding grizzly was her brother bear.

  But Nonie interrupted Kendra’s picking and her listening for another cry from the lake.

  “We go,” said Nonie. “Storm come.”

  Kendra lifted her head to the sky. The sun still shone down upon them. Fluffy clouds skittered across the expanse of blue, seeming a bit more in a hurry than normal, but Kendra could see no threatening rain clouds.

  “The sun is shining,” said Kendra.

  “Storm come,” said Nonie again. “We go.”

  Kendra did not argue further. Although she loved to be outside, she was weary of picking berries. She nodded in agreement and stood to her feet. Nonie led the way back through the forest. There was no trail to follow. Kendra followed closely behind her. The growth was heavy, and Kendra did not wish to be left behind.

  They were just nearing the cabin when a loud clap of thunder seemed to rock the very ground they sped over. Kendra lifted startled eyes to the heavens and was surprised to see that dark, menacing clouds had gathered over them. The child felt a moment of fear and hastened her step to catch up to the scurrying woman. She grabbed a handful of buckskin skirt, her eyes turning again to the sky.

  They rushed into the cabin just as the first large drops of rain began to fall. Kendra whirled at the entrance and pushed the heavy door soundly shut behind them, glad to be in where they were safe.

  Never had she heard it thunder as it did in that storm. Her wide green eyes grew large and intense in the small face. Kendra trembled, her whole being filled with fright.

  Nonie had been busy clucking over her berries and had paid little attention to the young girl, but when a small hand again clutched at her skirt, Nonie turned. For one moment quiet dark eyes met troubled green ones and then Nonie began her little comforting noises. “Tush. Tush,” she soothed, gathering the small child into her arms. She held her close for a long time while the thunder crashed and rumbled overhead and the lightning ripped through the sky above them, piercing their small clearing with jagged flashes of light.

  “Tush. Tush,” said Nonie. She carried Kendra to the rocker in the corner of the room and held her close against the cured buckskin with its strange and comforting smell.

  “Father Thunder,” she said. “Father Thunder.”

  Kendra’s trembling lessened. The storm moved slowly on until the thunder seemed to echo off the mountain ridge across the valley and no longer shook the small cabin with each clap.

  “I tell of Father Thunder,” said Nonie, and still holding the little girl close, she began her story.

  “Once, before there were people, all animals and trees lived and talked with one another.

  “Bear think he was biggest and strongest of all animals, but Fox think he was smartest. He keep telling Bear it was better to be smart than to be strong and that make Bear angry.

  “ ‘We’ll see,’ said Bear. ‘We’ll have contest.’

  “ ‘What contest?’ asked Fox.

  “ ‘There is not Fire on Earth,’ said Bear. ‘We need Fire to keep us warm, but there is only Fire in Heaven. We must steal Fire from Sun. But first we must go to Sky and find Fire. Sun keep it hidden in wooden box with three leather thongs around it.’

  “ ‘How will we get to Sky?’ asked Fox.

&n
bsp; “ ‘That is part of contest. We must find a way,’ said Bear.

  “So they both sat down to think and think. They think all day and they think all night. They think all next day.

  “ ‘I’m strong,’ said Bear. ‘I will build myself a road to Sky.’

  “So Bear went to Cedar. ‘Will you give me your long trunk for poles for building a road to Sky?’ he asked.

  “ ‘If I do, I will die,’ said Cedar.

  “ ‘What does it matter?’ said Bear. ‘You are not strong like me.’

  “So Bear took Cedar to build road. And all other forest cedars cried.

  “ ‘I need thongs to tie my poles together,’ said Bear, so he went to Deer. ‘Will you give me your skin to make thongs to tie my poles together?’ he asked.

  “ ‘If I do, I will die,’ said Deer.

  “ ‘What does it matter?’ said Bear. ‘You are not strong like me.’

  “And Bear took Deer to make thongs to tie poles, and all other deer cried.

  “Fox watched Bear build a long road to Sky with strong poles from Cedar and tie them together with thongs of Deer.

  “ ‘This is not right,’ thought Fox. ‘Bear will destroy our forests and our friends to win his contest.’

  “Sun saw what Bear was doing. It made Sun angry. ‘What are you doing?’ he said to Bear.

  “ ‘I must get to Sky,’ replied Bear. ‘I am building a long trail.’

  “ ‘Why do you climb to Sky?’

  “But Bear would not tell Sun.

  “That night when Sun was sleeping, Bear climbed the long, long cedar trail. He climbed all night. Next morning, just as Sun awoke, Bear made a hole in Sky with one long claw. Bear did not know, but Fox was close on his heels ready to sneak past him and into Sky to steal the firebox before Bear could find it.

  “But Sun was angry when he saw Bear. He stopped him.

  “ ‘Why do you come here?’ asked Sun, but Bear would say nothing.

  “Sun did not see Fox, who hid behind Bear in his shadow.

  “Bear went along Sky in search of the firebox. But Fox ran ahead and found the box first. He was ready to climb back through hole and run back down the long, long trail made by Cedar when Sun saw him.