Heart of the Wilderness

by Janette Oke

  “God could not go back on His word. He had given His pledge— extended His hand. But because He still loved the people He had made—He had a plan. He sent His own Son—His only Son—and He died in place of the whole human race—white people and Indians.

  Took the—the curse on himself.” She paused for a moment and took the old woman’s face in her hands.

  “It’s true, Nonie. It’s all in the Bible—the big Book. We can know this God. This only God. We never need to be afraid of all the evil spirits. God is greater. He is—His medicine is stronger. Much stronger. All we need to do is to believe in Him. To accept His great plan for us and ask Him to take away all the—the evil from our hearts. Oh, Nonie”—Kendra was in tears—“don’t you see? A religion without a Savior is just not good enough. Jesus is the Savior—the only Savior— for us all. We can’t do anything about our sinful hearts by ourselves—no matter how hard we try. But He can—and He will.”

  The woman had quietly listened to all that Kendra said. Her eyes gazed into emptiness. Kendra put one arm again around the frail body, the fingers of her other hand brushing lightly against Nonie’s cheek.

  “It’s true, Nonie,” Kendra said again, unmindful of the tears that ran down her cheeks.

  Nonie shook her head slowly. Sadness seemed to pour from her very soul.

  “White man’s god,” she said again.

  “No, Nonie. Your God. Everyone’s God,” insisted Kendra.

  “Too late,” said Nonie, and she lifted weary and frail shoulders in a slight shrug.

  “No. It’s not too late. It’s not. You can ask Him to forgive you right now. You can believe, right now. It’s not too late.”

  Nonie shifted her slight weight. Kendra eased back gently and Nonie seemed to sink deeper into the furs that formed her bed.

  “Too late,” said Nonie again with resignation. “I live with Indian gods. I die with Indian gods. Too late.”

  “But, Nonie, you—”

  “You go now,” spoke the feeble lips. “Come tomorrow.”

  Kendra hated to leave. She knew the old woman had very little strength left. How much longer might she be with them? Would she listen to Kendra’s plea on another day?

  Kendra knelt in silence.

  “You go now,” Nonie repeated.

  Tears again squeezed from Kendra’s eyes and rolled slowly down her cheeks.

  “You’ll—you’ll think about what I have said?” she asked the elderly woman, patting her hand.

  Silence.

  “Will you?” persisted Kendra.

  “Make Amo-chika happy?”

  “Yes—yes, it will make me very happy if you’ll just think about it. Think carefully about what I have said.”

  Nonie nodded.

  “Then, I think,” she said solemnly.

  It was the best Kendra could do. She slowly rose to her feet and left the cabin, Indian fashion, without a backward glance.

  An Indian boy brought the news the next morning. Nonie had died sometime during the night.

  George and Kendra would not be expected to attend the burial. The Indians would conduct the ceremony in their own way. Kendra mourned alone by her beloved stream. In the distance she could hear the beating of the funeral drums, too far away to hear the accompanying dirge that would be the death chant. Kendra wept bitterly. She had failed. She had come home too late. In the short time, she had not been able to make Nonie understand. She had been unable to effectively share her faith with the two people she loved the most. Nonie was gone. Her grandfather had forbidden her to speak. She might just as well have stayed in the city. She might just as well have encouraged the courtship of Reynard. For the first time since she had wept on the graves of her parents as a frightened and lonely child, she cried until she had no more tears.

  George knew the death of Nonie was hard on his Kendra. He watched her as she moved about the cabin or tended the small vegetable garden or took her basket and headed for the woods, Oscar at her heels.

  She was in deep mourning, and he did not know how to help her—what to say. He didn’t know if he should draw out her feelings or let her deal with them in her own way, in her own time.

  At last he could stand the sorrow-filled eyes no longer. She was sitting on the small bench at the front of the cabin where she often spent her evenings listening to the sounds of the closing day and drinking in the peace that seemed to seep from the twilight. George sat down beside her and spoke of Nonie’s death for the first time.

  “I know it has been terribly hard on you to lose Nonie,” he began.

  Kendra could not answer. Her tears were falling again.

  “I’m—I’m sorry,” he continued. “Truly sorry that you—that you have to face another sorrow. Another death.”

  “It wasn’t just her death,” Kendra said in a trembling voice.

  “Not her death?”

  “Not really. It was—it was just that she—she wasn’t ready to die.”

  The words tore again at Kendra’s heart.

  “I—don’t think I understand,” said her grandfather.

  “I—I went to see Nonie. To tell her about God. To tell her that she could—could have her sins forgiven—could know God as her— Savior,” sobbed Kendra. She was sobbing openly now.

  “You wanted to change her religion?” he asked softly, but there was a hint of accusation in his words.

  Kendra’s head came up. “I wanted to share with her the Truth,” she said frankly, and he could see the fervor in her eyes. She really believed in what she had embraced.

  There was silence. George shifted a bit. At last he spoke again.

  “She didn’t want to listen?”

  “Oh—she listened. She let me say—say it all—but then she said— she said He is the white man’s God. I couldn’t make her—understand that He isn’t. That He made all mankind. That He loves us all.”

  “I see,” said George.

  There was silence.

  “Did she send you away?”

  “She was very weak—and tired. She said for me to go and come again the next day.”

  “So she wasn’t angry with you?”

  “I—I don’t think so. She called me—Amo-chika—just like she did when I was little. Remember? She said—she’d—she’d think about what I said if it would make me happy.”

  “She said that?”

  Kendra nodded.

  They sat in silence, each deep in thought. George spoke first.

  “Then, she did that,” he said simply.

  Kendra looked up at her grandfather, not understanding his words.

  “If Nonie gave her word, she also fulfilled it,” said George.

  “You mean—?”

  George hesitated, then said, “If she was still able to—to think— straight—then Nonie pondered your words. Now I don’t know if—if she believed them. But she thought about them.”

  “Oh, God.” The words escaped from Kendra’s lips without her being aware of them. It was a prayer. It was an earnest plea. It was a bit of heartfelt praise. Just two simple words, but her whole heart was wrapped up in them.

  What if Nonie had thought on her words? What if she had actually understood them? What if she had believed? “Father, I leave Nonie’s soul in your hands,” she whispered.

  At least in some measure, things returned to a normal summer routine. George went about his daily tasks and Kendra quickly seemed to slip back into the role she had left when she went away to university. But there was a difference somehow. Kendra’s faith set her apart. She had a confidence, a peace, even as she moved about the cabin. George often heard her humming little snatches of song, and he had the feeling that she was in her room reading her Bible or praying in the early mornings or late evenings. He didn’t know how he knew—he didn’t actually see her—but he felt it.

  Another fall came and went and soon winter was with them again, wrapping them in its chilling arms with falling snow. Kendra harnessed the dogs and put out her traps. She did not take
pleasure in the death of the animals, but she and her grandfather were trappers and they had to make a living.

  After the long winter, Kendra was glad to see another spring breathe through. As Easter drew near her thoughts were more and more on the wonder of it all—God’s creation, His redemption for that creation. It was a joyous time. She recalled the previous Easter and her time spent with the Preston family. In spite of the happiness within her soul, she felt a tug of sorrow—of loneliness. Things might have been so different had she not been needed by her grandfather— by Nonie.

  But Kendra breathed a little prayer, leaving her life and her future in the hands of the God she had learned to trust. He knew what was best. She could trust Him.

  “Where is he?” Kendra said aloud for the umpteenth time.

  She paced the floor again and looked out the window. It was already getting dark. Her grandfather should have been home from the woods long ago. He always came home long before sundown from logging out firewood.

  Kendra went to the door and stood listening to the sounds of the approaching night. In the distance a wolf howled, and Kendra saw the hackles on Oscar’s neck rise in response. She placed a hand on the dog’s head without thinking, her eyes still hopefully straining to make out an approaching form in the darkness.

  Then she returned to the kitchen, picked up a lantern, and drew a few matches from the can near the stove. She shrugged into her light jacket, slipped her knife into the side of her moccasin, and turned to Oscar.

  “Let’s go,” she said to the dog. “We’ve got to find him.”

  She moved quickly through the forest with the lantern unlit until the darkness closed in around them. Then she stopped, drew a match from where she had tucked it in her sash and lit it.

  Without a word to the dog at her side she hurried on. They both knew the trail to the fallen timber where her grandfather had been working. Oscar walked in step beside her, his ears forward, his eyes alert. Once or twice Kendra felt him tense and knew that some animal was near them in the heavy forest growth. With Oscar at her side, she didn’t feel any concern.

  By the time they reached the deadfall, it was completely dark. Kendra could only see within the brief circle of light cast by the lantern. She depended on Oscar’s sharp nose and basic instincts to help find her grandfather.

  “Find him, Oscar,” she told the dog.

  The dog moved forward, head up, nostrils pointed into the wind. Now and then he whined, but he did not stop nor look at Kendra, so she knew he had not yet picked up a scent.

  “Papa Mac! Papa Mac!” she shouted every now and then as they wound their way through the fallen trees and discarded branches.

  She was about to give up when Oscar stopped with his head turned, his whole body tensed.

  “What is it?” Kendra asked, moving forward to place her hand on the dog’s neck.

  A whine escaped Oscar’s throat. He turned and looked at her.

  Then whined again.

  “Go ahead,” she told him. “Find him.”

  The dog moved forward and Kendra followed closely. “Papa Mac!” she cried out again. “Papa Mac, where are you?”

  A faint reply returned to her, borne on the sporadic breeze.

  Both girl and dog surged forward.

  They found him pinned by a log he had been working to cut free from a tangle of fallen trees. Kendra put the lantern on a nearby stump and quickly set to work with the handsaw, saying encouraging things to the man as she worked. “I’ll have you out of here in no time,” she told him. But the trunk was thick and Kendra was perspiring from hard work and nerves by the time she finished the task. She had to saw through the trunk again in order to get the log to a size she could move by herself. The minutes seemed to expand into hours before she was able to lay aside the saw and put all her remaining energy to moving the heavy section of log.

  At last she managed to pull it off her grandfather and let it drop with a crash among other forest debris. She was panting heavily. George lay quietly, and Oscar’s tongue reached now and then to lick the sweat from the man’s brow.

  When Kendra felt she could breathe again, she rose to her feet and picked up the lantern.

  “You should be able to get up now,” she gasped out. “Your leg is free.”

  Her grandfather did not move.

  “Papa Mac,” prompted Kendra, turning the lantern so she could she his face. It was white with pain. Kendra dropped on her knees beside him.

  “I—I can’t—get up,” he managed to say. “The—leg—it’s—” He could say no more.

  Kendra crawled along his body until she reached the leg that had been under the log. She lifted the lantern and was relieved to see no blood. Then she noted the odd way the limb was lying. “I’ll get the team,” she said.

  “You—you can’t,” groaned her grandfather.

  “With the wagon-sled,” went on Kendra. “I’ll bring the wagonsled.”

  He shook his head. “You’ll never—get it anywhere near here— with all the tangle,” he gasped through stiff lips.

  Kendra looked around her. He was right. She’d never be able to bring anything into this part of the forest. Dead trees fell in every direction, mingling with others in a wild tangle of limbs and branches.

  She felt panic. What was she to do?

  Quickly she made herself think through her options. She couldn’t leave him where he was. But she couldn’t move him very far. She only had Oscar to help her, and he didn’t even have a harness.

  “I’ll make you a bed—of spruce boughs,” she began. She had to begin somewhere. She had to do something. “Then I’ll—I’ll start a fire. That will keep us until morning. Then—then I’ll figure out a way to get you back to the cabin.”

  With the axe her grandfather had brought with him, she set to work cutting branches from the spruce and interwove them until she had formed a bed close beside him that was softer and warmer than the ground. Carefully she dragged and pushed her grandfather until she had him eased onto it. Then she began to clear and scrape away a spot to build a fire. She had to make it as close to her grandfather as she could, but she could not take a chance on setting ablaze any of the dry, tangled underbrush about them.

  When she had all the loose boughs out of the way, she dug down with her knife until she reached cold, damp ground. This would make a safe base for the fire.

  Carefully she gathered small sticks and dried grasses and drew another precious match from her sash.

  In a few moments her little fire was blazing. Kendra noticed her grandfather extend his hand toward the flame, flexing his fingers. In spite of the fact that it was midsummer, the nights were cold.

  “You make a good fire,” he said calmly, as though they were camping out.

  Kendra smiled. “I know,” she replied. “My grandfather taught me. He said, ‘Make a little fire. One that you can sit close to. White men make a big fire. Have to sit way back—and freeze. Indians make a little fire. Can cuddle up close—and keep warm.’ My grandfather is a wise man.”

  In spite of his pain, George chuckled.

  “Now I’m going to leave you—for a while,” Kendra went on.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I’ve piled up enough wood, right there to your left, so that you can keep the fire going. I’m going to the cabin. Get some supplies. I’ll get some blankets and food and Oscar’s harness and some hides and be back soon. Come morning we’ll make a travois. We’ll get you out of here. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Oscar will stay with you.”

  “You’re going alone?” asked George.

  “I have my knife,” replied Kendra with more confidence than she felt.

  “Take Oscar. I’m fine. I have the fire.”

  “I’ll feel better if you have Oscar too,” Kendra insisted calmly. “I’ll have the lantern.”

  Nearby an owl hooted.

  “I heard that fellow before,” George said, his voice low. “I thought— I thought for a while there he was calling
my name.”

  Kendra’s head came up sharply. “Nonsense,” she said quickly. “You are going to be just fine. Once we get you home—get that leg patched up.”

  “Maybe,” he answered softly. “Maybe.”

  “I’ll hurry,” said Kendra. “I’ll be back just as quickly as I can.”

  She turned to go.

  “Kendra.”

  His call stopped her. She turned to him, lifting high the lantern so she could see his face.

  “I—I really did think that—that maybe this was it. Oh, not because of the—the Indian legend about the owl—but because— because of the pain—the fact I couldn’t move.”

  Kendra felt horror wash all through her. She knew now his leg had been hurt badly. That it was likely broken in more than one place. But she didn’t expect him to die. Surely, not—that.

  “Kendra,” he said again, and she heard his voice tremble.

  “I—I didn’t know if—if I’d make it—if you’d find me—in time— but—but I thought about what you said. I thought a lot about it. I did it. I—I prayed. I—asked for His help. His forgiveness. You were right. He really is there.”

  With a cry Kendra fell on her knees beside her grandfather and let the tears fall on his plaid woollen shirt.

  He stroked her hair and whispered softly to her.

  “It’s all right. Even if—even if I don’t make it. Even if—It’s okay. I’m ready now. I’m ready. Honest.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  A Heart at Rest

  “Do you mind—very much—leaving the wilderness?” George asked his granddaughter.

  They were on the boat, all their belongings stacked around them. They both knew they had said a final goodbye to the little cabin they had called home for so many years. They had not brought much with them. There really hadn’t been that much. Their personal items, Kendra’s pile of books—and Oscar. Kendra could not bear to give up Oscar. All the other sled dogs had been sold—bartered off—to the trader at the post. The traps and skinning knives and snowshoes and sleds, the crude cabin furniture, garden tools and axes—it all had been sold to various trappers in the area, the canoe given to an Indian boy from the settlement. Gone. It was all gone now. A total way of living. A total life.