Miracle in the Wilderness Read online

  Here is Paul Gallico’s most moving fable since the immortal The Snow Goose.

  “This story was told to me when I was a boy, by my great-grandmother on a Christmas Eve by the fire. I always believed that stories told by great-grandmothers must be so, for their old eyes look inward and they recall . . .

  “I never knew whether this was something she had heard, or perhaps read in old letters. yellowing in an attic loft, but only that it happened in the wilderness of Britain’s colonies in the New World in the long distant past on Christmas Eve.”

  So begins Paul Gallico’s Christmas tale about a frontier family in colonial America. Jasper Adams had settled in the North American wilderness, cleared the forest, and built the fortlike cabin to which he later brought his bride, Dorcas, whom he had wooed and won in Albany. Her family was newly arrived from England, but her great love for Jasper enabled her to adapt to this new life. And in April 1752 she gave birth to their son. It was a hard life but a rewarding one. It was also dangerous. For the last fifty years the French, sometimes with Indian allies, and the British had been struggling for control of America. But constant vigilance and luck had kept Jaspers family and home safe. That is, until the morning of December 24, when an Indian raiding party surprised Dorcas while Jasper was out hunting. Without a miracle, all would be lost.

  In this heartwarming story of faith and fortitude, Gallico describes a confrontation between two cultures and a victory for humanity.

  Books by PAUL GALLICO

  Novels

  ADVENTURES OF HIRAM HOLLIDAY

  THE SECRET FRONT

  THE SNOW GOOSE

  THE LONELY

  THE ABANDONED

  TRIAL BY TERROR

  THE SMALL MIRACLE

  THE FOOLISH IMMORTALS

  SNOWFLAKE

  LOVE OF SEVEN DOLLS

  THOMASINA

  MRS. ’ARRIS GOES TO PARIS

  LUDMILA

  TOO MANY GHOSTS

  MRS. ’ARRIS GOES TO NEW YORK

  SCRUFFY

  CORONATION

  LOVE, LET ME NOT HUNGER

  THE HAND OF MARY CONSTABLE

  MRS. ’ARRIS GOES TO PARLIAMENT

  THE MAN WHO WAS MAGIC

  THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE

  THE ZOO GANG

  MATILDA

  THE BOY WHO INVENTED THE BUBBLE GUN

  MRS. ’ARRIS GOES TO MOSCOW

  General

  FAREWELL TO SPORTS

  GOLF IS A FRIENDLY GAME

  LOU GEHRIG, PRIDE OF THE “YANKEES”

  CONFESSIONS OF A STORY WRITER

  THE HURRICANE STORY

  THE SILENT MIAOW

  FURTHER CONFESSIONS OF A STORY WRITER

  THE GOLDEN PEOPLE

  THE STORY OF “SILENT NIGHT”

  THE REVEALING EYE, PERSONALITIES OF THE 1920’s

  HONORABLE CAT

  THE STEADFAST MAN

  For Children

  THE DAY THE GUINEA-PIG TALKED

  THE DAY JEAN-PIERRE WAS PIGNAPPED

  THE DAY JEAN-PIERRE WENT ROUND THE WORLD

  MANXMOUSE

  Simultaneously published in Great Britain

  by William Heinemann Ltd.

  Copyright © 1955, 1975

  by Paul Gallico and Mathemata Anstalt

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in connection with reviews written specifically for inclusion in a magazine or newspaper.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First U.S. printing

  Design by Barbara Liman Cohen

  Jacket design by Neil Waldman

  ISBN 0-440-05714-0

  TO

  VIRGINIA

  THIS STORY was told to me when I was a boy, by my great-grandmother on a Christmas Eve by the fire. I always believed that stories told by great-grandmothers must be so, for their old eyes look inward and they recall. Or perhaps when it is something that has happened in the long-ago far beyond their lifespan or even those of generations preceding them they remember things that someone before them has remembered.

  I never knew whether this was something she had heard, or perhaps read in old letters yellowing in an attic, but only that it happened in the wilderness of Britain’s colony in the New World, in the long distant past on Christmas Eve.

  Time had diminished my great-grandmother to the weightlessness of a bird and as fragile, yet her dark eyes were bright with communication and undiminished life. At ninety she was as hale and active seemingly as ever she had been. As she spoke, glowing pictures formed themselves in my mind for she had the storyteller’s gift, punctuating her narrative with alert and vigorous gestures. Hers was the power to cause me to hear sounds out of the past and even as she would wrinkle her tiny, almost translucent nose I would capture a whiff of long forgotten odors.

  The parlor where we forgathered was warmed by the log fire and filled with the pine and sugar scented fragrance of the Christmas tree but time and place were banished as she spoke. Her voice, when she began, was crisp and dry like the crunch of snowshoes on the feet of the Indian scouts she told about. It was as though she had known them intimately, rasping over the hard crust of week old snow in the dark forest of the wilderness as they made their way northwards by a last quarter moon with their three captives, the man, the woman and the infant.

  She made me see the file proceeding along the beaten forest trail where the moonlight breaking through the treetops cast blue shadows on the surface and distorted the forms of the Algonkin raiding party, hulking in their furs of beaver and muskrat, causing them to loom more huge and monstrous even than they were. She helped me to smell the rancid fetor of the Indians against the crispness of frost on spruce and pine, the leathery odor of buckskin and the rich animal hair of the pelts they wore against the cold.

  Occasionally there was the thunder of a slip of snow disturbed from a laden branch, from time to time the clash of a steel axe-head against musket butt, the snort or explosive exhalations of the pony of the mounted Indian and the heartbreaking moans of the woman who had been roughly handled. The Indians did not try to maintain silence for it was impossible in the winter forest. They relied upon swiftness to take them out of reach of any pursuing parties of Iroquois bent on rescue or vengeance.

  Darker than the forest aisles was the agony of mind of Jasper Adams because of the disaster that had overtaken them this morning of December 24, 1755, and his knowledge of the fate that awaited them when they reached Algonkin territory. More poignant still was the anguish and torment of his wife Dorcas who, through a moment’s heedlessness and disobedience, had been the unwitting cause of the catastrophe.

  The land where Jasper Adams had settled, cleared the forest and built the cabin that was about half stout fort and where Dorcas was delivered of Asher, their first born, was hewed out of the northwest section of New York, not far from French-controlled territory.

  Though roughly protected by a chain of British posts, they depended rather on the sturdiness of the house and the vigilance and knowledge of Jasper. He had hunted and farmed the frontier for ten years before he married Dorcas Bonner, young, lovely and but newly arrived from England with her family, part of yet another trickle of landless emigrants from the old country hoping to improve their fortunes in the New World. They had reached Albany by schooner. There Dorcas had been wooed and won by Jasper who had journeyed eastward for supplies to maintain his outpost home, tools, plowshares, gunpowder, lead for bullets.

  Young wives were at a premium in those days in the colonies and Dorcas was sought by many brave young men but once she laid eyes on Jasper there was none other for her and for Jasp
er it was like a dream of having found an angel from heaven. They were wed in Albany in accordance with the rites of their beliefs; they were simple God-fearing people and the sole book tucked away amongst the goods carried by the pack mule was the Bible. Dorcas rode Jasper’s farm Percheron. Strong Jasper marched on foot. Thus they moved north and westward through the wilderness in advance of the wave of colonists that was to follow and which, unsettling the French, in the already half-century old struggle for the New World, was turning that nation to a renewed policy of intimidation.

  It was unusual for the Algonkin to attack in December, yet that winter the alarming westward spread of the English threatening the Ohio Valley decided the French upon the political necessity of recourse to terrorism to stem the flow and they sent surprise raiding parties burning farms and carrying off captives as hostages or to torture and death to provide cards of diplomacy to be played back and forth across the English Channel.

  Now such a party was pushing northward, returning single file through the moonlit woods. Quanta-wa-neh, the leader of the expedition, rode at the head of the procession on a shaggy Indian pony and the rest of the party with the captives in the center, surrounded by some dozen warriors bundled in furs and blankets, marched on foot. At Quanta’s side trudged fat Nyagway, the Seneca renegade who spoke English. Quanta had thrown out scouts on snowshoes to the side and rear against any sudden surprise ambush. Nevertheless, he was uneasy. The speed of his retreat was limited by the capacity of the captives.

  One of the raiders carried the eight-month-old child Asher over his shoulder wrapped in a blanket from whence its head emerged every so often to gaze about—silent, solemn, interested, unafraid.

  Close behind, the mother followed, her dark eyes rarely leaving the bundle over the Algonkin’s back except for an occasional fearful glance at the craggy features and deep lines seaming the countenance of her stern, tall husband who limped and sometimes staggered beside her, his hands bound behind his back with buckskin thongs. She stumbled along the trail in shock from the calamity and the manhandling to which she had been subjected, close to the point of exhaustion, ameliorated only by the occasional rest periods.

  The procession came to a halt for a moment and Nyagway, the Seneca interpreter, obese, short of breath and waddling like a bear, came down from the head of the line. Peering with beady eyes out of a cloak of muskrat fur he looked more Eskimo than Indian. He spoke to Jasper Adams: “Quanta say you go faster or you, woman and young one die now.”

  Jasper glanced at Nyagway out of eyes glazed with pain and nodded. “I will try.” Then he uttered aloud a prayer: “Oh Lord! Thou art my staff and support in time of need. Give me the strength.”

  Nyagway regarded the white man for an instant but without hostility and then shuffled unhappily back to his position. He was too old and adipose for this sort of work. A vain and lazy man, he had originally defected to the Algonkin in the hope that his knowledge of English would prove useful to the French and bring him a sinecure. Instead, the northern tribe, with contempt for the turncoat, used him on missions involving long and arduous journeys.

  Forcing himself to renewed effort, Jasper quickened his pace and the line moved more swiftly through the forest to carry out the cruel and horrid paradox the Indians had set their prisoners: march quicker lest you die now so that you may the faster reach the place where you will die then.

  The fearful irony of the command and their situation was plain to Jasper and for a moment anger stabbed him as he thought of his wife’s foolish disregard of his order never to leave the door of the cabin unbarred when he was away or out of sight of the house.

  But in an instant love replaced anger with immense pity as he read the anguish of maternity reflected in the eyes that rested on her child. It touched his heart how haggard trial had turned the beauty that had been his delight and because of this he loved her the more.

  He found the strength to whisper, “It is better so. If we do their bidding they may adopt the child into the tribe and thus he will live.” In this manner he tried to comfort her. He blamed himself for their plight. He had had no right to expose someone so young and innocent to such a wild and savage land and the dangers of the wilderness. It had been the proximity of the familiar gentle feast of Christmas and the endearing femininity of Dorcas that had been their undoing.

  That bright clear sunny morning Jasper had disappeared into the woods to shoot a turkey for their dinner and again admonished her to caution. She had watched him cross the clearing and vanish into the forest with a smile of fond indulgence for his endless warnings. They had lived there for over a year now without so much as a sight of a hostile Indian. The Iroquois were friendly and traded with them or carried news or messages.

  The day had been so fine, the sun in the cloudless sky so warm, almost like summer in the still air. Dorcas had moved Asher’s crib outside the cabin to let the child bask some of the winter pallor from his cheeks. Nearby was the pile of holly, mistletoe and pinecones that Jasper had gathered to decorate their cabin. For tomorrow was Christmas, their first since the new house that Jasper had built was finished and she bethought herself how she might make herself attractive and please her husband on this holy and happy Christmas Day.

  On an impulse she had climbed up into the loft where the smoked hams hung with the flitches of bacon, bags of filberts and hickory nuts and bundles of dried herbs and in the corner next to the heap of winter apples she had gone delving into the horsehide box she had brought with her all the way from England and where the treasures of her girlhood were stored.

  And there she had been trapped, musing over a bit of lace and the matching of some silk ribands to go with the red of the holly berries and the white of the mistletoe, when the raiding Algonkin stormed in. With the child already in their hands it was hopeless. She had fought bravely and desperately and had been brutally subdued. The rising column of smoke from their burning home brought Jasper running from the woods and into the ambush. He had not even time to fire his fowling piece before the Indians were upon him and beat him almost into insensibility with their pogamoggans, as their crooked, knob-headed war clubs were called. They had stopped just short of killing him. Quanta’s orders had been to bring in the captives alive—if possible. Now, on the way back, the Indian leader had not expected to be handicapped by a man hardly able to walk.

  And so the captives moved onwards through the snowy forest pierced occasionally by the bright night and slowly approached the end of their resources. Only his determination to save the life of his son if he could and the incredible will to survive that animated the men of those days enabled Jasper to continue the pace. And Dorcas, the weaker vessel, faltered now. As the Indians reckoned time they marched for an hour and rested five minutes. It was not sufficient to restore her and she moved like an automaton, following the child, stumbling, and once Jasper heard her murmur as though her mind was wandering and she thought herself safe at home at her fireside.

  At the head of the march, Quanta-wa-neh wrestled with the exigencies. Beneath his furs, his paint, feathers, beads and medicine bags, he was a human being beset by most of the problems that have dogged the footsteps of man and leaders down through the ages. In this case it was protection, providing, acquiring and survival, not only for himself but the lives of his command for which he was responsible. He was sometimes savage and ruthlessly cruel as dictated by tribal custom, policy or necessity but he was no more devoted to such cruelty by nature than, say, his white brothers who in their day had plied the rack, hot irons and thumbscrews for the Inquisition. He was an experienced and practical commander.

  It was for these traits among others that Quanta-wa-neh had been assigned to the work at hand. A veteran warrior of some forty odd years he was a tall, wiry Indian with a shrewd, not unpleasant countenance, graceful and moving with the quiet assurance of the born leader who knew what he was about.

  Now, slowed in passage beyond what he considered the point of safety in spite of the element of surpris
e he had achieved, he reviewed his position in the light of his military command and his orders to bring in any captives alive if he could. He had no personal interest in the life or death of his prisoners whatsoever.

  The taking of hostages was a part of Indian warfare as well as the white man’s. If and when they became a nuisance or a menace to the safety of an operation they were simply slain out of hand as a matter of military necessity. He would do what was needed.

  The way darkened as they passed beneath a canopy of giant oaks and conifers that shut out the light from both the moon and the stars. The sobbing of the woman and the whistling breath of the stricken man reached Quanta’s ears and brought him to the verge of a decision when they reached an opening in the forest, a kind of circular glade made by some ancient vagary of the wind strewing the acorns so that the trees grew in a circle open to the sky.

  Into this glade the moonlight shone and, ringed by the dark shadowy forest, illuminated it like an amphitheater. The shaft, as though streaming from an opening in heaven itself, revealed the most extraordinary sight.

  Three white-tailed deer knelt in the snow; a buck, his noble antlers not yet shed, his doe and her fawn, as motionless as statues, their gentle faces turned towards the east.

  Quanta heard the swift rustle at his side that told him his lieutenant had plucked an arrow from his quiver, notched it to the bowstring and drawn it to his ear, for here was meat. Yet he held up his arm in warning, came to a halt and whispered, “Stay your hand. For such a thing as this I have never seen before.”

  Nor had any of the others and for once the Indians were surprised out of their habitual silence as a murmur of astonishment rippled through their ranks and the bowman lowered his weapon muttering, “Look, they do not move. And the fawn, it was born out of season. Is this a magic?”

  Yet even more astonishing was the fact that as the party formed a semicircle at the edge of the clearing, the beasts did not take fright but remained motionless in the attitude in which they had been discovered, hind legs erect, their forelegs folded beneath them, all three alike, and in this strange attitude casting a purple shadow upon the snow, their moist muzzles and liquid eyes reflecting moonlight.