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Excerpt

CHAPTER 2 . . . 

            As Rebecca wound her way on horseback to her cabin hidden in the mountains of Juniata County, Pennsylvania, she struggled with the realization that her life had changed in ways she could only begin to imagine. All her life she thought she was like everyone else in the small town of McAlisterville. But she wasn’t.

            While she was recovering from a brutal assault, her mentor—Back So Straight, an Iroquois woman—told her a secret she had been hiding for over twenty years. The man she thought was her father—the man who raised her—wasn’t the man married to her mother. Her real father was an Indian.

            So much made sense now. Her black hair and tanned skin. Why she was taller than every other young woman she knew. Why Back So Straight had lived all these years on the edge of the farm and taught her to use plants and trees to heal people. The close relationship between her mother Jane and this mysterious woman.

            She let the reins of her horse fall slack, not caring where the animal carried her. It didn’t matter that she had graduated from the Johns Hopkins Hospital Training School for Nurses, or that she had become the independent, savvy woman she always hoped to be. Or that she worked in the rough, primitive lumber camps where she nursed men with gruesome injuries—or in the town doctor’s office treating every imaginable illness and accident to befall people whose closest hospital was a seven-hour ride by horseback.

            A breeze still carried the acrid smell of burned-out trees and debris left smoldering for days after the firestorm raged through several nearby mountains that had been clear cut just months before. And half the Wagner virgin forestland. 

            Gone was the overstory. Towering hemlock and white pine. Chestnut, oak, birch, maple, hickory, elm. And dozens more species. And the gentle understory. Witch Hazel. Redbud. Holly. Dogwood. Also gone were vines, saplings, shrubs, herbs. And the wildlife they sheltered and fed.     

             

            The young woman’s mind spun like a fern blowing and twirling in the wind. So much of the beliefs about herself and her family were built on lies. Rebecca felt the weight of their deception—like a tree holding up another half-fallen neighbor, bending under the strain.

            Her horse paused by a large boulder and whinnied. The echo reverberated off the gray-black stone covered with spongy green lichens and dotted with small ferns that grew like feathers on a hat. Rebecca turned and saw a rider approach from below. She felt a flush in her cheeks and neck.

            Ben Seibert. What’s he doing here on the mountain? The man she once loved and thought she would marry maneuvered his horse up the mountain.

            The last time she saw Ben she revealed what Back So Straight had told her just months ago. He pretended to be nonplussed about her being half Indian, but his familiar way of clenching his jaw when he was upset said otherwise. How could he possibly know how he felt when she barely grasped the implications of being mixed race?

            Ben guided his horse beside her. But there was something tentative about the way he stopped before he got too close. “Rebecca, stop. I’ve been looking for you—thought I’d find you at your cabin.”

            “Hello. It’s good to see you, Ben,” Rebecca said in a shaky, halting voice. “I’m going there now. Want… to come along?” She held her breath, afraid he’d answer no and she’d be disappointed, but wanting to believe otherwise. Just the familiar sound of his voice, the way he pronounced every syllable clearly—make her smile inside.

            “I suppose so. I haven’t been there in a long time. Not since your brother and his friend Jake finished building it.”

            “I know. Is it a year…or more?”

            When he didn’t answer, she just nodded and led the way to the top of the mountain until they reached the lean-to. They dismounted and walked to the three-sided log structure. A chipmunk scampered into a hole under the bottom log.

            Ben narrowed his eyes and ran his hands over the logs. “I didn’t know you built a lean-to. Looks good. Lots of dry firewood and space for a few horses.”

            “My brother made sure there’d be plenty of room… but I’m the only one coming up here now. He and Jake are busy trying to make a living, but once in a while Back So Straight visits me to harvest plants. However, since the fire we have to travel farther to find them.”

            “I’m sorry about the fire, but I was relieved when I heard at least some of the Wagner timber was spared—and your cabin.” He shifted his weight to face her. “I guess everyone knows where this place is now, since Gunther Drupp was found dead below the waterfall. I’m sorry he… hurt you.”

            Rebecca’s hands clutched her stomach at the sound of Gunther’s name. “I’d like to believe all that’s behind me now. Let the gossipers say what they want.” She pulled at an imaginary thread on her sleeve and threw it away.

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