Read Online The Rosewood Casket by Sharyn McCrumb - Free Book Online

jar, and playing hide-and-seek when it was too dark to even see.”
    “I remember playing pioneer. I was always Daniel Boone—”
    “You still are, Clayt!”
    “Yeah—in my living history lectures, but it was more fun as a kid, when I could make it up as I went along. I remember how Dwayne and Garrett and I used to try to make you be an Indian princess in our game.”
    “I finally went along with it, didn’t I?”
    He laughed at the memory. “Sure, you did. How old were you then? Ten? You must have spent hours in the Hamelin library getting ready for that one.” He mimicked her little girl’s voice. “ All right, boys, I’m a Cherokee princess. I’m Nancy Ward!
    “And then you proceeded to kill all of us, and when we cried foul, you went home and got the book, and shoved it under our noses.” He shook his head. “Sure enough, it told how she chewed bullets for her husband during the Cherokee’s war with the Creeks, and how she took up his gun after he was killed and turned the tide of battle herself. I should have kept on reading, though. You tricked us. She never did harm any whites. Protected them, even from the wrath of the Cherokees. You didn’t tell us that.”
    “Of course I didn’t!” said Dovey. “I wanted to be a warrior, not a peacemaker. That’s why I picked her. You all wanted me to be Rebecca Boone, sweeping the smokehouse while you boys went off to have adventures. ‘Be careful, Dan’l,’” she said in mocking falsetto.
    In the darkness, Clayt Stargill smiled. “Nancy Ward. It was the first time I’d ever heard of her. I talk about her sometimes now in my school presentations.”
    “Good. Little girls ought to have somebody to relate to besides pioneer housewives and goody two-shoes Pocahontas. What do you say about Nancy Ward?”
    “Well, I’m in costume as Daniel Boone, who must have met her—they were both important people in the same place and time—so I tell them that she was my friend, and a friend to all the settlers in the western mountains. She tried to keep the peace between the Cherokees and the whites. I talk about the time she warned Fort Watauga about the coming attack planned by Dragging Canoe and how she saved Mrs. Bean from being burned at the stake, stamping out the flames herself and promising the village that if they spared this captive, Mrs. Bean would teach them how to make butter and cheese. I tell them that Nancy Ward was named the Ghighau when she was still a teenager, even though that honor is usually reserved for one very old and revered. The female students are always especially pleased about that part.”
    “I hope you make it clear that women played an important role in Cherokee society and that she had real power and influence.”
    “You ought to come with me, Dovey,” said Clayt. “With that dark hair of yours and a little pancake makeup to cover your Irish freckles, you’d make a great Nancy Ward. You might even be part Cherokee, who knows? I could rig you up a pioneer costume and some turkey feathers for a swan’s wing—you remember, the symbol of her authority.”
    “No thanks, Clayt,” she sighed. “Maybe men don’t outgrow playacting, but women do.”
    *   *   *
    “Grandma Flossie, where are they taking the hounds?”
    Nora Bonesteel was five years old, a big-eyed, solemn child, who watched more than she spoke. She was sitting on the back porch on a May morning, watching her grandmother peel potatoes to boil for dinner. In the soft wind Nora could smell the blossoms on the apple trees, as white as her pinafore against the green mountains beyond. She had been watching a mourning cloak butterfly drift among the clumps of purple irises in her mother’s garden beside the smokehouse, as she listened to her grandmother sing an old hymn, joining her on the chorus: Safely walking close to thee; Let it be, dear Lord, let it be.
    The dogs’ barking drowned out the harmony of old woman and child. Nora looked up to see her father and