Miracle in the Wilderness

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

T
HIS 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 Jasper 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.”