The People

"And Mr. Grafton had enough followers of that doctrine to found a town?" I asked, a little stunned.
"A whole town," said Nits, "into which we will not be admitted. There is a campground outside the place where we will be tolerated for the night if they decide we won't contaminate the area."
At noon we stopped just after topping out at Millman's Pass. The horses, lathered and breathing heavily, and poor dragged-along Molly, drooped grateful heads in the shadows of the aspen and pines.
I busied myself with the chuck box and was startled to see the girl sliding out of the wagon where we had bedded her down for the trip. She clung to the side of the wagon and winced as her feet landed on the gravelly hillside. She looked very young and slender and lost in the fullness of my nightgown, but her eyes weren't quite so sunken and her mouth was tinged with color.
I smiled at her. "That gown is sort of long for mountain climbing. Tonight I'll try to get to my other clothes and see if I can find something, I think my old blue skirt-" I stopped because she very obviously wasn't understanding a word I was saying. I took a fold of the gown she wore and said, "Gown."
She looked down at the crumpled white muslin and then at me but said nothing.
I put a piece of bread into her hands and said, "Bread." She put the bread down carefully on the plate where I had stacked the other slices for dinner and said nothing. Then she glanced around, looked at me and, turning, walked briskly into the thick underbrush, her elbows high to hold the extra length of gown up above her bare feet.
"Nils!" I called in sudden panic. "She's leaving!"
Nils laughed at me across the tarp he was spreading.
"Even the best of us," he said, "have to duck into the bushes once in a while!"
"Oh, Nils!" I protested and felt my face redden as I carried the bread plate to the tarp. "Anyway, she shouldn't be running around in a nightgown like that. What would Mr. Grafton say! And have you noticed? She hasn't made a sound since we found her." I brought the eating things to the tarp.
"Not one word. Not one sound."
"Hmm," said Nils, "you're right. Maybe she's a deaf-mute."
"She hears," I said, "I'm sure she hears,"
"Maybe she doesn't speak English," he suggested. "Her hair is dark. Maybe she's Mexican. Or even Italian. We get all kinds out here on the frontier. No telling where she might be from."
"But you'd think she'd make some sound. Or try to say something," I insisted.
"Might be the shock," said Nils soberly. "That was an awful thing to live through."
"That's probably it, poor child." I looked over to where she had disappeared. "An awful thing. Let's call her Marnie, Nils," I suggested. "We need some sort of name to call her by." Nils laughed. "Would having the name close to you reconcile you a little to being separated from your little sister?"
I smiled back. "It does sound homey-Marnie, Marnie."
As if I had called her, the girl, Marnie, came back from the bushes, the long gown not quite trailing the slope, completely covering her bare feet. Both her hands were occupied with the long stem of red bells she was examining closely. How graceful she is, I thought, How smoothly-Then my breath went out and I clutched the plate I held. That gown was a good foot too long for Marnie! She couldn’t possibly be walking with it not quite trailing the ground without holding it up! And where was the pausing that came between steps? I hissed at Nils. "Look!" I whispered hoarsely, "she's-she's floating! She's not even touching the ground!"
Just at that moment Marnie looked up and saw us and read our faces. Her face crumpled into terror and she dropped down to the ground. Not only down to her feet, but on down into a huddle on the ground with the spray of flowers crushed under her.
I ran to her and tried to lift her, but she suddenly convulsed into a mad struggle to escape me. Nils came to help. We fought to hold the child who was so violent that I was afraid she'd hurt herself.
"She's-she's afraid!" I gasped. "Maybe she thinks-we'll-kill her!"
"Here!" Nils finally caught a last flailing arm and pinioned it. "Talk to her! Do something! I can't hold her much longer!"
"Marnie, Marnie!" I smoothed the tangled curls back from her blank, tense face, trying to catch her attention.
"Marnie, don't be afraid!" I tried a smile. "Relax, honey, don't be scared." I wiped her sweat-and tear-streaked face with the corner of my apron. "There, there, it doesn't matter-we won't hurt you-" I murmured on and on, wondering if she was taking in any of it, but finally the tightness began to go out of her body and at last she drooped, exhausted, in Nils's arms. I gathered her to me and comforted her against my shoulder.
"Get her a cup of milk," I said to Nils, "and bring me one, too." My smile wavered. "This is hard work!"
In the struggle I had almost forgotten what had started it, but it came back to me as I led Marnie to the spring and demonstrated that she should wash her face and hands. She did so, following my example, and dried herself on the flour-sack towel I handed her. Then, when I started to turn away, she sat down on a rock by the flowing water, lifted the sadly bedraggled gown, and slipped her feet into the stream. When she lifted each to dry it, I saw the reddened, bruised soles and said, "No wonder you didn't want to walk. Wait a minute." I went back to the wagon and got my old slippers, and, as an afterthought, several pins. Marnie was still sitting by the stream, leaning over the water, letting it flow between her fingers. She put on the slippers-woefully large for her, and stood watching with interest as I turned up the bottom of the gown and pinned it at intervals.
"Now," I said, "now at least you can walk. But this gown will be ruined if we don't get you into some other clothes."
We ate dinner and Marnie ate some of everything we did, after a cautious tasting and a waiting to see how we handled it. She helped me gather up and put away the leftovers and clear the tarp. She even helped with the dishes-all
with an absorbed interest as if learning a whole new set of skills.
As our wagon rolled on down the road, Nils and I talked quietly, not to disturb Marnie as she slept in the back of the wagon.
"She's an odd child," I said. "Nils, do you think she really was floating? How could she have? It's impossible."
"Well, it looked as if she was floating," he said. "And she acted as if she had done something wrong-something-" Nils's words stopped and he frowned intently as he flicked at a roadside branch with the whip "-something we would hurt her for. Gail, maybe that's why-I mean, we found that witch quotation. Maybe those other people were like Marnie. Maybe someone thought they were witches and burned them-"
"But witches are evil!" I cried. "What's evil about floating-"
"Anything is evil," said Nils. "It lies on the other side of the line you draw around what you will accept as good. Some people's lines are awfully narrow."
"But that's murder!" I said, "to kill-"
"Murder or execution-again, a matter of interpretation," said Nils. "We call it murder, but it could never be proved-"
"Marnie," I suggested. "She saw-"
"Can't talk-or won't," said Nils.
I hated the shallow valley of Grafton's Vow at first glance. For me it was shadowed from one side to the other in spite of the down-flooding sun that made us so grateful for the shade of the overhanging branches. The road was running between rail fences now as we approached the town. Even the horses seemed jumpy and uneasy as we rattled along.