Poor at all times, the people of the district were now absolutely without
means of subsistence. Fortunately for them, they were inured to hardship;
and their men being all gone to the war, the women made such shift
as they could and lived as they might. They hoed their little patches,
fished the streams, and trapped in the woods. But it was poor enough at best,
and the weak went down and only the strong survived. Mrs. Mills was
better off than most, she had a cow -- at first, and she had Vashti.
Vashti turned out to be a tower of strength. She trapped more game
than anyone in the district; caught more fish with lines and traps --
she went miles to fish below the forks where the fish were bigger than above;
she learned to shoot with her father's old gun, which had been sent back
when he got a musket, shot like a man and better than most men;
she hoed the patch, she tended the cow till it was lost, and then she did
many other things. Her mother declared that, when Chris died
(Chris was the boy who died of fever), but for Vashti she could not have
got along at all, and there were many other women in the pines
who felt the same thing.
When the news came that Bob Askew was killed, Vashti was one of the first
who got to Bob's wife; and when Billy Luck disappeared in a battle,
Vashti gave the best reasons for thinking he had been taken prisoner;
and many a string of fish and many a squirrel and hare found their way
into the empty cabins because Vashti "happened to pass by.
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