Bone Rattler (49 page)

“Conawago!” Duncan exclaimed.

The old Indian acknowledged him with a slight nod, then solemnly pointed to the trail and began a slow trot toward the north. Duncan squatted by the fire a moment before following, cupping the smoke in his hand as he knew Conawago must have done, washing it over his face.

The old Indian did not speak the few times they paused to rest, but somehow Duncan did not expect him to. He was in mourning still, for the dead who had been killed again by the Ramsey men. He had made no more lacerations on his limbs, and, to Duncan’s relief, those he had made were healing well, though they gave the old man a fierce aspect, the look of an ancient and awful warrior.

As they sat on a high, stony ridge, silently sharing a piece of bread from the mission, Duncan began to notice the wariness in Conawago’s eyes. Pushing ever northward, he watched uncomfortably as the old Indian knelt several times to study the trail, sometimes pressing his ear to the ground. Suddenly he gestured Duncan off the well-used path, leading him at a run to a smaller parallel game trail on the ridge above, then pausing at a stout oak to gaze back, his hand on his club.

The explanation came half an hour later, as they moved along a series of high outcroppings. They had slowed to a walk, Duncan in front, and he had cleared the end of a long pile of huge boulders when he spotted a solitary figure moving at a steady lope nearly a
hundred yards away on the main trail. It was an Indian, adorned not unlike those he had seen at the army headquarters, a musket strapped upside down on his back. When he turned to point the man out to Conawago, his friend was nowhere to be seen.

“There is—” he began, then a figure materialized in the air, leaping onto Duncan, knocking him to the ground, clamping a small hand over his mouth. Duncan frantically tried to free himself, then realized his assailant was not trying to hurt him, but was using his free hand to cover them both with dried leaves. A small face appeared near his own, aimed not at Duncan but at the trail below. It was Alex.

A moment later more figures appeared. Alex tensed, seemed to stop breathing. Twenty-four, Duncan counted, all appearing much the same as the first, except for two men in the center who wore white fringed tunics with green wool caps and green leggings. They all trotted at a uniform pace, fleet and silent as deer.

For five minutes after the party had passed, the only part of Alex that moved was his eyes. His hand stayed clamped on Duncan’s mouth. He made no effort to shift the debris from their prostrate bodies.

Finally came a low, warbling whistle behind them, and the boy was up, brushing off his clothes.

“They won’t hurt you, Alex,” Duncan said to the boy. “I know they must terrify you after all they—”

The boy ignored Duncan, stepped eagerly to Conawago’s side. They clamped their forearms together, their hands gripping near the elbow in a silent, emotional greeting. There was a new aspect to the boy, a feral quality that had been absent at the mission. He had unthreaded the sleeves of his shirt and removed them, leaving his arms bare. A length of rope hung around his waist, from which hung a small pouch. Around his neck was a necklace woven of familiar tawny hair. Alex had braided it from the hair of his ox.

“I thought you had grown more particular about your scalp,” Conawago chastised Duncan.

“But they were like—” Duncan suddenly felt weak. He lowered
himself onto a rock. Despite his first impression, obviously they had not been like Conawago, not like the army Indians.

“Hurons. And a few Abenaki, if I’m not mistaken. Two French soldiers, at least one an officer. If they’d seen us, we wouldn’t have lasted five minutes. They are not inclined to be merciful, or to take prisoners, this deep in enemy territory.”

Duncan fought a shudder. “A raiding party? Why here? The farms are along the river.”

“Raids on farms are usually by just a handful of Hurons,” Conawago replied. “Which means the better question is why a party so large should be here at all. A party that size acts as skirmishers between units of the main armies. But the armies are far north of here, where General Wolfe is moving on Quebec. They shouldn’t be here.”

They shouldn’t be here, Duncan repeated to himself, just as they shouldn’t even know who Duncan was. But they were here, and the French were paying the Hurons to kill him.

Five hours later Duncan was about to drop from exhaustion when Conawago abruptly halted his relentless pace, dropping to a knee beside a fallen tree. Again Duncan knew the old Indian had seen, or sensed, something invisible to him. It was evening. They had been climbing a series of ledges that rose stairlike up a steep ridge, eating dried meat on the run. In the still air came the call of a bird, a low, two-tone whistle, which caused Alex’s head to snap up with a broad grin. Conawago answered the call, and a figure in green emerged from behind a rock a hundred feet ahead.

Captain Woolford looked worn out. The left side of his face bore a long bruise; one hand was wrapped in a bloodstained rag. He offered a weary nod, then led them to a campsite nestled among rock outcroppings beside a fast-moving spring. It was a base camp of some kind, Duncan realized, for inside the shadows of an overhanging ledge he spied several leather pouches, a kettle, and half a dozen rolled blankets.

After greeting the boy with a long, silent embrace and conferring in low, hurried tones with Conawago, the ranger confronted Duncan.

“Do you have any idea what Ramsey will do to you when he catches
up?” Woolford snapped. “You’re going to wish you had chosen to stay on the ship and face Jamaica. With fifty pounds on your head, you’ll probably be better off if it
is
Ramsey who takes you. He is paying for you alive, but barely alive will be good enough for him.”

“I must start traveling with a clerk,” Duncan replied, his voice heavy with fatigue, “to keep tally of all those who wish me harm.” He decided to tell the ranger about the French bounty on him, leaving the officer gazing in confusion at him. “Now let me see that hand,” Duncan said in conclusion.

The ranger did not object as Duncan unwrapped the makeshift bandage. It had been an ugly gash across the back of the hand, but was healing well. Duncan did some quick calculation. “This was done not long after you left Edentown.”

Woolford gestured to Duncan’s own wound along his temple. “It could have been the same knife that did that. They jumped me at a stream. They had more blades, I had faster legs. And they knew nothing of reloading on the fly.” He sensed the question in Duncan’s eye. “Rangers are trained to load while running, at least one shot a minute, including time to twist about and aim.” His gaze settled on Alex, who was helping Conawago light a fire. “How does he fare?”

“I left him at the mission this morning, thinking he was lost to the world of men. Three hours later he just appeared from thin air. Saved my life. Or more accurately, kept my foolishness from killing us all.”

“The Hurons aren’t supposed to be here. Headquarters tells me all the French Indians have been called back north, to harass Wolfe’s army marching on Quebec. When I sent an urgent message reporting they were wrong, that every farm from Edentown to German Flats has been raided, all I got back were orders to move north myself.” Woolford explained that he had already dispatched most of his men north, then studied the forest with a worried expression. “One of my men had been tracking this party. They were headed north and changed course three days ago, turned back for here.”

“Why?”

Woolford shook his head in frustration. “It’s like a war within a war.”

“We must be close to Stony Run,” Duncan declared.

“No more than ten miles now.”

They fell silent again. “If he had lived, Adam would have found a way to be there now, because of his wife,” Duncan said with a tone of query.

“Because of his wife,” Woolford agreed. “If things had been different.”

It had been one of the many layers of mystery surrounding Adam Munroe. But Duncan had finally realized that he had kept his wife a secret because she was part of the secret of his Indian captivity, because he had married while with the Indians. “Will she be there?” Duncan asked.

A low sigh escaped Conawago’s lips.

“Butterflies,” a small, tentative voice said. “There is a valley full of butterflies where she lives now.” Alex had found his tongue. “She used to visit it often, would tell me about it.” He spoke very slowly, seeming to struggle for each word. “She makes meal with a magic pestle, never having to add more maize. And there are . . . .” His lips twisted in frustration and he made a sign of something large and round with his arms, then turned and spoke in a tribal tongue to Conawago.

“And pumpkins,” Conawago translated, “fields full of pumpkins.”

“Pumpkins,” Alex nodded. “She likes pumpkins.”

Duncan dared not speak for fear of spooking the boy. In the spreading darkness only his gaunt face was visible, lit by glowing embers.

“When we arrived at the German mission, Adam said we weren’t prisoners,” Alex continued, “but they all treated us as if we were.”

“When she came to visit him, he sent her away,” added a new voice, low and strained. Woolford, turning halfway so he could still watch the night.

“Not right away,” Alex explained. “They spoke first, Adam and Sarah and she. They didn’t know I was watching. Adam gave her something, told her she had to flee to the farthest of the Indian towns. I don’t think they even saw when I followed her, hanging out
the Reverend’s cabin window. I thought no one else saw. I caught up with her behind the furnace. We slipped into the forest past the charcoal piles and ran. One of the Germans knew the trails, though, and led the soldiers onto the path that goes over the ridge, while I took her around it, because of my twisted ankle and because she was with child, four or five months with child.

“Suddenly they were there, leaping down the hill, calling out. She was terrified, pushed me ahead, clutching the sacred thing in both hands, the thing that Adam had saved from an old chief at the massacre, the thing he ran down the waterfall with and had given her for safe-keeping. I didn’t understand the ways of those men in red. I was in front of her when she fell on her knees, and I turned to see the thing that grew out of her breast. She stared at it, touching it with one hand, not understanding. She even tried to get up, but that metal had taken all her strength. Not a night passes when I don’t see her like that, her hand on the metal growing out of her, covered with her own blood. I was as confused as she was. I, too, had never seen one of those things before.”

“What things?” Duncan asked, his throat tightening.

“A musket sword.”

Woolford spoke again, in a desolate whisper. “Bayonet. A bayonet in her back.”

The tale opened a frigid chamber inside Duncan’s mind. He was back in Flanders, learning for the first time what the English soldiers had done to his family.

“Sometimes I find a snake in the forest and ask to visit her,” Alex said. “They live in the valley of the butterflies, just like Adam promised they would. By a river, because of Adam.”

“They?” Duncan asked. “Who else is there with her?”

“Adam. He just came a few weeks ago.”

A new chill crept down Duncan’s spine as he exchanged a haunted glance with Woolford.

“What do you mean beside the river, because of Adam?”

Alex looked up uncertainly, then gazed into the embers. “A spirit totem is his secret, not for words of men.”

But Duncan did not need to be told. The beaver. The beaver had been Adam’s sacred sign, the beaver who had been carved on the mast when Adam died, the beaver who swam deep.

“She didn’t want to leave him at the mission that day. Adam said she had to save the ancient thing, or the soldiers would find a way to use it against her people. He promised she would be safe, that there was nothing to worry about, that he knew she would never let go of it, never let it fall into enemy hands, that it would protect her, that if anything happened to her he would know. He vowed on the spirit of their child that if she went to her sacred land before him, he would know and he would join her.” Alex poked at the embers. “Sometimes when I see them, there is a small shape in the shadows behind them. It’s him, I think. Their son.”

There was no sound for a long time, none except the distant lonely call of an owl.

“I killed them,” Alex said in a tiny voice, filled with pain.

“Impossible,” Duncan said.

“I didn’t understand until later, when I heard those soldiers complaining. They had been told there would be a large reward paid for Sarah. They thought I would have family who would pay as well. It’s why they followed, because of me. What they took from her only paid for a few mugs of rum.”

When Duncan finally stirred, Alex was asleep, his head on Conawago’s leg. He rose and stepped across the fire. “You knew about the thing she was protecting, the ancient thing,” he said to Woolford’s back. “You recovered it.”

“Like the boy said, it took awhile to understand. When I did, I rescued it from those who stole it. But Adam decided to flee that very night, as far from the army as he could go.”

“But why didn’t he run back into the woods?” Duncan asked.

“Because he knew there were men who would use him against the Indians. Because he heard that Major Pike was coming the next day to interrogate him, and if he went among the Iroquois, Pike had ways to find him.”

“You recovered the ancient thing and then it was stolen from you on the ship.” The bear, Duncan knew now, had been in the bloodstained doeskin pouch passed around the prisoner’s hold. He glanced at his pack, where the bear lay snug against his pipes.

“I was trying to keep it safe. I never expected Adam to take it with him. He must have decided it was the only way for it not to be used against his wife’s people.”

“Or he could not abide that it was in your possession. You belonged to the ones who killed her.”