Bone Rattler (53 page)

Woolford warily stepped away from his cover, his palms open and empty at his side, then uttered a syllable of greeting.

The warrior did not reply.

Conawago stood, also without his weapons, and motioned Duncan to do likewise. Duncan did not miss the hesitation in the stranger’s eyes as he saw Conawago, the brief look of human chagrin before the predator’s face returned.

As the stranger took several steps forward, Conawago called out, speaking quietly in the Iroquois tongue, asking questions. The warrior softened slightly but did not reply except to ask his own question, pointing at Duncan.

Conawago spoke again, gesturing to Woolford and himself. The Iroquois’ face darkened and he turned toward Woolford. He seemed to know Conawago and did not wish to speak with him. There was no need to translate the anger in his voice when he replied.

Conawago sighed and turned to Duncan as the Iroquois stepped to within thirty feet of them. “He wants you to go with him.”

Duncan studied his companions, not comprehending the worry on their faces. “Who is he?”

“From the ones all in the Six Nations fear. The protectors of the sacred one. The singers of death. From the bear spirit himself.”

“Tashgua.” The name escaped Duncan’s lips like a moan. “Why me?”

“Because,” Conawago said in a hesitant tone, “he says you were the one who spoke with the gods last night. His name is Ravencatcher.”

“You know him?”

“He is the son of Tashgua. When he was young, I spent several seasons in his camp. Since last year, he no longer trusts Europeans or those who have lived with them.”

“The dead thing on the stick,” Duncan said. “What does it mean?”

Woolford spoke this time, gesturing to the stick in the Iroquois’s hand.

The response came in a low, impatient voice.

“He says he did not come to weave words in empty air,” Woolford explained. “He wants to know if you are coming or not.”

“If I say no, are they going to attack us? If I say yes, are they going to attack you?”

“I don’t know,” Woolford admitted. “They’re angry as hell. It’s a killing season like no other.”

Duncan searched Conawago’s face. The old Indian shrugged. “The tracks before us are like none I have seen before.”

If he left his friends alone, Duncan realized, they still could face the Hurons, with one bullet left. Before he could reply, the Onondaga took another few steps forward and lifted the dead thing in his hand. Something in Duncan wanted to laugh, something else wanted to cringe. It was a wig, one of Ramsey’s short powdered wigs. Exposed underneath it, at the end of the stick, was the skull of a young bear. “Tell him the three of us go or none of us go.”

Woolford studied Duncan a moment, betraying no emotion, then translated.

The Iroquois spat an unhappy syllable, spun about, and without another word stepped back down the hill.

“He reluctantly accepts your terms,” Woolford explained, hastily gathering his equipment. “But he’s waiting for no one.”

Moments later they were leaving the rocks, Woolford in the lead. Duncan followed for several paces, then paused. The Pennsylvania long rifle was still leaning against a boulder. He hesitated a moment,
scrambled back to retrieve the gun and its powder horn, then ran to join his friends.

The uneasy procession increased in number as they reached the adjoining ridge, with warriors materializing from behind trees and boulders, some even rising from shallow hollows in the forest floor, until they were a dozen in total, moving silently along the well-used trail at the gait of the forest runner. The scalp lock of one of the men in front of Duncan showed russet hairs. Another man, the only one with long locks, wore them plaited and pinned at the rear in the style of a sailor. His hair was the color of ripe barley.

As they paused at a spring to drink, Duncan approached the man with the plaited hair, who dressed with the breechcloth and leggings of the other Iroquois. To his arrow quiver was tied a small swatch of black-and-green tartan. Duncan asked him in Gaelic if he were a
Gaidheal,
a Highlander. The man’s reply was in the Indian tongue, spat over his shoulder as he rose and resumed the trail. Duncan recognized only one word.
Haudenosaunee.
When he looked to Woolford for an explanation, he saw the ranger on his belly, drinking from the stream. A passing Indian paused long enough to kick him in the ribs.

 

 

They were nearly inside the village before Duncan noticed the bark-covered longhouses in the shadows along the bottom of a low, steep ridge. At first the camp seemed abandoned. There were no dogs, no children, no crops, no sign of any activity. Four of the five habitations were in the shadow of large trees, beyond which lay a long, sandy groin at the edge of a river. In the distance was the low rumble of a waterfall. The fifth house was set apart from the others, beside two tall outcroppings like pillars, which flanked a well-worn trail up the ridge. The entry to the thirty-foot-long lodge was hung with animal skulls of all sizes and shapes. Over the door was one so huge it seemed impossible that it could ever have belonged to a flesh-and-blood creature. Its massive teeth seemed ready to close over anyone who dared trespass inside. A long string of massive bear claws hung down one
side of the entry. Duncan found himself clutching the stone bear in his pocket as the Indians gathered up the rifles he and his friends carried, and he fought the temptation to offer it up and flee.

He was led to the far side of the clearing, a hundred feet from the solitary lodge, where a heavy log, stripped of bark, had been sunk in the ground. It was covered with painted images of animals and men. At its base, the bare earth was covered with ominous stains. With a start he saw that Woolford and Conawago were being led into the shadows by the other longhouses. As three somber warriors moved toward him, Duncan retreated, until suddenly he found himself backed against the painted post. His hands were seized from behind, and before he could resist, they were bound behind the post. Three more Indians appeared. Not Indians, he saw. Though their hair was darkened with grease, all of their locks were fair.

“My name is Duncan McCallum,” he declared in a taut voice. “From the Highlands nigh Lochlash.” He saw that each of them held stout lengths of wood only an instant before the nearest one hit him.

The blow to his abdomen doubled him over. “I am called Duncan, of Clan McCallum,” he gasped in Gaelic as he straightened. “From the—” The next blow took him on the shoulders, slamming his head against the post.

“From the English sewers where spies and other rodents are bred,” spat a lean, muscular man with the left half of his face painted black. The blows came quicker now, on his legs, on his ribs.

“The Pied Piper for all the redcoats,” one of the Scottish warriors snarled.

“The king’s lapdog,” muttered another as he landed a club on Duncan’s thigh.

But then he forgot the blows, let them fall as they would as he stared into the blue eyes of the black-painted man who seemed to be the leader of the Scottish warriors. His blond hair was shaved deep along the temples, but the remainder was plaited down his neck. There was hate in his eyes as he returned Duncan’s stare, but there was also something familiar.

“Jamie!” Duncan gasped. “Don’t let it be like this!”

His brother muttered something in the Iroquois tongue. A man produced a switch and slapped Duncan’s shoulder, raising a sting like a cat o’nine tails.

Words rose behind Jamie, Iroquois words in a low, forceful voice. Two of the Scots instantly backed away. The words grew sharper. Jamie launched the club from his hand into the air so that it tumbled end over end above them. As everyone else, even Duncan, watched it, Jamie seized the club in the hand of the nearest man and pummeled Duncan again, with a quick, vicious rhythm. “Don’t ever use the name of my clan again,” he warned in a scalding whisper. “You forfeited the right long ago.”

“Cut me loose and I’ll teach you not to speak to the eldest of your clan so,” Duncan shot back, in the Highland tongue.

Jamie’s club, aimed now for Duncan’s head, slowed, then twisted downward. Someone was pulling the end. He resisted with a violent shove, knocking the interloper to the ground, raising the club again only to have it seized in mid-swing.

Everyone seemed to freeze for a moment. As Jamie spun about in anger, all the other Scots stared uneasily toward his feet. Duncan’s mind, clouded by pain, saw only a pile of feathers at first, then as the onlookers gasped and rushed toward the feathers, they took on a feminine shape. It was a cloak of feathers, Duncan saw, and inside it was a woman with russet braids.

“Sarah!” he cried, twisting in his bindings, struggling now to be free, to help her.

But she needed no help. As Jamie looked down, he seemed to shrink. He released his grip on the club and silently watched as half a dozen hands reached down to help Sarah to her feet.

“What have you done?” she asked in an injured tone. It took a moment before Duncan realized she was addressing him, not his brother. “You made a promise.”

Before Duncan could reply, more Iroquois appeared, pulling Sarah away as he stared after her. She was alive. She had changed.
She was no longer pale, no longer fearful. The Indians who escorted her did not have scorn in their eyes, but worry.

In a moment no one was left but his brother. Jamie’s eyes flared as a blade appeared in his hand. For a moment his brother hesitated, as if deciding where to sink it, then it flew downward to cut his bindings, and Jamie slipped away as a new figure materialized in front of the post, glaring at Duncan.

It was the Indian who had brought him from the ridge that morning. His paint had been wiped away, so that for the first time Duncan saw his face clearly.

“A crow,” Duncan heard himself say as he saw the tattoo above the Indian’s jaw. “You have a crow on your cheek.”

“A raven,” the Indian replied in a calm voice, the first time Duncan had heard him speak any English. “When I was young, my father found me in a nest of ravens on a cliff, playing with the birds. When I became of age, I was given the name Ravencatcher, though I always thought it was the ravens who had caught me,” he added. Then, to his utter surprise, Duncan saw a small, quick grin.

“This morning at the ridge you didn’t—” Duncan began, then started over. “You speak English well.”

“I had a good teacher when I was a boy,” his voice seeming to wander for a moment. “An old Nipmuc.”

“I am called Duncan.”

The Iroquois replied with a sober nod, then turned, gesturing him to follow. As Duncan followed him, an adolescent girl in a deerskin dress darted out of the bone lodge. With a shy smile she handed Duncan a turtle shell filled with water, motioning for him to drink. He drained the shell, then she handed him a small, round, yellow loaf, no bigger than his palm. He brushed off the soot from its edges and bit into it. It was of cornmeal, and to his long-deprived palate it tasted like the finest of cakes. She smiled again as he quickly devoured the bread, then darted back into the bone-covered entrance. Inside, Sarah lingered, shrouded in shadow, gazing at him. He moved toward her, returning her stare, question in his eyes. She
had not been mistreated. She was no slave. But he could not decipher her strange behavior. What did the feather cloak signify? He had heard of cultures where captives were feted until they were offered in human sacrifice.

Duncan had already taken a step toward her when Ravencatcher touched his elbow and gestured him toward the other lodges. Woolford and Conawago were there, stripped to the waist, washing from woodcarved basins, scraping their skin with narrow slabs of fragrant cedar. A boy was helping them, dumping fresh water into another basin. It was Alex, still wearing his shirt without sleeves, looking more at ease than Duncan had yet seen him. As Duncan stepped toward his friends, Ravencatcher held up a restraining hand and gestured at his belt, then at a log at the side of the nearest lodge. Their rifles lay against it, as did his companions’ other weapons and carrying packs. Duncan quickly laid down his tomahawk and knife, then stripped off his shirt.

As they finished cleansing themselves, Ravencatcher stirred the embers of the fire, placed several coals on a flat stone, and dropped tobacco leaves over them. He stepped to each man with the stone in his hands. Duncan followed the actions of Conawago, cupping the smoke in his hand, washing it over his face, rubbing it over his skin before putting his shirt on again.

When they finished, no word was offered, no gesture made. Ravencatcher simply set the flat rock on a log, turned, and walked away, up the steep trail. It was a very old path, rutted from decades, perhaps centuries, of use. As they climbed, painted images appeared on the rock walls at its sides, of varying complexity and design, of varying age, though all were of forest animals. On the downward side, all the paintings were of snakes.

As they descended through the maze of rocks, Conawago began a low, whispered prayer. Woolford kept glancing back uneasily at Duncan. Suddenly they rounded a huge boulder and emerged into a half-mile-wide bowl through which a boulder-strewn stream flowed. The valley was almost perfectly symmetrical, with steep
rocky walls rising up on either side and dense groves of white birch trees at either end. In the center was the most remarkable living thing Duncan had ever seen.

It was a tree, though to call the massive oak before them a tree was to call the mighty Atlantic a lake. It was as tall as the grandest cathedral he had ever seen, its canopy as broad as any village square, its huge lower limbs spreading out like the beams of a castle hall. Its vast trunk, easily a dozen feet in diameter, was split by a jagged, three-foot-wide hole, as high as a man, that seemed like the entrance to a deep cave.

Conawago noticed the awed look on Duncan’s face and waited as he slowly advanced. “Stony Run is just the name of the stream that feeds into the river over the waterfall,” the old Indian said. “It is the name Europeans use for the place because no one of the tribes will utter the name of the sacred tree itself.”