Long Hunt (9781101559208)

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

The cabin door stood open and movement was visible in the shadows inside. Even so, the watching frontiersman on the ridge facing the cabin was unable to discern exactly what he was seeing.

Another man approached quietly from behind and dropped to his belly beside the first man. “How many killed, Titus?” he asked.

“Don't know for certain. There's one man visible there by the woodpile—he's been scalped. Around the back there's a woman and a boy, both dead, both scalped. But somebody is inside the door, moving around. Can't see enough to know who or how many, though.”

The other man reached beneath his hunting shirt and drew out a small spyglass.

“What can you see, Micah?” Titus Fain asked.

“There's a body in there. A man, I think, though I can't see anything but the feet. But there's somebody else, too. Can't tell much, but I think it may be a child.”

Micah handed the spyglass to Fain, who adjusted it to his eye and peered into the shadowed doorway. He lowered the glass slowly. “It's a little girl, Micah. I'd say ten years old, maybe eleven.”

“Any other sign of movement?”

“None. I'm going down there.”

“Hold a moment. That may be a little girl down there, but if she's seen her family slaughtered, and if by chance she has a gun within reach, she could shoot you dead as you approach.”

“So she could. But so also could the tree above us fall down and kill us while we hide here. I'm going down there. It's likely the poor little gal needs help.”

“Then we'll go together.”

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First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,
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First Printing, December 2011

Copyright © Cameron Judd, 2011

All rights reserved

REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

ISBN : 978-1-101-55920-8

 

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AUGUST, 1786

 

 

 

S
he was old now, and hardly able to get out of her bed even on better days. This day was not a better one. She lay in her small, Cherokee-style cabin and stared upward, not even bothering to turn her gaze out the uncovered door to the lush woodlands around her. There was nothing out there for her now. The world had lost its life and luster.

She lifted her hand and looked at what she held. Small as gravel, but much more valuable, these yellowish pebbles had come from
him
. Any inherent worth beyond that was not relevant to her. She held them only because she could no longer hold the one who had given them to her.

Her name was Polly. She had been given another name at birth, but he had always called her Polly, so Polly she was. Names hardly mattered now, anyway.

She closed her eyes and slumbered. It was a hot and muggy day in the mountains, but the breeze was moving and angling itself just right to reach her through the door, so she was content. She moved the little stones in her palm with her fingertips and enjoyed the relative comfort provided by the light wind.

In her girlhood and most of her womanhood, her skin had been coppery and dark, beautiful to see. He had always told her that her skin was her most delightful feature, and she had treasured every moment when he caressed her, his rugged hands gentle on her flesh. She dreamed about it as she slept.

When she awakened the day had progressed and the breeze had changed its course so that it no longer came through the door. It was just as well. When evening came the air would be cooler and she would not want a breeze.

As the afternoon waned, Polly rose and with effort made her way out the door. She visited her privy area in the woods and headed back toward the cabin, but had to stop along the way and sit down on a stone to rest. It was that way now—shortness of breath, frequent dizziness, weakness. She despised what age and infirmity were doing to her.

Her eyes drifted closed, and when she next opened them, it was dusk, she was back in her bed, on her back, and someone was in the room with her. She looked over at the man, who was standing nearby. Like Polly, he bore clear evidence of a Cherokee heritage in his physical appearance, mixed with traits of an
unaka
, or white man. He was grinning at Polly. She said, “Hello, John.”

“Polly.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Since I carried you in. I found you on the ground, beside the big sitting stone.”

“I think I went to sleep.”

“Or fainted and went senseless.”

“I'm not well, John. I'm old and sick. I'll die soon.”

“Don't say such things, Polly.”

“I want to die. I'm ready. I want to join McCoy. I am alone here, barely able to feed myself.”

“We will keep you fed. I have brought you food today.”

“You have been good to me, John. You and all your family. But I am weary of being a burden to other people. I want to go on.”

“None of us has ever considered you a burden,” said John. “You have been a friend to us, like McCoy was. We consider you as one of us.”

Polly smiled a weary smile. “I have not seen Tom in the longest time,” she said. “He used to come and see me sometimes.”

“He has hidden himself more than before,” John said. “As more people move over the mountain into the backcountry, he hides himself more and more in his shame.”

“There is no shame in having been touched by the Creator.”

“The
unaka
s do not think in the same way about such things, Polly. To them such things are the mark of badness.”

“They are wrong.”

“They are. About many things. But there are more and more of them. They keep coming and the Indian people are pushed away.”

“I want to go to McCoy's grave now, John. While there is still a bit of sunset light to see it by.”

“Can you stand? Can you walk?”

“If you will hold to me, I can.”

With her every move deliberate and slow, and the woman growing wearier with each step, John led Polly out of the cabin and around to a small meadow, where they stopped at the side of a mounded grave. It bore a plain wooden grave marker that was already beginning to weather and weaken. On it was inscribed

The old woman, helped by the man, knelt and touched the carved-in name, tracing her fingers over the letters while tears stained her face.

“W
e named her Deborah,” the old clergyman named Eben Bledsoe said to his visitor. The Reverend Professor Bledsoe puffed lightly on a long clay pipe of the same sort taverns kept atop mantelpieces for the shared use of patrons. “After the Old Testament prophetess and judge. It was our hope she would grow into a strong and God-fearing woman like the one she was named after.”

The clergyman's listener nodded. He was a lean, gray-haired frontiersman with a clean-shaven face of leathery countenance, a face long exposed to sun and wind. He, too, puffed a pipe, one made merely of a hollowed half length of corncob stemmed with a hollow reed. The frontiersman's name was Crawford Fain, though he was sometimes called by the Cherokee name of Edohi. He was a man of some fame, known across his own country as a great hunter and tracker, and in parts of Europe because of his mention in a fanciful, idealized, and highly popular epic poem about the American frontier. The poem was the product of a dandified baron who had scarcely set foot off his own English property, much less ever visited America's wilderness.