Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1966 (12 page)

 
          
Then
there were war cries, whooping and quivering—a whole weird assortment of war
cries. Those must be the shouts raised by various tribes as they went into
battle, Mark realized. He tried to estimate how many voices raised them.
Half a dozen?
More?
Surely not as
many as had yelled defiance and insults earlier, before he and Schneider had
reduced the number by their lucky marksmanship.

           
“Is there any noise there to the
north, Schneider?” Mark asked.

 
          
“Nein.
All
ruhrig
—peaceful.”

 
          
“Keep
watching the more keenly,” Mark urged him. “This may be a lot of empty
brabbling, to keep our attention fixed here. Their assault may yet develop
there where you watch.”

 
          
“I
am ready,” Schneider declared. All trace of his earlier timid dismay seemed to
have departed, and he was every ounce the stout old soldier.

 
          
More howling and jabbering from the trees outside the west window,
full-lunged and sustained.
High in a tree flourished a bright scarflike
piece of orange cloth, and Mark fired at it, but could not tell whether his
shot did any damage.

 
          
“Guard
there to the north,” he warned Schneider again, for he felt ever more certain
that the Indians were making an effort to attract attention so as to make an
advance from another quarter. He moved back from his loophole and quickly
loaded one of the rifles, laid it on the floor in readiness, then set about
loading the other.

 
          
Even
as he rammed home the bullet and drew out the rod again, there came a new and
violent racket at the outer door itself, a rain of tremendous, deafening blows.

 
          
Mark
sprang to his feet, the rifle in his left hand with the firing pan open to be
primed, his powder horn in his right.

 
          
He
goggled stupidly at the door. A plank splintered, and for a moment he could see
the bright blade of an axe, driven halfway through it. Violently the axe was
torn free and out of sight, and another blow fairly shattered the door. The bar
across it burst from its fastenings as though under the impact of a battering
ram. Open flew the door, and there framed within the oblong stood the gigantic
form of the renegade Jipi.

 
          
In
a bit of time that could not have lasted more than a tick of a clock, Mark
looked at the towering Cherokee, saw him plain in every line and feature. Jipi
half-hunched his great shoulders, and bent his boulder of a head as though to
come in under the lintel of the door. His shaggy black hair was bound at the
temples with a pale thong of
buckskin,
his face was
made hideous with blotches of blue paint around the eyes, black and red strips
on the cheeks. His great naked chest looked as broad as the doorway itself. In
both hands he clutched a mighty double-bitted axe, such as might be used to
fell great trees, and it seemed no more than a hatchet in those great ridged
paws. He saw Mark, too, and his mouth opened wide in a scream of murderous,
victorious joy.

 
          
Something
moved beside Mark’s ear. It was Celia’s white hand, moving past his shoulder to
aim one of the heavy pistols. Mark heard the flat click as she drew back the
hammer.

 
          
But
Celia never fired. Jipi suddenly whipped himself erect on his toes, and
shuddered frantically in every huge limb. His eyes started, wide and utterly
astonished, in their surrounding circles of blue paint. Forth from his chest
jutted a lean shaft with a barbed head.

 
          
And
Jipi fell inward upon his face, with a crash that shook the timbers. Between
his shoulder blades showed the feather of the arrow that had struck him down.

 
          
By
the mill wheel outside stood Tsukala, his bow still lifted in his hand.

 
          
March
to the Rescue

 
          
Mark
MADE a sudden move with the powder horn in his hand. He primed the pan of his
rifle and snapped it shut. Then he hurled himself into a great leap and
another. The second carried him clear above Jipi’s body and out at the door.

 
          
At
the river’s edge he saw Indians, four or five, but all of them were running. As
they ran, a gun went off from the road to the west of the mill, and a yell rang
out. That was no Indian war whoop, but the loud “Hi!” of an American soldier,
such a battle cry as Mark’s father had told him had been raised by Carolina
troops in the war against the British.

 
          
Mark
took swift aim at one of those fleeing Indians and fired, but too hastily. The
noise of the report seemed to hasten that Indian’s running, and he floundered
into the river, wading in wild, clumsy haste for the other shore. Tsukala
whipped another arrow from his quiver, notched it on the string and sent it
winging. It struck through the bare arm of another wading warrior, who dropped
the gun he carried into the middle of the stream.

 
          
"
Hourra!”
came
the shouting voice of Bram

           
Schneider, also out in the open.
Schneider paused to drag Jipi’s silent form clear of the doorway and the path
outside. Then he charged down into the road, also firing his musket at the
departing enemy, and missing his target as Mark had done.

 
          
Leland
Stoke trotted swiftly into Mark’s view from eastward. Stoke made swift play
with powder horn, ramrod, and bullet to reload. Mark and Tsukala sprang down to
join Schneider on the road, and Stoke came up with them. All gazed into the
trees on the other side of the river, into which the Indians had hurriedly
plunged.

 
          
“They
run,” said Tsukala, as quietly as though he had met the others for some sort of
everyday matter. “Run fast. All are gone. They are beaten. They will run far.”

 
          
Mark
started toward the water, as though to pursue. But Stoke caught his sleeve and
held him.

 
          
“Nay,
lad, let them begone,” counseled Stoke. “As I think, they’ll not stop until
they’re well out of breath. But if you should press them, they might turn again
and fight you, there among the trees where they could hide and do you
mischief.”

 
          
“How many in there?”
Tsukala asked Mark, pointing with the
end of his bow toward the mill.

 
          
“Only
Celia is left inside,” said Mark. “There, she has come to the door.”

 
          
“Brave
lass!” cried Stoke. “So only three of you, and one a young maid, held against
so many? What injuries did you take?”

 
          
“The
Injuns did not bend vun hair on our heads,” said Schneider proudly. He looked
at Tsukala.
“Sehr danken
—thank you,
mein
goot friend. You shot your arrow
into that big giant, just in time.”

 
          
“My
thanks, too,” said Mark to Tsukala. “But even as your shaft smote him, Celia
was pointing her pistol, loaded to the muzzle with slugs. She’d have filled him
full of lead.”

 
          
Tsukala
studied the trees where their adversaries had vanished.
“Ahi,
they have gone deep in there,” he said. “You fought them
well, young warrior.” He gazed back up the ridge. “I know where four of them
lie still, and others were wounded.”

 
          
Mark
faced Stoke. “What has been happening elsewhere, sir?” he demanded. “When did
you come to us? Was there fighting at your cave home, and is all well there?”

 
          
“Nay,
not an Indian showed himself to us at the cave,” replied Stoke. “We could hear
the guns here at the mill, and my son and I and the two women made ready to defend
ourselves. But none threatened, I say, and we stayed in safety until Tsukala
called to us. I came out to him, and then here. But let him tell the tale, he
knows more than I.”

 
          
Thus
prompted, Tsukala spoke, simply and calmly.

           
After leaving Mark early in the
morning, he had scouted the woods south of the
Black
Willow
River
. He had moved with great watchfulness from
place to place, wary lest any of the renegades be lying in ambush. Some miles
to the south and well past the other place where he and Mark had seen Jipi’s
companions, he had found tracks and had approached a camp among some hills,
where many Indians were making ready for war.

 
          
“It
was hard to count them, but there were more than three tens,” he said.
“Nearly another ten more than three.
No women, no children,
no old men.” “Nearly forty fighting braves,” nodded Mark.
“Then
what?
Here, Celia, come and listen.”

 
          
She,
too, joined the group.

 
          
“They
had two chiefs,” said Tsukala. “
Jipi,”
and he waved a
hand toward where the giant lay still. “And that white man, the one you call
Moxley. He and Jipi made talk to the others. I was not close enough to hear,
but I could see they talked of war. Jipi struck his tomahawk against a tree, so
hard that it broke. Moxley shook his hand, and gave him a present—that big axe
you saw. Then they all went north, spread out among the trees, with faces
painted and bows and guns in their hands.”

 
          
“You
scouted them well, Tsukala,” Stoke praised him, but Tsukala shook his head and
looked slightly apologetic.

           
“I tried to get in front of them, to
go fast and bring word,” he said, “but they spread out in the woods, between me
and the river. I knew I could not get around them or through them without being
seen. So I followed along behind—slowly, slowly.” He moved his palm close to
the ground, in the Indian sign for a furtive creeping. “Came to where they saw
the mill and went to strike at it.”

 
          
He
told of how he approached the river cautiously, and reached it only when the
fighting had started and was well under way. Slipping along the south bank,
once climbing a tree, he made out the positions of several of the besieging
force, but could not find a place where he could cross unseen and begin to
shoot on his own account. He said that he watched for a long time, and was able
to count the destruction wrought by the gunfire from inside the mill.

 
          
“You
fought well in there, young warrior,” he commented to Mark. “It was like more
guns than three inside there.”

 
          
“Did
you see Quill Moxley?” Mark asked.

 
          
“Yuh.
And I heard
him, too, talking to you. You spoke bravely to him. Then I saw him go up on the
ridge. He left those Indians. I knew he was going to the fight at the tavern.”

 
          
“And
what then, Tsukala?” asked Schneider.

 
          
“Then
I crossed the river farther to the west.
Went to the cave,
found no fighting there.
I came back, and Stoke with me. I went around
to the east, and just in time.”

 
          
“In
time to finish Jipi,” said Mark.

 
          
“Yuh.
I am a
Cherokee, I owed him that.”

 
          
Then
Tsukala straightened up.
“Ahi,
I hear
fighting.”

 
          
Off
to eastward, more noise of the distant shooting.

 
          
“They’re
trying to capture the tavern,” Mark said. “How many do you think are there at
the tavern, Tsukala?”

 
          
“I
think ten—maybe twelve—fought here. The rest all went that way,” and his hand
pointed its heel eastward.
“More than two tens of them.”

 
          
“Durwell
must have reached the tavern and set them on their guard,” Stoke said.
“Otherwise, so many Indians would have cut up everybody unawares.”

 
          
“Can
we not go and take those Indians unawares ourselves?” Mark asked.

 
          
“Yuh/'
said Tsukala. “Come. Bring your
guns, all your guns.”

 
          
They
all went into the living quarters of the mill. Tsukala gratefully accepted a
chunk of bread and a cut of roast meat from Celia.

 
          
“I
am hungry,” he said, taking a bite. “Those others, the bad hearts, were hungry,
too. Maybe that is why they ran when Jipi fell. Their bad hearts became faint
hearts.”

           
Celia picked up one of the spare
rifles, and Mark swiftly tied a length of line to the other and slung it behind
his back. Bram Schneider stuck the two big pistols into his belt.

 
          
“Wessah,”
Schneider addressed his cat, “you must stay and be guard here.”

 
          
Mark,
Celia, and Schneider also hung themselves with extra powder horns and bullet
pouches. Going outside, Stoke and Schneider dragged the bodies of Jipi and the
Indian on the milling platform down to the river and pushed them in.

 
          
“Sir,
I think you should take command of our party,” said Mark to
Stoke
as he returned. “You were an officer in the war against the English, and we can
look to you for proper direction.”

 
          
“Not
I,”
demurred
Stoke emphatically. “Not when we have
here a leader that any man might well follow in this sort of forest fighting.
Hark you,
Tsukala,
I do call on you to be our chief.”

 
          
“No,”
said Tsukala. “I am a medicine man.”

 
          
“But
you are a brave warrior, and you know all these Indian sleights and devices
better than any of us others,” Stoke insisted. “Be you our
commander,
and I for one will engage to follow and obey you like a true man.”

 
          
“I
vote with Captain Stoke, Tsukala,” said Mark.

 
          
“Me
also,” added Schneider.

 
          
Tsukala
stood and listened to the remote sound of firing. Then he looked around the
group of his comrades, and a smile touched his brown face, ever so slightly.

 
          
“Ahi,
I will lead,” he consented. “Now,
we go there to the east. We leave this place, and we will cross the river when
we have come away from it.”

 
          
“Lead
on, and we will follow you,” said Mark.

 
          
Tsukala
turned without another word and paced off along the road. Mark moved at one
side of the road, Stoke at the other. Between them walked Schneider and Celia.
They completed about a mile in silence, and then Tsukala stretched out his arm
to show them where a jumble of rocks and trunks made a sort of rough causeway
across the Black Willow.

 
          
“We
can go over there and be safe,” Tsukala said. “Those bad hearts might turn and
come back to the mill, but they will not have come to this place. We will leave
them behind.”

 
          
He
went stepping lightly from rock to rock, and on the other side stood close to a
tree, arrow on his bowstring, while he gazed this way and that. Mark came over
at Tsukala’s heels, and also took up a watchful position. Stoke and Celia and
Schneider made their way in turn. Tsukala faced the east again.

 
          
“There
is a trail on this side, but do not go on it,” he said. “Maybe the bad hearts
have a watcher for that trail. We will go among the trees, and I go first.