Red Prophet: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume II (20 page)

They talked somewhat during the work, of course. Some of the conversation turned on the stories about Red massacres down south. Measure was pretty skeptical. “Oh, I hear those stories, but the bloody ones are all things somebody heard from somebody else about somebody else. The folks who actually lived down there and got run out, all they ever say is that Ta-Kumsaw come and run off their pigs and chickens, that’s all. Not a one ever said nothing about no arrows flying or folks getting killed.”

Al, being ten years old, was more inclined to believe the stories, the bloodier the better. “Maybe when they kill somebody, they kill the whole family so nobody talks about it.”

“Now you think about it, Al. That don’t make sense. Ta-Kumsaw wants all the White people out of there, don’t he? So he wants them scared to death, so they pack up and move, don’t he? So wouldn’t he leave one alive to tell about it, if he was doing massacres? Wouldn’t somebody’ve found some
bodies
, at least?”

“Well where do the stories come from, then?”

“Armor-of-God says Harrison’s telling lies, to try to get people het up against the Reds.”

“Well, he couldn’t very well lie about them burning down his house and his stockade. People could plain
see
if it got burnt, couldn’t they? And he couldn’t very well lie about it killing his wife and his little boy, could he?”

“Well of course it
did
burn, Al. But maybe it wasn’t
fire arrows from Ta-Kumsaw started that fire. You ever think of that?”

“Governor Harrison isn’t going to burn down his own house and kill his own family just so he can get people hot against the Reds,” said Al. “That’s plain dumb.”

And they speculated on and on about Red troubles in the south part of the Wobbish country, because that was the most important topic of conversation around, and since nobody knowed anything accurate anyway, everybody’s opinion was as good as anybody else’s.

Seeing how they weren’t more than a half mile from two different farms, in country they’d visited four or five times a year for ten years, it never even came to mind they ought to keep their eyes open for trouble. You just don’t keep too wary that close to home, not even when you’re talking about Red massacres and stories about murders and torture. Fact is, though, careful or not there wasn’t much they could’ve done. Al was coiling ropes and Measure was cinching up the saddles when all of a sudden there was about a dozen Reds around them. One minute nobody but crickets and mice and a bird here and there, the next minute Reds all painted up.

It took a few seconds even at that for them to be afraid. There was a lot of Reds in Prophetstown, and they came pretty regular to trade at Armor-of-God’s store. So Alvin spoke before he even hardly looked at them. “Howdy,” said Alvin.

They didn’t howdy him back. They had paint all over their faces.

“These ain’t no howdy Reds,” said Measure softly. “They got muskets.”

That made it sure these weren’t no Prophetsotwn Reds. The Prophet taught his followers never to use White man’s weapons. A true Red didn’t need to hunt with a gun, because the land knew his need, and the game would come near enough to kill with a bow. Only reason for a Red to have a gun, said the Prophet, was to be a murderer, and murdering was for White men. That’s what he said. So it was plain these weren’t Reds that put much store in the Prophet.

Alvin was looking one right in the face. Al must’ve showed his fear, cause the Red got a glint in his eye and smiled a little. The Red reached out his hand.

“Give him the rope,” said Measure.

“It’s our rope,” said Al. As soon as he said it he knew it didn’t make no sense. Al handed both ropes to him.

The Red took the coils, gentle as you please. Then he tossed one over the White boys’ heads, to another Red, and the whole bunch of them set to work, stripping off the boys’ outer clothes and then tying their arms behind them so tight it was pulling on their shoulder joints something painful.

“Why do they want our clothes?” Al asked.

In answer, one of the Reds slapped him hard across the face. He must’ve liked the sound it made, because he slapped him again. The sting of it brought tears to Al’s eyes, but he didn’t cry out, partly cause he was so surprised, partly cause it made him mad and he didn’t want to give them no satisfaction. Slapping was an idea that caught on real good with the other Reds, cause they started in slapping Measure, too, both of the boys, again and again, till they were half-dazed and their cheeks were bleeding inside and out.

One Red babbled something, and they gave him Al’s shirt. He slashed at it with his knife, and then rubbed it on Al’s bleeding face. Must not have got enough blood on it, because he took his knife and slashed right across Al’s forehead. The blood just gushed out, and a second later the pain hit Al and for the first time
ht did
cry out. It felt like he’d been laid open right to the bone, and the blood was running down in his eyes so he couldn’t see. Measure yelled for them to leave Al alone, but there wasn’t no chance of that. Everybody knew that once a Red started in to cutting on you, you were bound to end up dead.

Minute, Al cried out and the blood started coming, them Reds started laughing and making little hooting sounds. This bunch was out for real trouble, and Al thought back to all the stories he heard. Most famous one was probably about Dan Boone, a Pennsylvania man who tried to settle in the Crown Colonies for a while. That was
back when the Cherriky were against the White man, and one day Dan Boone’s boy got kidnapped. Boone wasn’t a half hour behind them Reds. It was like they were playing with him. They’d stop and cut off parts of the boy’s skin, or poke out an eye, something to cause bad pain and make him scream. Boone heard his boy screaming, and followed, him and his neighbors, armed with their muskets and half-mad with rage. They’d reach the place where the boy’d been tortured, and the Reds were gone, not a trace of a track in the wood, and then there’d come another scream. Twenty miles they went that day, and finally at nightfall they found the boy hanging from three different trees. They say Boone never forgot that, he could never look a Red in the eye after that without thinking on that twenty-mile day.

Al had that twenty-mile day on his mind now, too, hearing them Reds laugh, feeling the pain, just the start of the pain, knowing that whatever these Reds were after, they wanted it to start with two dead White boys, and they wouldn’t mind a little noise along the way. Keep still, he told himself. Keep still.

They rubbed his slashed-up shirt on his face, and Measure’s hacked up clothes, too. While they were doing that, Al kept his mind on other things. Only time he ever tried to heal himself was that busted leg of his, and then he was lying down, resting, plenty of time to study it out, to find his way to all those small places where there was broken veins and heal them up, knit together the skin and bone. This time he was a-scared and getting pushed this way and that, not calm, not resting. But he still managed to find the biggest veins and arteries, make them close up. Last time they wiped his face on a shirt, his forehead didn’t gush blood down to cover his eyes again. It was still bleeding, but just a trickle now, and Al tipped his head up so the blood would ooze on down his temples, and leave his eyes clear to see.

They hadn’t cut Measure yet. He was looking at Al, and there was a sick look on Measure’s face. Al knew his brother well enough to guess what he was thinking, about how Ma and Pa trusted Al into Measure’s keeping, and now look how he let them down. That was crazy, to blame
himself. They could’ve done what they were doing now at any cabin or house in the whole countryside, and weren’t nobody could stop them. If Al and Measure hadn’t been going off on a long trip, they might still have been on this very road at this very time anyhow. But Al couldn’t say nothing like that to Measure, couldn’t do much except to smile.

Smile and, as best he could, work on healing up his own wound. Making everything in his forehead go back to the way it was supposed to be. He kept at it, finding it easier and easier to do, while he watched what the Reds were doing.

They didn’t talk much. They pretty much knew what to do. They got the blood-smeared clothes and tied them to the saddles. Then with a knife one of them carved the English letters for “Ta-Kumsaw” in one of the saddle seats, and “Prophet” in the other. For a second Al was surprised that he could write English, but then he saw him checking how he made the letters, comparing them to a paper he had folded up in the waistband of his loincloth. A paper.

Then, while two of them held each horse by the bridle, another Red jabbed the horse’s flanks with a knife, little cuts, not all that deep, but enough to make them crazy with pain, kicking out, bucking, rearing up. The horses knocked down the Reds holding them and took off, ran away, heading—as the Reds knowed they would—on up the road toward home.

A message, that’s what it was. These Reds wanted to be followed. They wanted a whole bunch of White folks to get their muskets and horses and follow. Like Daniel Boone in the story. Follow the sound of screaming. Go crazy from the sound of their children dying.

Well Alvin decided then and there that, live or die, he and Measure wouldn’t let Reds make his parents hear what Daniel Boone heard. There wasn’t a chance in the world of them getting away. Even if Al made the rope come apart—which he could do easy enough—there wasn’t no way two White boys could outrun Reds in the forest. No, these Reds had them as long as they wanted. But Al knew ways to keep them from doing things to
them. And it would be all right to do it, too, to use his knack, because it wouldn’t just be for himself. It would be for his brother, and for his family, and in a funny way he knew it would be for the Reds, too, because if there was something real, if some White boys really did get tortured to death, then there’d be a war, there’d be a real knockdown-drag-out fight between Reds and Whites, and a lot of people on both sides would die. As long as he didn’t kill anybody, then, it would be all right for Al to use his knack.

With the horses gone, the Reds tied thongs around Al’s and Measure’s necks. Then they pulled on the thongs to drag them along. Measure was a big man, taller than any of the Reds, so as they led him they made him bend over. It was hard for him to run, and the thong was real tight on him. Al was getting pulled along behind him, so he could see how Measure was being treated, could hear him choking a little. It was a simple thing for Al, though, to get inside that thong and stretch it out, stretch it and stretch it, so it was loose around Measure’s neck, and long enough that Measure could run pretty much upright. It happened slow enough that the Reds didn’t really notice it. But Al knew that they’d notice what he was doing soon enough.

Everybody knew that Reds didn’t leave footprints. And when Reds took White captives, they usually carried them, slung by their arms and legs like dressed-out deer, so the clumsy White folks wouldn’t leave no tracks. These Reds meant to be followed, then, cause they were letting Al and Measure leave tracks and traces every step they took.

But they didn’t mean it to be
too
easy to find them. After they’d gone forever, it felt like—a couple of hours at least—they came to a brook and walked on upstream a ways, and then ran on another half mile or maybe a mile before they finally stopped in a clearing and built a fire.

No farms close by, but that didn’t mean much. By now the horses were home with the bloody clothing and the wounds in the horses’ flanks and those names carved into the saddles. By now every White man in the whole area was bringing his family in to Vigor Church, where a
few men could protect them while the rest went out searching for the missing boys. By now Ma was pale with terror, Pa raging for the other men to hurry, hurry, not a minute to waste, got to find the boys, if you don’t come now I’ll go on alone! And the others saying, Calm down, calm down, can’t do no good by yourself, we’ll catch them, you bet. Nobody admitting what they all knew—that Al and Measure were as good as dead.

But Al didn’t plan to be dead. No sir. He planned to be absolutely alive, him and Measure both.

The Reds built up the fire good and hot, and it sure wasn’t no cook fire. Since the sun was shining bright and hard already, it made Al and Measure sweat something awful, even in their short summer underwear. They sweated even more when the Reds cut even that much off them, popping off the buttons down the front and slicing it right down the back, so they were naked right down to the ground they sat on.

It was about then that one of the Reds noticed Al’s forehead. He took a big hank of underwear cloth and wiped at Al’s face, rubbing pretty hard to get the dried blood off. Then he started jabbering at the others. They all gathered around to see. Then they checked Measure’s forehead, too. Well, Al knew what they were looking for. And he knew they wouldn’t find it. Cause he had healed up his own forehead without a scar, not a mark on his own face. And of course no mark on Measure, either, since he wasn’t cut. That’d make them think a little.

But it wasn’t healing that Al was depending on to save them. It was too hard, too slow—they could sure cut faster than Al could heal, and that was the truth. It was a lot faster for him to use that knack he had on things like stone and metal, which was all the same straight through; living flesh, on the other hand, was complicated with all kinds of little stuff that he had to get right in his head before he could change it and make it whole.

So when one of the Reds sat down in front of Measure, brandishing a knife, Al didn’t wait for him to start cutting. He got that knife into his head, the steel of the blade—White man’s knife, just like they were carrying
White man’s muskets. He found the edge of it, the point, and flattened it out, smoothed it, rounded it.

The Red laid that knife up against Measure’s bare chest and tried to cut. Measure braced himself for the pain to start. But that knife made no more mark on Measure than if it was a spoon.

Al almost laughed to see that Red pull his knife away and look at it, try to see what was wrong. He ran the edge against his own finger, to test it; Al thought of making the blade razor sharp right then, but no, no, the rule was to use his knack to make things right, not to cause injury. The others gathered round to look at the knife. Some of them mocked the knife’s owner, probably thinking he hadn’t kept the edge sharp. But Al spent that time finding all the other steel edges that those Red men had and making them round and smooth. They couldn’t’ve cut a pea pod in half with them knives when Al was through.