Red Prophet: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Volume II (28 page)

One more time, it was worth a try. “Alvin, if you love me, come with me now.”

Alvin started to cry. “Measure, I love you, but I can’t go.” Still crying, he ran down the dune. Not wanting to watch him out of sight, Measure started walking. Almost due south, a little bit east. He wouldn’t have no trouble finding the way. But he felt sick with dread, and with shame for having let them talk him into leaving without his brother. I failed at everything here. I’m pretty near useless.

He walked the rest of that day and spent the night in a pile of leaves in a hollow. Next day he walked till late afternoon, when he came to a south-flowing creek. It would flow into the Tippy-Canoe or the Wobbish, one or the other. It was too deep to walk down the middle, and too overgrown to walk alongside. So he just kept the stream within earshot and made his own way through the forest. He wasn’t no Red, that was for sure. He got scratched up by bushes and branches and bit by insects, none of which felt too good on his sunburnt skin. He also kept running into thickets and having to back out. Like the
land was his enemy, slowing him down. He kept wishing for a horse and a good road.

Hard as it was to go through the woods, though, he
was
up to it. Partly cause Alvin toughened up his feet for him. Partly cause of the way he seemed to breathe deeper than ever before. But it was more than that. Strength was wound in among his muscles in a way he never felt in his life. Never so alive as now. And he thought, If I had a horse right now, I think maybe I’d be wishing I was on foot.

It was late afternoon on the second day when he heard a splashing sound in the river. There was no mistaking it—horses were being walked in the stream. That meant White men, maybe even folks from Vigor Church, still searching for him and Alvin.

He scrambled his way to the stream, getting scratched something awful on the way. They were headed downstream, away from him, four men on horseback. It wasn’t till he was already out into the stream, yelling to bust his head off that he noticed they were wearing the green uniform of the U.S. Army. He never heard of them coming up in these parts. This was the country where White folks didn’t go much, on account of not wanting to rile up the French at Fort Chicago.

They heard him right off, and wheeled their horses around to see him. Almost quick as they saw him, three of them had their muskets up to the ready.

“Don’t shoot!” Measure cried.

The soldiers rode toward him, making pretty slow progress as their horses had some trouble breasting the water.

“Don’t shoot, for heaven’s sake,” Measure said. “You can see I ain’t armed, I don’t even have a knife.”

“He talks English real good, don’t he?” said one soldier to another.

“Of course I do! I’m a White man.”

“Now don’t that beat all,” said another soldier. “First time I ever heard one of them claim to be White.”

Measure looked down at his own skin. It was a vivid red color from his sunburn, much lighter than any true Red man. He
was
wearing a loincloth, and he looked pretty
wild and dirty. But his beard was growing somewhat, wasn’t it? For the first time Measure found himself wishing he was a hairy man, with thick heavy beard and lots of chest hair. Then there’d be no mistake, since Reds didn’t grow much. As it was, though, they wouldn’t see his light-colored mustache hair or the few little hairs on his chin till they were up close.

And they weren’t taking no chances, either. Only one rode right up to him. The others hung back, their muskets out, ready to open fire in case Measure had some boys lying in ambush on the riverbank. He could see that the man riding toward him was plumb scared to death, looking this way and that, waiting to see a Red man flitch an arrow at him. Kind of an idiot, Measure decided, since there wasn’t no chance of seeing a Red man in the woods till his arrow was already in you.

The soldier didn’t come right to him. He circled around, got beside him. Then he looped a rope and tossed it to Measure. “You hitch this around your chest, under your arms,” said the soldier.

“What for?”

“So I can lead you along.”

“The hell I will,” said Measure. “If I thought you were going to drag me along by a rope in the middle of a creek, I’d’ve stayed on dry land and walked home myself.”

“If you don’t put this rope around you in five seconds, them boys are going to blow your head off.”

“What are you talking about?” Measure demanded. “I’m Measure Miller. I was captured with my little brother, Alvin, almost a week ago, and I’m just going home to Vigor Church.”

“Well, ain’t that a real pretty story?” said the soldier. He drew back the rope, sopping wet, and cast it again. This time it hit Measure in the face. Measure caught at it, held it in his hand. The soldier drew his sword. “Get ready to shoot, boys!” shouted the soldier. “It’s that renegade, all right!”

“Renegade! I—” Then it finally occurred to Measure that something had gone real bad with this. They knew who he was, and they still wanted to take him prisoner.
With three muskets and a sword close by, they had a fair chance of maybe even killing him if he tried to run away. This was the U.S. Army, wasn’t it? Once they got him to an officer, he could explain and all this would get cleared up. So he put the rope over his head, and pulled the loop around his chest.

It wasn’t too bad as long as they were in the water; sometimes he just floated along. But pretty soon they got out and then they made him walk along behind as they picked their way through the woods. They were looping east, around behind Vigor Church.

Measure tried talking, but they told him to shut up. “I tell you, we been told we can bring in renegades like you alive or dead. White man dressed like a Red—we know what you are.”

From their conversation he was able to gather a few things. They were on a scout-around from General Harrison. It made Measure sick, to think things had got to the point where they’d call on that likker-dealing scoundrel to come north. And he got here awful fast, too.

They spent the night camped in a clearing. They made so much noise that Measure thought it was a wonder they didn’t have every Red in the whole country nosing around before morning.

The next day, he flat refused to be dragged along on a rope. “I’m near naked, I got no weapons, and you can kill me or let me ride.” They could talk about bringing him in alive or dead and not caring which, but he knew that that was talk. These were a crude bunch, but they didn’t hanker much after killing white men in cold blood. So he ended up on horseback, holding one of them around the waist. Pretty soon they reached country that had some roads and trails, and they made good time.

Just after noon they reached an army camp. Not much of an army, maybe a hundred in uniform and another two hundred marching and drilling on a parade ground that used to be a pasture. Measure couldn’t remember the name of the family that lived here. They were new folks, just come up from the area around Carthage. Turned out it didn’t matter who they were, though. It was General Harrison
had their house for his headquarters, and these scouts led him straight to Harrison.

“Ah,” said Harrison. “One of the renegades.”

“I’m no renegade,” said Measure. “They been treating me like a prisoner this whole way. I swear the Reds treated me better than your White soldiers.”

“I ain’t surprised much,” said Harrison. “They treated you real nice, I’m sure. Where’s the other renegade?”

“Other renegade? You mean my brother Alvin? You know who I am, and you ain’t letting me go home?”

“You answer
my
questions, and then I’ll give some thought to answering yours.”

“My brother Alvin ain’t here, and he ain’t coming, and from what I see before me I’m real glad he didn’t come.”

“Alvin? Ah, yes, they told me you were claiming to be Measure Miller. Well, we know that Measure Miller was murdered by Ta-Kumsaw and the Prophet.”

Measure spat on the floor. “You
know
that? From a few tore-up bloody clothes? Well you don’t fool me. Do you think I don’t see what you’re doing?”

“Take him to the cellar,” said Harrison. “Be real gentle with him.”

“You don’t
want
folks to know I’m alive, cause then they’ll see they don’t need you up here!” shouted Measure. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you got them Chok-Taw to capture us in the first place!”

“If that’s true,” said Harrison, “then if I were you I’d watch how I talked and what I said. I’d be real worried about getting home alive,
ever
. Now look at yourself, boy. Skin red as a redbird, wearing a loincloth, looking wild as a real bad dream. No, I reckon if it turned out you was shot dead by mistake, nobody’d blame us, not a soul.”

“My father’d know,” said Measure. “You can’t fool him with a lie like that, Harrison. And Armor-of-God, he’ll—”

“Armor-of-God? That pathetic weakling? The one who keeps telling people that Ta-Kumsaw and the Prophet are innocent, and we shouldn’t be getting ready to wipe them out? Nobody listens to him no more, Measure.”

“They will. Alvin’s alive, and you’ll never catch
him
.”

“Why not?”

“Cause he’s with Ta-Kumsaw.”

“Ah, and where is that?”

“Not around
here
, you can bet.”

“You’ve seen him? And the Prophet?”

The hungry look in Harrison’s eyes made Measure kind of step back and hold his tongue. “I seen what I seen,” said Measure. “And I’ll say what I say.”

“Say what I ask, or you’ll be dead,” said Harrison.

“Kill me, and I won’t say nothing at all. But I’ll tell you this. I saw the Prophet call a tornado out of a storm. I saw him walk on water. I saw him prophesy, and his prophecies all come true. He knows everything you plan to do. You think you’re doing what
you
want, but you’ll end up serving his purpose, you watch and see.”

“What an idea,” said Harrison, chuckling. “By that reckoning, boy, it serves his purpose for you to be in my hands, don’t it?” He waved his hands, and the soldiers dragged him out of the house and down into the root cellar. They treated him real gentle on the way—kicked him and knocked him down and all they could before they threw him down the steps and barred the door behind him.

Since these folks came from Carthage country, the cellar door had a lock, as well as the bar. Down with the carrots, potatoes, and spiders, Measure tested that door as best he could. His whole body was one big ache. All the scratches and the sunburn were nothing compared to the raw skin inside his thighs from riding behind with bare legs. And that was nothing compared to the pain from the kicks and bashes they gave him on the way here.

Measure didn’t waste no more time. He knew what was going on well enough to know Harrison couldn’t let him out alive. He had those scouts out
looking
for him and Alvin. If they turned up alive, it would undo all his plans, and that’d be a real shame, cause things were going just right for Harrison. After all these years, here he was at Vigor Church, training the local men to be soldiers, while nobody was listening to Armor-of-God at all. Measure
didn’t much like the Prophet, but compared to Harrison the Prophet was a saint.

Or was he? The Prophet had him wait for the gatlopp—why? So he’d leave in the afternoon two days ago, instead of morning. So he’d reach the Tippy-Canoe just when them soldiers were riding down. Otherwise he would’ve come to Prophetstown and then hopped on over into Vigor Church without seeing a soldier. They’d never have found him, if he hadn’t heard them and called out to them himself. Was this all part of the Prophet’s plan?

Well, so what if it was? Maybe the Prophet’s plan was a good thing, and maybe it wasn’t—so far Measure didn’t think too highly of it. But he sure wasn’t going to sit around in a root cellar waiting to see how the plan worked out.

He burrowed his way through the potatoes to the back of the cellar. There was more spiderwebs in his face and hair than he cared for, but this wasn’t a time to worry about tidiness. Pretty soon he cleared him a space at the back, with the potatoes pushed mostly to the front. When they opened the doors, they’d just see a lot of potatoes. Not a sign of his digging.

The root cellar was the normal kind. Dug out, timbered over, roofed, and then the roof covered up with all the dirt from the hole. He could dig into the back wall and come up behind the cellar, and they couldn’t see a thing from the house at all. It was bare-hands digging, but this was rich Wobbish soil. He’d come out looking more like a Black than a Red, but he didn’t much care.

Trouble was, the back wall wasn’t dirt, it was wood. They’d walled it in, right to the bottom. Tidy folks. The floor was dirt, all right. But that meant digging down under the wall before he could tunnel up. Instead of being something he could do overnight, it’d take days. And any time, they might catch him digging. Or just plain drag him out and shoot him. Or maybe even bring back them Chok-Taws, to do what they started—leave him looking like Ta-Kumsaw and the Prophet had him tortured. All possible.

Home wasn’t ten miles away. That’s what plain drove him crazy. So close to homeland they didn’t even guess it, had no idea they ought to come to help. He remembered
that torch girl from Hatrack River, years ago, the one who saw them stuck in the river and sent help. That’s who I need right now, I need me a torch, somebody who’d find me and send help.

But that wasn’t too likely. Not for Measure. If it was Alvin, now, there’d be eight miracles, whatever it took to get him out safe. But for Measure, there’d be just whatever he could work up for hisself.

He broke a fingernail half off in the first ten minutes of digging. The pain was real bad, and he knew he was bleeding. If they dragged him out now, they’d know he was making a tunnel. But it was his only chance. So he kept digging, pain and all, every now and then stopping to toss out a potato that rolled down into the hole.

Pretty soon he took off his loincloth and used it in his work. He’d loosen up the soil with his hands, then pile it onto the cloth and use that to hoist it up out of the hole. It wasn’t as good as having a spade, but it sure beat moving the dirt out one handful at a time. What did he have, days? Hours?