The Legend of Tyoga Weathersby (3 page)

The rhythm of daily Indian life had so influenced his formative years that he grew restless in the more regimented lifestyle of the Weathersby family home. The European traditions of molding the land to conform to the dictates of plow and hearth were at odds with the man he would ultimately become.

The Indians lived in harmony with the natural world and allowed their lives to be governed by nature’s cues. Waking when roused by the warmth of the rising sun; following the game and harvesting only that which they needed to survive; growing from seed those crops nurtured through generations of careful cultivation; and reaping the forest’s seasonal bounties of roots, berries, leaves and legumes was their way of life. Young children ran naked and free, embracing their true nature and accepting the gift of entitlement bestowed to the bear and beaver, eagle and elk. Free to stand safely alone among the tall whispering pines while reveling in the wind’s embrace and the warmth of the sun on their naked skin; they were a people as sensuously alive and secure as the birds in the sky, the otters in the rivers, and the wolves in the protective embrace of their pack.

Seasoned mountain travelers at the age of twelve, Tyoga and Tes Qua were enjoying the warmth of the autumn day. Leather breached and loin clothed, the two scampered along the multicolored tapestries that were the woodland trails this time of year. Brilliantly colored autumn leaves, soft and spongy beneath their moccasined feet, gave an extra spring to their boundless energy. Discounting the peril, they’d leap from boulder to boulder sure-footed and confident, each trying to outdo the other with distance and danger.

Stopping at favorite outcroppings on their way to the trout pond, they lay their naked backs against the rocks and basked in the glow of the sun’s rays. The sun-warmed rocks relaxed their taut young muscles. Their gentle coarseness triggered an instinctive sensual pleasure. Fingers locked behind their heads, the boys gazed up to the heavens for hours. From time to time, they interrupted the silence with interpretations of the cotton ball clouds silently floating upon the updrafts of the mountain breeze.

“Ut se Ty. Kamama.”

“Ahh, that don’t look like no butterfly. Eet sa tsa-yo-ga.”

“Tla. Kla tsa-yo-ga. Kamama.”

“Well, it looks more like a bluejay than a butterfly to me.”

As was their habit, the two spoke in competing tongues. Tes Qua’s English was clean and formal as he had learned the language at a very early age thanks to his constant companionship with the Weathersbys.

Whereas, Tes Qua spoke English with the deliberateness of one who had the advantage of seeing the written word, Tyoga had learned the dialect of the Amonsoquath while sitting around the campfires of his Indian brothers’ lodges. Tyoga had no written guide in learning Tsalagi. He learned by imitation and mimicry.

What the boys enjoyed even more than interpreting the puffy white clouds passing by was watching the eagles soar high over head on the rising thermal currents of the clear mountain air. Untethered by earthly bonds, the masters of their universe were free of the laws that govern all other creatures. Recognizing no boundaries or limits, accepting no sanctions nor offering any mercy, they were free.

The two boys appeared the picture of carefree indulgence and disinterested serenity as they lay on their backs on the sun-drenched rocks. But years of traveling the backwoods together had taught them to remain alert. Even with eyes closed and hands clasped behind their heads, their ears searched for any sound that was out of place like the misstep of a predator’s paw snapping a dry branch, the covey of quail exploding into sudden flight, or the flock of scolding crows suddenly mute—eerily silent. It was a dangerous time in the mountains.

Unexpected meetings between predators and prey were frequent—and final. The field mouse in search of pine seeds and oats instead fattening the breast of a fortunate fox. The trout by the thousands fighting the currents in brisk mountain streams seeking a meal of fingerling fry instead becoming fat on the haunch of a three-hundred-pound bear.

It happened only minutes after the two left the comfort of their mountainside perch and resumed their trek to the trout pond.

Leading the way, Tyoga high jumped downed chestnut and spruce trees that blocked the path, feeling the route, sensing the path more than watching his footsteps. A few steps behind him, Tes Qua matched Ty’s deer-like leaps with ease and grace. Traveling along at their usual fast-paced trot, they rounded a bend in the trail and slowed where the path led them downhill along terraced escarpments to the banks of the pond’s feeder stream. Where the path reached the water’s edge, Tyoga left the trail to hop-scotch along the knarled roots of an old cedar stump on the left and stair-stepped mossy granite slabs that lay like giant dominoes along the bluff to the right of the trail.

Tes Qua stuck to the trail that ended at the water’s edge. Planting his left foot, he pivoted along the bank of the stream to follow Ty. He heard the hideous sound seconds before he felt the pain.

Chapter 2

The Raven Will Settle You

T
yoga was ahead and below Tes Qua when he heard the numbing screams.

He couldn’t make sense out of the cries. Tes Qua was stoic in pain, steady in crisis, and uncompromising in courage. But the gutteral animal wail he heard coming from Tes Qua was instinctive and beyond such control.

Oblivious to the thorny under brush tearing at his buckskins, he cleared the distance between them with dear-like bounds. He was by Tes Qua’s side in an instant. Wrapping his arms around his brother, Tyoga held him tight while his body writhed in pain, his face contorted with confusion and shock.

Unsure of what had happened, from which direction the assault had been launched and from what, or who, he must brace himself, Tyoga’s eyes focused animal-like on the forest that enveloped them. Framed by the wild and frenzied moments that bridge life and death, when instinct and reflex measure the divide, Tyoga assessed his surroundings with the clarity of eye that discerns even the most obscure and clandestine threats. Prepared to give his life in defense of his friend, the images burned into his mind’s eye with lightening speed and exquisite detail.

Crouching low he surveyed the underbrush immediately in front of them—nothing—clear.

Whirling around on his mocassined heal, he checked the outcroppings behind and overhead—clear—nothing.

Spinning to his left, he scanned the clump of trees on the knoll on the far side of the stream—clear.

He ducked his head and folded Tes Qua in his arms while focusing his other senses—listening for the “zzsssstt” of arrows slicing the air, or the staccato retort of musket fire and the sulphur stench of acrid smoke. Nothing … nothing.

When the blood splattered his face in rhythmic course, his attention was once again focused on Tes Qua.

Looking down at his writhing companion, Tyoga saw what was left of Tes Qua’s lower leg. “To ‘hitsu, Tes Qua? To ‘hitsu?”

“Tlaosda. Tlaosda.”

In their frenzied madness to sate Europeans’ hunger for pelts and furs, white trappers set powerful traps that yawned their promise of a cruel, agonizing death. It was unfair in its dismissal of nature’s sublime balance, untroubled by the savagery of its methodical course, unparalleled in resource, and unchallenged by the wiles of nature’s own. Hidden and chummed, their hypnotic allure beckoned the unwary fox, bear, beaver or wolf. At watering hole and scent rub, the savage death would wait. Silent. Cold. Cocked. Lethal. Meting out its wanton brutality with reckless abandon.

Once tripped, the mighty jaws sink razor sharp jagged teeth through flesh and bone. Tendons, cartilage, arteries and veins are cleaved as the teeth course along their gruesome path. Tearing muscle and severing joints—the mutilation so lightening quick—so unexpected—that it takes a heart beat or two for the agony to register.

The fortunate animals mercifully suffer only the misery of swift amputation, sentenced to an abbreviated life minus a limb. The others—after hours of hopeless combat with an unyielding oppressor—recognize the futility of further resistance and accept the inevitability of their final hours.

When the massive jaws of the bear trap clamped down on Tes Qua’s left ankle, the tearing of flesh and cracking of bone were muted by the primal scream of searing agony.

Tes Qua was crumpled down in the trail half-squatting in a rapidly growing pool of blood. Sitting on his right foot, his left knee was bent to his chest, his hands groping feebly at the horrible wound as if sending them there would make some sense of the horror and pain.

Cradling his friend in his arms, Tyoga’s mind was racing wildly out of control. His eyes were wide with alarm while Tes Qua’s blood splattered the trees and the rocks. The trail turned bright red under their feet. His own hands joined Tes Qua’s at the wound in search for an answer as the spurting arteries covered his arms, his chest, and his face with the warm lifegiving liquid.
Make it stop!
Tyoga’s mind screamed.
How do I make it stop?

When his brave companion’s body grew limp in his arms, he screamed, “Na deya Tes Qua. Don’t die. Na deya. I won’t let you die.” His eyes welled with tears. His own body shook with helplessness and confusion.

AAWWWWKKKKKKKKKKKK

The shattering cry reverberated off of the canyon walls and sliced through the hushed forest air with the harsh proclamation of unquestioned authority. The gruff, screaming scold of a raven summoned sharply from high overhead. The dissonant cry bounced off of the peaks and bluffs behind and above the boys, and eerily echoed off of the canyon walls.

The sound shook Tyoga to his core. As his eyes slowly cleared, he turned to look over his shoulder to the crest of the rise. There, in an ancient chestnut tree, the eyes of a solitary raven were riveted upon him. The bird’s marble black eyes glared from their deep-set sockets straight into the heart of Tyoga’s quaking frame. He did not survey the scene, judge the circumstance, nor take stock of their peril. He did not weigh meaning, offer resolution, nor suggest course. His gaze fixed upon Tyoga like a black robed headmaster, displeased, but not yet ready to pronounce his vedict. Their eyes locked.

Tyoga remembered the promise. He understood.

“Yo’si’ gwu, Tes’a. We’re gonna be awrite.”

The ball of Tes Qua’s left foot was wedged deep and hard against the pan of the massive trap. The ligaments that supported the foot’s natural architecture were sinewy white bands slapping at Tes Qua’s ankle and calf, wildly searching for the purchase of muscle and bone that moments before had anchored them in place. Blood poured from incised vessels through the jagged gash and painted the stone upon which Tes Qua had come to rest a brilliant crimson.

One jaw of the trap had imbedded its two-inch teeth deep into the marrow of Tes Qua’s ankle bone. The white of the joint capsule shone pearl-like through the surrounding pool of blood. The other jaw had snapped through the small bone in Tes Qua’s lower leg. The jagged fragment of bone had pierced through the skin on the other side of his mangled limb.

The enormous trap was tethered to the base of an oak tree by a heavy, rusty chain. Thankfully, it wasn’t secured to the tree by a lock, but by a long iron pin that served as a clasp laced through several links in the chain.

Tyoga released the clasp and the chain was free of its mooring. Slowly, Tyoga lifted Tes Qua’s limp body and began the arduous trek up a steep embankment to a bluff about fifty yards away from the stream. He laid him gently on a flat table of rock that stood alter-like at the far end of the ridge. Stripping off his loin cloth, Tyoga balled it up and placed it under Tes Qua’s head.

He raced back down the embankment to the stream, moistened a clutch of maple leaves and brought it to his friend’s face. The cool water jolted Tes Qua from the mercy of semi-consciousness, and the agony returned in waves of wretchedness. He instinctively reached for the trap, but Tyoga intercepted the reflex with a gentle grasp. “Ne’ya, ditlihi. Don’t touch it.”

Calling Tes Qua “detilihi”(warrior) was the Indian way of strengthening a companion’s resolve as they marched into battle, or began a dangerous hunt. With a clearer eye and a more controlled demeanor, Tes Qua hiked himself up onto his elbows.

“What are we going to do, Ty?”

“Let me have a look-see. Stopped bleedin’ some.” Tyoga bent down close to the trap to inspect the wound more closely. The bleeding hadstopped, and the gelatinous ooze was congealing on the surface of the gash.

“First thing, I gotta try ta op’n the trap,” he said calmly and quietly. Turning to look Tes Qua in the eye, he added with apologetic resolve, “May hurt some.”

Tes Qua closed his eyes and nodded.

Tyoga removed the leather thong securing his Do’tse pouch to his belt. “Here.” He handed it to his friend.

Tes Qua put the leather strap in his mouth and bit down hard.

Hopping up onto the alter rock, Tyoga stood facing Tes Qua so that the trap and Tes Qua’s broken leg and mangled foot were at his feet. Squatting down, he touched the jaws of the trap. He glanced up at his friend to see if the touch caused additonal pain. Tes Qua didn’t flinch.

Unfamiliar with the workings of the bear trap’s pan and spring mechanism, he was unsure how to release his friend from the enormous jaws that clung so cruelly to his lower leg. He interlaced the fingers of his left hand between the razor sharp teeth that had snapped the small bone in Tes Qua’s leg. He could get a pretty good grip above where the jagged end of the bone protruded through the skin. He cocked his head to the right to survey the other jaw of the trap. That’s when he saw the iron long springs on either side of the trap’s hinge.

Tes Qua lay back down. His head rolled to one side. His mouth went slack and the leather strap fell to his chest.

“Do’hitsu, Tes’a?” His friend didn’t answer.

Better this way. Sleep my brother. Sleep.

Tes Qua’s unconsciousness gave Tyoga the opportunity to try whatever he could to release his friend. Placing a foot on each of the long springs, he hoped that his weight would pinch the springs enough to loosen the jaws sufficiently to pull Tes’A’s leg free of its grip. The weight of a twelve year old proved to be no match for the trap’s long springs.