The Legend of Tyoga Weathersby (36 page)

“What are you doing, Prairie Day?” Tyoga asked.

“I am packing for the journey.”

“Thank you. I will need that blanket where I am going.”

“Then you had better pack one for yourself. This blanket is for me. I am going with you and there is nothing else to say.” With a solitary tear running down her cheek, she stepped assertively toward the men.

Stunned at her adamancy, neither of them spoke.

“You will need someone to care for you. I will cook and carry your belongings. I won’t slow you down. You can run ahead and I will catch up to wherever you are and make camp. I will not let you leave me behind.”

Tyoga stepped over to her and caressed her cheek in the palm of his calloused hand. “Prairie Day, I would love to have you by my side, but you will slow me down. The journey will be hard and dangerous. I will not even be able to make a fire. I will lie down on the forest floor to sleep wherever I can find a soft patch to rest my head. I will eat only what I can carry and scavenge.”

“Then, so will I.” She threw her arms around him and pulled herself close to his chest.

Tyoga let her hold on to him for a long moment before gently clutching her shoulders in his strong hands and holding her away from him. “Prairie Day, you cannot come with me. I know that you want to help me, but don’t you see that if you come along there will be two lives that I must protect. My feelings for you will make me reckless. There are no second chances out there.” He tossed his head toward the wilderness.

At this, Prairie Day fell to her knees and clutched his thigh. “Don’t leave me, Ty. Please, don’t leave me here. I am not alive unless you are near to me. You will tear my heart out if you go without me.”

Tyoga knelt down and held her close. He had no words.

He looked up at Tes Qua and motioned for him to come over.

Her head was hanging down as Tes Qua picked her up off the ground. She sobbed quiety into the palms of her hands.

Tyoga rose to his feet and put his arm on Tes Qua’s shoulder.

“Goodbye, my brother,” Tes Qua said. “If you need me, just send for me. Wherever you are—I will come.”

“I know you will,” Tyoga replied.

Tes Qua turned with his arm around Prairie Day’s waist to begin the journey down the slope to the village below. They took two steps, before she stopped.

“No,” she said. Standing up straight, she dried her eyes with the back of her hands. “Ty, you go rest now. We will go down to the village and I will get the supplies that you will need for your journey. I will come back and ready your gear and supplies and I will wake you when it is time for you to leave.” She went over to where she had dropped her knapsack to the ground, picked it up, and went inside the shelter to prepare Tyoga’s bed.

Tes Qua and Prairie Day made the hour-long trek down the mountain trail in the dead of night. Without the night watch even noticing her presence, Prairie Day slipped into Tuckareegee and collected the supplies that Tyoga would need for his trip. It was nearly midnight when she arrived alone back at the outcropping.

When her work was done, she stepped into the shelter and stood for a long time while watching Tyoga sleep.

Yearning to feel him once again upon her naked skin, she tiptoed over to the buffalo robe upon which he slept, slowly untied the shoulderlaces of her tunic and allowed it to float silently to the floor. Lifting the soft elk hide blanket that covered him, she lay down beside him.

Propping herself up on her elbow, she leaned over and whispered softly into his ear while he slept, “What I have done, has been done for you, my love. If I must live the rest of my life with but half a heart, it is a small price to pay for your happiness. I will love you forever, and will be with you always.” Closing her eyes, she moved so close to him that her lips nearly touched his ear. “Forgive me.”

She closed her eyes. But did not sleep.

Part Four

Prosperity and Emptiness

Chapter 41

The Trek to Mattaponi

S
hawnee Chief Yellow Robe had honored the treaty forged by the bonds of marriage between his daughter, Winged Woman, and Gray Owl of the Ani-Unwiya, and did not exact revenge upon the people of Tuckareegee for Sunlei’s escape and the vicious attack upon his son.

The target of the Shawnee chief’s fury remained Tyoga Weathersby. Yellow Robe was certain that Tyoga was somehow responsible for slitting Seven Arrows' throat even if it was not he who held the knife.

He had not been fooled by Tyoga’s act to convince the People that he had left the Appalachians before Seven Arrows arrived to take Sunlei for his wife. At his order, war parties fanned out throughout the Appalachians to search for Tyoga. The Chief would not rest until his head was displayed upon a pike at the entrance to his lodge.

Tyoga headed northwest toward the land of the Iroquois. He remained hidden in the deep hollows and unnamed valleys of the Appalachians while traveling along narrow deer paths and oftentimes slogging along knee-deep in mountain creeks and streams.

As a means of escape, he traveled through the night, which was a dangerous practice used only by the most experienced woodsmen. The technique came at a high cost.

His body’s demand for restorative nighttime sleep could only be denied for so long. When sleep finally did come, his slumber was so deep that it silenced the nocturnal cues that he relied upon to keep him alive. It very nearly cost him his life.

The third day into his trek, Tyoga could travel no more. Seventy-two hours without any sleep was as much as his body could take. He desperately needed the deep nighttime sleep that refreshes and restores.

The sun had set and the temperature was dropping fast when he came upon a damp, musty grotto hidden by evergreens and wild rose bushes. He found a dead pine bough and poked around inside the cavity to make sure no critters had made it their home. Dropping to his belly, he crawled inside, wrapped himself in the warmth of the red wool blanket, and slept past sunrise.

He awoke to the sounds of a Shawnee search party standing not two feet away from the entrance to the shrub-covered hiding place. He could have reached out and touched them. After several minutes, the Shawnee resumed their search without realizing that their prey had been but an arm’s length away.

The close call made Tyoga realize that he could not continue traveling through the mountains like a hunted animal. He would most surely be caught if he continued on his present course.

Tyoga looked up from the shallow creek he was wading through and said out loud in a voice barely above a whisper, “I’ve got to change the direction I’m headin’. It looks like he’s figured that I would head to the north, toward the land of the Iroquois. And that’s where they’re huntin’ for me.” He placed his hands on hips and skewed his mouth in annoyance. “Hmm. I never thought they would follow me north.”

Tyoga surveyed the granite rise to the north. Deep within one of Appalachia’s hidden gorges, it was even difficult to see the sky through the dense treetop canopy.

“Well,” he whispered. “I reckon I’ve got to climb to the top of this ridge and map me out a new course.”

The slope was steep and covered with loose granite shards which made it like a wall of solid ice. One wrong step would send him sliding down to the bottom of the gorge. He had to take it slow and easy. Half way up the slope, it hit him.

“They think that I’m headin’ northwest. I’ll go in the opposite direction. I’ll head southeast toward the colonies. Heading toward the whites is the last thing they will expect me to do. It’s the land of the Powhatans, the Algonquins and the Mattaponis. I’ll be heading away from the mountains but toward my American brothers—and the colonies. It is the perfect cover. They will never follow me there.”

When he got to the crest of the ridge, he saw a clear route to the tidewater in the east.

He had been to Middle Plantation in New Kent once with his papa. It was about two weeks due southeast from South Henge.

He had been traveling three days toward the northwest so that would add a couple of days to the trip. He calculated that if he pressed on he could make it before his supplies ran out.

With a spring in his step, he trotted along the ridge while thinking out loud. “I’ll go the Mattoponi north of Middle Plantation. They are Algonquin. Papa said that they were once part of the Powhatan confederation. They will give me a place to stay and help keep me safe.” With that said, he picked up his pace.

Along the ridge, footpaths were well worn and the slope varied little for the first few miles. The wind blew his long brown locks of hair out of his eyes and he recalled how Sunlei used to do that when she wanted to look into his eyes.

He was confident that she had made it safely to Chickamaugua and he knew that Lone Bear’s large family would keep her safe. He had no way of knowing that she had left the safety of the Chickamaugua Cherokee and was lost to the wilderness. Certain that their separation would be for less than a year, he was already planning for their reunion in the spring.

Prairie Day’s red blanket was draped over his right shoulder and secured to his waist cinch. He held onto it with his left hand while he ran.

He could not get Prairie Day out of his mind. The village mourned her husband Running Elk’s loss in battle. Tyoga noticed how she watched him from afar whenever they were around one another. When she lost her son to miscarriage, she summoned Tyoga to her lodge. She held him close and cried. He dismissed it as nothing more than a lonely friend seeking comfort, but understood after Green Rock Cove that there was a great deal more to the summons and tears.

He was lost in thought about the magic in her eyes when it happened. It was so fast that he had no time to prepare himself for the fall. A loss of concentration, and one misstep sent him careening off the trail and onto the shard covered slope to his right.

His right shoulder hit first to send him tumbling out of control for the first twenty-five feet. He righted himself and was able to sit up so that his feet were in front of him while he continued sliding down the slope on his back and rear end. The granite shards were like razor blades cutting chunks of flesh from his hands, legs, back, and thighs. Faster and faster he raced down the slope with no way to control his speed or direction. His right foot hit a more substantial boulder, which spun him around so that he was sliding backwards down the slope. He watched bits of his clothing and hunks of his flesh speckle the slate gray slabs of rock bright red with his blood.

Tyoga saw some shrubs and bushes bordering the pine trees to the west. Throwing his weight in that direction, he changed his course so that he headed directly for the underbrush. He reached out a bloody hand and tried desperately to grasp a branch that would stop his fall. The branches whipped his already bloody hands and arms with the sting of a lash, but none would give him mooring. He was finally able to throw himself off of the slippery slope and into the woods. He passed out on the pine needle covered ground before he was able to assess the damage.

When he awoke the sun was setting. He was on fire from head to foot. The fall had torn him apart. His shirt and breeches were shreaded into rags. His backside, arms, and hands were slashed as if he had tumbled down a slope covered in straight razors. Some of the gashes had stopped bleeding. Because of the clean-edged incisions, others continued to bleed profusely.

The lightheadedness he felt told him that he had lost a good deal of blood. He had to do something to stop the bleeding and he had to do it fast.

With herculean effort, Tyoga picked himself up off of the ground and staggered further down the slope. Struggling to stay conscious, he felt his way like a blind man through the brush in search of running water at the bottom of the gorge.

He hadn’t gone more than fifty feet before he heard the sound of rapids and waterfalls. Moving ever closer to the sound of the mountain stream, he stumbled faster and faster through the pines. When he got to the bank of the stream he threw the blanket onto the shore, staggered knee deep in and fell face first into the icy water. A lazy eddy twenty yards downstream turned crimson red as it filled with his blood.

Tyoga lay in the water until he began to shiver. When he opened his eyes it was dark and the light of the moon guided him to the shore and his bloody blanket. The pain was too great for him to wrap himself in the wool blanket so he laid it on the ground, and went to sleep face down in the sand.

The night was cold and dark when the moon set behind the mountain peaks. The cold was exactly what he needed to clot the wounds on his back and keep the swelling in check.

Thankful for the gift, he shivered through the night.

When the sun rose, he discovered that he had lost everything in his fall down the shard covered slope except the red wool blanket. His shirt was gone and what was left of his leather breeches did not even cover his crotch. Struggling to his feet, he stripped them off and threw them into the bushes. He picked the blanket up off of the shore, and wrapped it around him from the waist down. Securing it with his sash that was still in one piece, he began the agonizing climb back to the top of the ridge.