Vanishing Act (27 page)

She took the crow feathers and cut them along the quill so the wider side came off in one piece. She feathered her arrows in the Seneca fashion, two lengths of feather tied on with a spiral twist, so they would spin in flight. The trick was to glue both sides in place with a little sticky pine sap so they would stay put while she tied them with the fishing line.

Jane stood up, nocked the first of her arrows, pulled back the string of the bow, and let it fly at a big maple across the meadow. It revolved in flight like a rifle bullet and sank deep into the bark. When she was in college, she had thought how odd it was to give young women physical-education credit for practicing the way Stone Age men had killed bears. Now it seemed odd to her that she had not really known how to use a bow until a Japanese-born instructor had taught her. She had told people she had chosen archery because the only other class that fit her schedule was golf. Now she admitted to herself she had known that it was because the bow reminded her of her father, making her little arrows and letting her play in the back yard with them when she was about ten. She had missed him all the time in college, and it had helped her to feel close to him.

Jane walked to the tree and tried to tug her arrow out, but she found it was in deeper than she had expected. She took her knife and dug it out, then went back to put a new bone tip on it. She was a lot better at this than she had imagined. The old wa-a-no had been made with such a strong pull that most European men who met the Iroquois couldn’t bend them without practice, and probably no woman at all could have done it. But she had made hers a foot longer and more supple than the old ones in the museums.

She took the knife, cut the legs off her jeans, tied one at the bottom, and made it into a quiver to carry her fifteen arrows. Part of the other leg she made into a strap to hold the quiver on her back, and the rest she tied around her waist as a sash to hold her war club, the way the old warriors had done.

She cut five more saplings to length for extra arrows and shoved the remaining pieces of the deer antler into the bottom of her quiver to hold it open. She looked about her for a place to preserve the last five long crow feathers. She found that the only place where they wouldn’t get bent was in the band that held her hair in a ponytail, so she stuck them in and let them hang downward at her back. She stopped and looked up at the sun. It was late afternoon now. She had spent the whole day remembering and making while the crows kept watch.

When she walked away from the mountain meadow, she found that the forest had changed; she could see in it now. The foliage wasn’t just a green wall anymore. It was complex and comprehensible. This was the last remnant of the great forest that had covered all of the land of the Hodenosaunee and beyond. Maybe it made sense to walk in it now, to see that it was still intact, holding the seeds of the same plants that could spread and sprout again after she was gone.

In the old times, the men had come out here prepared with a song about how they weren’t afraid. It was for when they were being tortured, to spit their last breath at the enemy so he would fear the ones who came after: "I am brave and intrepid. I do not fear death or any kind of torture. Those who fear them are cowards. They are less than women ..."

It was as though this had been meant for her, and it made her feel light and small and weak. Killing was what men did, but she was the only Seneca in the forest and she would have to be the one.

29

She moved deeper into the forest below the meadow, where the glaring evening sun hit the foliage at a low angle to make leaves glow and sink shadows into near darkness. This stand of trees was old, not replanted with one species. Each kind took its small niche and grew there. The collar of pine trees at the top of the mountain merged into the birch, maple, hemlock, slippery elm, and hickory down lower. Where the dirt beneath was deep and the thousands of years of rotting leaves and the mineral water runoff from the peaks had gathered, the trees grew tall and the taproots sunk deep. This group of maples was old and thick, this elm grove had taken hold late, the seeds maybe blown here in a storm twenty years ago, maybe carried here in a deer’s belly and dropped undigested in the right place.

The world she had lived in before, the cement, houses, and roads, wasn’t any different from this. It was wilderness, too. The planet Earth was a place where the lone hunter made his way through the wild country. There was something out there that wanted the hunter dead, and he had to defeat it or be killed by it.

The hunter’s name never changed. In the language that Jane knew best, the hunter’s name was "I." As she stalked through the forest, doing her best to slip between the trees without moving a branch, to step on the damp, soft forest floor where dry twigs would not crack, she became the hunter. She could not see herself, turn her eyes around and be frightened by the fact that she was only a slender girl walking alone on the deer run. She could only see where she was. What she was doing made her who she was. Her eyes, watchful, cautious, and alert, saw the trail ahead and the sky above.

As her mind projected more and more of its will and attention outward into the hunt, she obliterated Jane Whitefield. The hunter was tall, with long, naked brownish legs made strong and quick by years, of running. The hunter’s eyes had sharp, clear vision that could detect movement beside the path ahead and ears sensitive, after so many days in the forest, to any sound that wasn’t exactly as it should be. The hunter was shrewd and had fought many times against opponents who were bigger and stronger in other parts of the wild country that didn’t look like this.

Now the lone hunter slipped quietly through the North Woods, doubling back in a path parallel to last night’s run. Lake Nehasane was five or six hours away, and the hunter accepted the distance and traveled patiently, always thinking. The simple tactic of coming on the enemy in the woods and beating him in a hand-to-hand fight was not possible this time. The enemy had more upper-body strength than the hunter had, and a longer reach. Approaching the enemy across an open space would mean quick death because the enemy had the only rifle in the world right now.

She thought about the ways of using the forest. The Hodenosaunee had come here to hunt bears in the winter. They had come up on snowshoes, sometimes chasing the bear, sometimes goading it into chasing them. They moved quickly on top of the deep drifts while the bear floundered along, sinking in deep and finally exhausting its enormous strength. The old hunters had sometimes built V-shaped fences in the forest and driven herds of deer in toward the center to the narrow tip, to be slaughtered. They had also perfected a deer trap, using a bent sapling and a rope, so the deer would be hoisted in the air with the rope around its hind legs. None of those ways would work on an enemy like this one.

She walked all night, accepting the fact that there was no food. This time the warrior had a slight advantage from inhabiting a female body. The body was smaller and lighter and needed fewer calories just to move around, and had more reservoirs of stored fat among the muscles and sinews, because it was built to endure, to bear and feed children even when food was scarce. She found more berries in secluded copses in the woods, and chewed the leaves plucked from trees along the trail to stave off hunger pains, and drank from the streams. The warrior’s body had been inured to fasting by the discipline of years of fitting a size-twelve body into a succession of size-ten dresses.

When it got to be too dark to travel, she lay down near the path and slept until dawn. She stood up and walked on, always quiet, alert, and careful. She walked for the whole day, and as she did, she sometimes saw the places where she had fought her way through thick bushes, breaking branches and leaving tracks.

It was early evening when she made her way around the shoulder of the last mountain and looked down on Lake Nehasane. In the woods she painted her skin and stained her clothes with a green solution of ground moss, making stripes on her legs and arms like camouflage. When she came upon the residue of the enemy’s campfire on the rock shelf where she had once cowered at hearing his voice, she took some charcoal and streaked her face.

She looked down on the enemy’s camp on the opposite shore of the lake and studied it. The murderer had moved his tent to a stretch of shore in the center of an open space where there were no trees or brush to afford a stalking ground. The canoe was far up on the shore with the tent, where he could protect it.

Then she saw him. He emerged from a path near his camp, walked to his fire pit, and dropped an armload of wood. He carried his rifle in his other hand and a hatchet in his belt. He set the rifle aside and knelt down to build his fire, banking the wood to last the night, but she could see from the attitude of his head that he wasn’t even looking at it. He was watching and listening for her. He was at least eight feet from the rifle. He was tempting her. He had known that she would come back, because she was tired and cold and hungry. He was trying to make her come in and sprint for the gun. He knew exactly how a desperate, frightened person thought. He didn’t know because he had been one himself, but because he had made a living out of tracking and killing them. She turned away into the sheltered leaves of the forest and started to make her way around the lake toward him.

The sun was behind the western mountain when she found the place in the forest that she had been looking for. She had imagined it while she was walking and had kept going through the woods until she found it.

She used the knife and the deer antler as scrapers and dug the hole five feet wide and as deep as she could before she hit bedrock. She used her five spare arrow shafts as the frame to hold the branches and matting of grass to cover the hole. She attached the fishing line to the eight hooks and hung them carefully six inches apart from the overhanging limb of the hemlock tree. She tested the height again and again. It had to be perfect.

Then she walked back thirty feet along the trail, bent a sapling almost double, and tossed some leaves over the path beside it to make it look like a deer trap. She judged that thirty feet would give him the time to think, even running at full speed. She calculated where to leave her bow. When she had finished her work, she went through the forest making V marks with her knife in the bark of the biggest trees to mark the trail.

In the darkness just before dawn, she climbed to the side of the mountain to take another look at the camp. When she was satisfied that he was asleep, she took one last look up at the sky, where the stars were already beginning to fade. Life was good and precious, and she was glad that she had never needed to be told that it was. Many Seneca warriors had died alone in the wilderness like this. There were probably some lying unburied all around her now.

She made her way to his camp, floating like a wisp of smoke through the forest without moving a leaf or dislodging a stone. At the dark edge of the camp a few feet from the tent, she lay on her belly and watched, a shadow inside a shadow.

She listened for the sound of his breathing. She had heard it, lain awake beside him listening to it, watching over him and hoping he would survive. Now, as she listened, she heard it again, but it wasn’t right. It wasn’t coming from the tent. She slowly turned her head to follow the sound. He was sleeping in the woods behind the canoe, waiting for her to try to kill him in the tent. He would have some kind of alarm to wake him when she tried so he could come out of hiding and shoot her.

She considered for a moment. He had to see her, and when he did, she would have to be doing something he understood, or he might react unpredictably. She crawled to the front of the tent, took the last of her fishing line, and tied it to the zipper on the door flap. Then she crawled back to the edge of the woods, almost at the start of the trail she had blazed.

She gave a strong tug on the line and the zipper moved and started to come down when there was a deafening Barroom! and the front of the tent blew outward, with a three-inch hole in it. Jane leaped into the air at the sound. It was a spring gun. He had another gun! She took a step toward the tent, but her mind settled again. Either a spring gun worked when it was set off or it didn’t. You wouldn’t load the shotgun with more than one shell.

She whirled and saw him. He was coming to his feet, his hair tousled the way it had been in the mornings at Grand River, and she almost called out to him. But the rifle was in his hand and was coming up. His eyes were cold and dead and certain.

She pivoted on her toes and dashed through the space in the bushes just as the rifle cracked. The shot hit somewhere behind her. She had laid out the path carefully to wind through the thickest part of the woods, so there would be no second shot. She had sighted along the trail and made sure there was no straight stretch that was long enough to allow him to stop, aim, and shoot before she turned again and placed a rock or a tree between them.

She ran hard now, sprinting from one marked tree to the next, digging the balls of her feet into the dirt and pumping her arms. She could hear him on the trail behind her, running as hard as she was, his feet hitting harder and louder than hers, determined to get her this time. As she listened, she began to be afraid. She could tell that she had underestimated his speed; he was gaining on her.

She tried to go faster, making her strides longer to pass each mark and take the next turn. At the big sycamore she couldn’t take the turn without falling, so she went into a slide on her side to push off the root with her foot and dash up the next corridor toward the rocky outcropping ahead.

At last she was on the path, running up the little incline between the jagged slabs of stone, then into the chute that the two long rock shelves formed. There was another shot, which went over her head, but she was in the stretch now. She could see the bent sapling. When she reached it, she took a jump and ran on.

Thirty feet farther on, she glanced over her shoulder and saw him appear between the stone outcroppings. She took two steps, put her head down, and leaped over the covered pit. She hit the path hard and let her momentum push her to the right into the brush.

She rolled behind the rock, picked up her bow and the arrow that she had left fitted to the string, turned, and cautiously looked above the rock through the leaves of the bush.

He was coming hard, charging toward her, the gun in both hands across his chest. She could tell from the look on his face that he had seen the bent sapling. He was sure he had spotted a trap and stepped over it without breaking stride. But the confident, almost amused look wasn’t for the sapling. He had seen her leap over the spot where the pit was dug. His eyes were on the path. He was going to jump over the pit.

She pulled the bowstring back, straining to hold it steady. She listened for his footsteps: louder and louder and then a stutter-step. He was timing his approach to push off into the air. Through the leaves she saw the enemy’s eyes. They were on the narrow path, down on the matting covering the pit. With his size and his strength, the jump was going to be easy. He kept his eyes on the pit as he launched himself into the air, higher than he needed to.

As he reached the top of his arc, the hooks caught him. Jane saw the upper part of his torso abruptly jerk backward and a look of horror contort his features. His momentum made five of the fishing lines go taut, and the bough of the tree above him bent, then tugged back, pulling him upright. His breath was sucked in with a whistle.

Her right hand released the bowstring. The arrow streaked through the air and made a thunk as it struck him. He gave a harsh, loud shriek of pain. She nocked another arrow and pulled the string back. She had time to see the black feather of the first arrow sticking out of his shoulder as she released the second.

He was straddling the shallow pit, holding himself upright to keep the hooks from going deeper into his face and chest and trying to claw at the arrow shaft when the second arrow struck his right leg.

The wounded enemy grunted in rage, swatting the arrows out of his shoulder and thigh, where they had penetrated the fabric of his clothes. He dropped his rifle, pulled his knife from his belt, and slashed wildly at the fishing lines. She aimed her third arrow for his chest. It flew straight, but he ducked down just as it came so that it glanced off his back and sailed into the forest.

She dropped to the ground and began to crawl when the enemy grasped his rifle. The woods echoed with shots. He fired wildly, shooting into bushes in her direction as rapidly as he could. Two shots, three more, four this time. She lost count as a bullet bit into the bark of the tree a foot above her head. There was silence again, and she used the time to retreat quietly up the trail a few paces, then slip off into the deep brush. She was in trouble. The arrows weren’t getting through the thick down jacket. It was like armor. She kept going silently, trying to move farther into the brush.

He was enraged now, and he was free. The arrows weren’t doing enough damage, and the fishhooks had only nettled him. He could still kill her, and the pain would make him desperate to do it this time.

Then she heard the scraping sound and stopped. He was climbing up on the stone outcropping that had been meant to keep him in. He was a little hurt but not at all incapacitated. In a moment he would be on top, and he would see her and the rifle bullet would explode through her body. She slipped behind a tree trunk. She couldn’t wait here, hiding until he found her. Jane’s hand trembled as she fitted the arrow onto the string and leaned against the tree. The bow wasn’t powerful enough. She hadn’t been strong enough to use one that could penetrate that padded jacket. "They are less than women." She felt anger rising in her chest. She was going to die; she had been doomed from the moment he had heard her name from poor Harry. The injustice of it stung her, and her chest tightened with hatred as she decided how to deny it. She stepped out from behind the tree into the open and held her bow downward, the arrow ready. She turned to the side as though she didn’t know he was up there and was waiting for him to come up the path. She gave him a profile to aim at.