The Black Rifle (Perry County Frontier series)

by Roy F. Chandler

  Nodding in satisfaction, the Indian grunted “Waugh,” and in conversational tone added, “You are awake at last, my brother.”

  The youth’s obvious pleasure so astonished the white prisoner that he involuntarily muttered, “I ain’t your brother,” and scarcely recognized the hoarse croaking of his voice too long unused.

  Undistressed, the Indian answered in his precise English. “All men are the brothers of Blue Moccasin.” The white glanced at the Indian’s feet, and the moccasins were, sure enough, blue.

  Amusement edged Blue Moccasin’s voice, “And what is your name, my brother?” As the captive hesitated, the Indian added, “Or do you know it?”

  Irritated, the white man snapped, “O’course I know. I’m Jack Elan,” and was shocked to realize that he had not known until the words were spoken. Awareness of other things began crowding for his attention, and the drumming increased in tempo as his mind reached for its safety.

  The hand of Blue Moccasin on his arm restored his concentration, and the solemnity of the young Indian’s expression held him.

  “Do not hide within yourself, Jack Elan. One who is soon to die must use what time he has.”

  The words of Blue Moccasin pounded within Elan’s skull, and he felt suddenly fevered, as though it were all an illness-born nightmare from which he would soon awaken.

  Blue Moccasin raised his hands palms toward the captive and held them bracketing his face and forcing attention to himself and his words.

  “Tonight, you must clear your mind, Jack Elan. Look into the depth of your heart and know all that has happened. Your time of hiding is past. Tomorrow we will talk. Become again a man, white brother.”

  The night became the worst in his memory. It surpassed the times of physical agony. It made as nothing the torment of the long march to the village. Memories paraded in Elan’s mind, each seeking to surpass the horror of those preceding.

  When his anguish seemed beyond bearing and the drumbeat crashed within him the words of Blue Moccasin were small, but they lingered. Their weight gave meaning to his awareness. “Your time of hiding is past.” There was truth there, for he felt himself emerging.

  Elan forced his mind to see the clearing, to realize the murder of his wife and son. Green bile rose and gagged him; sweat soaked his naked body and dripped from his fingers wetting the earth where he crouched. Wracking chills and pulsing fevers engulfed him, but they were shallow and quickly moved on. Always the drum tapped its mesmerizing promise of escape and release.

  He knew he had not slept, but as dawn touched the east, Elan sensed a swelling control. He had tasted the depths, and having studied the undiminished horror, he knew its limits and felt his power over it. A throat-blocking ache of irretrievable loss fed tears to his cheeks, and he let them flow unashamed in his grief.

  By true light he was calm, and in the new day he examined himself with mixed amazement, disgust, and some fear. Naked and filthy, his body was marked by countless bruises and lacerations. His weight had fallen away, and cords of stringy muscle and sinew roped and ridged a body leaned to skeletal. He felt the rasp of filthy beard and unkempt hair against bony shoulders, but with his hands behind his back and his elbows secured, he could not test the length or texture of its growth.

  “Become a man,” Blue Moccasin had said. Jack Elan began with a desperate awareness of irreplaceable time lost.

  In the first chill of morning the warrior guarding the lodge looped a leather cord about his prisoner’s neck and moved him beyond the village where he was permitted to relieve himself over the edge of a bluff above a swift moving river.

  For the first time, Elan took interest in his surroundings. The village, bright in a wintry sun, was protected by a rise of mountain behind. His own clearing had lain so and, with the memory, the rising drumbeat required additional calming.

  Scattered about were other lodges like the one he occupied, but the bulk of the village consisted of small longhouses covered with bark or hides. They sheltered many families and reminded Elan of giant bread loaves scattered amid a few remaining trees.

  Smoke from cooking fires exited through holes cut in the longhouse roofs, and a vagrant breeze brought him the powerful aroma of cooking meat. His mouth watered uncontrollably and sudden hunger gripped his innards. A reminding jerk tightened the cord about his throat, and he was marched to his lodge with little chance to see more. As had been done on each toilet visit throughout his journey, the guard loosened Elan’s bonds and re-adjusted them with knots that would not destroy circulation. Elan could flex his fingers, and he could shrug his shoulders, but he remained securely tied.

  Blue Moccasin returned amid the clamor of a village in the performance of daily living. Squaws labored, and children rushed about. Few men appeared, and Elan assumed that most were away at their hunting or scouting.

  Blue Moccasin was young, certainly not yet in his maturity. Above his blue footwear he was clothed in tube-like leg covers of soft doeskin, and a long jacket decorated with dyed porcupine quills covered his breechclout and hung nearly to his knees.

  The young Indian wore no paint, and his only adornment was a necklace of small river-washed stones. His hair, black and shining, was parted in the middle and woven into thick braids which hung to his chest.

  There was something about the youth that appealed strongly to Elan—an aura of understanding or perhaps sympathy that no other Indian had exposed. With a start, Elan saw that Blue Moccasin had eyes to match the color of his footwear. Blue eyes among Indians could not be common, and the captive assumed Blue Moccasin to be of mixed blood.

  As the guard withdrew, Blue Moccasin spoke in his formal English. “Has your vision cleared, Jack Elan?”

  Elan answered, his voice rusty with disuse. “I’m ready to talk, but I’d do better with my hands free. My shoulders are near dislocated, and my fingers are half-numb.”

  “Blue Moccasin is but a guest in this village. You have my personal regrets, Jack Elan, but I can do nothing for your comfort.”

  Elan’s voice was coarse. “Where are we? What village is this?”

  As though suddenly realizing the white man’s ignorance of his predicament, the Indian explained in detail.

  “You have traveled far, Jack Elan. Your eyes were blinded by your pain and injury from a blow to your head. You saw not the rivers and mountains as you passed. This is the Shawnee village ‘Pthuthoi,” which in English means, ‘Buffalo Village.’ We are beside the river the whites call Shenango in the land of the Ohio.”

  Elan’s spirits slumped, for as near as he could figure, he must be hundreds of miles west of his cabin site. He doubted there would be other white men this far out. Controlling his emotions, he asked, “What has happened to me? I have harmed no one.”

  Elan found his speech stilted and false in his own ears. He sounded child-like and begging in his efforts to communicate.

  Still, it was hard to be squatting naked as a jay in a strange place all tied up like a hog for slaughter and trying to talk plain to as wild a looking Injun as this Blue Moccasin.

  The Indian youth’s chuckle was light in his chest and sounded startlingly American. “I fear your enemy, Heart-Eater, would not agree, Jack Elan, for you wounded him severely.

  At the prisoner’s start, Blue Moccasin raised a placating hand and added, “No, Toquisson, the Heart-Eater, is not dead. Even now, he travels to this village, but his hurt is great and his journey will be long. They say Heart-Eater moves slowly in much pain, and it is only his thoughts of you that gives him courage to march each day.”

  An involuntary shudder sped across the captive’s body before the Indian continued.

  “You wonder what is to happen to you, Jack Elan?” Blue Moccasin paused to consider, then continued in his school-book English.

  “That you will die at the hand of Heart-Eater is certain. The Eater’s ways cannot be known, for although a noted warrior, he is a trifle mad, and with his many days of pain his revenge will no doubt be long and terrible.�
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  The Indian’s dispassionate voice chilled the white prisoner. He visualized the stricken Heart-Eater struggling ever closer through the mountains, and he could feel the sourness of fear rise in his throat.

  The thought of his enemy’s pain gave Elan satisfaction, but that he would have an opportunity to kill Heart-Eater now seemed improbable.

  His own death was somehow unimportant. All that he had loved had been destroyed, and he could not find it in himself to be concerned with his future. Still, dying by his enemy’s hand rankled, and Elan recognized yet another discontent sprouting within.

  Blue Moccasin watched with interest, as though studying a new fire that was little more than a glow of heat and judging how best to fan the tiny spark into useful flame.

  “You are of interest to the people of this village, Jack Elan. All know of your terrible blow to Heart-Eater. They have heard how you uttered no cry at the cut of the Eater’s knife, and how you traveled naked on the long march. The Shawnee respect bravery, and the village waits to admire the manner in which you die.”

  The youth smiled grimly. “Know that in this village, Heart-Eater, a warrior of great pride, is being called ‘Bird Song.’ Other message carriers say that since your blow crushed his organs, the Eater’s voice has risen until he speaks with the voice of a woman. If his hatred is now great, it will grow a thousand fold when he learns of the new name.

  “The people wait to see the vengeance of Bird Song on the one who destroyed his manhood. It will be a thing for them to remember, Jack Elan.”

  In following days the words of Blue Moccasin dwelt in the mind of Jack Elan. He wasted little emotion on the thought of his own demise, but to die at the hands of the monster who had destroyed all that he had loved tortured his soul and set Elan’s mind racing on impossible trails of vengeance.

  Tightly bound and continually guarded, there seemed little probability that he could launch even the most token attack against his enemy. Even if free and armed, Elan possessed no fighting skills to match those of a Shawnee warrior. While Heart-Eater had hunted game and men, Elan had labored at common tasks within Philadelphia city, and the few months of wilderness living in the shadow of Conococheague Mountain had added little to his forest skills. That he should supinely wait for Heart-Eater’s imminent arrival rankled, but he found no alternatives.

  Daily visits by Blue Moccasin offered Elan’s only relief. The youthful Delaware was obviously sympathetic to the white captive’s precarious existence and offered his companionship as balm to Elan’s tortured soul and body.

  As his blue eyes disclosed, Blue Moccasin was of mixed blood. His well-to-do white father had furthered his son’s education at Governor Morris’s school in Philadelphia. Despite exposure to and more than a little liking for civilization’s challenges, James Cummens, beloved son of the increasingly prominent trader and business owner Paul Cummens, cherished his Indian heritage.

  Indian ways strove for dominance in the heart of James Cummens, and the youth blunted his hunger for woodland freedoms by serving as interpreter and message carrier between whites and Indians. As Blue Moccasin, Cummens became an honored courier between villages and tribes. An astonishing ability to imitate the voices and mannerisms of message senders built his popularity, and the arrival of Blue Moccasin bearing the forked stick of a message carrier was welcomed by all villages.

  If his schoolroom English was unique to the frontier, Blue Moccasin’s savage attire and disregard for white ways was in equal conflict in Philadelphia, and because he preferred village to town, moccasin to shoe, and a warrior’s code to white acquisi-tiveness, James Cummens sometimes considered himself an Indian versed in white ways.

  Blue Moccasin could offer no help to Jack Elan. He was present only as a message bearer. He lingered to witness the outcome of Heart-Eater’s return and in hope of encountering a particular friend who might pause at the Shawnee village.

  For an honored message carrier to attempt to interfere in village affairs would be to commit a serious discourtesy and breech of ethics.

  Blue Moccasin, carrier of messages, sometime companion to The Warrior was a Delaware. His acceptance within Shawnee villages depended on the purity of his words and actions. His honor demanded neutrality in all things and, like the mighty fighter called The Warrior, Blue held honor highest among attributes.

  Squatting or sitting together in the prisoner’s small lodge, Blue Moccasin spoke long of Indian ways, and at Elan’s insistence of the Shawnee Heart-Eater.

  “Although a fierce warrior, Toquisson is not well-liked. There is a madness about him, and the people fear him. Men walk lightly about the Eater—as one would a panther on a worn tether.

  “The Eater is known in many lodges for his ferocity in battle. He has taken many scalps, and he has eaten the hearts of enemies.

  “I could wish you in other hands, Jack Elan, for if Heart-Eater knows of mercy or compassion, none have seen it.”

  Tightly bound and continually guarded, escape appeared impossible. Yet, as the days passed and Heart-Eater’s arrival grew closer, the thought of escaping blossomed in Jack Elan’s mind. Far better to die quickly beneath a war club or even starve in the wilderness than to be butchered alive by the half-mad Toquisson.

  His bonds were the first obstacles to be overcome. Although regularly altered, they were never removed. A leather cord behind his back tied Elan’s elbows and eel skin thongs secured his wrists or his thumbs. Those bonds had been so long in place calluses had developed. His feet were hobbled with a short rawhide cord that reduced his steps to half their normal length. He was sometimes fed by hand, but more often a flat bowl was placed before him, and he slurped and licked, as would a dog, until he had cleaned the vessel.

  As advised by Blue Moccasin, Elan took to walking in the proudly erect Indian manner and gazing straight into the eyes of those who watched. He doubted that his outward bravery would long withstand Heart-Eater’s tortures, but the act of appearing courageous buttressed his spirits, and he set his mind strongly toward escape.

  Elan’s lodge was bare. Everything had been removed and the dirt floor swept clean. Still, the shelter had been in place for a long time and stone implements were regularly discarded. An overlooked arrow point could sever his bonds. Elan began a systematic culling of the lodge floor, digging at the packed earth with his fingers and sifting the loosened soil unseen behind his back.

  The search went slowly, and he found nothing useful. Each digging required careful repacking of the disturbed earth lest sharp eyes discover and end his efforts.

  Elan found the broken shard near the lodge entrance. A bit of flint stone snapped from a hide scraper, it was smaller than his thumb, but an edge was sharp, and hope flared in the captive’s heart.

  He sat for some time fingering the stone’s edges and searching for a means of holding the fragment while cutting his bonds. A splintered support along a wall looked promising. He twisted the stone behind his back fitting and trying until he was sure he could imbed the tool firmly enough to hold as he sawed his bonds across its jagged edge. Satisfied, Elan carefully reburied the shard near the base of the pole.

  Despite a means of freeing his bonds, Elan realized his chances for escaping the village were poor, and surviving naked and alone in the winter wilderness was improbable. Yet, to merely wait, ox-like, for Heart-Eater’s vengeance was no alternative. That he must attempt to escape was his only course.

  Beginning to plan, Elan watched the village with new eyes. He saw the nearby lodge that almost daily hung garments out to air. He judged the weakest of his guards and learned his habits. If he was to have any chance at all, he needed a start on pursuing Shawnee, and he needed to know which way to travel.

  When they talked, he guided Blue Moccasin’s conversations toward traveling to and from the white lands along the distant Susquehanna.

  With astonishment, Elan learned that Blue Moccasin was a regular visitor to the home of Rob Shatto, Elan’s closest neighbor. Blue, in turn had believed
that Elan had been captured from the Virginia Colony many marches to the south of the Conococheague country.

  That Elan shared friendship with Rob Shatto tortured the spirit of Blue Moccasin. The message carrier had known others who had died at the torture stake when he could do nothing, but as he learned Elan’s story, the man’s pending torture and death became more meaningful than the youthful messenger preferred. What could he do? The question haunted the hours of Blue Moccasin’s day, but no answers appeared.

  Taken in battle, Elan belonged to his captor. A prisoner of the Shawnee, Elan was spoken for by that tribe. A huge ransom of blankets, pots, and knives for the entire village? The Heart-Eater would not care.

  Blue Moccasin might plead Elan’s case to Shawnee sachems, including handsome gifts, but those distant chiefs wielded no direct power. They could suggest, but in the end the decision would be Toquisson’s, and Blue Moccasin had no doubt that Elan would die.

  Blue noted Elan’s hunger to turn conversations to the routes to white lands, so perhaps the prisoner had a plan. Blue could not imagine a scheme that could succeed, but if planning gave the prisoner hope or comfort, Blue would describe all that he could.

  Elan was no skilled frontiersman who could outrun or trick and confuse Shawnee searchers. Rob Shatto might perform such feats, but Shatto was not like other whites along the frontier.

  Elan committed to memory the forks of trails and river fords. If Blue Moccasin wondered at the captive’s interest, he gave no indication, but the message carrier seemed particularly willing to describe in exacting detail the paths and valleys leading east to the white settlements of Pennsylvania.