by John Legg
Winter Rage
By
John Legg
© Copyright 2016 John Legg (as revised)
Wolfpack Publishing
P.O. Box 620427
Las Vegas, NV 89162
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.
ISBN: 978-1-62918-876-8
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Table of Contents:
Beginning
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
About the Author
For my brother, Joe, with whom I share —and always will— an unshakable, unbreakable bond
“C’mon, ye sisters of the devil! Batards! Fils de salaud!”
They came after him—Frantic Blackfoot warriors with lances and war clubs, coup sticks and tomahawks.
With the pistol, Squire blasted a large hole in the first one’s belly. He lashed out with the tomahawk in his left hand. A Blackfoot fell over, a deep, bloody gash in his skull. Squire dropped his pistol and scooped up the Blood’s stone-headed war club, swinging it in one hand and the tomahawk in the other. He connected with each powerful blow, and Blackfoot bodies piled up like cordwood at his feet. He stood firm, ready to die.
Beginning
(1832)
HANNAH hummed happily in the warmth of the spring day as she gathered early-season herbs and berries. The racy tune—“I’ll Not Marry at All”—would have shocked her mother had she still been alive. Much about Hannah had shocked her mother. It had caused no little consternation in the small cabin on the prairie not far away when Hannah had taken to wearing her four older brothers’ hand-me-down pants and shirts and roaming the wilds with the boys. My, how she had been scolded that time! Her father had taken little notice of such things in the two years since Hannah’s mother had died of consumption.
Hannah grinned and touched the brim of her cap, thinking of the consternation it had aroused in her mother. It had belonged to her oldest brother, Lute, until he had given it to her. The brim was of good, hard leather, but the rest was of raggedy cloth. Hannah didn’t care about the cap’s wear and tear. She got along best with Lute, and enjoyed being in his company the most. He was more of a woodsman than Caleb, Royal and Micah together, and was not always bent on trying to make her miserable. She did not spend as much time with him since he had married Hannah’s best friend, Anne, but he was still her favorite.
Almost absentmindedly she plucked off a sprig laden with blackberries and dropped it in the basket she held on her left hip. She always enjoyed this, almost as much as she did stalking through the woods with Lute, following him avidly while he hunted rabbits or quail or partridge; once, she even was with him when he jumped a deer. What a sight that was. It was not as much fun now as it had been back in Ohio. Here in northern Illinois, the prairie predominated, and the real woods were usually found along rivers and streams.
She enjoyed the density of the woods and abhorred the stilted life expected of her inside the cramped cabin with its continuous drudgery. Out here amid the trees, or even the flowered, tall-grass prairies, all was green and sweet smelling, warm and comforting. Still, she preferred the woods. Even the cold of winter did not dampen her love of the woods; it just changed her perception of them. But this time of the year was best, she thought, changing the tune she hummed to the melancholy “Strayaway Child.”
Hannah smiled when she heard the fluttering whoomph of a covey of quail flushing from under a still-barren chokecherry bush. She adroitly avoided the copperhead that slithered across her path, its shiny back catching the dappled light for a fleeting moment. Hannah worked from bush to bush. There was little to pick, since the blueberries, blackberries and chokecherries had barely bloomed. But Hannah was determined to find something to break the monotony of the family’s simple fare. She hummed all the while, switching tunes.
Her humming changed pitch and intensity as she thought of her mother, which she often did when she was alone. The woman had been kind and generous to a fault. But she also had been pious and had had her notions of what was proper for a young lady—and what was not.
Hannah had turned fifteen over the winter, and she could just see her mother’s frowning consternation at what Hannah had become. But Hannah had no hankering to primp just to attract beaus. Not just so she could settle down with some farmer to a life of tending a garden; bearing a brood of youngsters; boredom; eternal washing, mending, and tending; caring, sharing and wanting; fixing, cleaning and . . . She stopped her humming and stood stock-still. Something wasn’t right, but she did not know just what. Her heart fluttered a bit as a trickle of icy fear dripped down from her chest into her belly. Something had changed subtly, and panic began to rise as she tried to fathom just what it was.
Birds! she thought, growing more worried. The birds were silent. Usually the sweet song of the lark would be wrapped around the frequent squawking of crows, ravens and jays. Partridge would be chirping, and the knotty knocking of woodpeckers would punctuate the other soft sounds. Now all was silent save for the soft sighing of the wind through the leaves of the oaks and ash and maples over her head.
Heart thumping, she turned back toward the cabin. She took two steps before freezing again, terror ripping through her as a wild, inhuman shriek pierced the air. Within seconds, there was a cacophony from the direction of the cabin.
Chilling war whoops stabbed through the afternoon, and Hannah heard her father’s deep, usually comforting voice roaring. Lute’s hoarse bellows rose up, and Hannah could hear the two youngest—Nell and Abe—scream in fear. The frightened whinnying of the half-dozen farm horses touched her worried heart. Several gunshots rang out. There was a pause, then a few more. A screech of pain rent the day.
Without thinking, Hannah dropped her basket and ran toward the cabin. Her heart pounded inside her chest. Twigs and small branches whipped her face and clothes as she ran, heedless of the thick foliage that clutched at her.
By the time she burst from the trees, which lay thick and bunched up against the length of Somonauk River, into the clearing, the cabin and rickety barn near i
t were aflame. Maybe a dozen Indians swarmed, screeching around the burning buildings.
Hannah backed into the trees again, terror and despair choking her. Desire to do something burned in her, but she was helpless. She saw an Indian dragging her next youngest sister, Beth, around by the hair. Almost unconsciously, Hannah determined from things Lute had told her that most of the savages were Pottawatomies, though there were a few she could not identify.
“Oh, dear God in heaven,” she breathed. With a choking sob, she spun and plunged into the forest. They’ll be after me next, her muddled brain told her over and over. Run! Run! Hannah tripped and fell countless times in her flight along the river. Finally, she stopped, gasping. Pain laced through her chest and side. Her head swam as the blood pounded in her veins. The sounds of the attack were gone, lost behind her. Here the birds were singing. She stood for some moments, bent over, hands on knees, drawing in large gulps of air.
Feeling a little more steady, she straightened, looking around. She had come, she realized, less than two miles, though it had seemed to her that she ran all the day. She heard no pursuit, and was heartened. Then Lute’s words came back to her: “Injins can walk through the woods like a ghost. Sis. Don’t ever think ’cause you can’t see or hear nothin’ there ain’t no Injins about.”
Fear sliced through her again, and confusion. What should she do? she wondered, panic building. Where could she go? Were the Indians hot on her trail? The next farm was several miles away on this side of the river, and across open ground. The nearest settlement was Indian Creek, quite a few miles southeast. She and her family should have gone there, she thought, when the warning about Indian trouble had first been given. But there had been so many false alarms in the past few years that her father had not believed it when a neighbor reported that thousands of Sauks and Foxes, aided by Potawatomis, Winnebagos and Kickapoos were on the rampage across the state.
Hannah heard something behind her. Without waiting to see who—or what—it was, she ran, mind made up. She headed toward the river. Trying to stop, she slipped on the mud of the bank and fell hard on her rear end. She winced, but clamped her lips over the gasp of pain that tried to erupt.
She pushed herself, sliding down the rest of the way and into the water as quietly as she could. The current grabbed her and swung her out from the bank and downriver. She moved her arms easily, just trying to keep her head above the water, letting the flow carry her.
She spotted some caves gouged into the high riverbank and pulled herself out of the water. She moved into one of the caves, working her way back as far as she could. Since everyone in the area knew of these caves, she figured the Indians did, too. But she hoped—and prayed—that they would not think she had come down the river this far, if they were indeed after her.
It was a cold and miserable night for Hannah. With her wet clothes in the damp, cool cave, she shook steadily from the chill. She had never felt so alone in all her young life, and each little sound scared her half out of her wits.
At last a dim glow filtered back into her shelter, and she figured daylight was well up. She was all cried out and exhausted. She pushed herself up with a great effort and made her way to the mouth of the cave. She slithered up to it—back against a side wall just in case.
But no one was there. Birds sang in the trees, and she saw a deer drinking from the swift-running river. She heard a turkey gobble in the brush, and it was somehow comforting. She slipped into the river. With strong strokes she swam across the short distance. She clambered onto dry ground and fought through the brush until she came to the prairie. Then she began walking purposefully back the way she had come, sticking to the line of trees and brush that covered anywhere from fifty yards to just a few feet between river and prairie. The warmth of the day dried her quickly. Her stomach made rumbling noises from hunger. But she had no food, so she kept walking. She found that she was walking slower and slower the closer she got to her family’s cabin.
Maybe, she thought, adding a silent prayer, someone was still alive. Maybe someone had come along just after she ran. Maybe other farmers had seen the flames and come to help. Maybe . . . But there was little hope in her heart.
In irritation, she squared her slim shoulders and pushed ahead with renewed determination. Unconsciously, she hardened her heart to what she was about to see. She would not let it overwhelm her.
Moving into the brush under the cover of the oak, ash, maple and beech trees, she kept going, jaw firm, though a few tears slid unbidden from her green eyes. Then she was out of the forest and moving across the clearing.
The cabin and barn had fallen in on themselves and still smoldered, thin streams of smoke curling lazily skyward from the heaped rubble and ashes. She found Micah first, his head smashed open, and his stomach cut open all the way down to . . .
Hannah vomited, bile bitter in her throat. Eyes blurred by fear, hatred and sickness, she stumbled on. She found Caleb, mutilated and scalped; then her father, just outside where the house had been. He had been scalped, but not mutilated beyond that.
Hannah wanted nothing more than to be gone from this place, to be away and never come back. But she had to be sure of everyone. If there was any hope at all of anyone being alive, she had to know. And if they were missing, she had to know that, too.
She found the bodies of Royal and Lute in the cornfield. Both had been shot through with bullets and arrows, then scalped and disemboweled. Hannah broke down, great sobs wracking her frail, thin body when she found Lute. She wondered where Anne was, with her new husband lying here dead and butchered. Maybe she was no longer alive. And what would the bratty Klemp girl do now? Caleb had planned to marry her come fall. And where were all the others?
She breathed deeply, raggedly. And she shook as she shoved herself up. There were no more tears; she was too numbed for that anymore.
With a sigh, she went back toward the house. Her father’s rifle was lying under him, and his pistol was nearby. Hannah was surprised, but then realized something must have scared the Potawatomis off before they could complete their grisly tasks. She took the rifle and stuck the pistol in her worn leather belt. Gulping back the gorge that rose inside her again, she tugged and yanked at the shooting pouch and powder horn her father wore. Finally she took his knife and cut the straps. Tying the ends of the straps together, she slung the pouch and horn over her shoulder.
Her face had hardened, mourning giving way to rage and thoughts of her future. She had to be hard, she told herself resolutely. Loading the two guns, she set off toward where the barn had been. But there was no sign of the missing family members—Anne, Nell, Abe and Beth. She made a circuit of the small farm, but did not find them.
Her stomach ached, both from sickness and hunger. She sat, hugging herself in her pain and misery. Almost as if watching someone else, she pulled the old smooth-bore pistol from her belt and pulled back the hammer. She poured a little powder into the pan and snapped it shut. Gently she placed the muzzle against her right temple.
Lute’s face floated into her vision, and she blinked. He was not really there, but still, she could hear his soft, slightly hoarse voice: “Life is for the livin’, little sis.” He had said that after butchering a hog she had raised from a piglet. She had cried, but he told her softly, though firmly, “We got to eat, Hannah. That’s why God put that hog here, to feed us, keep us alive, so that we can live, and till the soil, and”—he grinned lopsidedly— “put more children on this here earth.”
“But . . .” she had tried to argue.
“No buts now, Hannah. It’s the way God made things. It ain’t right, maybe, that folks go killin’ each other, though there’s times for that, for certain. Still, animals and folks is dyin’ all the time, but the livin’ got to go on.”
“I know, Lute, but ...”
“You ’member back when Granny Sikes died? Mama didn’t go on all to pieces, did she? No, sir, she just picked up her life and kept on a goin’, takin’ care of Pa and us. And when Ma’s tim
e came, Pa…”
Hannah lowered the pistol. She was shaking. She was barely fifteen, but she had had an awesome responsibility thrust upon her.
With renewed determination, she dug around in the root cellar and in the embers of the house until she found food. She ate as much as she could, then wrapped the rest in a salvaged piece of cloth. She slung the pack across her shoulders and, without looking back, left. The Indian trail wasn’t hard to find, but it was hard to follow with the tears in her eyes making things so damn blurry.
It took nearly a week, but she found all the members of her family, except Anne—Lute’s wife. Anne was just a little older than Hannah, and ripe for the taking as a prize—maybe even as a wife. Beth should have been, too, Hannah thought when she found her sister’s torn, bloody body. But Beth had always been one with a sharp tongue and a penchant for talking without cause or reason. The Potawatomis probably had tired of her after they had had their sport with her.
Nell and Abe were nine and six, respectively—and the Indians most likely considered them more trouble to cart along than they were worth as captives or adoptees. Especially if the Indians were in a hurry, fearing that they were being chased.
Hannah choked back the parched corn she had eaten that morning. Beth was the last she found. It seemed her sister had been discarded when . . .
Hannah vowed to continue on—just to make sure about Anne, whom she was sure would be in some Potawatomi village by now.
She gave it three more days before giving up. There would be nothing she could do even if she found Anne now. She turned back southward, thankful that Lute had taught her many of the ways of the forest: how to shoot; how to fashion crude traps from willow twigs and rawhide thongs; what plants could be eaten and those that were deadly.
She thought of making her way to Aunt Jess’s place way back in Ohio, or over to the Turner place. She was friends with Amy Turner, and Amy’s oldest brother, Bartlet, was sweet on her, she knew. Or she could make her way down to Indian Creek, where her distant cousin, Maggie, lived with her family. Any of them would take her in.
