With new determination he tightened the bandage over his head and rose from the log he sat on. He had taken two steps when his heart stopped beating.
The massive black creature that stared at him, though fifty yards away, looked as big as a horse. It was watching Duncan, its head cocked to one side. Duncan retreated a step. The bear took a step forward, approaching a fork in the trail. After a moment the beast turned its gaze toward the path that led to the north, Duncan’s trail, then opened its huge mouth, revealing its long, treacherous teeth. The biggest of the beasts could pluck off your head like a ripe berry, men in the Company had told him. Duncan felt his knees weaken. The meager confidence he had been building since he left the pool evaporated with one glance at those fangs.
The sound that rose from the creature as it opened its mouth was not the ferocious roar he expected. It was more of a long, weary groan. But the animal continued to bare its teeth at Duncan after the sound died, in the manner of a patient predator, confident of its kill. It smelled the blood of his wound. It would never let him pass.
Duncan lost track of time as he stood motionless, replaying in his mind the past half mile of travel, considering and rejecting each tree, each outcropping as a possible refuge. Finally-had it been fifteen or fifty minutes? — he took a single step toward the trail by the bear, then another. The creature did not move, but did not take its eyes from Duncan. Duncan willed his hand toward the tomahawk on his belt only to find its fingers were full. They had already found, and clenched around, Adam’s carved stone. For no reason he understood, he raised the stone, then, for good measure, shouted out the name of the McCallum chieftains. The bear cocked its massive head as he spoke.
With agonizingly slow progress, step and stop, step and stop, his knees shaking, he reached the fork and the well-worn northern trail, passing within twenty yards of the terrible creature, close enough to smell the wet musk of its fur. The bear followed him only with its eyes, which seemed to take on a chiding, impatient expression. Duncan backed down the first fifty paces of the trail before turning. When he paused and turned to look back after another fifty paces, the bear had not followed, but was still there, watching.
Hours later, aware of little but the throbbing in his head, he reached a river. He extracted Ramsey’s map, realizing he had no way of determining if it was indeed the river shown on the map, the river that connected Edentown to Stony Run, but he had crossed no other in his journey, and he had no strength to push on. He found an overhanging ledge and covered himself with leaves. When he woke in the dawn, his head no longer spun, no longer roared out in pain at every movement. He washed himself, had a quick, cold meal, and began following the bank northward.
It was nearly midday when he glimpsed three towers of rock by a bend in the river. He found himself trotting, pulling Ramsey’s map from his pocket, and relief surged through him as he searched for the cabin or farm, a resting place at last, he expected to find. He had, against impossible odds, navigated the wilderness alone, had found his way to the Chimney Rocks, the first landmark marked on the route to Stony Run. He slipped on a root and fell, then rose, his head now throbbing again, and hobbled past stands of small, dead saplings, his shoes crunching on dried sticks; then he was touching the vertical stones as if to confirm they were real, confirm he was not losing the thread of his sanity, that he actually had a chance of finding his way in the wilderness. Then he froze.
He was not in a grove of dead saplings. They were poles, arranged in groups of four, platforms of cut limbs at the top of each group. Objects were hanging from some of the poles, dangling from the platforms. Feathers. Strips of fur. Necklaces strung with clamshells and beads. Human legs and arms. He had not crushed dried sticks, but old bones. He was surrounded by pieces of the dead.
There were at least three dozen of the scaffolds, some so old as to have been overgrown with vines. Fitch’s description of what he and Woolford had done with Old Jacob’s body echoed in his mind. He pressed against one of the rock columns, the fear he had wrestled with now breaking free and overwhelming him. He slid down the rock, utterly sapped of strength, dropping to the moss below.
He had been gradually steeling himself against another encounter with the strange living natives of the forest, but dead Indians were far worse. He had entered a nightmare, for now he saw that the inhabitants of the platforms, who communicated with birds and visited from the world of the snakes, had been moving about the terrible field. Pieces of skeletons were scattered across the ground, as if the dead had simply collapsed at the end of the night. In a new paroxysm of fear he had a vision of himself, still trapped there hours after sunset, surrounded by sacks of skin and bone dancing in the moonlight, waving snakes in the air.
Then the sound of a solitary thrush cut through the miasma, and his senses revived. He remained very still, as he had seen Fitch and Woolford do, studying the scene with a new, calmer eye, examining the forest floor, the platforms, the stumps of poles that had been freshly hacked away. Nowhere did he see a complete skeleton. The dead had been disturbed, bones dragged from the burial platforms. A skull lay in pieces ten feet away, recently broken, stomped, he suspected, by a boot. The poles of many of the broken platforms had not rotted away but had been hacked with axes.
He discovered he had risen, had taken a step away from the chimney, toward a long, fresh rut in the moss-laden earth, along which lay remnants of several necklaces, old withered feathers, the carpals and tarsals of hands and feet. The track ended at the water’s edge. The dead had been pulled from their platforms and thrown into the river. He took another step, numbed now with a new feeling, lifting a strand of intact beads from the bank, and found himself staring into the clear, fast-moving current. A piece of buckskin clothing clung to an overhanging branch fifty feet downstream. Much closer, several feet under water, a skull, some skin still attached, had been trapped by a submerged limb. It seemed to be looking up at him, asking why.
The thrush was joined by another sound, a low murmuring that he might have mistaken for the working of the wind were it not so constant. He pursued it slowly, consciously placing each foot so as to remain silent, to the far side of the second chimney, where on a wide, flat bank more platforms lay ravaged. Something frigid clutched his heart as he first thought he had discovered one of the sacks of bones, crusted with grime and blood, come to life.
Then with a stab of pain he recognized the gentle old man collapsed against the stone. Conawago had stripped to his loincloth, had covered all his skin except for his tattoos with dirt. He rocked back and forth, uttering low, prayerful sounds as with his knife he made a row of cuts on his arm. One leg was already oozing blood from two dozen parallel slash marks along his thigh. Tears rolled down his cheeks.
When Duncan reached out and pried the blade from his hand, the old Indian continued the cutting motion as if he still gripped the knife. Duncan closed his hand around the blood-soaked fingers. It took a long time for Conawago to become aware of him.
Finally the Indian scrubbed at his eyes with the back of his hand and looked up. “Who would do such a thing?” he asked forlornly. “Who would kill our dead again?”
It was nearly an hour before Duncan finished ministering to Conawago. The Indian moved like one of the decrepit aged when he rose, letting Duncan lead him toward the water, advancing in short, hobbling steps, pausing to silently lean on Duncan every few feet. He was as ruined as the cemetery.
Finally they sat on a rock ledge at the edge of the river, with Conawago’s limbs washed but still oozing blood. He began speaking in his native tongue, not to Duncan, but toward the sky, then toward the water, in low, anguished tones. Eventually he fixed his gaze downward. Duncan looked away awkwardly then, as Conawago began what sounded like one side of a conversation. When he turned back toward his companion, another chill crept down his spine. The old Indian was speaking to the head under the water.
Duncan lowered his gaze and watched Conawago’s blood drip from his fingertips into a still pool at th
e edge of the river.
“When I was young,” he began when the Indian finally grew silent, “some English soldiers came up the coast seeking enemies of their king. My family sailed away to distant islands for a month. When we returned, we found that the English had slain all our livestock. My grandfather paid it no mind, said there were always calves and lambs in the mountains. But the next day I found him speechless, weeping on a rock by the sea. Our ancestral graveyard was in a small vale above our croft. The English had pulled up the grave markers and smashed them to pieces. They opened several graves. The most recent was that of an uncle three months dead, whom they hung from a tree, with a note pinned to his chest saying he had been tried and found guilty of treason. Other bodies, mostly just bones, were scattered over the hillside.”
Conawago said nothing. Now he, too, was watching his blood mix with the river water, desolation in his eyes.
“We reburied our uncle. My mother wanted to try to determine which pieces of which ancestors went into the other graves. My father said it didn’t matter, so long as we showed proper respect. So we just put a few of the bones in each of the old graves and covered them up. We were almost done when my father looked past me and groaned. My mother had cut off her beautiful red hair, had shorn herself like a spring ewe, and was dropping a lock of her hair tied around a sprig of heather into each grave.
“My grandfather disappeared when the sun went down, and we found him playing pibroch in the graveyard, under the moon. Every night for a month he did that, and every night more of our people came to listen, until at the end of the month there was a great gathering and a bonfire with the clans swearing blood oaths to support each other. My grandfather declared it enough that the old ones in the graves were peaceful again.”
Conawago, still staring at the blood as it slowly swirled downstream, gave no sign of hearing his words. Duncan fought an unexpected torrent of emotion as he relived the pain of that long-ago day when his family had found their own ancestors scattered across the slope.
“Pibroch?” the old Indian suddenly asked.
“It means the Great Music, the old music. .,” Duncan began. “I don’t know how. . ” He stood, slowly surveyed the cemetery again, and stepped to his haversack. Conawago gave no notice as he extracted his precious pipes, inflated the bag, and began to play at the base of the tallest chimney. But as he played, his companion’s head slowly rose, until he was solemnly staring into the sky.
Minutes later Conawago rose and slowly began collecting the remnants from the ground and arranging them on the surviving platforms. Duncan played for nearly an hour, then set down the pipes and helped Conawago. They worked until dusk, when at a distance from the cemetery Duncan made a small fire and a bed of moss for his companion.
“Hawkins,” he said, breaking a long silence. “You asked who would do such a thing. It was Hawkins. He left Edentown last week with Ramsey men who were familiar with handling the dead.”
“But why?”
Duncan had no answer.
“I had a dream last night,” Conawago said after another silence. “I was at Stony Run. Men flew through the air like birds. As I was speaking with an old woman, rocks began pouring from the sky. There was great lamentation, though the okewa had not even begun.”
“I, too, had a dream,” Duncan rejoined, his heart racing now. “I was with Sarah Ramsey. She sat in the shadow of a great bear, and Hawkins was sneaking up on her with a knife between his teeth.”
Conawago nodded slowly. “It is the way of things for her,” he said in a weary voice. “She becomes only bone and starts over.”
“I don’t understand.”
“She is dead again. The last time, I believe.” Conawago gestured him around the outermost of the tall pillars, which towered over a bend in the river. A new scaffold had been raised, the only one left standing. On it lay a dead woman in a familiar green dress, with crows sitting at her head.
With a mournful sob Duncan leapt forward and in an instant was on the cross support of the scaffold, hoarsely yelling at the birds, with blind horror lashing out at them. Then he began to see the thing. It was Sarah’s dress, he was certain, as was the small gold chain around the neck. But inside the dress were old bones, including a skull from which long hair still clung, with skeleton arms, even skeleton hands clasped together. He fell away, dropping from the scaffold, and gazed at the thing in horror. He wanted to weep.
After a long moment he steeled himself enough to examine the thing on the scaffold. Around the scaffold were the recent prints of moccasins, many overlain with boot marks. Indians had been there after the destruction of the burial ground and erected the scaffold. And the men who come after, probably Arnold and his party, had been too frightened to touch it.
A terrible despair tore at Duncan’s heart. He gazed out onto the ruined dead. He felt so weak, he dared not ask the Indian to explain.
Conawago pulled him away, back toward the fire. “You still mean to go north?”
It took Duncan a long time to answer. “I have begun to understand the truth of dreams.” he said. “An innocent man is going to hang. The truth of the murder he is charged with lies in the north. I know of no other way to go.”
Conawago gestured to the broken bodies. “This is what Hawkins and the others will do to you,” he said in a calm, matter-of-fact voice.
Duncan stared into the fire, fighting images of Sarah and Lister being chased by skeletons. He had also begun to grasp why Woolford had warned about speaking of dreams with the Indians. “I shall boil some tea,” he declared at last.
“No tea,” the Indian said in a dry, creaking voice. “The pipes. I never knew of these, but your grandfather understood. The dead can hear those pipes.” He gestured out toward the desolation. “Call them home, like before.”
Naked trees. “Look for naked trees,” Conawago had said when Duncan had left him at dawn that morning. “Follow the naked trees to Bark Hollow by the mission at German Flats.” After Duncan had spoken of his dream, the old Indian had spoken no more of Duncan fleeing south, but he had also denied any interest in traveling north himself now.
“Here is where I am needed,” Conawago had said with a deathbed air. “I should go across, I should explain and apologize.” He was, Duncan had realized with a chill, speaking of dying.
Duncan had felt as if he were bidding good-bye to another of his great-uncles, never to see him or his ways again. He had lit another small fire for Conawago and left him staring at the flames. “Mourning must be done,” Duncan had said as he stood to leave, “but mourning is not standing up to the enemy.”
Conawago had given no sign of hearing him.
Ten miles from the Chimney Rocks he reached the first of the naked trees, a huge hemlock, over five feet in breadth, stripped of its living bark for ten feet above the earth. Soon there were others, all oaks and hemlocks, all huge, all stripped to a uniform height. The swath became broader as he approached a rumbling sound that rose from behind a low ridge. He paused just before he reached the crest of the ridge, and looked back at the dozens of debarked trees he had passed. They were all going to die.
Bark Hollow had been aptly named by Conawago. Except for a small log house at the far end, the small valley was piled with bark. In the center, a heavy log had been mounted on a central hub fixed to a stump. Two-thirds of the way along the length of the log was fastened a huge roller stone, like a thick mill wheel with heavy striations along its rim. Harnessed to the end of the log was a great brindled ox, pulling the wheel along the circle, crushing the bark under the wheel. Leading the ox was a boy of perhaps twelve years. Duncan settled onto a rock and watched, his interest suddenly intense. Another riddle was answered. Evering had written that the third ghostwalker would be found at an ox wheel.
As Duncan took a step down the hill, still in the shadows of the trees, the boy’s head snapped up, not at him, but at the forest, as if sensing something had changed. The ox slowed and bent its heavy head toward the cabin. Duncan paused,
then squatted in the shadows, studying the cabin. It was a rough, squalid place. Two men lay stretched out on benches beside the cabin, jugs beside them. A thin horse tied to a tree gazed longingly at the stream that ran by the cabin. A small, fur-covered creature lay dead on a stump, a crow pecking at its head. Beyond the cabin stood a decrepit wagon at the end of a cleared track that wound behind the ridge. On it sat three bales of the crushed bark, bound for a tannery, where it would be steeped in water for its tannic acid.
Duncan’s gaze drifted back to the boy, who was facing the ox, standing idly now, stroking its snout. Something was fastened to the boy’s waist at the rear. A rope, he saw as the boy turned and began walking again. The ox was tied to the axle of the great wheel. And the boy was tied to the ox.
Duncan stepped back over the ridge, circled the valley, and walked up the track toward the cabin. The two men on the benches, reeking of rum, did not move as he untied the horse and led it to the stream, then knelt and washed the grime from his own face.
After a moment the hairs began rising on the back of his neck. He looked up to see a musket barrel extended from one of the windows, aimed directly at him.
“I only mean to water him,” he explained in a loud voice.
“Git inside or git dead,” came a high, nervous voice. “Put him back where he was.” More gunbarrels had appeared, two others extending from rectangular holes recently chopped into the log wall.
Duncan rose slowly, tied the horse to a sapling, then moved toward the building, hands opened at his side.
“I tie him like that so when they come for him I have a clean shot,” the gaunt man inside explained as soon as Duncan entered the musty cabin. There was an accent in the man’s voice Duncan could not place.
“Wolves?” Duncan asked.
The man gestured toward Duncan’s scalp. “Man with a wound like that shouldn’t have to ask.” Welsh. It was a Welsh accent.
“Indians want to steal your horse?”
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