Bone Rattler amoca-1

by Eliot Pattison

  When Conawago at last accepted the rifle, Woolford turned to Duncan. “She says the world is upside down. She says she could not bear for Conawago to be buried this season as well.”

  Alex helped the woman gather her few surviving possessions into a blanket, which he slung onto his shoulder, and then the two began walking across the field. When Duncan grabbed his own pack, Conawago put a restraining hand on his arm.

  “They have a different path to take,” he said.

  Duncan looked in confusion from the old Indian to the boy. “But Alex. . all those years a prisoner. Surely we can’t just let him think he’s a slave again. We must. . ”

  “God’s breath!” Woolford snapped. “After all this, you cannot see? His nightmares aren’t caused by all those years with the Indians. To his mind, he only became a prisoner when he was taken by Europeans.”

  Duncan looked from the ranger to Conawago, both of whom gazed at him; perplexed, he looked down at the earth, at his feet, with unexpected shame. He was a fool to think he was progressing toward the truth. All he ever found was more confusion.

  “Do you think he suffers from anything you and I do not?” Woolford asked in a forgiving tone.

  “What are you saying?”

  “His days spent with Arnold and Ramsey at the mission. You asked once when the Company was started. That’s when.”

  “At the mission? But that was where Alex explained the Iroquois to them, tried to explain their trade routes, their concept of religion, how the shamans were the lifeblood of their people, how. . ”

  “Exactly,” Woolford interrupted, as if Duncan need say no more. The ranger turned, retrieved his pack and rifle, and began jogging back up the trail.

  They moved in silence, Duncan’s companions so wary now that he retrieved a heavy piece of wood from the forest floor to defend himself. As they climbed the final mountain before their destination, Conawago and Woolford stopped running. They acted as though they were stalking game now, crouching, moving in perfect silence, keeping Duncan between them. Once, in the distance, there was a cracking sound. It could have been a tree snapping in a gust. It could have been a rifle shot.

  Woolford signaled for a halt and sat on a rock under a hemlock, as if waiting. Conawago, seeming to sense something as well, crouched beside a boulder twenty feet away. After several minutes, a man in a fringed linen hunter’s frock and green leggings materialized from behind a tree a hundred feet away, running toward the north until Woolford gave a soft warbling whistle.

  The leathery-faced man offered a broad smile to Conawago, eyed Duncan suspiciously, then hastily reported to his captain. Woolford’s face tightened as he read a slip of paper handed him by the ranger. He handed it to Duncan. “Never have I met a man who made friends so quickly,” he said.

  The note was in French. It offered a princely sum for the scalp of Duncan McCallum.

  “The corporal says some of the Ramseys mixed it up with that party of Hurons,” Woolford reported after a moment. “He came across two of them running through the woods, the Hurons tracking them, not far behind. One with a beard that’s red and gray, with another half his age.” He turned to Duncan with question in his eyes. The ranger was asking if the men were worth saving.

  “The old one’s named McGregor. They’re all just trying to work off their indentures.”

  “Working off indentures at Chimney Rock?” Woolford rejoined with a bitter frown, then turned and conferred with the corporal again. The soldier nodded several times, drank from a small wooden canteen that hung from his shoulder, then dashed away in the direction of the camp they had left that morning.

  Five minutes later, as they climbed a steep ridge, another cracking sound echoed through the forest, this one unmistakably a gunshot, and much closer than the first. Woolford pointed to the top of the ridge and ran. The ranger led them into a formation of rocks that was like a small fortress, squared at the top but with natural openings like the crenulations of a castle wall, a flat-topped tower of rock above the wall. As Duncan collapsed behind the rocks, Woolford and Conawago took up positions, guns at the ready. Moments later Woolford raised his rifle and fired. There was a muffled cry of surprise, then a flurry of footsteps. As Duncan ventured a look down the ridge, McGregor burst into view, stumbling, running, pausing to offer a call of encouragement to a companion in the shadows behind-a call that ended in an abject cry as the second man fell and was instantly covered by an Indian kneeling on his back. McGregor paused only a moment, for another Huron appeared from behind a tree thirty feet away, a tomahawk raised in one hand, a rifle balanced in the other, quickly closing on the old Scot.

  Woolford, having quickly reloaded, leapt past Duncan down the slope several feet, dropped to a knee, and fired. The Indian staggered backward, slumped onto his knees, and fell face-first onto the ground. McGregor summoned a final burst of energy, reaching Woolford, who grabbed his arm and shoved him toward Duncan.

  “McCallum! Never thought I’d find. .,” the old Scot panted. “God’s life!” he groaned, stricken with fear again as Conawago leapt toward them, battle ax raised for throwing. “Another!” McGregor bent, grabbing a rock as if to defend himself. But the ax, tumbling end over end, landed in the upper arm of an Indian aiming a bow at McGregor only twenty feet away. The arrow discharged as he spun about, the bow knocked from his grasp. With one fleet glance, the Indian took in Conawago and Woolford, then vaulted over the rocks down the slope, the war ax dropping from his broken arm, dripping with blood.

  McGregor straightened, looking first in confusion at Conawago, then at Duncan with an air of guilt. “Arnold said Ramsey was to be given the paper, down the river, said to watch for you, for the bounty,” the old Scot said, apology in his tone. “But we wanted no more of it, McCallum. We thought if we could get back to that mission, we could go take that road east and. . ” With a hiss of air, McGregor’s words choked away. It wasn’t pain on his face when he looked down, but surprise. Three feathered shafts had materialized in his chest. By the time the Scot turned his numbed gaze to Duncan, blood was oozing from the side of his mouth. With a trembling finger, McGregor touched the pocket of his tattered waistcoat. “Redeat,” he said in a rattling voice, then dropped to his knees. As he collapsed onto the ground, Woolford fired shots, then Conawago. Whistles and animal calls rose in the forest, sounds Duncan had not heard before.

  “Retreating,” Woolford declared, then leapt over the rocks toward the Indian who had died when charging at McGregor. Duncan bent to the old Scot, clasping his wrist, touching his neck, calling his name.

  “He is dead, Duncan,” Conawago said over his shoulder. As Duncan kept futilely searching for a pulse, the Indian extracted the arrows, working the heads back and forth, seeming to take great care not to damage them.

  Duncan stroked the old man’s hair, emotion welling within. He felt as though he had somehow failed the old man. He straightened McGregor’s long, graying hair, began brushing the soil from his clothes.

  “No time for niceties, McCallum,” Woolford interjected. As Duncan looked up, the ranger leaned a long rifle on a rock beside him, dropped a leather cartridge bag and powder horn beside it. “This is yours. Do you know which end to aim?”

  Duncan touched the gun, then withdrew his hand.

  “Take it or die,” Woolford said in a matter-of-fact tone. “Without a decent weapon, you haven’t a prayer of reaching what you seek.” The ranger lifted the gun, gauging its balance, gazing approvingly at the finely worked walnut stock. “A good piece, near as good as my own. A Pennsylvania gun, likely taken in the raids in the Wyoming Valley south of here.”

  Duncan gazed with revulsion at the weapon. “You mean the man who owned this was killed by that Indian lying out there?”

  “Most likely.” Woolford stepped away, conferring with Conawago.

  Duncan could not bring himself to touch the gun. To do so not only seemed to show contempt for its dead owner, but more, it seemed to mean he was joining the ranks of the king he hated so
much. He left the gun where it lay as Woolford and Conawago began moving their belongings to the top level of the rock formation, a flat ledge enclosed by more rock formations.

  “Leave him,” Woolford said as he saw the way Duncan looked at McGregor’s corpse. “He’ll do us no good up there.”

  But Duncan somehow could not leave the old Scot. He heaved McGregor’s body over his shoulder before climbing to the little protected table of land. They looked down steep rocky slopes on three sides. The fourth was a cliff that dropped away to a fast-flowing river fifty feet below.

  As his companions watched the forest below, Duncan laid the body flat on the rock ledge, cleaned McGregor as best he could, then reached into the pocket the old man had touched, extracting a piece of paper. Arnold had said Ramsey had to have it. It took him a moment to understand, then he stared at it numbly. On one side was a plan for constructing a gallows, complete with detailed measurements, on the other an outline for conduct of Lister’s murder trial.

  “There’s a grave to be dug,” Duncan said.

  “Not on this rock,” Woolford rejoined without taking his gaze from the forest.

  “Below then, where he died.”

  “No.”

  “We can’t just-”

  “Go down there with McGregor and there will be two sets of bones for the wolves to pick tonight.”

  For the first time Duncan saw real worry on the ranger’s face.

  “Usually they would move on,” Conawago explained, “especially with a ranger sharpshooter against them. But they caught the scent of a real treasure now. And they know there’s three of us, with perhaps twenty of them left.” The Indian lifted his gun, watching a shadowy patch of forest.

  “Treasure?” Duncan asked.

  “You heard the old Scot. He called out to you by name. Your scalp is worth more than any of them would earn in an entire trapping season. And the hair of a ranger officer always carries a premium.”

  “Woolford!” Duncan exclaimed. He suddenly realized the ranger had slipped below them and was working feverishly along the base of their little fortress, gathering dried brush and tree limbs into piles spaced twenty feet apart, prying up a large boulder that could be used for cover and letting it roll into the forest.

  With a single fluid motion, Conawago raised his rifle to his cheek and pulled the trigger. The top of a rotting log two hundred feet away burst into fragments. Woolford kept at his task without a pause.

  Five minutes later, as Woolford dove over their covering rocks, the Huron rushed them again. Duncan loaded rifles for the ranger as he kept up a hellish fire, alternating between his own gun and the salvaged Pennsylvania rifle. The Huron reached within a hundred feet before withdrawing under the answering fire, carrying three of their companions with them.

  Woolford and Conawago exchanged a troubled glance. “Your ax,” the ranger said, and tossed Duncan a sharpening stone from his pack. “Make it ready for work.” He rummaged deeper into his pack and produced a knife, much bigger than the one Duncan had been given at Edentown. “This was Fitch’s. Use it half as well as he did and you might live.”

  “But your rifles-”

  “There’s powder enough but only ten balls. The work will be hot, and close, by dawn.”

  Duncan clamped his jaw tight, fighting a new surge of fear, and began whetting the stone on his new blade. Conawago followed suit with his knife. They worked with silent, grim determination as the sun set. Duncan suddenly stopped to reach into his pocket and tossed Woolford the bullet he had extracted from the Scot at the mission. “Thirteen balls. This and the two from the farm.”

  Woolford silently lifted his rifle and placed the ball on the end of the barrel. “These three are all the same size, all seventy-five caliber, made for the Brown Bess standard of the army. Rangers and Indians use long rifles, with smaller balls, fifty caliber and less. Even the French soldiers use a smaller caliber. If I had a mold, I could melt these down, but I left it at the base camp.”

  Duncan looked out into the darkening forest a moment. “I cut it out of a deserter from the Forty-second,” he explained as he tried to reason out the puzzle. “He took it in his leg a year ago. He was a survivor of Stony Run.”

  Woolford leaned forward, his eyes flashing with excitement as he hefted the three balls in his palm. “You’re wrong. There were no survivors, only Adam.”

  “There were other Indian prisoners who survived.”

  “Sarah and Alex weren’t there. Tashgua had sent the council to Stony Run. He was performing a rite nearby. When they came back the carnage was done.”

  “You don’t know for certain, Captain. A deserter would never speak with you.”

  “No,” Woolford admitted after a moment. “He wouldn’t.”

  Duncan bent over his pack and pulled out the high-domed hat he had secreted there, wrapped in a scrap of muslin. He tossed it to Woolford. “Why would Ramsey have this, hidden like a great treasure?”

  “Grenadier,” Woolford said as he turned the cap over and over in his hand. “The Forty-ninth. You lied about finding that match case?”

  “I found it, but with this hat in the Ramsey cellar. Where were the Forty-ninth Grenadiers last year?”

  “In the north. Lake George. Lake Champlain.” Woolford’s face darkened as he threw the cap back to Duncan, and he turned back toward the forest. “They’ll try before the moon gets higher, to use the dark,” he predicted.

  “We can jump in the river,” Duncan said, “swim away in the dark.”

  “They will have thought of that and will be watching. Right now they don’t know we are short of rounds. Drop in the water, and they will know for certain we could not shoot, even if we kept the rifles, for our powder will be wet. They have enough men to straddle the river and spear us like fish.”

  Duncan watched as Conawago lit a small fire then began tying dried grass around the ends of the arrows he had extracted from McGregor.

  “The brush at the bottom,” Duncan concluded. “You’re going to light fires. But there’s a gap.”

  “Exactly,” Woolford said in a flinty voice and lifted his rifle. “That’s where we greet them.”

  It happened exactly as the ranger planned. As Duncan watched in surprise, Conawago produced a long string, which he inserted into notches at the end of his staff, converting it into a bow. The old Indian waited until there was movement at the base, then lit the brush below with carefully aimed shots. With a thundering heart, Duncan watched their attackers move into the darkened gap and climb halfway up the slope before his companions opened fire. He reloaded with shaking hands, spilling precious powder, his gaze shifting often to the sharpened tomahawk lying on the rock beside him. Then there was silence. Below them someone moaned; the fires crackled and subsided. There were bullets left for only two more shots.

  Woolford and Conawago arranged their blades in front of them.

  “If you keep holding that ax so tightly,” the ranger warned Duncan, “your fingers won’t respond when it comes time to use them.”

  Duncan forced himself to set the weapon down and wiped the sweat from his palms. He gazed up at the moon, which had risen high enough to cast a silver glow over the hill. He had a strange sudden desire to be near the ocean. The McCallum clan chiefs almost always died on or near saltwater.

  By the end of the first hour, the waiting became unbearable. Duncan found himself shifting positions like a nervous child, then began to notice how differently his companions waited for the final onslaught. Woolford, ever the soldier, watched the shadows with a cool, treacherous anticipation. But Conawago had stopped watching the woods. He had found a small white flower growing out of a crack in the stone, glowing in a small patch of moonlight, and was studying it with a serene expression.

  As he watched the old Indian, Duncan found himself growing calmer, inching closer, watching the flower himself, watching the stars reflected in a small pool of rainwater on the ledge by the flower.

  “It thrives only in rocks and other
harsh places,” Conawago said of the flower as Duncan reached his side. “I found one like this when I was very young, and asked my mother why it would bloom in the night. She said that was a secret between it and the moon, from a time before man.”

  Duncan looked away for a moment as he realized he had also been studying the Indian’s face the same way Conawago had looked at the little silver pool. “I’m sorry,” he said clumsily. “It’s just that here we are, with two bullets left and. . ”

  “Here we are,” Conawago repeated when Duncan could not finish the sentence.

  “I don’t even know who you are.”

  “Men can only know one another by their actions.”

  “I don’t know who your people are.”

  The old Indian offered a sad smile and looked up at the stars. “It’s just another story of old clans fading away.”

  “You said they were called the Nipmucs, from Massachusetts.”

  “A very old and peaceful tribe,” Conawago said after a moment. “Our troubles began with the Dutch, who enticed us closer to the Hudson for trade, then gradually wore us down. There were wars, small wars that few took notice of. My people were finished by the time I was born, nothing but small family groups left to wander along the river, under the protection of the Mohawks and the Mahicans who were left. When I asked about our tribe, my mother said one day we would all be together again, that for now our family was our tribe. Then some Jesuits came and offered me a new life. They were kind men. They showed my mother the magic of written words, told her that if I could learn the European ways, I could protect what was left of our people. My mother said go with them for five years, that she and the family would not leave, they would be there at their camp by the river waiting when I returned.” Conawago looked at the flower in silence before continuing.