He goggled stupidly at the door. A plank splintered, and for a moment he could see the bright blade of an axe, driven halfway through it. Violently the axe was torn free and out of sight, and another blow fairly shattered the door. The bar across it burst from its fastenings as though under the impact of a battering ram. Open flew the door, and there framed within the oblong stood the gigantic form of the renegade Jipi.
In a bit of time that could not have lasted more than a tick of a clock, Mark looked at the towering Cherokee, saw him plain in every line and feature. Jipi half-hunched his great shoulders, and bent his boulder of a head as though to come in under the lintel of the door. His shaggy black hair was bound at the temples with a pale thong of buckskin, his face was made hideous with blotches of blue paint around the eyes, black and red strips on the cheeks. His great naked chest looked as broad as the doorway itself. In both hands he clutched a mighty double-bitted axe, such as might be used to fell great trees, and it seemed no more than a hatchet in those great ridged paws. He saw Mark, too, and his mouth opened wide in a scream of murderous, victorious joy.
Something moved beside Mark’s ear. It was Celia’s white hand, moving past his shoulder to aim one of the heavy pistols. Mark heard the flat click as she drew back the hammer.
But Celia never fired. Jipi suddenly whipped himself erect on his toes, and shuddered frantically in every huge limb. His eyes started, wide and utterly astonished, in their surrounding circles of blue paint. Forth from his chest jutted a lean shaft with a barbed head.
And Jipi fell inward upon his face, with a crash that shook the timbers. Between his shoulder blades showed the feather of the arrow that had struck him down.
By the mill wheel outside stood Tsukala, his bow still lifted in his hand.
CHAPTER XII
March to the Rescue
Mark MADE a sudden move with the powder horn in his hand. He primed the pan of his rifle and snapped it shut. Then he hurled himself into a great leap and another. The second carried him clear above Jipi’s body and out at the door.
At the river’s edge he saw Indians, four or five, but all of them were running. As they ran, a gun went off from the road to the west of the mill, and a yell rang out. That was no Indian war whoop, but the loud “Hi!” of an American soldier, such a battle cry as Mark’s father had told him had been raised by Carolina troops in the war against the British.
Mark took swift aim at one of those fleeing Indians and fired, but too hastily. The noise of the report seemed to hasten that Indian’s running, and he floundered into the river, wading in wild, clumsy haste for the other shore. Tsukala whipped another arrow from his quiver, notched it on the string and sent it winging. It struck through the bare arm of another wading warrior, who dropped the gun he carried into the middle of the stream.
"Hourra!” came the shouting voice of Bram
Schneider, also out in the open. Schneider paused to drag Jipi’s silent form clear of the doorway and the path outside. Then he charged down into the road, also firing his musket at the departing enemy, and missing his target as Mark had done.
Leland Stoke trotted swiftly into Mark’s view from eastward. Stoke made swift play with powder horn, ramrod, and bullet to reload. Mark and Tsukala sprang down to join Schneider on the road, and Stoke came up with them. All gazed into the trees on the other side of the river, into which the Indians had hurriedly plunged.
“They run,” said Tsukala, as quietly as though he had met the others for some sort of everyday matter. “Run fast. All are gone. They are beaten. They will run far.”
Mark started toward the water, as though to pursue. But Stoke caught his sleeve and held him.
“Nay, lad, let them begone,” counseled Stoke. “As I think, they’ll not stop until they’re well out of breath. But if you should press them, they might turn again and fight you, there among the trees where they could hide and do you mischief.”
“How many in there?” Tsukala asked Mark, pointing with the end of his bow toward the mill.
“Only Celia is left inside,” said Mark. “There, she has come to the door.”
“Brave lass!” cried Stoke. “So only three of you, and one a young maid, held against so many? What injuries did you take?”
“The Injuns did not bend vun hair on our heads,” said Schneider proudly. He looked at Tsukala. “Sehr danken—thank you, mein goot friend. You shot your arrow into that big giant, just in time.”
“My thanks, too,” said Mark to Tsukala. “But even as your shaft smote him, Celia was pointing her pistol, loaded to the muzzle with slugs. She’d have filled him full of lead.”
Tsukala studied the trees where their adversaries had vanished. “Ahi, they have gone deep in there,” he said. “You fought them well, young warrior.” He gazed back up the ridge. “I know where four of them lie still, and others were wounded.”
Mark faced Stoke. “What has been happening elsewhere, sir?” he demanded. “When did you come to us? Was there fighting at your cave home, and is all well there?”
“Nay, not an Indian showed himself to us at the cave,” replied Stoke. “We could hear the guns here at the mill, and my son and I and the two women made ready to defend ourselves. But none threatened, I say, and we stayed in safety until Tsukala called to us. I came out to him, and then here. But let him tell the tale, he knows more than I.”
Thus prompted, Tsukala spoke, simply and calmly.
After leaving Mark early in the morning, he had scouted the woods south of the Black Willow River. He had moved with great watchfulness from place to place, wary lest any of the renegades be lying in ambush. Some miles to the south and well past the other place where he and Mark had seen Jipi’s companions, he had found tracks and had approached a camp among some hills, where many Indians were making ready for war.
“It was hard to count them, but there were more than three tens,” he said. “Nearly another ten more than three. No women, no children, no old men.” “Nearly forty fighting braves,” nodded Mark. “Then what? Here, Celia, come and listen.”
She, too, joined the group.
“They had two chiefs,” said Tsukala. “Jipi,” and he waved a hand toward where the giant lay still. “And that white man, the one you call Moxley. He and Jipi made talk to the others. I was not close enough to hear, but I could see they talked of war. Jipi struck his tomahawk against a tree, so hard that it broke. Moxley shook his hand, and gave him a present—that big axe you saw. Then they all went north, spread out among the trees, with faces painted and bows and guns in their hands.”
“You scouted them well, Tsukala,” Stoke praised him, but Tsukala shook his head and looked slightly apologetic.
“I tried to get in front of them, to go fast and bring word,” he said, “but they spread out in the woods, between me and the river. I knew I could not get around them or through them without being seen. So I followed along behind—slowly, slowly.” He moved his palm close to the ground, in the Indian sign for a furtive creeping. “Came to where they saw the mill and went to strike at it.”
He told of how he approached the river cautiously, and reached it only when the fighting had started and was well under way. Slipping along the south bank, once climbing a tree, he made out the positions of several of the besieging force, but could not find a place where he could cross unseen and begin to shoot on his own account. He said that he watched for a long time, and was able to count the destruction wrought by the gunfire from inside the mill.
“You fought well in there, young warrior,” he commented to Mark. “It was like more guns than three inside there.”
“Did you see Quill Moxley?” Mark asked.
“Yuh. And I heard him, too, talking to you. You spoke bravely to him. Then I saw him go up on the ridge. He left those Indians. I knew he was going to the fight at the tavern.”
“And what then, Tsukala?” asked Schneider.
“Then I crossed the river farther to the west. Went to the cave, found no fighting there. I came back, and Stoke with
me. I went around to the east, and just in time.”
“In time to finish Jipi,” said Mark.
“Yuh. I am a Cherokee, I owed him that.”
Then Tsukala straightened up. “Ahi, I hear fighting.”
Off to eastward, more noise of the distant shooting.
“They’re trying to capture the tavern,” Mark said. “How many do you think are there at the tavern, Tsukala?”
“I think ten—maybe twelve—fought here. The rest all went that way,” and his hand pointed its heel eastward. “More than two tens of them.”
“Durwell must have reached the tavern and set them on their guard,” Stoke said. “Otherwise, so many Indians would have cut up everybody unawares.”
“Can we not go and take those Indians unawares ourselves?” Mark asked.
“Yuh/' said Tsukala. “Come. Bring your guns, all your guns.”
They all went into the living quarters of the mill. Tsukala gratefully accepted a chunk of bread and a cut of roast meat from Celia.
“I am hungry,” he said, taking a bite. “Those others, the bad hearts, were hungry, too. Maybe that is why they ran when Jipi fell. Their bad hearts became faint hearts.”
Celia picked up one of the spare rifles, and Mark swiftly tied a length of line to the other and slung it behind his back. Bram Schneider stuck the two big pistols into his belt.
“Wessah,” Schneider addressed his cat, “you must stay and be guard here.”
Mark, Celia, and Schneider also hung themselves with extra powder horns and bullet pouches. Going outside, Stoke and Schneider dragged the bodies of Jipi and the Indian on the milling platform down to the river and pushed them in.
“Sir, I think you should take command of our party,” said Mark to Stoke as he returned. “You were an officer in the war against the English, and we can look to you for proper direction.”
“Not I,” demurred Stoke emphatically. “Not when we have here a leader that any man might well follow in this sort of forest fighting. Hark you, Tsukala, I do call on you to be our chief.”
“No,” said Tsukala. “I am a medicine man.”
“But you are a brave warrior, and you know all these Indian sleights and devices better than any of us others,” Stoke insisted. “Be you our commander, and I for one will engage to follow and obey you like a true man.”
“I vote with Captain Stoke, Tsukala,” said Mark.
“Me also,” added Schneider.
Tsukala stood and listened to the remote sound of firing. Then he looked around the group of his comrades, and a smile touched his brown face, ever so slightly.
“Ahi, I will lead,” he consented. “Now, we go there to the east. We leave this place, and we will cross the river when we have come away from it.”
“Lead on, and we will follow you,” said Mark.
Tsukala turned without another word and paced off along the road. Mark moved at one side of the road, Stoke at the other. Between them walked Schneider and Celia. They completed about a mile in silence, and then Tsukala stretched out his arm to show them where a jumble of rocks and trunks made a sort of rough causeway across the Black Willow.
“We can go over there and be safe,” Tsukala said. “Those bad hearts might turn and come back to the mill, but they will not have come to this place. We will leave them behind.”
He went stepping lightly from rock to rock, and on the other side stood close to a tree, arrow on his bowstring, while he gazed this way and that. Mark came over at Tsukala’s heels, and also took up a watchful position. Stoke and Celia and Schneider made their way in turn. Tsukala faced the east again.
“There is a trail on this side, but do not go on it,” he said. “Maybe the bad hearts have a watcher for that trail. We will go among the trees, and I go first.
Then young warrior,” and he touched Mark’s arm, “then you others. You, Stoke, walk last. Look back when you walk. Watch for those other bad hearts following.”
“Don’t fear, you may count on me,” said Stoke.
They resumed their walk toward the sound of occasional firing, louder now. Tsukala kept his forward position, half a dozen paces ahead of Mark. He seemed to flit from tree to tree, and Mark, trying to imitate Tsukala’s stealthy advance, congratulated himself that his own progress was cautious and quiet. Behind Mark came Celia, and she, too, was making little or no noise.
They finally approached the area of forest which Mark knew from long hunting experience to be near the river across from the Jarrett homestead. The sun was sliding to westward, the afternoon was waning. Tsukala brought them close to the water, and stopped them where they could see out.
“Ahi, your home has not been hurt,” he whispered to Mark. “If they had put fire to it, we would see smoke.”
“I rejoice that we see none,” returned Mark thankfully.
“Maybe danger here,” amplified Tsukala. “We go across the river now, one at a time. Here, the water is not deep. Everybody come close and hear me.”
They gathered around Mark and him, Stoke very stern and grim, Schneider bluff and expectant, Celia pale but steady.
“Hold your guns, ready to shoot,” said Tsukala. “I go across first of all.”
“Nay, Tsukala, let me go first,” said Mark. “If anybody is over there watching for us, he will shoot. You had better be here, to direct the fight if needed.”
“Brave heart,” Tsukala praised him. He stood up behind a pine tree and half-drew the arrow on his bowstring. “Then you go,” he granted. “Ready, you others. When young warrior goes over there, he will stop behind that big tree, the one you call an oak. He will make ready to fight. When he is across, I go next. Then you, Stoke. After that, you,” and he nodded at Schneider. “Then the girl with sun hair.”
“Be careful, Mark,” besought Celia in a low voice.
"Ahi, young warrior, do what the sun-haired girl tells you,” Tsukala lectured Mark. “Quick now, go.”
Mark waited no longer, but moved quickly into the open, to the river, and went sprinting across the shallows. He headed for the oak and knelt behind its broad roots, rifle rested against its bark to the right to command the leafage beyond.
Hurried splashing, and Tsukala was there, too, dropping to a crouch behind bushes. Then Stoke joined them. Schneider came across the water, and Celia last of all.
“Spread out,” Tsukala ordered, extending his arms left and right. “You men, each side of me—move apart, twice the height of a man. You, sun-haired girl, keep behind us.”
They formed the skirmish line. Mark was at the left, then Tsukala, then Schneider, with Stoke at the far right. Celia brought up the rear.
“Move,” said Tsukala.
They stole gingerly along through thickets and clumps, keeping their formation. They came to the edge of Mrs. Jarrett’s garden patch. Beyond it, they could see the corn cribs, the shed that was a stable for the horses and the cow. The Jarrett cabin stood like a brown block among trees beyond the smaller sheds.
“Young warrior,” said Tsukala under his breath. “I crawl now, toward your house. You come, too. You others, follow behind, but stay away from us till the right time.”
A shot sounded, seemingly from close at hand. Another replied to it. That must be at the tavern. Tsukala cast himself flat and went creeping among the trees like a great brown mink. Mark handed the extra rifle to Stoke and threw himself down, too. He inched his way along on elbows and knees, keeping his body as close to the ground as he could manage.
And still they went unchallenged. Mark and Tsukala approached the very edge of the Jarrett yard. Beyond, the brush was cleared and only a few shade trees were left to grow.
Tsukala jerked his head in a gesture to beckon Mark close to him. Side by side they crawled to where a tree had fallen and a great bristle of leafy shoots had sprung up from its half-rooted stump. Tsukala lay low and peered carefully through these. Mark squirmed under a spreading laurel to where he, too, could see into the yard.
He was looking straight toward th
e front of his house, at perhaps twenty yards’ distance. Two Indians were in sight there, both with guns. One stood and stared intently in the direction of the tavern beyond more trees. The other squatted on the sill of the open door, and he had one of his mother’s quilts, a patchwork of green and white squares, caught around him like a loose robe. He gnawed at a piece of meat stuck to the point of his knife. Plainly these outlaws had been plundering the house.
Even as Mark’s blood grew hot at that realization, a third Indian came running into view toward the house. He gestured and pointed, as though calling them to the tavern. The Indian on the door log rose, leaned in and grunted something. A comrade came out. In his hand he carried a jar, and Mark recognized it as the sort in which his mother and Celia had put their preserved berries.
All four Indians started away across the yard.
A sharp buzz in the air, and Tsukala’s arrow leaped into the open. The man with the quilt around him sprang high, then went down. He struggled on the ground, and the fabric flapped like the wings of a green and white beetle.
Mark sprang to his feet, aimed, and sent a bullet at the one who carried the jar of preserves, then yelled like an Indian himself to see the thief go down.
Almost at once, a volley burst around him. Stoke was firing. So were Schneider and Celia. A third Indian fell, and the fourth dashed away like a scared rabbit.
CHAPTER XIII
The Blow from the Ridge
“QUICK!” CRIED Tsukala to them. “Hurry, before that man tells his friends!”
He was off, even as he spoke, running swiftly in pursuit of the survivor. Mark paused only to gesture at Celia with his rifle.
“They’ve all gone from the house,” he shouted at her. “Stay here, Celia. Go inside and fasten the door shut—stay out of harm’s way.”
Schneider and Stoke were running in the direction Tsukala had taken. Mark also started running, caught up with the two older men and in half a dozen paces ran past them with all his strength and speed.
Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1966 Page 10
