Woods Runner

by Gary Paulsen

  A large clearing popped up in front of Samuel now. It was late afternoon, almost evening, and the sun slanted from the west behind him into the clearing.

  It was another stroke of luck. The clearing had been turned into a large encampment, filled with Indians, some British soldiers in red uniforms and, nearly a quarter of a mile away, freight wagons hooked up to horses.

  Samuel slid into the underbrush. He crawled farther back where he couldn’t be seen. Unfortunately he couldn’t see, either, and he squatted in the thick foliage and tried to remember what he’d seen.

  Three wagons ready to go out. Ten or fifteen soldiers, including three officers on horses, and ten or fifteen Indians.

  He shook his head. No. Not so many soldiers. Seven or eight. And fewer Indians. Eight or nine.

  One large fire in the center of the clearing, one smaller one closer to the wagons. A group of people huddled there.

  The captives.

  There hadn’t been time to see them clearly and they were too far away for him to see if his mother and father were in the group.

  In a rope pen near the wagons were one or two horses, three or four oxen, maybe a milk cow; there was also a spit set up over the larger fire with some kind of big animal cooking.

  Which meant they were going to be here for some time, perhaps the night.

  He settled slowly back on his haunches, careful not to move the brush around him.

  He had caught up to them.

  There was a chance his mother and father were with that group of captives. He still had no plan to rescue them. Everything he’d done was just to catch up, see if they were still alive. Could they be here? He hadn’t come across their bodies on the trail, and there were captives by the fire. For the moment, that was enough.

  The plan would come later.

  It would be dark soon; there was still no moon. Now he was astonished that it had only been forty or so hours since he’d returned from the hunt. His whole life, everything in it and around it, was different now, torn and gutted and forever changed from all that it had been, and it would never be the same.

  It would be dark soon.

  And in the dark, he thought, with no moon, in the near pitch-dark of starlight, there might be possibilities.

  He had no plan.

  But it would be dark soon.

  And just then, as he settled back to wait and think on some way to get to the captives without being discovered—the whole world blew up.

  Warfare

  The British procedure when fighting was to march at the foe in a close line, with two or three ranks of men. The front rank would fire at fifty or sixty yards, then drop back and reload while the second rank stepped forward and fired, dropping back and reloading while the back rank came forward and fired.

  This “rolling volley” had the effect of creating a kind of mass firepower. The weapons were very simple, but it was almost impossible to stand against the line when the men grew close, quit firing altogether and charged, screaming. It took a special kind of courage to stand ready when a line of howling men ran at you with bayonets aimed at your stomach. Many times, American soldiers turned and ran rather than face what the British army called the Wall of British Steel.

  CHAPTER

  8

  The natives began whooping and dancing around the large campfire, firing their muskets in the air in celebration.

  Samuel crept out, slowly, until he could partially see what was going on. He started to move back under cover when there was a sudden increase in the racket. And the sound was different.

  The Indians had been firing in the air as they danced, which caused the explosions to go up and away. They were firing smoothbore muskets, weapons that made a muffled barking sound. But this new sound had the sharper, cracking quality of higher-velocity rifles.

  Samuel crept back out to the edge and saw that the shots had come from the north side of the clearing, where another trail came in.

  Six or eight shots. Great clouds of black-powder smoke came rolling out of the forest. A pause to reload, then eight more shots.

  The Indians and British soldiers were stunned. A few Indians and one soldier went down, probably dead. Several others were wounded and hobbled into the brush for cover.

  But the Indians and British recovered and returned fire. Samuel was jarred by two important facts: First, whoever was attacking, this might end in the rescue of his parents. Second, he should help them.

  He moved to the clearing near the trail, raised his rifle, cocked it and, without thinking of the enormity of what he was doing, aimed at the nearest British soldier. He was less than fifty yards away. The German silver of Samuel’s front sight settled on the red uniform. He set the first trigger and was moving his finger to the hair trigger when he heard a noise behind him.

  He wheeled, his rifle coming around in time for him to see the two Indians who had nearly caught him earlier, running straight at him.

  “Wha—” Half a word, then one Indian, the one farther away, leveled his musket and fired. Samuel felt the ball graze his cheek. Without thinking, his rifle at his hip, he touched the hair trigger and, in slow motion, felt the rifle buck, saw the small hole appear in the Indian’s chest. Then, through a cloud of smoke from his weapon, he watched the Indian fall as he saw the other Indian swing a tomahawk in a wide arc. He knew he couldn’t raise his rifle in time to block the blow. The tomahawk was coming at his head and he tried to duck, but the white-hot pain exploded as the side of the tomahawk smashed into his forehead.

  And then, nothing.

  Wounds

  Untreated battle injuries often led to gangrene, which causes the body to literally rot away, turning first green, then black, from infection that travels rapidly. Because antibiotics were unavailable in the eighteenth century, amputation was the usual treatment. Due to the horrific odor of gangrene, surgeons could smell the patient and make an accurate diagnosis.

  If the patient was not lucky enough to benefit from amputation, maggots would be introduced into the wound in an attempt to aid healing. They would eat away the infection.

  Barring the surgical removal of body parts or the use of parasites, doing absolutely nothing and letting the patient die was the only option at the time.

  CHAPTER

  9

  Strange dreams.

  Visions of unreality.

  Endless screams that started with low grunts and became more and more shrill until they cut his soul …

  Dreams of his mother, dressed all in buckskins, ladling some kind of thick stew with a wooden spoon into a wooden bowl, chewing tobacco and spitting off to the side while she held the bowl out, shaking her head.

  “He ain’t anywhere near right yet.” She spit her wad of tobacco juice out again. “Brains scrambled to hell and gone …”

  Then a trapdoor came down, a lid, something thick and dark, and there was no light at all, just blessed darkness and sleep, sleep, sleep … and more screams.

  No sense of time. Once he tried to remember his name and fought with it for a minute or a day or a week or ten years. He couldn’t tell.

  More dreams. Scattered. His mother, this time wrapped in a blanket with stringy black hair hanging down at the sides of her head while she chewed an obnoxious cud. She disgorged it, slapped it on his head and tied it on with a filthy rag, spitting more tobacco juice out and nodding. “Got to get the pizen out or she’s going to rot on him.”

  It was as if his eyes never really opened, as if he saw everything through closed lids, and the images that swirled through his mind were so mixed that they became a blur.

  Night, day, night, day—light and darkness seemed to flop and flow over each other. Pictures would stick for a moment and then go.

  A horse, then a cow, then his mother leaning down, still in the dirty blanket, greasy black hair hanging down the sides of her head, raising the poultice and grinning, spitting more tobacco juice. “Coming clean now,” she said, “clear pus, looks clean as springwater, all the yelle
r gone.”

  And then bouncing, incredibly rough bouncing, as if someone were jumping on a bed while he was trying to sleep. He would pass out in pain, rolling waves of pain.

  Finally a picture stopped, just stopped in front of his eyes, in front of his mind. Locked in.

  It was dark, or night, and he was on some kind of wooden frame lying on the ground. A fire burned nearby and when he opened his eyes wide, the light from the fire seemed to shove a lance into the middle of his head. He grunted in pain. He closed his eyes and waited for the rolling pictures to begin again. When they didn’t, he opened his eyes, but only in a slit.

  The image was the same. A bed frame of some kind, a fire, and this time, less pain from the light. As he watched, an arm came out of nowhere and put a piece of wood on the fire, then withdrew.

  He tried to move his head and see where the arm went but the pain was so intense he nearly lost consciousness. He lay back and closed his eyes, opened them again when the pain receded.

  “Where … who …?” The words pealed in his mind like a bell, echoing around inside his head.

  A figure appeared next to the fire. Not his mother but a young man with stringy black hair and a cheek full of tobacco juice. He leaned down, his face close to Samuel’s. “You in there righteous or are you going away again?”

  “I’m … I’m here. Who are you?”

  “John. John Cooper, but most just call me Coop.”

  “Where …?”

  “Long story, that. We be about twelve miles from where you got that egg on your head. Twelve miles in distance, more’n that in time.”

  “When … I don’t remember … Some Indians. I think I shot at one and then … nothing. Why did I shoot at an Indian?”

  “Cain’t tell. We come on these Iroquois and some redcoats. We’d already seen what they took and done back at Miller’s Crossing, so we snuck up proper and took them on.”

  “I remember. You were shooting. You say ‘we,’ where are the others?”

  “Asleep. I’m the night watch tonight, plus I’ve been doctoring you and I thought you might lose your light during the night. You been breathing like an old pump. I guess you was just sucking air hard because you didn’t die. Course it could still happen. I had a cousin got kicked in the head by a mule—they’s fractious, mules—and he lived for nigh on two months ’fore he lost his light. He never talked none except now and again a kind of moan—like somebody stepping on a duck. Then he just up and died.”

  Samuel closed his eyes, felt a spinning. Then, as if a fog were lifted, it all came back.

  “I was tracking Ma and Pa. They … I mean the redcoats, the Indians … hit our place while I was looking for bear. They killed most everybody but took my parents and a few others captive.”

  Coop nodded. “We saw them, all around a fire. Ropes tyin’ ’em together.”

  “What happened to them?”

  Coop shrugged. “Wasn’t much of a fight. We fired once, reloaded, laid out another round, and they ran. Them redcoats had wagons already hooked up and they piled the captives in the wagons and lit out. We couldn’t shoot no more for fear of hitting the captives. The Indians just drifted away, like smoke. That would have been that except one of them put a musket ball in Paul. It was in his gut—awful place, that. We knew he was going to die—ain’t nobody comes back from a belly wound—and kept waiting for it, but he made four days. He gave up his light last night. No, night before. Died screaming. It was bad. Surprised it didn’t bring you out of your stupor, the screaming. Kept everybody up all night.”

  Samuel closed his eyes again, trying to put numbers together. Died one, two days ago, after making four days; if a belly wound took four days to kill and it happened the day of the fight but Paul died two days ago … “How long since they took the captives? Since the fight?”

  “Five, six days. You been out six days. We like to not found you and when we did, we almost left you. Thought you was with the raiders.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “Well, you wasn’t with us, so we thought you was with them. But Carl did some thinking on it—Carl’s my brother and he’s the one to think on things—and said look how messed up your head was where they clubbed you and look at the bullet hole in the Indian you killed—that’s a honey of a little rifle you got—and how could you be with them and still get clubbed and shoot one of them, so we took you with us.”

  “I’ve been out six days?”

  “Closer to seven, counting the night.”

  “And did you say we’d come twelve miles?”

  Coop nodded. “First three days—no, four—we let you to lay. Everybody thought you would die and there wasn’t no sense dragging you. Then there was Paul, with his belly wound. If we tried to move him he would scream like a panther. Then we rigged up a drag and started to pull you back of one of them oxen they left behind when they ran.”

  “All the bumping.”

  Coop nodded, spit tobacco juice in the fire and listened to it hiss. “We couldn’t stay too long and thought you could die just as well dragging as you could laying up somewhere. If we’d left you, something would have come along and ate you, so … here you are.”

  “My head …”

  Coop nodded. “Good cut from that ’hawk. Carl took some deer sinew he had and an old needle he carries for fixings and sewed it up right pert’. He said in case you lived wouldn’t be much of a scar. Across your forehead.” Coop smiled and with some pride added, “It come on to having green pus and everybody knows that’s bad, so I made up a spit and ’baccy poultice and tied it on with a piece of rag. Pus cleared up in two days.”

  “So I’ve been laying for six days?”

  Another nod. “Coming on seven.”

  “Well, how …” With a start, Samuel realized he didn’t have any pants on underneath the coarse blanket that covered him. “How come I’m not all messed up?”

  “We took your pants off. Got them wrapped in a blanket pack with your rifle. Indian must have been in a hurry or he would have took it, sweet little shooter like that. Also got your possibles bag and powder horn. What you feel under your rear is fresh grass. Anytime you messed we just threw the old grass away and pulled in a half a foot of fresh new grass. Slick as a new calf, or maybe slick as a baby’s bottom.”

  “Maybe I should put my leggings on.”

  “Only if you ain’t going out of your head again.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Suits me. I was the one having to get new grass all the time. You ain’t et nothing other than a little broth I got down you one time and some water now and again. Man can go long time without food, no time at all without he has some water.”

  “I’m starving,” Samuel said automatically, but with the words came the feeling and he realized he was as hungry as he’d ever been.

  “You’d ought to drink something soft first.” Coop handed him a wooden bowl with a mixture of broth and meat. “Go slow. This is from some salted ox they was cooking when we jumped them.”

  Samuel took the bowl. He tried to drink slowly, but as the taste and smell hit him he couldn’t help gulping at it, meat and all, so fast that he gagged and threw up.

  “Slow,” Coop repeated, coming back with a blanket roll and putting it on the ground next to Samuel. “You’ll founder, you don’t go slow.”

  Samuel started over carefully. There was silence as he ate, chewing completely before swallowing, small bites, small swallows.

  It’s like fire, he thought, when you’re cold. Fire moving through your body. He ate the first bowl, handed it to Coop and watched him refill it, this time with broth and chunks of glistening fat as well as meat.

  This second bowl he drank and ate more slowly than the first, and while he ate he made a mental list of questions to ask when his stomach was full.

  Why are you here? How many of you are there? Where are you going? Is there any way you can help me find my mother and father? Are you, will you, can you, do you … questions roaring through his m
ind.

  He finished eating.

  He lay back.

  He opened his mouth to ask the first question and his eyes closed at the same instant and he was immediately asleep.

  And the last thing he thought as he went under was that he still hadn’t put his pants on.

  American Spirit

  Although poorly trained and weakly led and improperly fed—so badly that soldiers sometimes had to eat their shoes—the Americans took comfort from fighting on home soil and usually had much higher morale than the British. While they were often outnumbered and fought with inferior equipment, this spirit had an enormous effect and they took the phrase “morale is to fighting as four is to one” to heart on the battlefields.

  CHAPTER

  10

  This time the sounds of men coughing and axes chopping wood for the fire awakened Samuel. He opened his eyes—the pain was much less—and saw that it was daybreak. Men were moving all around him.

  He started to roll, but the head pain stopped him, as well as the sudden memory that he had no pants on. The bedroll was next to him where Coop had put it. He snaked his pants out, pulled them on and fastened them with the leather cord around the waist.

  The pain in his head had abated; it only jabbed if he moved suddenly. The wound felt tight, as if someone were pulling the top of his scalp together.

  When he unrolled the blanket, his rifle half fell out and he saw that the lock had dirt jammed around the flint and pan, pushing up the striker plate, or frizzen, so the rifle was not able to fire.

  The men were making fire, tying bedrolls. One man had what looked to be a permanently bent left arm held up at a slight angle. He was sitting on the ground cleaning his rifle. It made Samuel feel embarrassed that his own lock was so dirty. He found his possibles bag in the blanket roll. This was a pouch with the powder horn attached that hung around his neck, where he carried odds and ends of equipment for cleaning and firing his rifle. Inside, he had a tiny piece of steel wire. After blowing the dirt out of the pan and frizzen and flint, he used the wire to clear the touch hole, which fed the jet of flame from the pan into the powder charge. Then he used an oily rag to clean the whole area and put some finely ground black powder into the pan. This was the ignition powder that the flint-metal sparks would fire into the powder charge. He closed the frizzen over the pan, eased the hammer to half cock, safety, and set the rifle aside.