Eye of the Raven

by Eliot Pattison

  Duncan watched as worry mounted on the Frenchman’s face. “Do you recognize them?”

  “I knew someone . . .” the Frenchman murmured, his words trailing away.

  “There was a fine young man from Connecticut, named Cooper.” Reverend Macklin picked up the explanation. “Trying to make his way as a surveyor. He lingered a few months here, and in the little English settlement called Penn’s Creek across the river. He took up with the daughter of an Onondaga village. They showed great affection for one another . . .” the Moravian said awkwardly.

  Rideaux took over the story. “They gave offense to Reverend Macklin’s wife. She told the congregation she saw them swimming under the moonlight, bare as fish. Cooper promptly asked the good reverend to marry them so no one would think them sinners. The surveyor had the buttons made as a gift to his bride. Everyone laughed when they saw the fish.”

  Rideaux stared at the buttons in his hand, watching in silence as Duncan took them and returned them to his pouch.

  “She was not from any village,” Macklin reminded them. “She was from Skanawati’s village, from his own hearth.”

  Rideaux lifted one of the long nails. “And these?”

  “Used to nail the hands of the victims to their trees. One went into Cooper’s hand. He probably was still alive as they murdered his wife in front of him.”

  Rideaux’s face sagged. He stared at the nail, squeezing it until his knuckles grew white. “What do you want from me?” the Frenchman asked in a hollow voice.

  “Did you send this man to kill me?”

  “Like lots of the tribesmen, he appears every few weeks to wander about town. They called him Ohio George.”

  “Did you send him to kill me?” Duncan repeated.

  “No. I just want you to leave us alone. There are other ways of getting rid of you without committing such a sin.”

  “Like hiding your involvement with the escaped slaves. Like warning the merchant Waller to leave town. Like pretending you know nothing of intrigue over land claims.”

  “I did not warn Waller,” Rideaux said in a brittle voice. “As far as I know he is but doing his Christian duty in helping the slaves.”

  “You can either deal with us or else with two hundred vengeful settlers when they hear of Shamokin Indians brutally slaying surveyors. What do you know about this Ohio George?”

  “What I know,” came a new voice, “is that we should not speak over his dead body.” Moses was kneeling beside the corpse now, removing the lacrosse stick still clenched in his hand.

  Duncan conceded the point with a nod. “Does he have family here?”

  “Not likely. He’s a Delaware, from the Ohio. We will take him to the compound. His body should be cleaned for his journey to the other side.”

  It was a slow, silent procession up the hill, the body on a blanket carried at each of its corners. They set it on a trestle table in the yard of Rideaux’s compound. As an older woman brought water to wash the dead man, Rideaux gestured for Duncan to follow him back outside, leading him down the path to town. They stopped at the lean-to sheltering the smith’s forge. The Frenchman lifted a hammer left on the anvil where it lay beside half a dozen newly forged nails and extended it to Duncan. Confused, Duncan turned it over in his hands then understood as Rideaux held up one of the fresh nails. The head held a rough crosshatched pattern, identical to those used in the murders.

  “It’s just something the smith does, to distinguish his work. He smashes the heads with this hammer. I’ve never seen it elsewhere.”

  The striking end of the hammer, Duncan saw, was scored with crossed lines.

  “Anyone could have taken these nails from here,” Rideaux pointed out. “Settlers buy them. A passerby could lift them from a basket.”

  “Ohio George wasn’t acting alone. Someone here silenced him, not just because he failed in killing me, but because if he were captured he would have had much incriminating knowledge to divulge.” Duncan fixed Rideaux with an inquisitive gaze. “Is there anyone here who might have employment for a man like Ohio George, work that would take him west from time to time? Someone, perhaps, who would buy these nails from the smith?”

  “Not many can afford to buy nails. Pegs are used for most construction. Mostly the nails go into making heavy doors.” The Frenchman took a moment to contemplate the community. “There are merchants using the nails for making stronghouses to store their goods.”

  “Merchants,” Duncan ventured, “who may trade in the west, who would know about Europeans traveling on the frontier. Surveyors who bought supplies.”

  “Some hire Ohio Indians to help convey their goods to the western forts and trading posts.” Rideaux considered the town once more. “There is a shed behind one of Waller’s storehouses where some of them sleep when they are here.”

  Duncan bent with one of the nails and drew shapes in the soil, the five geometric shapes from Burke’s killing tree. “Do you recognize these?”

  His companion shrugged. “Secret signs. A code.”

  “Jesuits and spies use codes,” Duncan asserted.

  “Often,” Rideaux agreed. “But Jesuits use alphabet codes, keyed to a Bible passage. This is altogether different.”

  “It is not an Indian thing.”

  “Of course not. It is European. Secret societies use them. The Freemasons. The guilds.”

  “Where in America are Freemasons?”

  Rideaux shrugged again. “New York. Philadelphia. Virginia.”

  The shelter to which Rideaux and Moses led Duncan was a drafty lean-to fastened to the log storehouse behind the store they had visited earlier. They were a stone’s throw from the landing dock where boats bound for the settlement upriver at Wyoming boarded, and as Moses explored the shadows inside, Duncan watched a flatboat slowly wind its way upstream. In two days a fast canoe in that direction could reach Edentown, where Sarah Ramsey and her company of Scottish workers were building a new life.

  When he emerged a minute later Moses was herding a muscular Indian who was using a lacrosse racquet as a makeshift crutch. The young stranger spat curses at the older Indian, clutching a small clay ale pot tightly to his chest as he staggered toward a bench along the wall. He lowered the crutch and fingered a tattered shoulder pouch decorated with lewd figures, pushing it behind him as he sat. Moses motioned for Rideaux and Duncan to approach.

  “This sinner at first claimed he never heard of Ohio George,” Moses declared in a disapproving voice as the young Indian slopped more ale down his throat. “I told him he could then have no claim on the possessions of the dead man he had stuffed under his pallet, that we would gladly take them for the use of the church.”

  “He is an Ohio Indian as well?” Duncan asked.

  “Red Hand is Shawnee, from west of the Susquehanna,” Moses said. “I have known this one since he was a boy. His parents died of fever, and we brought him to the mission to live with us, but he always fled into the forest. He consorts with a band of renegades, most of them orphans who ran away from missionaries, ready to work for anyone who will buy them rum.” He shook the drunken Shawnee. “Did you kill Ohio George?” he demanded.

  Red Hand offered a drunken laugh. “He had no family,” he said with a sneer. “No one to complain.”

  The words, as good as a confession, startled Duncan at first. Then he realized that Red Hand was saying that in the tribal world there was no need to account for the killing, for there was no one to be held responsible to.

  Moses stared at the Shawnee with a cold fury. The Christian Indians took a very different view of murder.

  Duncan stepped into the lean-to, quickly surveying the tattered furs that hung on the walls, the bundles of cedar boughs used as pallets, the stringless bows and battered lacrosse sticks in one corner. Picking up a pack decorated with a faded pattern of concentric circles that was half-covered by a pallet, he took a step toward the door then paused. Kicking aside the boughs, he exposed a much smaller, crudely made case of heavy buckskin bearing
a similar pattern of circles.

  He carried both outside and dropped them in front of the drunken Shawnee. As he upended the contents of the pack on the ground the Indian began a low, whispered chant. The words, unintelligible to Duncan, lit a fire in Moses’ eyes. He snapped a command at Red Hand, who ignored him. Then to Duncan’s astonishment, the Christian Indian slapped the man, so hard it cracked open his lip.

  “He is without honor, this Shawnee!” Moses spat.

  “I don’t understand.” Duncan scanned the faces of his companions for an explanation.

  “He is invoking vengeful gods,” Rideaux explained, as Red Hand laughed at Moses, then touched his bleeding lip. His eyes flashed with defiance as he drew lines on his cheek with his own blood.

  “It is a sacred thing to invoke those spirits,” Moses said in a simmering voice. “Not for one who would kill his own mother for his next jug.”

  “What will you do, Chris—tian?” the Shawnee taunted Moses, drawing out the last syllables. “Your master forbids you striking another man. Run now, and beg forgiveness. Your white god makes you a woman!” he mocked.

  As he spoke Rideaux appeared from inside the lean-to, carrying a rifle. “This is too rich a gun for the likes of these,” he said. “It was hidden under the boughs along the wall.”

  Red Hand’s face clouded as Rideaux handed the gun to Duncan. It was a finely worked piece, with an elaborate carving of the owner’s initials on the stock. WB. He thrust the stock into Red Hand’s face. “Did you kill him? Did you kill Winston Burke?”

  Red Hand silently drained his pot of ale. Duncan studied the gun as Moses took it and leaned it against the wall. It meant one or both of the renegades had come from the Forbes Road, had probably been following them, and had no doubt warned Waller. It meant that Samuel Felton had lied to Duncan.

  Duncan kept a wary eye on the man on the bench as he sorted the possessions of Ohio George. A pair of tattered moccasins. A lacrosse ball, its hair stuffing hanging out a deep gash in one side. A broken bullet mold. A small oval-shaped piece of wood with several threads attached to it. A glass ball, perhaps an inch in diameter. A bundle of leather straps. Six more of the long nails with the crosshatched heads. A twist of tobacco. He lifted the tobacco and smelled it. It was neither the leaf cultivated by the tribes nor the cheap plug tobacco traded in sutlers’ stores, but an expensive leaf, the kind Winston Burke might have brought from his home in Virginia.

  As Duncan contemplated the meager possessions of the dead man, Moses probed them, then peered into the empty pouch. He saw the query on Duncan’s face. “Our missionaries have never been killed during their service with the tribes. But one has been missing, one of our only female missionaries, a longtime friend of the Macklin family who left Bethlehem two years ago for the Ohio country and was never seen again. We watch for any sign of her. The Reverend is leaving for a meeting with the church elders soon to discuss resuming the search for her.” As he spoke he shook the pouch again. A second, very small bag fell out onto the ground.

  When Duncan opened it and tilted it over his hand four silver buttons fell onto his palm. Two were worked with the same fish as those he had found at the Monongahela, two were embossed with crossed swords.

  “The dead Virginian,” he explained to his companions. “Had silver buttons cut off his waistcoat.” He reached into his own belt pouch and produced the button he had taken from Burke’s corpse. It was identical to the two with swords from Ohio George’s pouch.

  Duncan then began pulling papers from the separate, smaller case he had found hidden in the lean-to. Tattered letters from a lawyer in Philadelphia to Francis Townsend, hectoring for a debt. A small worn New Testament bearing Townsend’s name on the inside plate, which he handed to Moses. A broadside advertising a public display of Dr. Franklin’s experiments with natural fire, on the back of which was the beginning of a letter. Dear Catherine, it said in a careful hand. Fair weather makes for a quick journey. I look forward to my return with resources enough to hire carpenters.

  “This man Townsend has been to Shamokin more than once,” Moses said. “The last time as a surveyor, heading down the Warriors Path. He went west and never came back. A magistrate sent inquiries, but there was no trace of him.”

  Red Hand began to laugh.

  “Did you kill him too?” Duncan demanded. “Did Ohio George kill him?”

  “Not us,” the Shawnee crooned. “He said it was his job, to carry out punishment.”

  “Who? Who killed him?”

  Red Hand leaned forward, swaying back and forth as if he were going to be sick. “I was there. I saw him kill Townsend. Saw him stab Townsend.” The Shawnee made a screwing motion over his chest. “I put my mark on a paper that says so.”

  “Who?” Duncan shouted.

  “Skanawati.”

  The name shattered the air like a cannon shot.

  “Surely you must be—” Duncan began, but had no time to finish his sentence.

  The Indian leapt into action, slamming his makeshift crutch across Moses’ knees, kicking Rideaux’s thigh as he jumped up, no longer as drunk as he appeared. Both men dropped to the ground in obvious pain. Duncan made a futile leap for the prisoner, landing in the dirt as the Shawnee disappeared around the corner of the storehouse.

  The moon was high over the broad river when Duncan ventured out of the Moravians’ house, leaving the pallet he had been given by the hearth after Hadley and Van Grut had offered to stay with Mokie at Rideaux’s. He could not sleep, could not penetrate the mysteries that gnawed at him, could not even focus on them for the worry over his friend. Conawago had retreated back inside himself, leaving the cabin with murmured thanks for the evening meal shared by the Moravians but without another word to Duncan.

  He found the old Indian on the ledge that jutted out over the moonlit water and sat with him in silence for several minutes.

  “You must listen to me carefully, Duncan,” Conawago said at last. “I beg you to heed my words.”

  “No one’s words are more important to me,” Duncan replied, suddenly frightened by the frailness in his friend’s voice.

  “You must leave. Go back to Edentown. Hide somewhere from those who would throw you in prison. But leave this place, go anywhere but Philadelphia, where Ramsey will kill you. Leave the mysteries of the tribes to the tribes.”

  Duncan must leave him, Conawago was saying. “You know I am trying to help, to stop the killing, to stop the hanging.”

  “You only help to increase the pain.” It was, from his comrade and mentor, a stinging rebuke.

  Duncan could find no reply.

  “What that Frenchman says, about the hearts of the Indian and the hearts of the Europeans being different, it is right. It is not for you and me to pretend otherwise.” There was a wrenching tone of surrender in Conawago’s voice.

  “I have seen European and Indian marry, build families together,” Duncan offered, his voice tight. “The Moravians bring comfort to the hearts of some in the tribes.” Even as he spoke them Duncan’s words felt hollow. For that which Conawago invoked there were no words.

  “You will bring more death, Duncan. The spirits have their own ways of dealing with evil. I worry that you interfere with them.”

  “There is too much death,” Duncan said, a hoarseness rising in his throat. “My people became like the leaves on the autumn tree. I do not want the clans of the woods to die too.”

  “I think what you and I want matters little to the fate of the tribes.”

  For a moment, Duncan wanted to weep. He could not bear to think this was the end of the life he had started only months before, the end of his time with the remarkable old man.

  They sat for a long time, gazing into the stars reflected on the river.

  “Will you tell me one thing, Conawago? What happened in the water today?”

  His friend gave a trembling moan. He was silent so long Duncan assumed he would not answer.

  “I had never been deep in the water like that
,” Conawago finally said. “Not like the land world. So cold. Dark and yet not dark. I found a gateway to the other side.”

  The hairs stood up on Duncan’s neck. “Gateway?”

  “My mother was there, Duncan. I saw her plain, looking as she had the day I was taken from her as a boy. She was smiling, gesturing for me to come to her. She held a basket, like she was waiting for me to go gather summer berries.”

  The realization of Conawago’s meaning stabbed Duncan like an icy blade. “You are not going to die, my friend. More years lie ahead. The tribes need you more than ever. I need you.”

  “My mother needs me. I think there is trouble on the other side. Maybe that is where the fate of the tribes is being determined, maybe that is where I can best help.” Conawago turned to Duncan. “That day at Ligonier,” he added, “it was my fate to die. I was ready to cross over. That baby boy had been born to take my place. Skanawati should not have stepped in. He thought he should help me, protect me because of what you and I were doing. But he is more important to the tribes than some dried-up old Nipmuc. I cheated death, don’t you see, and by my doing so bring the death of a chief who is like a saint to these people, the only chieftain with a chance of leading our people back to the old ways. At Ligonier death was cheated by a lie. Today it was cheated by the happenstance that you were near. It is wrong to trick the spirits.”

  Even had Duncan been able to think of a reply, the words would not have gotten past the great swelling in his throat.

  “We will meet again, Duncan. I will visit you from the other side.” The Indian rose and descended the rock. Ghosts, Conawago had once told him, revealed themselves only to closest family members.

  A tear ran down Duncan’s cheek. As if it were dispatched from the spirit world a large canoe appeared and nudged the pebble beach below. He watched as though in a dream as Conawago slipped into the vessel and four shadow warriors paddled him onto the silvery water.