Jamie made up his mind. He would not attempt to return to the area where he used to live. What would be the point? He had no family left. He would listen to the older people of the tribe talk, and more importantly, warriors who had returned from recent raids, and try to find out where the nearest town was. He would listen carefully, and memorize any landmarks they might mention. He had to know for certain how to get to the Ohio River. For once there, he could make it to freedom. He just knew he could.
His days were busy ones now, for Tall Bull began his instructions on the art of being a Shawnee warrior. Jamie was very young for this harsh and uncompromising study, but Tall Bull puffed with pride when he was with the boy. How many men could say they had a son who, no more than a child, could kill a deer that weighed double the boy’s weight and drag it home? How many men could boast that their son had faced down wolves, and won? And Tall Bull also kept picking away at any scab that grew over the wound on Jamie’s chest so that a scar would remain forever.
“People will always want to see the scar where you battled wolves and won,” he told Jamie. “It is something to be proud of.”
Jamie had stopped trying to tell Tall Bull that he had received the slight wound quite by accident. The black wolf had been afraid of him and had lost its balance and fell over on his back. Kicking out with its legs, one paw had struck Jamie, ripping his shirt and scratching his flesh.
Jamie had yelled in pain and the wolves had become frightened and ran back about fifty yards. It was no major thing to Jamie. Actually, he’d felt sorry for the hungry animals, for it had been a hard winter. But he sure wasn’t going to argue with Tall Bull about it.
Jamie took to the bow as if he had been born to it. Tall Bull made him a much better bow than the one Jamie had made, and before the summer was over, he was the best shot in the Shawnee town, for his age group, and even better than some of the men, which did not set well at all with those warriors. Jamie could read the looks on their faces, but none vocalized their unhappiness. To do so would incur the wrath of Tall Bull, and none among them wanted that.
By the time Jamie was ten, he was very tall for his age and very strong. He could run and jump and wrestle with the best of the boys. As a hunter, he had no equal among his age group and even those several years older. He brought back to the lodge more than his share of game.
The hatred that Little Wolf felt for him had deepened, but only Little Wolf, his band of friends, and Jamie knew that. Inside the lodge, it was all brotherly love and good feelings. Deer Woman suspected that all was not wonderful, but she maintained her silence concerning her suspicions. Tall Bull did not have a clue. He knew only that he had two fine sons and he was proud of both of them.
By the time Jamie was eleven, he looked and behaved as a boy much older than his years. Even Little Wolf, who was about nineteen — no one knew for sure — was more than a little wary of the boy called Man Who Is Not Afraid. He and Bad Leg talked often, and secretly, of how best to get rid of Jamie, but so far it was all talk and no action.
Jamie and Hannah were doing some secret talking, too. A particularly cruel and quite ugly Shawnee had taken Hannah as his wife, and she was miserable.
“It’s time, Hannah,” Jamie told her as she worked one afternoon.
She paused only for a second, and then resumed her berry picking.
“You have a plan?”
“Yes. But it’s a dangerous one. We might be putting ourselves in more peril.”
“I have to get away from Big Head. I think he might kill me soon.”
“Meet me in the woods at noon tomorrow. By the blow-down. I have food and robes hidden there. Also a pistol I stole from the possessions of Sour Belly before they buried him. We’re escaping, Hannah. We’re going to be free.”
She cut her eyes to this boy — really just a child. But Jamie had left his childhood far behind him. He was serious, seldom smiling. Much more man than boy. And she felt sorry about that. For Jamie, the joys of being a child had been ripped cruelly from him, leaving a deep scar that nothing would ever erase.
“Jamie, you know what will happen to us if we are found.”
“We will be tortured to death. I know. I’ve seen it. We both have.”
“I’ll meet you in the blow-down at noon tomorrow. I would prefer death over my life as it is now.”
The boy called Man Who Is Not Afraid met her eyes for a moment. “I will not let them take you alive, Hannah. That is why I stole the pistol. I will kill you first.”
“I hope you mean that, Jamie.”
“I do.”
* * *
“I will bring back a buck for you, Mother,” Jamie told Deer Woman the next morning. “One that you can make me a fine shirt and leggings from.”
She looked at him and smiled.
“I shall go with you,” Little Wolf said.
“I need you here,” Deer Woman said quickly.
“Why?” Tall Bull demanded.
“To fix the panels on the smoke holes.” She pointed upward toward the ceiling.
Tall Bull grunted. “You were to have repaired them last week, Little Wolf. I am becoming weary of your laziness. Stay here at the lodge and do what your mother asks you to do. I must go to a council meeting. Good hunting, son,” he said to Jamie with a smile.
Little Wolf left moments after his father, grumbling and complaining.
Jamie picked up his bow, quiver of arrows, and secured his knife.
“Man Who Is Not Afraid?” Deer Woman said.
Jamie turned. He was now as tall as Deer Woman.
She put a hand to his face and touched him gently, then ruffled his dyed brown hair. “I knew this day would come. You are not Shawnee and never will be. Head south toward the tall mountains, to the Cherokees. They will see that you and Quiet Woman get back to your people. Do not reply to my words. Just go, my son. But go with this knowledge; someday Tall Bull and Little Wolf will find you. That will be the day when you must decide whether you live or die. And whether you will, or can, kill your father and brother. Goodbye, son.”
She turned her back to him and Jamie knew, with that gesture, she was forever cutting the Indian ties to him.
Jamie stepped out of the lodge and did not look back.
He walked away with all the dignity an eleven-year-old can muster, and that is about on a par with the Queen of England. And it does not matter whether the eleven-year-old is a so-called uneducated savage or the son or daughter of a royal family.
Very few in the Shawnee town paid Jamie any attention as he walked out of the enclosed village and headed in the opposite direction of the blow-down in the timber. Where Hannah was waiting. Bad Leg watched him leave, however, and noted Man Who Is Not Afraid was heading north.
“He’ll probably kill a bear and there will be singing and dancing and more praising of him,” Bad Leg muttered sourly. “I hate him.”
Deer Woman busied herself in the lodge. She had grown to love the white-haired boy, much more so than Little Wolf, who she suspected was not quite right in the head. There was something very dark and twisted about Little Wolf.
When Jamie was in the deep timber, certain he could not be spotted from the town, he changed directions and began running. He ran at a steady, distance-eating lope and was not even winded when he reached the blow-down.
“Here!” Hannah called, standing up amid a jumble of brush and old fallen logs.
“Follow me!” Jamie said, and took off at a trot, slowing his pace so Hannah would be able to keep up.
He jogged along for another five minutes before reaching the spot where he’d been caching supplies. While Hannah rested, Jamie removed the supplies from the hiding place and then carefully concealed the spot.
Jamie said, “Follow me, Hannah. Put your feet where I put mine. Do not break off any twigs or bruise any leaves. Do not step in any mud or soft ground. I think they will first search to the north. But they will, in time, find our trail. Of that, I am certain. Probably by this time tomorrow. There
is a small river that flows south about a day’s run from here. Once we reach that, we will enter the river and cling to logs for a time and let the current take us...”
“There are great scaly creatures in the waters!” Hannah said, very much afraid. She had heard talk of the huge alligators that slid through the dark waters of the creeks. Huge beasts that preyed on humans and animals alike.
“No,” Jamie assured her. “Those are to the south and east of here. Nearer the big waters. The old men say they used to be here. But no more. Let’s go, Hannah. We’re running for our lives.”
“And freedom,” Hannah said, adjusting the straps to her pack.
“Yes,” the boy/man said. “And freedom.”
* * *
By full dark, Tall Bull knew that one of two things had happened: Jamie had been attacked by a panther or a bear, or he had run away to seek out his own kind.
Since the boy had an uncanny ability to get along with wild animals, Tall Bull had to conclude that Man Who Is Not Afraid had run away.
“Bad Leg saw him going north,” Little Wolf told his father. “That would be the logical thing for him to do.”
Tall Bull grunted. “Man Who Is Not Afraid would not necessarily do the logical thing. He is uncommonly bright and filled with wisdom for one so young. We can do nothing in the night. There is no moon and we would only blunder around in the dark, destroying any sign they might have left. Which will be few,” he added dryly. “We will commence the search at first light.”
* * *
Jamie had first set a hard pace. He was young and his muscles strong. But when he saw that Hannah was beginning to falter, he slowed to a walk for a time, allowing her to catch her breath. For seven hours that is how they traveled, running, jogging, walking, then resting for only a few minutes every hour. At full dark, with Jamie in a part of the country he had never before seen, he found a good place to rest. Hannah sank wearily to the branch-protected grassy spot. Jamie had no way of knowing just how many miles they had traveled from the Shawnee town, but he guessed at least fifteen or so miles. Maybe twenty. They were heading into dangerous country; disputed country. While there were ever-growing spots of civilization in this country, it was still very dangerous. And to make matters worse, Jamie really did not know where he was. For as the white people pushed further west, the Shawnee town had been moved several times during Jamie’s captive years.
Jamie thought it was 1820, but he wasn’t sure about that, either. He had heard talk among the elders that there were thousands of whites living in the territory that bordered the latest Shawnee town, considerably smaller and hidden much better than the first one Jamie had been taken to. Many of the Shawnees had moved much further north, but Tall Bull and those who followed him stayed to the south.
“Where are we, Jamie?” Hannah asked the next morning.
“I don’t know,” the boy gave her an honest answer. “But we’re free.”
They walked and ran all that day, and the next, heading south. Jamie never did find the river he was looking for. But he did stumble onto a creek and he and Hannah followed that for miles, sometimes on the bank, sometimes wading to hide their footprints. On the ninth day out, Jamie was forced to admit that he was as lost as a goose. He and Hannah had gotten turned around in the dark woods and he had absolutely no idea where they might be.
“What do we do?” Hannah asked.
“I climb a tree,” Jamie said.
He climbed the tallest tree he could find, and when he finally settled on a limb, he was so startled he almost lost his balance and fell. He was looking at more smoke than he had seen in his life. Smoke from dozens of chimneys. This was no Indian village or town. No Indian would allow that much smoke to fill the air and give away their location. Jamie figured the town, surely a white town, was no more than three or four miles away, over the hills.
He quickly climbed down and told Hannah the news. She was deliriously happy for a few moments, then a worried look sprang into her eyes.
“What’s the matter, Hannah?”
“They’ll shoot us, Jamie. They’ll think we’re Indians. Look at us. We’re more Shawnee than white.”
Jamie had not given that any thought. But he did now. “Hannah, you have a petticoat in your pack. I saw it. It’s white. We’ll rip off some pieces and tie them on sticks. We’ll walk in holding the sticks in the air. That way we’ll be safe. But first we’ll wash as best we can. We’re both filthy. Then we’ll put on our spare clothing.” Buckskin clothing. But it was all they had.
It would have to do.
They scrubbed themselves clean at a spring and changed clothes, then looked at each other, the grown woman and the eleven-year-old man/boy who had thought up the escape plan, and carried it out.
They still looked like a couple of Indians.
Hannah started giggling and Jamie lost his usual serious demeanor and let the child free. Soon they were howling with laughter.
They finally sat down on a log and wiped their eyes with pieces of Hannah’s torn petticoat. She looked at what was left of the undergarment. “I’ve been so careful with this all these years. It was my last hold on reason and order and... sanity, I suppose. It sounds stupid, but it was all I had left.”
“No, it wasn’t, Hannah,” the man within the boy once more surfaced. “You had memories and you had hope. Just like I did. And we had each other. And now we’re free to start over.” He stood up and held out his hand. “Let’s go make a new start for ourselves, Hannah.”
That new start almost ended before it could begin. As they walked up the rutted road that led to more buildings than Jamie had ever seen, they both heard the call.
“Indians! Indians! To your posts. Man your posts.”
Jamie and Hannah froze and held up their white pieces of petticoat and waved them.
“We’re not Indians!” Jamie called. “We’re white. We’ve been captives for years. We’re not Indians.”
A dozen mounted men, all heavily armed, rode out to the pair, standing still in the road.
“My name is Jamie Ian MacCallister. And this is Hannah Parker. We escaped from a Shawnee town about eight or nine days ago. Far north of here. Tall Bull’s tribe.”
“Good Lord!” a man breathed. “Where are you from, lad?”
“The western edge of Ohio Territory, sir. I think it was four, maybe five years ago. I’m just not sure. I know it was the day before my seventh birthday when they came out of the night. Tall Bull led a raiding party to my cabin. They killed my pa and ma and smashed my baby sister to death against the stones of the fireplace. Tall Bull and his wife, Deer Woman, adopted me. Hannah here...” He paused for only a second, thinking fast. He knew that if any settler knew she had been touched by an Indian, much less shared the robes with a savage, she would be shunned; an outcast. “She played like she was crazy so the Indians would leave her alone. It worked.”
“Smart thinking, lass,” another man said. “Damn filthy savages.”
The men all swung down from their saddles and looked at the pair.
“They dyed Jamie’s hair with coloring from plants,” Hannah told the men.
“Sure did,” another man spoke. “You can see the blond roots.”
“After Jamie faced down a pack of wolves...”
“Faced down a pack of wolves!” yet another man said, clearly startled.
“Yes,” Hannah said quickly. “The boy was hunting and became separated from his guards. He was only nine years old and had killed a huge deer with the bow and arrows he’d made. The wolves were about to fight him for the meat” — Jamie struggled to keep a straight face, but it was done only with a lot of effort — “and he grabbed one by the throat and stared it down. The animal clawed him fiercely but Jamie refused to drop his eyes. Jamie and this huge wolf stayed that way for several minutes, as the other wolves became afraid.” Jamie rolled his eyes. “Finally, Jamie threw the big wolf from him and all the wolves ran away. Look!” She opened Jamie’s shirt, exposing the long scar.
“Would you look at that?” a young man exclaimed. “What a fearsome mark the beast left on you, boy.”
“And after that,” Hannah continued. “Jamie was called Man Who Is Not Afraid. The Shawnees sang songs about his bravery and danced in his honor.” She put her arm around Jamie’s shoulders. “He saved my life, and I shall forever be in his debt.”
Jamie decided to change the subject before the manure got too deep. “Where are we, if I may ask?”
“Why, you’re in Kentucky, lad. And you and the lady here are safe. Come on, the both of you. Let’s get you out of them savage’s clothes and into a tub of hot soapy water. How does that sound.”
“As near to heaven as I might ever get,” Hannah said.
And the men laughed. All but one.
Three
Jamie and Hannah had traveled many more miles than they thought. They had come about a hundred and seventy-five miles from the Shawnee town on the river.
“You must have gone right by a dozen or more settlements,” Reverend Hugh Callaway told them. “Why, the country is filling up fast, I tell you.”
“Tall Bull’s band is one of the last real holdouts in this area,” a farmer named Mason said. He leaned forward. “Lad, what are you going to do? Will you seek to find relatives up yonder whence you came?”
Jamie shook his head, conscious of Hannah’s eyes on him. “No, sir. I think not. I had no kin there. Just Pa and Ma and the baby. They’re all dead. I see no reason to go back.”
The men looked at one another. Callaway said, “Then what do you intend to do, lad?”
Jamie met the reverend’s gaze with one of his own. “Survive, sir. I’m really very good at it.”
“But where, lad?” Mason asked.
“In the woods, if I have to.”
“But you’re only a child!” the reverend’s wife said. “You can’t live out in the woods in a cave like a sav — ” She bit the words off.
Eyes of Eagles Page 3
