Wilderness Double Edition 25

by David Robbins

  Sounds heralded the arrival of someone else. Or was it something else? Winona wondered as she sought to make sense of a series of smacks and scrapes mixed with scritching and labored breathing.

  Through an opening that had appeared to be nothing more than a shadow came the source. It moved with a strange swinging gait. In height it would come to about Winona’s chest, or slightly less. It was almost as wide as it was tall. Behind it, crawling, came another something.

  Winona tingled with fear. She heard the girl gasp.

  The sounds, and the things, came to the center of the enclosed space, then stopped. Other sounds suggested the striking of flint or quartz. Sparks flew. The short thing bent down and Winona heard it puff lightly. Kindling caught, and tiny flames licked into life. The man—it had to be a man—added broken branches from a pile collected for that purpose. The flames grew, became a fire that cast welcome light and warmth.

  What the light revealed stunned Winona.

  The man who had started the fire wore tattered buckskins. Girded around his powerful chest was a strip of buckskin, and wedged under the strip was a crude knife and a thick club. But it was the man’s face, and his legs, that interested Winona more, interested and horrified her. The face was hideously scarred. Not the random scars of some terrible accident, but deliberate scarring, whorls and circles and other shapes, that must hold special meaning.

  The man had suffered an accident. His legs were gone from just above the knees, the stumps swathed thick in buckskin. He had cleverly improvised a pair of crutches to get about, and had wrapped rabbit hide around them. A rope latticed his powerful chest, an ingenious harness he to used to drag things, freeing his hands for the crutches.

  The thing behind him turned out to be a young warrior he had been dragging. The warrior wore green buckskins, and was unconscious. A gash in his temple explained why.

  An excited cry burst from the girl. She wore a green doeskin dress, and had been tied, wrists and ankles, exactly like Winona. “Dega!” she wailed, tears brimming. “Dega! Dega! Dega!” She tried to crawl toward the young warrior but was brought to a stop by her ankle rope, which, like Winona’s, was tied to a boulder.

  The scarred man was shrugging out of the harness. With remarkable speed and agility, he darted in close to the girl and swung his club with cruel effect. She slumped, insensate.

  “There was no need to do that,” Winona said.

  Whipping around, the scarred man coldly regarded her. He slapped his club against his palm a few times as if debating whether to use it on her. Apparently he decided not to. He slid the club under the band on his chest and turned to his new captive. His ability to move about was uncanny. It was as if the crutches were extensions of his arms and hands. He dragged the young warrior to another of the dozen or so boulders that dotted the enclosure and bound him tightly in the same manner as Winona and the girl. Only then did he turn and hobble toward her, although “hobble” was a poor description of the fluid ease with which he moved. He could get about on those crutches as rapidly as most people could on two legs. Just beyond the reach of her ankle rope, he stopped and studied her through hate-filled eyes.

  Winona met his gaze unflinchingly.

  The scarred warrior raised his hands. He made the sign for “rope,” and motioned for her to turn around.

  Obeying, Winona felt him pry at the knots at her wrists. Soon her hands were free. Rubbing them to restore circulation, she shifted, and froze.

  The scarred warrior had drawn his knife and was eyeing her as if he dearly desired to slit her throat. But after a few moments he slid it under the band, and moved back so she could not reach him. Again he employed sign, “Question. You know me?”

  Winona wriggled her stiff fingers, then signed, “You be Drinks Blood.”

  A cruel grin slashed his scarred face. He was pleased she knew who he was. “Question. Husband talk Drinks Blood?”

  “Yes,” Winona signed. Nate had told her all about his harrowing experience at the pass. “You be Heart Eater tribe.”

  At the mention of his people, Drinks Blood scowled and placed his hand on his knife.

  “Question,” Winona signed. “Why you do bad?” She indicated her bound ankles and the girl and the unconscious young warrior. “Why you mean?”

  In answer, Drinks Blood angrily smacked his twin stumps.

  “Me no understand,” Winona signed.

  Fury and hate twisting his scars, Drinks Blood signed at great length, his fingers flying. “I do break husband. I hate husband. I be mountain when husband make thunder. I try run. Many big rocks fall. Big rock fall me. Fall my legs.” Drinks Blood made a cutting motion. “Legs no have ...”

  Winona remembered Nate saying that there had been no sign of life in the pass after the explosion. Evidently Drinks Blood had been partly buried and dug himself out, crushed legs and all.

  “I stop blood. I crawl forest. Take three sleeps but I crawl. I weak. I hungry. I kill squirrel with teeth. I kill bird with teeth. I eat. I live.”

  “Mountain thunder moons ago,” Winona signed. “You be here all time?”

  Drinks Blood seemed to not see her fingers move. “I make wood legs.” He patted the crutches. “I walk much. I be good with wood legs. I go mountain but many rocks. No make through. No go people. No go Heart Eaters.” He leaned toward her. “I think count coup husband. I think kill husband slow. Make husband afraid. Make husband hurt.”

  Winona did not respond. There was no reasoning with him. He hated them with every fiber of his being.

  “I watch you. I watch family. I watch white-hair. I watch white-hair woman. I watch your son. I watch his woman. I think. I wait. I find here,” Drinks Blood gestured.

  The enclosure was not really an enclosure at all. It was a bowl-shaped cliff, the open end ten feet across and choked with firs and a thicket.

  “I see green people come. I take green girl. I give your axe. They think you take green girl.”

  “That must be why they abducted Evelyn,” Winona said to herself.

  Sinister delight animated Drinks Blood. “I have surprise, woman. I rope you. I bring surprise here.”

  To resist invited a clubbing. Winona turned so he could bind her wrists again, then watched him take the rope harness and move to the opening. He looked back. “Your husband take my legs. I take his family.” A cold, sadistic laugh followed the scarred warrior out.

  Winona King shivered.

  Nineteen

  Nate King was surprised to hear so many voices coming from his cabin. He was especially surprised that they sounded cheerful. Because Nate himself was in the grip of a deep depression, feeling as joyless and glum as it was possible to feel. The happy voices made him mad.

  Swinging down from the tired bay, Nate marched to the cabin door and went to fling it open. It was bolted from within. Balling his right fist, he pounded on the panel fit to bust the wood. “Open up!” he roared.

  “By my troth!” responded a familiar voice. The door swung in, framing Shakespeare in a blaze of warm light. “How now, Horatio? What portends this foul manner?”

  “They better be here,” Nate said, shouldering past. He was hoping to see his wife, daughter and son. Instead, two strangers in green rose nervously from chairs at the table. The man took the woman’s hand and she moved close to him as if for protection.

  Blue Water Woman was at the counter and smiled in greeting.

  Louisa was in the rocking chair by the fireplace. Jumping up, she ran over and gave Nate a hug. “I’m so glad you’re back! Did you find them?” She glanced at the doorway and said in mild disappointment and surprise, “Oh!”

  Teni had come in. She was shocked to see her parents. Sidling past the white-haired white man, she stepped into their waiting arms. “What has happened? Why are you here?” She noticed a bulge under her father’s shirt. “Is that a bandage? Have you been hurt?”

  “Save your questions, daughter,” Wakumassee said. “We must talk with the man who brought you.”


  “There has been a misunderstanding,” Tihikanima added. “We have wronged these people greatly.”

  Nate had not made hide nor hair out of their words. He turned to McNair. “What is this? Who are they? My family is in danger and I come back to find you celebrating?”

  Shakespeare jerked his head as if he had been slapped. “That’s about the crudest thing you have ever said to me, son. You should damn well know better. I’m as worried about Winona, Evelyn and Zach as you are.”

  “Sorry,” Nate muttered, although it still bothered him that he had heard them laughing and having such a grand time. “Who are they, then? And what in God’s name do they have to do with this?”

  “I suspect they have been duped, as we have been,” Shakespeare said. “More on that in a bit. First, permit me to introduce Mr. and Mrs. Waku.” He bobbed his white beard at the man and woman. “They call themselves the People of the Forest. Or the Nansusequa. As near as I can figure from what they have told me, they come from the deep woods along the Indiana-Kentucky border. Their people were massacred. They are the only ones left.”

  “Massacred?” Nate repeated.

  Shakespeare grimly nodded. “By the local whites. They fled west and came to the mountains, looking for a new home. They ended up here.”

  “And took my daughter?” Nate growled. He glared at the trio and the woman and the girl gripped the man’s arms.

  “Try not to scare them to death if you can help it,” Shakespeare said. “I’ll get to Evelyn shortly. The mother, there, has told me something that will interest you greatly.” He stepped over to the table and beckoned for Nate to join them. “Don’t just stand there like a bump on a log. Pretend you have manners.” Reluctantly, Nate walked over.

  “The gent here is Wakumassee. He speaks some English. His wife is Tihikanima. The daughter is Tenikawaku. They have an older son, Degamawaku, and a younger girl, Mikikawaku.” Shakespeare paused. “Notice anything?”

  “They all wear green?”

  “Besides that,” Shakespeare said. “Green to them has great medicine. But I was referring to their names.”

  “You’ve lost me,” Nate said.

  “Listen closely. Wakumassee. Degamawaku. Tenikawaku. Their names are actually three words in one. The children always take the first part of the father’s name as the last part of their own. In the middle they stick a ‘ma’ for ‘son of’ or a ‘ka’ for ‘daughter of.’ So Degamawaku breaks down to Dega, son of Waku. Tenikawaku is Teni, daughter of Waku.” Shakespeare chuckled. “I like how they do that. Too bad we don’t do the same.”

  Nate did not share his mentor’s enthusiasm. “My family is missing and we stand here talking about how wonderful their names are?”

  Shakespeare’s smile evaporated. “I think it fair to point out that their daughter and son are missing, too. In fact, this business started when their daughter disappeared. They thought we took her, so they took Evelyn. Their plan was to persuade us to swap Evelyn for Miki.”

  “Wait. Are you saying their daughter was abducted? And they blamed us? Why in God’s name did they think we were to blame?”

  “Because they found your axe near where their daughter was taken,” Shakespeare explained.

  “What?” Nate practically exploded.

  “I’ve made it clear to them that we had nothing to do with their girl going missing,” Shakespeare said. “They say they are sorry for taking Evelyn. That if the mother had known it was not a dream, things would be different.”

  Impatience bubbled in Nate like boiling water. “Damn it. How does a dream figure in?”

  “Since we didn’t take Miki, there has to be a third party involved. I asked them if they had seen sign of any others in the valley. Or if anything unusual had happened. Something did.” Shakespeare flicked a finger at Tihi. “About a week ago, the mother, there, was taking her turn sitting by the fire late at night and keeping watch. The rest were asleep. She couldn’t keep her eyes open and kept dozing off.”

  “And she had a dream?”

  “She saw a face. It seemed to float in the air at the edge of the firelight. It was staring at her, and it scared her. When she sat up, it vanished, and she assumed it had been a dream.”

  “Maybe it was,” Nate said sourly. A dream that had no bearing on his family’s plight.

  “You haven’t heard the rest,” Shakespeare said. “The reason the face scared her so much is because it wasn’t normal. She thought it might be the face of a ghost. Or an evil spirt.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Is it, Horatio? I will use her own words as her husband translated them to me. The face Tihi saw ‘was covered with scars, terrible, terrible scars, scars that made the face look less than human.’”

  Icy fingers closed around Nate’s heart. “It can’t be! I sealed off the pass.”

  “The Heart Eaters must know of another way,” Shakespeare said. “Tihi only saw the one but there might be an entire war party.”

  Nate turned toward the door. He was all for barging out into the night and scouring the valley from end to end. A firm hand on his arm restrained him.

  “We can’t do much good in the dark,” Shakespeare advised. “We’ll wait for daylight. Waku has offered to help. He’s sorry for what he’s done, son. Truly and sincerely sorry.”

  Waku nodded when the great bear of a white man with the black beard looked at him. “Very sorry,” he stressed. “Me think bad in head. Me do bad.”

  “You were tricked,” Shakespeare said.

  “Yes,” Waku said. But that was only part of it. He had been so consumed by hate, he had not been himself.

  Nate suddenly thrust his big hand at Waku for Waku to shake. “No hard feelings, then. We’ve all been deceived. Now that we know, we can take the fight to them. If they have harmed your children or mine, we will track them down and kill every last one of the sons of bitches.”

  Waves of pain crashed over Dega like waves crashing onto a rocky shore. He blinked and opened his eyes, and promptly wished he hadn’t. The pain worsened to where he had to squint against the glare of a nearby fire. Inadvertently, he groaned.

  “Dega! Oh, Dega! I am so happy to see you!”

  Jarred out of lethargy, Dega turned, or tried to, and broke out in a broad smile. The pain, and the blow to the head that had felled him, were temporarily forgotten. “Miki! We feared you were dead, little sister.”

  “We both may soon be,” Miki responded, and gazed anxiously past him. “Maybe I should not be so happy you are here. I do not want you to die.”

  Dega looked around, taking in the cliff and the opening and the pink flush of dawn in the sky, and the wife of the white man with the black beard, the mother of the girl who stirred him in a manner no girl ever had. His meager grasp of the white tongue limited his greeting. Then he remembered the first words her daughter had spoken to him. He said them as best he was able. “Consarn me.”

  Winona had been fervently hoping the young warrior would revive before Drinks Blood came back. Now she beamed and declared, “You speak English! Wonderful! We are prisoners of a warrior out to kill us. He is gone now, but he will be back. We must work together to free ourselves.”

  Dega squirmed uncomfortably. Whatever she said might be important. She was looking at him as if she expected an answer. “Consarn me,” he declared again, and smiled.

  “Oh,” Winona said, comprehending. “Do you know any Sosoni?” she asked in her language.

  Remembering the words Evelyn had taught him, Dega brightened. Sosoni had been one of them. “Haa!” he replied.

  “You do?” Winona could not believe her luck, and in Shoshone repeated, “We are prisoners of a warrior who will soon kill us. We must work together to free ourselves. Do you understand?”

  “Haa,” Dega said.

  “Good. Crawl toward me and I will crawl toward you and see if we can untie one another.”

  The young warrior did not move.

  “Did you hear me?” Winona asked.


  “Haa.” Dega said.

  “Buffaloes have wings.”

  “Haa.”

  Crestfallen, Winona said more to herself than to him, “You do not understand Sosoni any better than you do English, do you?”

  “Haa.”

  “Say that one more time and I swear I will scream.”

  “Haa.”

  “Damn.” Winona reverted to English. She wriggled toward him as far as the rope would allow, then wagged her head to indicate he should do the same.

  Dega caught on right away. Clenching his teeth against the throbbing in his head and shoulder, he copied her movements and discovered they were still an arm’s length apart.

  “If it weren’t for bad luck I wouldn’t have any luck at all,” Winona said forlornly. Then her gaze fell on the fire. It had burned low, but it was not yet out.

  Of the three of them, Winona was the nearest. At first glance it appeared to be well out of her reach. But she wondered. Crawling as far as the rope permitted, she extended her legs to their fullest. Her moccasins fell only an inch or two short.

  Encouraged, Winona swung her legs from side to side, seeking to gain those extra couple of inches. The boulder her feet were linked to did not move. She swung harder and faster. The strain on her legs was almost unbearable, but she refused to give up. She put more of her body into each swing.

  Suddenly, perceptibly, the boulder shifted. Not by much, but it definitely moved. Winona swung with renewed eagerness, her entire body swinging like a land-bound pendulum. Again the boulder moved a fraction.

  Dega and Miki were riveted in fascination.

  Winona nearly wrenched her hips out of joint with her next swing. But once again the boulder moved. Quickly, she flung her legs straight out, at the fire. Searing heat licked at her moccasins. Her feet grew blistering hot and her moccasins began to give off streams of smoke.