Bone Rattler amoca-1

by Eliot Pattison

  Suddenly Duncan spotted Woolford splashing across the stream, sprinting at a desperate pace up the trail to the camp. With terrible foreboding Duncan watched him disappear behind the outcroppings. He dared not follow, dared not leave Ramsey with the Indians.

  The Iroquois were admiring the gifts from the keg, hefting some of the powder horns the sergeant had produced, responding when another of Pike’s soldiers set the keg of honey on a root at the foot of the tree and gestured for them to come and sweeten their cups.

  “Your heart,” said a quiet voice at Duncan’s side. “She has your heart in her dreams.”

  Duncan turned to see Tashgua, sitting in his chair of roots. The old Indian’s wrinkled face seemed beyond age, so ancient, so full of secrets from other centuries, other worlds. Duncan longed to sit with him for hours, for days, to learn something of life in the forest before the Europeans came, to absorb some of the things that could not be spoken. Then he realized that in the middle of the long-awaited ceremony, the old shaman wanted to speak of Sarah.

  “There was a terrible storm at sea,” Duncan said. He had never felt more humbled, more insignificant, before another person.

  “A mother storm,” Tashgua declared, as if he had been there.

  “I was going to die. Then she was going to die. Then the storm swallowed us and spat us back out.”

  “We know,” the shaman murmured. “It was the first miracle. The water miracle.”

  Duncan’s breath caught in his throat. The Iroquois had decided that his saving Sarah had been one of their prophesied miracles.

  “Part of both of you died in that storm,” Tashgua said before Duncan could respond.

  Duncan swallowed hard. He looked up at the massive tree and with a strange sense of release knew it to be true. Since the hour he had saved Sarah there were parts of his life that were indeed dead, never to go back to, just as new parts had been created. “I am not strong enough to be in Sarah’s dreams.” The words came out unbidden, and Duncan looked up with an expression of surprise.

  Tashgua, strangely, smiled. “Her dreams are for all of us. We do not control them. She does not need our strength. She needs our understanding. It is not an easy thing to live in this world and another at the same time.”

  Duncan realized he did not know for certain which worlds Tashgua spoke of. But then he gazed out among the Iroquois and knew they would have to speak of it another time. “You must tell them to leave,” he pleaded.

  Tashgua offered another small, serene grin. “We will all be the same, you know, all of us linked forever by this day.”

  “The soldiers and Lord Ramsey, they. . ” His voice trembled as he felt the quiet power of the man beside him. “Please,” he added in a whisper, beginning to lift the stone bear from his pocket.

  Tashgua, seeming to anticipate his intention, raised a hand to stop him. “We came so the spirits could speak to us. Nothing else matters,” Tashgua said, then lifted his hand and gently placed his palm on Duncan’s heart. “Do I have your blessing?” the shaman abruptly asked him.

  Duncan stared in disbelief as the stiff old hand reached down and clasped Duncan’s. He returned the grip, squeezing tightly, then the aged prophet rose and stepped inside the tree. Tashgua gazed at the log drum in the pool of light in wonder, as if it had magically transported itself into the center of the tree cave, then sat beside it, his fingers running along its ranks of carved animals, the motion slowly converting to the quiet, steady heartbeat sound.

  The final realization came in pieces as Duncan walked out among the Iroquois gathering before the tree, some taking honey, some settling onto the ground as Tashgua’s drumming grew louder, amplified by the hollow chamber of the tree. For the first time, he noticed a grenadier’s match case on the chest belt of one of the soldiers. He saw the soldiers all moving, though not in the same direction. One, with a long horn from the keg of gifts, stepped into the shadows at the side of the tree. There was a faint scent of sulphur in the air. Pike stood with Ramsey by the fire, far from the tree. The images came faster. Something red flashing on the rocky cliff above them. The soldier with the match case moving toward the tree. Arnold retrieving his coat from the log by the tree. Conawago, searching among the rocks by the stream, waving something at Duncan. A tool, a large hand auger. As the soldier disappeared around the tree, Duncan saw that the match case was off his belt, in his hand now.

  His feet reacted faster than his mind, propelling him toward the shadows as a long, anguished moan escaped his lips. He tackled the soldier from the back, knocking the man to the ground, but as he fell, the soldier adeptly tossed the piece of smoldering match cord to the burly man, Pike’s sergeant, who was emptying the contents of the horn into a hole drilled into the tree wall.

  Duncan struggled to his feet and launched himself at the sergeant, who spun about and kicked him as the slow match did its job, lighting the line of black powder now leading into the oak. As the soldiers sprinted away, Duncan staggered to the front of the tree. Arnold shouted at him, holding up his coat, his hand in the empty sleeve, his face draining of color as he understood what Duncan had done. The vicar dropped the coat and flung himself toward the drum in the tree chamber.

  Duncan cried out for the Indians to flee. Most of them stared at him uncertainly, then looked back toward Tashgua. Pike snapped furious orders and two soldiers charged at Duncan. There was a sharp crack from the hillside, and the old chief wearing Jamie’s wolf pelt stumbled forward, caught by his companions. Some of the Indians began to move as Conawago took up the warning, then another figure dashed through them, calling frantically in their own tongue. Duncan spun about as Sarah paused in her sprint to push some of the chieftains away, then launched herself toward the opening through which Arnold had disappeared.

  Duncan leaned forward as he reached her, his shoulder to her belly, scooping her off her feet, maintaining his frantic pace as she pounded his back, screaming out the same Iroquois word, over and over. He threw her behind a boulder, covering her with his body as with a massive roar the world came to an end.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Duncan was the first to rise in the awful stillness. The scene was like a battlefield. One of the two soldiers who had tried to stop Duncan sat on the ground, blood gushing down his chest, staring numbly at him, holding the end of a thick splinter of wood that had pierced his neck and emerged from the opposite side. The second soldier lay lifeless on the ground, his body perforated with at least a dozen wooden shards, some curved, from the kegs that had held the gunpowder.

  Most of the Iroquois lay on the earth, many dead or dying. Duncan slowly pushed himself up, saw that Sarah was numbed but unharmed, then ran to the Iroquois, stopping at the chief who had worn Jamie’s cap and blanket. The back of the man’s head was shattered. He had not been killed by the explosion.

  “He flew through the air,” a desolate voice said from behind him, as Duncan bent to the old Seneca with the fox headdress. Conawago was looking at another figure, lying on the ground a hundred feet away. “I saw his face. There was no fear. There was no surprise.” The chief at his feet was dead. Duncan straightened, looking past Conawago, then ran to the inert form as several of the surviving Iroquois began a terrible lamentation, accompanied by loud words from the cooking fire. Ramsey was shouting at Pike, pointing to the ridge above.

  Tashgua’s body, incredibly, was intact. He had been at the entry, had ridden the force of the explosion outward. The bones of his back were crushed, his skull indented where it had slammed against a rock. As Sarah rose with an anguished cry, Duncan’s hand shot into his pocket, then pushed under the dead shaman. He stood as she reached him, tears flooding her cheeks, then stepped aside as she collapsed onto the body. As he turned back to the other Iroquois, patches of color appeared on the path from the camp. A line of forlorn men in ill-fitting red coats emerged. Ramsey’s harangue of Pike choked away as the patron recognized the figures on the trail. It was the remainder of his militia, along with Hawkins and his trappers, e
ach man bound by rope to the next. They were being escorted down the ridge by Jamie’s men and half a dozen others wearing the colors of Woolford’s rangers.

  An agonized moan brought Duncan back to the carnage behind him. The wounded Iroquois were not reacting to their own pain, Duncan saw, but to the fate of the sacred tree. They all gazed in the same direction, at the massive burning stump before them. Most of the tree lay in huge, smoldering pieces, some blown far from the stump. The remainder, a thirty-foot-tall section at the rear, was moving, swaying, groaning. The long, wrenching screech as it separated from the base was the most terrible sound Duncan had ever heard, the dying sound of the centuries-old creature. They watched in stunned silence as it toppled, shaking the earth so violently that rocks on the ridges above were loosened and rolled down the cliffs. Ramsey had brought the wonder of his science to the Haudenosaunee.

  As he recovered his senses, Duncan moved more quickly from one Indian to the next, clenching his jaw against the gore. The torso of one of the old Iroquois had been nearly severed in half by a slab of wood the size of a plowshare. Every one of the Indians who had been directly in front of the chamber was dead, including the old woman, the smiling matriarch who had helped Sarah in the village. Several of them had no evidence of injuries, except the blood seeping out of their ears and noses. He watched, his heart in his throat, as Conawago moved among them, closing their eyes, lifting dead hands and folding fingers around the leather totem pouch each wore around his or her neck. Duncan steadied himself, lifted the tail of his shirt, and began ripping bandages. There was work to do among those who still lived. He labored without break for an hour, staunching wounds with moss brought by Conawago, removing long, bladelike splinters from legs and arms, vaguely aware of Jamie’s men ordering Pike’s surviving soldiers to remove their shirts for more bandages. As he finished with each of the wounded, they struggled to their feet, refusing assistance, insisting on limping to the dead shaman.

  “Twenty-two dead,” Woolford announced in a grim tone. “Including the two who were inside the tree.”

  Arnold. Duncan paused in his work, looking about for signs of the vicar.

  “We found Arnold’s hand, with his vicar’s ring, blown halfway across the valley. The rest is mostly ash, inside the stump.”

  “You reached the militia.”

  “With only moments to spare. They had orders to open fire on the surviving Indians and deserters.”

  The tone shifted among the survivors. Something like joy entered the voices of several nearest the shaman’s body. The oldest of the surviving chieftains had his hand in the air, lifting a black object to cries of awe.

  Conawago cocked his head in confusion for a moment. “It’s a miracle,” he said, gazing pointedly at Duncan. “They seemed to have discovered their ancient bear, missing since the massacre last year. They say the blood of Tashgua has drawn the sacred bear out of the earth. They say this is the true word of the tree, the last word, the reason Tashgua brought them together. It is the earth miracle they awaited.”

  “But it can’t be. .” Woolford said with a muddled expression. “Munroe took it into the. . ” The ranger slowly turned toward Duncan, realization lighting his eyes. He lowered himself onto a rock, a strange mix of guilt and gratitude on his face.

  “What was it she spoke?” Duncan asked after a moment. “The word Sarah kept repeating when she realized what was happening.”

  Conawago whispered the answer. “Father. It means father.”

  They burned the red coats of Ramsey’s militia in the embers of the sacred tree, then returned to camp and released all but ten of the Company men at the canoes, ordering the confused, subdued men to Edentown without Ramsey or the head keeper. Cameron spoke quietly to Ramsey, who despite his victory seemed confounded, looking about, calling for Arnold. When the patron offered no protest, made not even a demand that the remaining men tied in the shadows be released, Cameron began directing the loading of the canoes. When the keeper complained the men had no weapons against the Huron, Woolford ordered four of Pike’s privates and one of his own rangers to join the party.

  “My men only take orders from the major and me,” Pike’s sergeant groused. Pike, who had not left Ramsey’s side since the explosion, watched his men readying their packs, then inched toward his own.

  “Major Pike,” Woolford declared in a loud voice as two of his rangers appeared at his side, brandishing manacles pulled from Pike’s equipment, “is under arrest.”

  Ramsey’s head snapped up. “By you?” he snapped. Woolford’s defiance had broken the patron’s spell. “Ridiculous. He is under my protection.”

  The deserters of the Forty-second seemed to have developed a new respect for Woolford. The ranger officer made a quick, impatient gesture toward Pike, and in an instant the manacles were on his wrists. Two of the Scottish warriors dragged him, shrilly protesting, sputtering curses, to the post at the entrance to the camp, where they began to tie him. Ramsey uttered a weak protest, then turned to Sarah, his countenance sagging as he saw the dark emotion in her eyes. When she had called to her father that afternoon before the explosion, it had been toward the shaman. Tashgua had raised her from a child. Duncan recalled how she always referred to the patron as Lord Ramsey. He had misunderstood her fearful prediction at Edentown. They want my father dead, she had declared, they want to spread the pieces of his body over the forest. She had not meant Ramsey. She had one true father, the man who had first brought knowledge into her heart, and Ramsey had killed him that day.

  “Deserters! Traitors!”

  Duncan spun about to see a tangle of arms and legs on the ground near the post. “Leave him, God rot ye!” Pike’s burly Irish sergeant had charged into the Scots tying Pike and was lashing out with fist and foot at the former soldiers, who responded with equal vehemence. One of the Scots fell to the ground, doubled up in pain. The sergeant was repulsed with a blow of a club to his back, which sent him sprawling onto a pile of knapsacks belonging to the half-dozen rangers who had arrived in time to help confront the militia. He threw one of the packs at his opponents, strewing the contents over the ground. As he did so, four of the Scots warriors fell on him, dragging him backward, pinning the sergeant against a rock, tying first his hands, then his feet, then connecting the two bindings with a short length of rope so he could not straighten.

  “Major Pike,” Woolford declared in a dark voice, “is under arrest for treason. Perhaps, Sergeant, you need to join him at the post.”

  “A pox on ye!” the Irishman snapped. “We know the traitors in this camp! We sent a runner back. The army knows where to find ye! Ye’ll all swing from trees before the winter, ye damned whores of the heathen!”

  Duncan had never seen the ranger move so fast. In an instant Woolford was before the man, the back of his open hand pounding his jaw. “Major Pike is under arrest for treason,” he repeated as the sergeant reeled backward. “And for the murder of six of my rangers. There may well be room for you on that particular gallows, Sergeant.”

  The man spat in the dirt at Woolford’s feet. “Treason, my arse! We’ll see about charges! Aiding the McCallum deserters, that be worse than murder in some esteemed ranks.”

  As the two men glared at each other, Duncan began helping the young ranger who was retrieving the articles that had tumbled out of the knapsack. A flint striker, a bullet mold, a wool cap. He paused as he lifted an unfamiliar object. It was a flat piece of iron, four inches long, with short legs at each corner ending in sharp points, two small loops at each end on the side opposite the legs. He gazed at it, not understanding what about it was gnawing at his awareness.

  “We never know how long we’ll be out,” the young ranger explained as he reached for the piece of iron, “don’t know if we’ll get back to a quartermaster before winter.” He saw the confusion in Duncan’s eyes. “An ice creeper. You strap it to the bottom of your boots.”

  Duncan quickly pulled out the grenadier’s cap from Ramsey’s cellar. The four pointed legs m
atched the four small holes perfectly. “Who is issued these?” he urgently asked the soldier.

  “Rangers. The other troops stay in winter quarters.”

  The curses of the Irishman died away as Duncan approached Woolford, extending the creeper, silently demonstrating how the legs matched the holes in the cap.

  “Meaning what?” Woolford still hovered over the sergeant as if about to pounce again at any moment.

  Duncan replied by holding the cap and the creeper in front of the sergeant.

  “A pox on y’er mother!” the sergeant spat.

  “His left cheek,” Duncan said. When the sergeant resisted, turning the cheek against the rock, two of the Iroquois Scots held the man, forcing his head around. “It’s hard to see for the grime,” Duncan said, and before he could continue, Woolford had grabbed a kettle sitting by the cold firepit and tossed its contents onto the man’s face. The scars were there, as Duncan had seen at the ranger camp-two pairs of small circles spaced four inches apart. He held the creeper to the man’s cheek. On the skin, as with the hat, the marks were perfectly aligned to the ice spikes.