River City

by John Farrow

  In the morning, Sarah stirred up the breakfast beans.

  Sometimes, the young men who travelled overland with the horses made it to the same camp at night as those who canoed north. Then she would hug her animal’s neck, water him and brush the dust from his coat with her fingers.

  “You’re riding him now?” she asked the young Iroquois.

  “I teach him ride no saddle. To be a Mohawk horse.”

  “That shouldn’t be so hard. I’ve ridden him bareback. I ride him bareback all the time.”

  “White girls lie,” the youth proclaimed.

  “Do they? I don’t know any who do. Anyway, I’m sure you’ve never met an English girl before, so how would you know?”

  “You never before met Mohawk,” the young man stately gruffly. He looked to be older than her, yet only eighteen years of age, at the most. While he appeared to be a man, he was usually ordered around by the others.

  “So true, I’ve never met a Mohawk, so I do not know if a Mohawk lies or not. I’ll wait, and judge for myself. That’s what you should do. Judge for yourself.”

  “What means ‘judge’?”

  Sarah Hanson thought a moment. “It means decide for yourself. Think. Don’t just believe what others tell you. Do you understand?”

  “In old days,” he said, “a white girl like you be my slave. You cook for me, come to the bed of Colweenada at night when Colweenada want.”

  “What old days? You weren’t there, so you don’t know the first thing about any old days. I would never come to your bed just because you wanted me to. Anyway, you would never have had a chance to make me your slave. One of the warriors would have me, not some boy.”

  In the light of a campfire built close to the horses, the youth wiped his brow.

  “I am warrior,” he claimed. “Not boy.”

  “You’re a thief and a kidnapper. You should be ashamed of yourself. But you’re a savage, so of course you don’t understand what I’m talking about. What do you know of shame?”

  “Your father, he come for you. Take you home. Don’t worry.” From his tone of voice, he sounded as though he’d be relieved when that day arrived.

  “What will the Iroquois sell me for, I wonder?”

  The Iroquois shrugged. “A walking cow,” he said.

  “A cow!” Sarah’s voice expressed her outrage.

  “Two cows still walking, maybe. More pigs still walking. More dead chickens. Sacks of beans. Two more horses. Colweenada would trade you for that, if Colweenada was the man who own you.”

  “You don’t own me. Nobody does. No one can own another person.” She sat by the fire and crossed her legs. Using a stick, she poked at the flames, causing sparks to fly up to the branches and leaves.

  “A man can own a slave,” the boy said.

  She had to concede that point. “I’m a captive. I’m not a slave. You shouldn’t be allowed to sell me. It’s not right. Certainly not for two cows.”

  “Colweenada pay two cows for you, if Colweenada own two cows.”

  She looked at him across the fire. “That’s a compliment, I suppose.”

  “Not understand, com-plim-ent.”

  She continued to look at him, then turned her eyes away.

  “Never mind,” she said.

  “If Colweenada own horse …” the Indian boy started to say.

  “It’s my horse,” Sarah interrupted him stubbornly.

  “If Colweenada own horse, horse stay to me. Colweenada give back horse to you if Colweenada own horse. If Colweenada not own horse, horse go to market in Montreal, a man buy horse, a Frenchman, you do not see horse again.”

  Sarah curled her legs up so that her chin rested on her knees and wrapped her arms around her folded legs to keep warm. “His name is Surprise.”

  The Indian boy nodded. He looked at the ground for a long time before he looked up. He was not as handsome as some warriors. He was chubby, his face round and flat with dark pockmarks, as though he’d been frozen during the wintertime as a child. While at first she had considered him ugly, with his red and black warrior stripes and his jaw line emphasized by white paint, she liked his rare, slight smile in a way, and she liked how he talked softly when only the two of them were together by the fire. He told her, “A good name.”

  “Thanks,” the girl said.

  “You ride horse tomorrow,” the boy said. “With Colweenada you ride.”

  She immediately straightened up with interest. “I can? Can I?”

  “Colweenada ask my chief for you ride.”

  “Ask. Ask! Go ask!” She was pushing him to go quickly.

  “You must promise Colweenada not to escape.”

  “I can’t escape, Colweenada. I don’t know how. I don’t know where I am.” “English girls lie.”

  “I don’t lie! Now go. Ask him. Hurry!”

  The boy would return to their small campfire with the chief standing beside him. The old man had deep furls that ran straight down his cheeks, and black eyebrows, each bisected by tufts of grey. He said nothing, looking from one young person to the other, into their hearts, their minds, before he walked away.

  In the morning, Sarah Hanson thought she was saying goodbye to Surprise again, and kissed him on the snout, when her new friend ordered, “Climb on horse. You come ride. My chief, he who is my father, he say okay. If you make escape, Colweenada take your scalp.”

  “You’d never do that,” she said with glee, so delighted at the prospect of riding these deep woods upon her favourite animal.

  “Colweenada do what Iroquois warrior do,” the boy protested. She never seemed to take him seriously, even when matters were profoundly serious. “I won’t escape and I don’t lie,” she told him. “Now, come on, let’s ride!”

  The journey north on horseback became more arduous than Sarah Hanson had expected. She rode long hours with rare stops, the stamina of the boys being extraordinary, and forded fast, rocky rivers against the animals’ will. That’s when she peed—when she was up to her waist in water. She was too embarrassed otherwise. Trails were Iroquois footpaths beaten down through the ages, often not suitable for horse and rider, although deer, bear and other critters used the routes often. Sarah Hanson’s face was slapped by branches and cut and punched by tree limbs, yet she was forbidden to cry out on the chance that bandit Indians were lying in wait. She had to twist her mind to comprehend that she was travelling as a captive in the company of Iroquois raiders, yet should be frightened only of other Iroquois or Indians believed to be bandits. If this bunch was not a concoction of bandits, why was she being held against her will?

  Walking the horses down a steep trail, one rebelled and fell, slipping off to the side, and its pack shifted on its back, surprising the animal, which hoisted its four legs into the air and took flight. For Sarah, the fall seemed to last forever. The horse broke its back and neck in the ravine below. She wept. She didn’t care if the boys thought little of her—she wept for the animal who had no fault or design in this, brought into the wilderness with no prayer or comprehension and now dead because stones had skidded loose beneath its hoof. She mopped her face dry on her shirtsleeve and forged on.

  When they found a good place, the Indian boys tied her to a tree, then went down into the ravine to retrieve the dead pigs off the back of the dead horse. Then they hacked the horse into manageable sections for travel and consumption later.

  Sarah stretched her restraints as far as possible from the tree and vomited. Yet she said nothing, and the boys untied her and carried on.

  They were descending, and at times she could see the great expanse of a lake. She gathered that they were bound for Lake George and Lake Champlain. In a day, they made it to the French and Iroquois camp at Fort Ticonderoga, where many Indians were sitting in huddled groups. Their dark eyes were upon the girl as she rode her horse among them. She stayed very close to Colweenada after they dismounted. She didn’t want him to step into the forest without her, not even to relieve himself.

  Within the
fort were drunken Indian boys and women and men, and others who never spoke nor smiled, but gazed upon her with a look as indifferent as trees. She could not begin to fathom their intentions. Some Indians wore white man’s clothes, including the clothes of soldiers.

  “Are they in the army?” Sarah asked.

  Colweenada did not answer such a foolish question. Whenever she caught up to him to ask another question, he turned away in a different direction. Finally, she grabbed his arm and said, “Are you mad at me? What’s the matter with you?”

  He looked over her head when he spoke to her. “You must look like you are the woman of Colweenada. If you do not look like you are the woman of Colweenada, a man will come and make you his woman.”

  She was unaccustomed to making herself appear to be any man’s woman, but she did her best, and only after they had departed Fort Ticonderoga did she ride alongside him, and only then did he let her. They carried on along the edge of the lake, northbound now, their supplies replenished. They had traded a pig and the horsemeat after declining offers for the girl, and they received in exchange a variety of foods and new rifles.

  “Bandits were in that camp,” she told her guide.

  “Colweenada believe this true,” he said.

  “Now they know we are here. They know I am here.”

  “Are you afraid, Sarah Hanson?”

  “I have every right to be worried.”

  “We ride our horses. We move well. Colweenada not worry about bandits behind. Colweenada worry about bandits not yet seen.”

  That seemed wise, so Sarah worried about the bandits up ahead as well.

  Sarah Hanson was leading three horses down to a gurgling brook for a drink when an attack commenced. An Indian boy saw the arrow that killed him break through leaves before it surged through his throat and he gurgled, dropping to his knees. Colweenada flinched, and an arrowhead passed through his shoulder. He broke the shaft and pulled it out of his back while running for a boulder’s shelter. He fell upon the ground and, ignoring his pain, pulled out his dagger.

  The whoops and battle cries spooked the horses and she lost control of two. Spinning herself up onto Surprise’s back, she bolted off in pursuit of them.

  An attacker, the only one among them who possessed a rifle, for these were impoverished bandits, commenced taking potshots at the boulder Colweenada hid behind. The youth hoped they’d soon fight hand to hand. He was determined to be the fiercest fighter in the forest that day, so that his killers might choose to protect his corpse from the appetites of animals.

  Colweenada’s immediate problem would be the man with the rifle, who was creeping around, trying to find a clear shot. Unable to shoot back at him, he watched the marauder move towards him with impunity. Colweenada peeked and spotted his attacker sliding along a fallen tree trunk suspended above a creek, so he crept slightly to his right to better shield himself. The move exposed his rump to arrows from that side, where other bandits were skulking through the woods. He would have to frustrate their arrows and bullets and tempt them to charge him with knives and tomahawks.

  This was going to be a difficult fight.

  Then he heard pounding hooves.

  Sarah had gone after the other horses to retrieve the rifles slung across their backs, and, having snared the animals and seized a pair of weapons, was galloping back. While in blazing motion, she took a shot at the bandit who sat fully exposed on a tree trunk, missing, although he nearly toppled over from fright, then Sarah reared her horse to a stop and simultaneously fired again. She felled him.

  The bandit, wearing a tall and torn straw hat, collapsed through branches to the exposed rock of the meandering creek bed below. His head split open on a rock. Sarah slid off her animal, leaving Surprise to fend for himself, and the beast, in its panic, galloped off. She ducked in behind the boulders, close to her new friend, and tossed him a rifle, and together they fired upon their attackers, driving them off.

  Sarah raised her arms and howled as resolutely as any Iroquois.

  Her pal, Colweenada, did not join in her celebration.

  “Your friend,” she said, seeing his sorrow. “I’m so sorry.”

  “He is my brother.”

  She assumed that he meant the term in a familiar manner, that all young Iroquois were brothers and sisters.

  “My father will be sad to hear of this day,” the young man reported.

  She understood then that he and the other boy were blood brothers.

  “My father will thank you for saving the life of his older son.”

  “Your father will be welcome,” Sarah said. She smiled despite their grief. He did not thank her himself, for she was only a woman, but anticipated the thanks of his father and passed them along.

  She helped Colweenada dig the youth’s grave. They’d take turns clawing in the dirt, and at one point the young Indian lad went sullen and stiff. She took the branch out of his hands and allowed him to rest while she dug, and at that moment the bandits attacked again. Three arrows pierced the chest of Colweenada, and she heard them pop his skin. One clicked on a bone inside him, and another came out his back, the arrowhead covered in a bloody tuft of tissue. The shock had yet to subside when she looked up and saw herself surrounded. She was holding nothing more than the stick. She’d left her rifle too far away. She was as bad as her father, she thought, who had misplaced his ammunition on the morning she’d been taken, and she swore she’d never be so foolish again. Sarah attacked them with her wood, but easily, laughing, they wrestled her into submission and tied her hands and feet.

  Now she was a prisoner for the second time, and this time she felt her heart stagger in her chest with a mortal dread—thumping, thumping.

  She gazed upon the corpse of Colweenada—poor, unlucky boy—and knew that his father’s grief on this day would be immense.

  Sarah had never seen a dead person before, and now she’d seen three, and had killed one of them herself. She longed to be home again. Just the thought of her mother and her house and her brother and the farm caused her to lose all hope, all reason, and she wept and screamed at her accusers and felt out of her mind and cursed them and pulled mightily at her restraints while they only laughed and danced around her and ran their filthy hands over her body and licked her face like dogs. One man tore at her shirt, exposing her left breast, and bit it, causing her to make a rapid series of unearthly sounds. Another man pulled him off her and Sarah, terrified beyond all capacity, raged up at them.

  The bandits decided to keep moving. They feared reprisals, discovery. These were unsafe woods. They wanted to sell the girl, but they didn’t want her too crazy. She was worth less to them crazy, more if they were the heroes of her rescue. This was explained to the man who had bitten her nipple, and she watched his eyes to see what he might decide.

  She feared death less than all manner of upset as they dragged her across the ground, down through the woods to the lake. Her skin was cut and chafed and bruised, and she cursed them. The attackers, who had also lost a friend on this excursion, kicked her quiet.

  At the lake’s edge, they tied her to a floating log and walked on, pulling Sarah Hanson through the water. The trunk of the tree spun, and her belly was in the water and she had to fight to hold her face up high enough to breathe.

  If she possessed the will, she knew, she’d breathe water only and die.

  But she survived that portion of her journey.

  They made camp after dark, these drunken men unaccustomed to travail in the wilderness. Sarah’s log was turned upright, and she was pulled halfway onto the shore and neglected there while the men organized themselves to eat and sleep. They drank whiskey, and the worst of the men who was always pestering her kissed her mouth. His lips tasted of rotted moose flesh, and Sarah Hanson, bound hand and foot, spat at him, and he only laughed as he fondled her vilely. The others told him he had to wait—he had not chosen a straw to be the first to have her, if anyone would have her, because that had not been decided yet. They argued about
these matters in English, for they were from different tribes, and their voices echoed off the rocks and trees. One reminded the others that they didn’t want her crazy. The vile man declared that the girl wasn’t crazy, that she wanted him to touch her, so Sarah Hanson showed how a crazy woman behaves, yelling and gagging and foaming and cursing and kicking—although she could not kick—and the men had to pull the other man off her to settle her down.

  Long after the vile man had gone away and stumbled into a stupor, she sensed that she was hearing her own voice, its echo wailing across the desolate waters of Lake Champlain.

  But that was the voice of a woman gone crazy.

  At dawn, the vilest of the men awoke first and stretched his hands above his head. A tomahawk flew through the air, and Sarah heard the weapon break a thin, dry, dead branch, then crack his skull. The sound was like the snapping of old wood that had a rotted core, and she heard him fall onto his face like the sound of a horse dropping onto its rump with a satisfying sigh. Without a single yell, Iroquois fell upon the three remaining bandits as they slept, and scalped them alive. Two who survived the scalping staggered forth, down to the lake, the tops of their heads sheared off. Blood flowed down their faces. The Indians brayed at them. Strapped to her log, Sarah watched as they stumbled around her and fell into the water as though to conceal their shame and torment, and one rose up again with a yell inhuman in its desolation, a man abandoned even by himself. The other man never turned his face again to the sun, and floated face down in the waterway. The man with the blood in his eyes got to his feet and was pierced by an arrow before he fell upon Sarah Hanson to take the revenge he might have wished, and a second arrow, straight through his mouth, silenced his mournful lament.

  Then the Iroquois hacked off the limbs of each corpse and floated the pieces away.

  Sarah, strapped to the log, was freed of her restraints by her original band of raiders. She hugged the leader and, weeping, told him that his sons were dead. He nodded, for this calamity was known to him.