Woods Runner

by Gary Paulsen

  “Yes. Maybe a little slow. We’ll see.”

  “Good. Follow me. And again, we can’t talk.”

  He set off without really thinking. He’d been away from the woods and sitting in the wagon for days, out of his element. His body was sick of it, wanted to move, to move, and he took off at a near lope.

  Annie held the pace, as she had when they’d been traveling together before, but within thirty yards his father gasped, “Samuel, I can’t….” His mother was out of breath and limping, but she didn’t complain and tried to help support his father.

  Samuel slowed then, but he wanted to be well away from the road before stopping, so he kept them moving for over a mile. The sun was near enough to the horizon then to shed light everywhere, even through the clouds. He stopped in a small clearing, unrolled his bedroll and took out the moccasins he had made those days sitting in the wagon. “Father, try these on,” he whispered.

  “Can we talk now?” his mother also whispered, but he shook his head.

  “Not yet. Two more hours.” He continued whispering, “Annie, I will walk in front, you in the rear. If I stop, we all stop. Not a sound. If I go down, you all go down—again, not a sound. Annie, every forty or fifty paces you turn and listen with your hands cupped to your ears. If you hear something strange or that bothers you, whistle softly. Then we all stop. Is all that clear?”

  “Yes—” his mother started, but he put a finger to her lips.

  “We are still in danger, great danger. Please, for now just do as I say.”

  She smiled at him and rested her hand on Annie’s shoulder. He turned to his father. “Can you hold a slow pace for two or three hours?”

  His father nodded. “I’ll do it.”

  “Then we go.”

  Samuel started off, this time at a much slower pace, and as quietly as possible, moving along game trails when he found them, below the tops of ridges if there were any so they wouldn’t be silhouetted against the skyline. Stopping every forty or fifty paces for Annie—and Samuel—and to listen, to watch, to know, to know if anyone was following them.

  His parents and Annie obeyed him and they moved, if not rapidly, at least steadily until Samuel looked down and saw water seeping into his footsteps. The edge of a swamp lay ahead of him.

  He found another clearing on slightly higher and drier ground, and let everybody sit while he dug food out of one of the packages. It was slabs of venison—but with little fat—and corn dodgers: corn bread made into small muffins. They had some lard in them, but not much. He fed the others and pretended to eat, but put it back. There was still a long way to go and unless he killed something, they would need all the food they could save.

  “All right.” He spoke low, almost in a whisper. “A short rest, just a few minutes. Then we start southwest. Ask questions now, but soft.”

  “What happened to your head?” his father asked. “That scar?”

  “I was hit with a tomahawk …,” he started, then realized he’d have to tell the whole story. He did so, leaving out the worst parts.

  “We saw you! We saw you!” his mother said. “On the other side of the clearing when the shooting started. It was too far away for us to know it was you, but we saw you when you shot. Did you … did you hit …”

  He nodded. “I fired, he went down, the second one clubbed me and I went down. All very fast.”

  Then he told of Cooper and the other volunteers who had helped him, leaving out the part about the man screaming for days. He worked past the rest of it—telling about Caleb and Ma, leaving out the Hessians—to the present.

  “But how could you …,” his father started. “You’re thirteen!”

  “We’ll have time for me to answer everything later. But now let me tell you what Abner said,” and he told of the British line they might have to cross, the possible danger, the situation in Philadelphia. When he was done he stood and picked up his rifle. “We go again now, all day if we can. Father?”

  “If we go slowly I think it will be all right.”

  “Drink as much water as you can from each stream. The water helps.” And he didn’t add that water keeps the stomach full and so less hungry. “Annie, you’re in back, me in front. No talking. A soft whistle.”

  And he set out. He knew his father was weak but he worried that if they favored the weakness, it could get worse. He kept the pace all day, checking the compass every few minutes. They stopped often to drink from the small streams and creeks—and there were many—with short, silent breaks every hour and a half or so, until it was early evening, and he saw his father weaving.

  They came to a small rise out of the moist lowlands and he pulled up there, on the back or western side, and stopped.

  “No fire,” he said softly. “Cold camp. Father, you eat until you’re full. Mother and Annie, hold it down to a little, just a taste. I’m going to go check the back trail. Wait here for me.”

  He trotted back the way they had come, stopping often to listen, smell, absorb. He didn’t feel completely safe until he had gone half a mile and had not seen or heard anything. Then he moved back to where he’d left them and found them sitting back against trees, his father and Annie wrapped in his blanket roll, already dozing.

  “We’re clear,” he whispered to his mother, his rifle across his lap. “Get some sleep.”

  She was studying him. “You’re so different. Grown.”

  “No. I’m the same. It’s everything else that’s changed.”

  She shook her head. “No. You’ve changed. Not in a bad way. You … know things. See differently. Think differently. If I didn’t know you, I don’t think I would recognize you. It’s like you’ve gone to some far place and come back a different person. But I love the new Samuel as much as I loved the old. And I’m very glad, I’m so thankful, that you’re with us, to show us, to lead us.” She held his hand.

  “Good night, Mother.”

  “Good night, New Samuel.”

  British Behavior

  The British, on their military tear through the countryside as they tried to regain control of the wayward colonists, adopted what later became known as a “fire and sword” strategy rather than a “hearts and minds” policy. That is, rather than attempting to placate and persuade the rebels, they destroyed towns and warehouses; they sacked and burned plantations, crops and livestock; they plundered and stole from households and stores alike without regard to law or justice or the well-being of the people they encountered.

  CHAPTER

  19

  They slept fitfully that first night, especially Samuel. He could not get over the feeling that somebody was following them.

  The next day the feeling abated somewhat, but by evening Samuel saw that his father was sliding back a bit. The food Emily had sent was good, but his father needed fat meat. Samuel decided to do a quick evening hunt for raccoon. One shot, hopefully away to the west, was all he would allow himself. With luck, nobody would hear it. They were walking southwest in marshy country, perfect for coon, and he saw tracks all over the place.

  He left the group resting and moved to the west an eighth of a mile, walk-hunting, and hadn’t gone fifty yards before he saw a small female with two kits. That wasn’t what he wanted and he kept going, out from her in circles. Within twenty minutes he came on what he was looking for: a large boar coon halfway up a tall oak, sitting on a side branch.

  He moved east of the coon so the sound would go west into the forest, aimed carefully and took him in the head, so that the animal fell backward off the limb, dead when he hit the ground.

  Samuel gutted him quickly and left the entrails for scavengers. Some people ate coon liver, he knew, and bear liver—bear and raccoon meat were similar—but he never trusted it. An old man had once told him, “Bear and coon liver will give you the gut gripes,” so he stayed away from it.

  Back with the others, he skinned the coon, built a small, very small, fire with the driest wood he could locate and cooked the meat in half-pound chunks, fat dripping
from it. He killed the fire as soon as the meat was cooked. He forced his father to eat several helpings of it; then he and his mother and Annie ate until they were full. He saved the rest for his father to eat over the next two or three days.

  They wanted to talk then, especially Annie, who was nearly bursting. “My talker is about to blow up,” she told him. But he shook his head, wiped the grease off his mouth, took his rifle and went back up the trail a quarter mile. He sat in a small stand of hazel brush next to the trail, dozing all night, watching. The sound of the gunshot worried him immensely, as did the smell of smoke from the fire—even a soft breeze could carry the odor of smoke for miles.

  But he needn’t have worried. Nobody came along and he went back to the family at dawn and awakened them. After letting them tend to themselves in the woods, since there were no privies, he started moving, again, in silence.

  That day they stopped for breaks four times and he forced his father to eat more coon. The rest of them ate the remainder of Emily’s venison and corn dodgers. They started to hit cross trails about midday.

  There was still good forest all around them and they walked in a beautiful green tunnel, although the trail seemed to get more beaten down as they moved southwest. Now and again, they came to cross trails that ran east-west and they went west. These trails were even more compacted, and twice they crossed over paths with twin ruts where carts and wagons had moved through.

  These frightened Samuel. They were so wide and exposed that he was especially cautious in the way he let his family cross them. He stood and waited for ten, twenty, thirty beats, listening, then sent one person across at a run, waiting and listening for another long stretch before sending the next person and the next and then, finally, himself.

  Which made it all the more difficult to believe when after all that care he got caught.

  On day four—even at the slow pace, Samuel thought they had made close to fifteen miles a day—they came into an area that seemed slightly more civilized. Forest, still, but here and there a farm off to the east. They had to bear west to avoid the larger cleared areas.

  The cross trails were becoming more substantial as well, double-rutted roads appearing fairly often and, now and then, proper roads—well traveled, hand-graded and planked over the muddy spots.

  They came on such a road near the end of the fourth day. It was sunny, although nearly evening, and they had relaxed, knowing they would soon stop for the night. Samuel came around a tight turn in the trail and stepped out onto a real road without thinking.

  He was two feet away from the rear end of a British cavalry horse. Samuel froze. The man on the horse, an officer, was looking into the brush on the other side of the road, as was his horse, both ears cocked.

  The officer had his saber drawn, held down at his side at a slight angle. Ready.

  To his left were five more men on horses, all facing the same way, staring intently, short muskets at the ready, their sabers still in the scabbards.

  A second, two, and they still hadn’t seen Samuel. The picture would be frozen in his mind for the rest of his life: a split second when everything was still, sane, controlled, nobody hurt, nobody dead; all sitting on their horses, all staring at the other side of the road, all alive, and then, and then … chaos.

  One man, young, with rosy cheeks, caught sight of Samuel and turned. His mouth opened, he called, started to aim his musket at Samuel at the same instant that Samuel raised his rifle, cocking the hammer. But before he could shoot, or the soldier could shoot, the officer wheeled his horse, which knocked Samuel away, and chopped his saber down at Samuel just as Samuel pulled the trigger on his rifle, aiming up at the officer, the ball taking the man just beneath the chin, killing him instantly as the saber barely caught the edge of Samuel’s shoulder. Samuel fell back to see his father coming out of the woods to help him.

  “No!” he said as the other soldiers swung their muskets around, when, like thunder, like the very voice of the god of war gone mad, the other side of the road erupted in a shattering roar of flame and smoke. The men on the horses were blown off their mounts into the brush.

  Dead. By rebel fire.

  Two horses were hit, screaming, staggering back into the brush. Samuel leaned back on his father’s arm and, without thinking, reloaded.

  The rebels reloaded, followed the redcoats off the road where they had fled, and killed the wounded horses.

  Then silence as about fifteen men came out of the brush and checked the British dead for papers.

  Samuel tried not to look at the officer he had killed. As with the Indian, it had happened by reflex. So quick. And final.

  The death bothered him, but when he thought of that saber coming down at him, he knew there had been no choice.

  A soldier in a blue Continental uniform came up to him. “I’m Sergeant Whitby. We’re from the Thirtieth Foot, out of Philadelphia. And you?”

  Samuel pointed with a vague wave to his rear, where Mother and Annie came out of the brush to stand by Father.

  Samuel couldn’t talk—he kept staring at the dead officer, whose hat had come off. The man had long brown hair that waved in the light breeze near the ground. It’s like he’s still alive, Samuel thought; like that part of him is still not dead somehow. Maybe I didn’t really …

  Samuel’s father cleared his throat. “We’re—refugees. Trying to get to Philadelphia and safety. My wife and I were prisoners in New York and my son, Samuel, rescued us. This is our daughter, Annie. May we walk with you?”

  “Sir, we can do better than that.” Sergeant Whitby turned to his troop. “Peters, Donaldson, gather up those four horses. Put this man and his wife and little girl on three horses and all the rest of the equipment, muskets and sabers, on the other. The rest of you get these bodies off the road.” He turned back to Samuel’s father. “We were sent to set up an ambuscade and take a prisoner or two to find out the situation in New York. Since you came from there I’m going to consider the mission accomplished—you tell us what you know—and there’s no reason you can’t ride in comfort.” He turned to Samuel, smiled and said, “I take it you have no objections to walking?”

  Samuel shook his head, then watched the soldiers drag the officer’s body back into the brush with the rest, load the horses and start back down the road toward Philadelphia.

  Toward safety.

  But Samuel hung back, leaning on his rifle, watching them until they were out of sight around a bend.

  It was over now, he knew. The run, the madness, listening to every crack of a twig, worrying over every brush of a leaf. His parents and Annie would be safe now. A great weight came off him then and he thought, No, we will be safe now.

  It’s over.

  But still he hung there, hesitant to go, to follow, until a young soldier came trotting back and waved at him to come.

  He nodded, picked up his rifle and jogged to catch up.

  It was over.

  Epilogue

  He stood leaning on his rifle, on the high ground where he had first seen the smoke from the attack on the settlement.

  Three years had passed.

  They had settled in Philadelphia and safety. The frontier would never be the same for his parents; the forest would always threaten them. So they had found a house, two stories of wood frame, among the many vacant houses in Philadelphia. Samuel’s parents had started a school to take in and teach some of the many children orphaned by the war. Annie had become a great help.

  But Samuel had trouble fitting in.

  Too much city, too much town, too many people, for him to feel settled, calm; and then there was that other thing that kept bothering him.

  The back trail.

  After a few months in the city, he told his parents, “Everybody helped us; at great risk they helped us, helped me. Everybody back there gave us everything they had—I have to go back. I owe.”

  There were arguments, of course, almost outright fighting, that went on for nearly two weeks, but in the end—surprisin
gly—it was his mother who stopped it. “No,” she said finally. “He’s right. He may be only sixteen, but age doesn’t matter now. He’s his own man and if he feels that strong, he must do it.”

  And, after he sat and talked with Annie and promised he would come back, made a sacred promise that he would come back, she agreed to stay, and let him leave.

  And he went back to the war.

  He worked his way up to Boston and joined Morgan’s Rifles, where he also found Coop and some of the other men who had rescued him. He stayed with them for nearly three years. He saw fighting as he’d never seen it before, but he did not join in the firing; instead he hunted for meat, fixed equipment, helped the sick and wounded as best he could. He stayed until Coop died, streaming with dysentery over a slit trench in an agony of jabbering delirium, killed by dehydration. At the end, Coop didn’t even know where he was, didn’t know his own name.

  Samuel left then.

  He went back, but not to Philadelphia, not yet. He went back to the healing forest, where it had all started for him, and where the war had nearly vanished by this time. He found the clearing back in the woods that he had seen that first day, when he’d gone so far from home hunting bear. He stood there, trying to make the last three years not be.

  Thinking at last it was over.

  But, of course, it wasn’t finished.

  Philadelphia would be briefly taken by the British. Samuel’s parents did not leave, but stayed to help the children. This time, oddly, the British treated them with great kindness; brought them food and blankets.

  Thousands more men would be killed, dying from bullets, bayonets and sickness. The world would bring the war to the oceans and naval men would die horribly at sea; France would send troops to help the American colonies, getting so deeply involved that it would destroy the French economy, weaken the government and contribute to causing the French Revolution, in which many of the leaders who had helped America would die, beheaded on guillotines. The madness didn’t end. Perhaps it has never ended.