Dance on the Wind tb-1

by Terry C. Johnston

  He stumbled, spilling to one knee, the rifle skidding from his grasp in a skiff of snow iced across a patch of leafy brush. Lumbering to his feet, Titus told himself to forget the pain crying out from his knee. Scooping up the rifle and a handful of dead leaves, he pushed on through the woods, trying to forget the bare limbs and thorny branches that whipped at his face.

  They thundered behind him, breaking through the underbrush, some exhorting the others with chants and war cries—he swore he could even hear the hard breathing of a few of the closest ones, grunting as they chased him.

  Plunging into a thicket of bramble, he felt the thorns claw at his jerkin, catch at the cuff on his britches, slash the back of his hands to ribbons as he swept ahead—struggling to hack his way through to the far side of the briars. Now he had a good-sized gash on one eyelid, and it was beginning to ooze enough that it hindered his vision from that eye. As slow as he was in breaking through to the other side—Titus was certain with his every step that he would feel a bullet catch him, maybe an arrow driving deep into those thin, sinewy muscles of his back. By their growing shrieks he knew they were closing on him faster than he would have ever imagined possible.

  But then he remembered this was their forest. Not his. And he became all the more frightened—figuring they knew where he was going much better than he. Something cold clutching his belly in a knot made him fear some of the fastest ones might even get somewhere ahead of him and be waiting for him.

  The breathing, the grunts, the yelps he heard at his heels, all made him fear that his first run-in with real Indians was going to be his last. Something he simply would not live to tell his grandchildren of, the way his grandpap had sat the young’uns around his knee and told them the chilling, hair-raising stories of just what a dark and bloody ground that Ohio River canebrake country had been of a time not all that long ago.

  An angry whine sailed past his ear, followed a heartbeat later by the roar of a musket behind him. He’d never been shot at. Now he felt as if he had become the fleeing game, the bounding, hard-pressed buck or doe, pursued by the hunters, chased through the thickets, driven across the snow as his heart pounded in his chest until he was sure it was going to burst with its next beat.

  What a fool he had been to go so far inland to hunt!

  His stupidity, along with the fear, the exhaustion, and the utter hopelessness of ever reaching the boatmen alive … it all came slipping in on him like separate fingers to claw the courage right out of him. At least a mile inland, and they must surely have gone much more than a mile downriver. That meant that no matter how he cut back to the river at an angle, he still had more than two miles—maybe even twice that—before he would reach the boatmen’s camp.

  How he wished Ebenezer had been with him when the first Indian showed up. For sure he wouldn’t have frozen in fear, Titus thought. Not the way Abigail had told him of how Zane had waded right into the rivermen fixing to abuse a friend of his, Mathilda. The river pilot would do no less for Titus, would he, now? Any of them, maybe even Reuben, the sourest of the lot, would have helped him take care of that first Indian … and they could have slipped away before the others had happed onto the clearing.

  His breathing came a little easier. Titus figured he was getting his second wind. Chest didn’t hurt so much now. And the soles of his feet inside that double pair of moccasins didn’t pain him near as much as they had there at first. Maybe they were simply numb. He couldn’t tell, really—not able to feel anything from the ankles down. Like something cold clinging from the end of his legs.

  What a fool he was for going so far inland to hunt. A fool for seeking the aloneness with the woods and what game he might find … for now the boatmen could not hear his yells, even if he could have forced his dry mouth, his aching throat, to break free a yelp of warning. There were two things he realized had a crystal certainty at that moment: the Indians were still behind him, crashing through the brush in his wake; and the boatmen were still somewhere ahead of him, floating somewhere downriver before tying up for the night to await him and the game he was to bring in.

  That almost made him laugh, and almost laughing made him want to cry. Instead of carrying in some haunches of fresh venison, he was bringing in some Indians right behind him. As the limbs and thorns whipped across his face, slashed at his eyes, Titus tried to focus on each of their faces, one at a time, to imagine how the four rivermen might look as he came down upon the camp they had made.

  Sitting there circling their fire.

  Fire!

  He could almost smell it. Wanting so bad to stop long enough to get himself a good, long whiff of that fragrance on the cold wind. But he dared not stop for anything … hearing the Indians renew their yelps and cries close behind him. Perhaps they smelled that fire too. Maybe it wasn’t his imagination, after all.

  Then he realized warriors would figure on redoubling their efforts to get to him before he got any closer to any sort of help.

  It was his sensitive nose that led him across that last half mile of chest-heaving sprint. As an animal might catch the scent of danger on the wind, this time Titus followed the scent of man’s woodsmoke toward the east bank of the Mississippi.

  Then in the murky light of that late afternoon as the air seemed to grow all the colder, he thought he spotted a distant twinkle of light. Almost like a faraway star flung against the dark shimmer of twilight coming down upon that river valley, a flicker of something against the dark, rolling band of the Mississippi itself. The light danced and rose, quivering from side to side. Their fire!

  He tried to yell, but nothing came out—finding his tongue pasted to the floor of his mouth, unable to budge it free.

  Then he saw movement cross in front of the light of that fire, remembering how he had happened upon the four of them early last autumn, back on the upper Ohio. Their black shadows momentarily cut off the light as they moved about the fire. He tried again to yell, his tongue freed a bit, and sensed his warning come out as a squeak escaping his parched throat.

  One of the shadows ahead of him stopped, backlit by the fire. Then it seemed that they turned. He could hear the sound of voices suddenly raised in alarm ahead of him, no longer just those cries and yelps behind him. Then the four were all on their feet, looking at him.

  Didn’t they know! Couldn’t they see!

  Clumsily he tried to twist his upper body as he ran, pointing behind him with the empty hand. In doing so he nearly stumbled on the last clumps of some low brush just as he reached the muddy, sandy bank. The final thing he saw before he began to pitch forward was Ebenezer waving his arms and the other three breaking in different directions.

  He felt the grit of the icy sand and snow bite the bloodied skin on his face, sensed it scoop into his mouth, rub raw against the cuts on the back of his hands as he got to all fours, crawling, scrambling to get back onto his feet at the same time he swiped a forearm across his eyes to clear them of sand and blood and stinging sweat.

  And before he realized it, he was sprinting again.

  Heman Ovatt was already on the flatboat, lunging from the awning to the gunnel, something in his hands. There he threw the long object to Kingsbury, a second to Root. While Ovatt turned back to that awning of oiled Russian sheeting, Titus knew those had to be longrifles, muskets, smoothbores, fusils—firearms! As Ovatt reappeared at the gunnel with two more, Titus watched Kingsbury and Root scurry in his direction, where they dropped to their knees and brought their weapons to their shoulders.

  Zane swung about with a rifle in his own hands, bringing it to his shoulder as Ovatt leaped over the side of the boat. The steersman hollered something. Titus wasn’t sure what he said. The words sounded garbled at first.

  “Hold your fire, boys!”

  Then he understood, as Kingsbury rose from his knee, his rifle still at his cheek.

  “C’mon, Titus Bass! C’mon—you can make it!”

  Hames strode toward Bass confidently, the muzzle of his weapon pointing at whatever migh
t be pressing down on Titus from behind.

  “Get on in here, Titus!”

  He lunged past Kingsbury as Root got up from his knee and began to move backward, a step at a time. Ovatt and Zane were there to catch Bass as he stumbled against them.

  “Get him on board!” the pilot ordered Heman.

  Ovatt turned, clutching Bass as they careened down the riverbank past the big, warming fire they had built. How he wanted to stop, to rest, to feel the fire’s warmth. He found himself stumbling.

  “Get up!” Ovatt hollered.

  Zane became frantic, shouting, “Get yourself in the boat!”

  He did as he was told, scrambling over the gunnel as the first shot rang out.

  Yet it wasn’t fired by any of the four boatmen. The shot had come from the brush, where he glanced to see a whiff of smoke, saw glimpses of the Indians converging, then moving apart at the edge of the timber.

  “Ease back to the waterline, boys,” Zane ordered his crew. “Hold ’em so they don’t break on us.”

  The three of them continued to back slowly, slowly toward the flatboat, training their rifles on the timber, holding the Indians at bay. Bass stuffed a hand down into his shooting pouch, dragging out at least a dozen round lead balls he then popped into his mouth.

  “Heman—you got them hawsers?”

  Ovatt turned from the last of two lines securing the flatboat for the night. “Done, Ebenezer. I’m getting on up so I can pole us off soon as the rest of you’re here.” Heman leaped against the side of the flatboat and kicked a leg over the gunnel, rolling himself aboard.

  Pulling the plug from his powder horn, Titus spilled more of the coarse black grains onto the deck than he got into his palm. Trembling more now with the exquisite excitement of their predicament than with anything resembling fear, he turned that quaking hand over the muzzle and poured the powder down the long barrel. One of the lead balls he popped from his lips and dropped down the muzzle without a patch.

  Without taking his eyes off the enemy still clinging to the shadows, Zane said, “You get on up first, Reuben!”

  They were less than five yards from the boat now—just about the time the Indians were making a clear, stand-up show of themselves at the edge of the timber. Yelling, screeching, pounding their chests and taunting the boatmen, a few even pulled aside their breechclouts and exposed their manhood at the whites from the river.

  As Root turned his back on the Indians and raised his arms to clamber over the gunnel, Bass and Ovatt both reached down to help him get on board.

  Titus asked, “What’s that mean, them showing us their … their privates that way?”

  “Just their way of telling you they think you ain’t much of a man like them,” Root grumbled as he turned and crouched atop a pair of large oak casks, pointing his rifle at the edge of the timber.

  “You next, Hames!” Ebenezer ordered, only his eyes moving back and forth as the two of them backed right to the water’s edge. He eased back a few more steps, the water lapping at his knees before he came to a stop.

  “We can both climb on at once’t, Ebenezer!” Kingsbury protested.

  “No!” he growled. “That’d take two guns off them red devils at once’t. Get!”

  His lips pursed in resignation, Kingsbury turned and splashed out to the flatboat as it drifted lazily away from its moorings. He slogged through water midway up his thighs before he could toss his rifle up to Ovatt, then held up his arms for help.

  Bass did his best to sprinkle a dusting of priming powder down into the pan while he kept his eyes darting across the crescent of Indians pointing muskets and arrows at the boat and its white men.

  Kingsbury shrieked, “C’mon, Ebenezer!”

  “You all got your guns ready?” Zane asked, cocking his head slightly so he could snatch a quick glance at the flatboat.

  “Gotta come now, Ebenezer!” Kingsbury shouted. “We’re loose and drifting off!”

  Bass’s heart leaped into his throat as he felt the river jostle the boat to the side as they inched out into the channel where the Mississippi’s pull became increasingly stronger. They were easing away from the pilot.

  “Zane!” Root cried.

  Ebenezer waited no longer. Suddenly wheeling, the steersman lunged around into the water, struggling as the river bottom sank deeper, desperate to reach the side of the flatboat before it drifted out of reach.

  “I’ll get the rudder an’ work us back to shore!” Kingsbury shouted, starting for the stern.

  “No, goddammit!” Zane bellowed, the water up to his waist as he fought his way into deeper and deeper water. “Keep your gun on them!”

  The first bullet smacked into the gunnel, just past the pilot’s head. Titus snapped up, wrenched from watching Zane’s struggle to find the Indians emerging onto the open beach where the white men had tied up for the night. The arrows began to arc silently into the twilight. Making no noise until they struck the thick yellow timbers, snapping at times like dried cane stalks underfoot in the ripe, moist bottomland every winter. A few sailed down through the oiled awning with a brief hiss as they ripped through the heavy fabric.

  “Listen to ’em, will you?” Kingsbury called out. “That’s a Chickasaw war whoop if ’n I ever heard one!”

  “Shuddup and shoot, goddammit!” Ebenezer called out.

  As Titus pulled the hammer back to full cock, he watched Root reach down and snatch the rifle from Zane, who now stood up to his armpits in the river. Bass whirled away as the boat twisted slightly, starting to come broad-side against the current, throwing the blade down into that back buckhorn sight—not knowing where the hell to hold on those tall figures. Sure as anything, he knew game: where to hold his sights on a turkey or squirrel, deer or even a black bear. But … those were men! Red bastards to be sure, just what Zane had called them. And they would’ve likely killed him and raised his hair if he hadn’t run so fast, what with being so damned scared. Shooting a man?

  He held squarely on the middle of one of the bodies—an Indian who stood reloading his rifle. And Titus squeezed, clenching both eyes shut.

  When he dared open them in the echo of the gun’s blast, he watched the Indian spin like a string top, his rifle cartwheeling out of his grip. Ducking down on one knee to reload, he saw from the corner of his eye Zane kick one leg onto the top of the gunnel. Then heard the pilot grunt.

  More and more arrows slapped the surface of the water, thwacked into the side of the boat with a hollow, leaden sound.

  “Jesus God, Ebenezer!” Ovatt cried.

  “He done caught one!” Root said, desperation in his voice.

  “Get us the hell out of here!” Zane snapped as they dragged him over the gunnel and onto some crates. “Hear me, Kingsbury! Get to that rudder!”

  All at once the men seemed to explode in different directions, every one of them hollering as the Indians came on down the sandy bank to the water’s edge, shooting their old muskets and loosing their arrows, screeching and crying out in frustrated disappointment.

  “Goddamned Chickasaws,” Zane growled as he rolled onto his belly.

  That’s when Titus glanced away to the beach—then immediately looked back at the pilot, his mind suddenly realizing what his eye had seen: the long shaft of an arrow, its fletching a’quiver with the muscle spasms in Ebenezer’s leg as the pilot struggled to make himself small among the crates.

  “Titus—go help him!” Ovatt ordered from the bow where he had seized the gouger and was working it frantically back and forth to help Kingsbury speed the flatboat farther out into the current.

  Stuffing the rifle between two of the kegs filled with iron nails, Bass scrambled toward Zane.

  “Goddamned Chickasaws … goddamn, goddamn, goddamn,” the pilot muttered repeatedly.

  “That what they are? Chicka … Chicka—”

  “Saws. Goddamned Chickasaws,” Ebenezer grumbled as he twisted onto his side. “Take a look at the son of a bitch for me. See how bad she’s bleeding back there.”r />
  “Damn right, they was Chickasaws,” Kingsbury bellowed from the stern rudder. “No other cry like a Chickasaw war whoop in the world—them runts hollering for blood the way they do.”

  “Ain’t bleeding too bad,” Titus declared, wide-eyed, staring down at the back of the pilot’s leg.

  “Cut it open,” Zane ordered.

  “Y-your leg?”

  He wagged his head, biting down on his lower lip, then said, “No. Cut open my britches, goddammit—so you can see for sure if I’m bleeding bad.”

  Pulling his knife from his belt with one hand, the other gripping the thick canvas fabric of the pants, Titus pricked a long slice away from the arrow’s shaft.

  “How it be?” Zane inquired, dolefully looking over his shoulder in the coming darkness. “Best get me in there.”

  Titus watched the pilot nod to the open area beneath the awning, then lifted Ebenezer’s arm over his shoulder, dragging him off the crates, hopping one-legged under the edge of the cloth.

  “Light a few of them wind lanterns. We’re bound to need some light,” Zane ordered. As Bass set about pulling some tow from a kindling box, the pilot turned to fling his voice at Kingsbury. “Hames—best you get us on downriver afore putting over.”

  Kingsbury shook his head in protest. “I wanna look at that leg of yours first off, Eb—”

  “The boy’s taking care of it for now,” Zane interrupted. “You just get us a few miles on downriver afore putting over to the west bank.” Rolling on his hip slightly, he turned to holler at Ovatt. “You hear that, Heman? Up to you on that bow to find us a place to put in for the rest of the night.”

  Titus asked, “How many mile you figure we ought to put atween us and them?”

  “Don’t matter how many, son. We’re gonna be on the other side of this big, wide ol’ river. They ain’t gonna cross the Messessap to get at us.”