Into the Wilderness

by Sara Donati

  At nightfall the men made a small fire and cooked a hen turkey Ton had snared. Lingo threw Elizabeth a piece of charred meat.

  “So, how long do you think it will take for Todd to die without medical attention?” he asked in a jovial tone. “Perhaps he is dead already and your troubles about the mountain are over. You would owe me a debt, then.”

  Dutch Ton had been sucking on a bone, and the face he held up in the firelight glistened with fat. He looked between Elizabeth and Lingo with his usual perplexed gaze. She caught his eye, and held it until he blinked and looked away. He had brought her water earlier in the evening, enduring Lingo’s ridicule. Elizabeth had hopes of him.

  “It is very rude of you to deny me conversation,” Lingo said, sighing. “Ton here has such a limited view of the world.”

  “Have you had any more letters from your sister?” Elizabeth asked Ton.

  Lingo raised his voice. “Of course, maybe Todd and Bonner are both dead. In which case you will need consolation in your grief. You would prefer Ton’s … assistance to mine?”

  “If you still have that letter,” Elizabeth persisted, “I would very much like to look at it again.”

  “She is trying to seduce you, Ton. Tell her she needn’t work so hard at it.”

  Elizabeth was glad of the twilight, hoping that it masked her heightened color. Dutch Ton was staring at her and she managed a prim smile. “The letter?” she repeated.

  “Don’t have it no more,” he said. “Didn’t need it, once it was read to me.”

  “Oh, what a pity,” Elizabeth said lamely. “Then perhaps you could tell me something about yourself.”

  Lingo laughed softly. “Oui, Ton. Tell her about the day down at the schoolhouse, and how close you came to killing her husband.”

  Elizabeth started. Ton had dropped his gaze and was poking at the fire with a stick.

  “Five good beaver pelts,” said Lingo. “That’s all it took to have him shoot your precious husband. But of course, he failed to kill him and never collected.”

  In her cold fury Elizabeth said, “I didn’t realize that you were quite that lazy. To have a simpleminded man fight your battles for you.”

  Before she realized what he was about, Lingo had reached across the fire. He used the back of his hand rather than his fist, but still Elizabeth’s head rocked back and she tasted blood in her mouth. The blow echoed in her head.

  “Let me show you what Ton will do for a beaver pelt,” said Lingo. “I think you will find it most instructive. If the smell of him doesn’t choke you first. And then I will take my turn and demonstrate to you that I am very capable of settling my own scores.”

  “Nathaniel and Hawkeye will track you down,” Elizabeth said, her voice faltering.

  “The north woods are very large,” said Lingo. “And we know them as well as your men. Better.”

  “But think,” Elizabeth said softly. “Am I worth the last chance you have at your gold?”

  His smile startled her. In the firelight, his pale eyes seemed totally without color. “Perhaps,” he said. “Just perhaps you are. I have the idea that you are a screamer, madame. A weakness of mine, you see, that I indulge on occasion.” He was tossing more wood on the fire as he said this, and there was a swoosh as it caught, and the crackle of resin. An explosion of sparks flew up and into the darkening sky; Elizabeth watched them scattering like malevolent spirits.

  He lifted his hand as if to salute her. The rope that bound them together jumped to life. It had been lying coiled to one side of the fire, but now she watched him loop it around his wrist, once, twice, until it stretched high across the fire between them. The first tug Elizabeth was able to resist without moving. She held his eye, and lifted her chin.

  He jerked harder, and she rose awkwardly. Another yank, and she fell forward onto her knees, directly before the fire. She scrambled to her feet.

  Lingo stood and gathered the rope in both hands. Realizing that he intended to pull her into the flames, Elizabeth began to struggle in earnest, leaning back with all her weight.

  “Stop,” said Dutch Ton quietly.

  Lingo laughed breathlessly. “It won’t kill her,” he said, jerking again so that she stumbled half into the fire. “Just a scar or two in payment for that mouth of hers.”

  The skin on Elizabeth’s wrist had peeled away, but she was too concentrated on the fire to take note of that, or of the blood. She struggled for her footing, sliding forward two inches for every inch she regained. The toes of her moccasins were singed. Tossing her head back in an effort to keep her hair from the flames, she saw Dutch Ton towering over her. His large, placid face was creased in concentration.

  Coming up next to her, Ton closed his fist over the rope in front of her own two straining hands. For a single strange moment Elizabeth was reminded of childhood games with her cousins. Then Ton grunted, and pulled. With a shout of rage Jack Lingo was hauled through the fire, scattering burning wood and embers everywhere.

  They had stumbled backward together, and Elizabeth stood heaving for breath, watching while Lingo bellowed and hopped, slapping at himself. There were burnt spots on his hunting shirt and breeches, and a livid red welt on his hand.

  And then he looked at her, and she knew that the unholy tales Nathaniel had kept from her about Jack Lingo were all true, and more, and worse. He grinned, and she moaned.

  He pulled the rope up again, and producing a knife from its sheath at his belt, he cut it with a single movement. Then he launched himself at Dutch Ton.

  Elizabeth backed away. The men circled each other slowly, Lingo lithe and winding; Dutch Ton much like a bear, all hulking muscle. She could hear the sound of Ton’s breathing, even above the steady stream of curses in French and English. With a scream, Lingo rushed the bigger man and threw his weight at him.

  Without stopping to think about the outcome of this fight, Elizabeth circled the fire to the jumble of provisions, keeping her eyes on the men while she searched with shaking hands. Her knife, her pack, her musket, these she grabbed up and turned away, and then turned back. There was no time to look for her wedding ring or the silver hair clasp that he had taken from her, and no time for regret, either. After a split second’s hesitation, she took up Lingo’s rifle, too, and she ran into the woods.

  In the meadow there had been enough of a moon to cast a weak shadow, but once the woods closed around her she was in total darkness. Elizabeth stopped, closed her eyes, and forced herself to breathe deeply.

  There was a fluttering above her in the trees, and she looked up in time to see the faint glimmer of a wide white breast. Then the owl called, and her pulse slowed.

  He would be after her, if he survived the fight. And Elizabeth feared that he would survive. Dutch Ton had drawn Lingo’s anger on himself and given her this opportunity; he would most probably pay dearly. She could not find it in herself to be thankful for this, not right now. All she could think of now was getting away, of finding Robbie.

  Her vision was adjusting slowly to reveal the faintest outlines of trees.

  Blue-eyed people are at an advantage in the night woods, Nathaniel had told her once while they made camp on a moonless night. He had winked one hazel eye at her and drawn her into the darkness of the balsam-branch shanty where there had been only Nathaniel and no thought of anybody but him until the sunrise. She had not feared the dark then. She had never feared it before. But Jack Lingo had looked at her over the fire, his pale blue eyes promising things she did not want to contemplate.

  Elizabeth stifled a small hiccup of fear and began to sort through the weapons. As she tucked the musket into her belt she realized that she had neglected to pick up the powder horn.

  Instead, she had Lingo’s rifle. In the afternoon she had watched him clean it, polishing the walnut stock lovingly. A Kentucky rifle, he had told her with some considerable pride in his voice, in spite of her studied lack of interest. She ran her hands over it in the dark, familiarizing herself with its dimensions, touching the trigge
r lightly. It was primed, but to shoot it accurately and hit a moving target would be a miracle.

  Miracles are a luxury you cannot afford, she told herself sternly. You have only yourself to depend on.

  Elizabeth looped the strap over her head, swung the gun across her back, and set off cautiously. She thought of Treenie now, hot regret welling up in her eyes.

  She had feared hunger and exhaustion, and found instead that she was suffused with energy, uplifted with it, rendered almost weightless. By the time the night sounds had begun to recede and she was able to make out irregular patches of sky, Elizabeth had begun to hope that she had evaded Jack Lingo. She would soon reach the crest of the hill, and there would be enough light to check her compass. In the early light, walking steadily, she could make Robbie’s camp in two hours from that point.

  There was a spring and a trickle of water; she drank at length, glad of the icy cold. She filled her palms and splashed her sunburned cheeks with it. When she looked up, she realized that it was light enough to see the ferns and grasses that circled the spring. She took a handful of wild mint, tucked half of it into her shirt and the other into her cheek, and drank again.

  Able to move more quickly, Elizabeth picked up her pace, pausing now and then to listen. Near the crest of the hill, she paused for a longer time, and felt her pulse take up an extra beat. Six weeks in the bush under the tutelage of Runs-from-Bears and Robbie and Nathaniel had made her aware of certain things. She could not always put a name to what she heard, but she could say if it was out of place. The faint crackling might be a moose, or it might be a man. She headed uphill again, hoping for a clearing at the top. What advantage this would bring her she was not sure, but it was a goal and she moved toward it.

  And then stopped, finding herself at the edge of a small clearing. Afraid to step out, she hesitated.

  She started at the sound of his voice, yelping one high, clear tone.

  “Don’t run,” he said easily. “It is such a waste of energy. In the end I will catch you anyway.”

  But she ran, without looking back. She felt his knife thump against the rifle on her back; heard him curse and stop to retrieve it. She ran faster, into the woods again, downhill now, she ran hard and clean, her toes turned safely inward, leaping over a small stream and dodging a deadfall. Branches tore at her hair like grasping hands. Elizabeth heard Lingo behind her, and she ran harder.

  The scream was like a woman’s, high and shrill. It pulled her up short as nothing else save Nathaniel’s voice could have done. Elizabeth tripped and righted herself and turned back to see the panther dropping out of a tree to take Jack Lingo to the ground. She had passed under that tree just seconds before.

  Elizabeth stood taking in great burning gulps of air while she watched. Unable to turn away, unable to run as she knew she should, she must. She watched first in horror as they struggled, and then in disbelief and amazement and unwilling admiration as Lingo extricated himself from the dying animal.

  He stood looking at her, blood dripping from the scratches on his upper body, his bloody knife at his side. She turned to run again, and again she tripped.

  In seconds he was on her, one foot on the small of her back as he reached down to cut the rifle strap. He was careless with the knife; the cut burned. Then he was up again, kicking her until she rolled over to face him. Lingo leaned down, his breath rancid on her face, his eyes glittering. His sweat dripped onto her, and his blood. She heard a hoarse whimpering, and knew it was her own.

  “This will take a very long time,” he said, not bothering to grin now.

  She tried to roll away and he slapped her, and slapped her again, until she lay still looking up at his face and the canopy of trees with her ears ringing. Behind him was a wild cherry tree in full bloom, framing his scratched face in delicate white blossoms. It was a strange sight. Elizabeth smiled.

  Lingo started at her smile, and then his face darkened. His eyes traveled down over her breasts. With a small flick of his knife he cut the first tie, nearest her throat.

  “There’s no hurry,” he said, his eyes darting wildly. “Let me tell you first what I’ve got in mind.” He was speaking French now, his voice low and easy, talked on and on while he played with the knife, laying the flat of the blade on her cheek, touching the tip to the corner of her eye. She learned that steel had a smell, bright and hard.

  Elizabeth wished for the ability to close her ears as she could her eyes. She turned away inwardly, tried to gather her thoughts. She could not reach for her knife. The musket was useless.

  “I see I have lost your interest,” he said after a while. The knife jerked again, cutting her skin this time with the tie. He grinned, and the bile rose in her throat.

  “Ah,” he said, lifting up the silver chain with the bloody tip of the knife. “You have been hiding treasures from me.”

  “Take it,” Elizabeth said.

  “Oh, I shall. When we are … finished.”

  If she struggled, perhaps he would kill her outright. For one moment, she could not decide if that was something to be wished for, or not.

  She tried to fix on Nathaniel’s face in her mind, but he would not come to her, as if he could not bear the sight of her pinned underneath Jack Lingo.

  Elizabeth sobbed. Lingo slapped her, and her lip split against her teeth. He rubbed one finger in her blood and drew it down between her exposed breasts. She began to retch.

  Lingo jerked back, his face creased with disgust. Elizabeth rolled onto her stomach and hauled herself to her hands and knees, vomiting into the soft mass of moidering leaves. Her whole body shook with it.

  She heard him moving away. She hung her head and brought up the last her stomach had to offer, blood and bile, mint and bitterness. Gagging, praying, she lifted her head and heard an unexpected sound.

  He stood three feet away, his back turned to her, leaning with one shoulder against the cherry tree. It struck her almost as comical, that he would think to turn away while he pissed. She choked back something that might have been a laugh.

  At her side was his rifle. The gleaming barrel, more than three feet in length, the long, polished cherry wood stock with its inset patchbox and hinged brass lid. Something etched in the brass plate in ornate script. Her vision doubled but then cleared:

  VOUS ET NUL AUTRE

  You and no other. Elizabeth’s fingers curled around the cold metal.

  Wake up now! she heard Curiosity’s voice say clearly. You can’t always be daydreaming when the fat’s in the fire.

  As he began to turn back toward her, Elizabeth lurched to her feet with the rifle barrel in both hands like a cricket bat. Her scream seemed to paralyze him, tearing up from the gut, every ounce of her strength and rage in it. His expression was almost resigned: one brow frozen high in reluctant admiration as his eyes traced the arc of the swing.

  The edge of the stock met his head over the left ear. The cracking bone resounded like nothing Elizabeth had ever heard before and she felt his skull pop like the shell of a beetle underfoot. The force of the blow traveled up her arms with a jolt that forced her backward, the gun dropping out of her hands just as Jack Lingo hit the ground, folding in on himself.

  She stood looking down at him, her hands tingling at her sides.

  Petals were falling. They made intricate and lovely patterns on the spreading crimson lake; they spangled the wild tangle of his matted hair. His eyes were open, and his expression quizzical.

  A woman who had always taken pleasure in a task well done, Elizabeth turned her face upward and sent a howl of satisfaction spiraling into the sky.

  · · ·

  She left him as he was, and went on without weapons, without provisions. A half mile away, she stopped to listen, and hearing no sound of him, she sat down on the forest floor. After a good while, Elizabeth rose to her feet, wiped her swollen face with her own hair and checked the compass. She was off course, but not badly. She began to walk.

  At Little Lost she stopped, and stumbled, an
d walked into the water, submerging herself for as long as she could bear it. The cold was a mercy on her cuts and bruises. She drank until she could drink no more, and finally came up on the shore where she lay with her throbbing cheek against the firm, cool sand. A loon swam by, its ruby eyes turned blindly toward her. She wondered how loon might taste.

  The path to Robbie’s camp was immediately familiar. It would be safe to run, if only she had the energy. Her feet hurt, and her face was a misery. She wondered if Robbie would recognize her.

  The clearing, then. Finally. The worn log benches and stone-lined cook pit, the neat rows of traps hung under the roof, the woodpile. No fire burning, no sign of Robbie. She called, and got nothing but a crow’s raucous cry in return. Elizabeth looked into a stand of pine and saw the bird balanced delicately on a sycamore branch, its dusty black breast spotted with yolk and eggshell. Around it, the robin darted and shrieked while the crow reached into her nest again.

  Elizabeth wondered if it was possible simply to die of despair.

  XXXVIII

  She dreamed of Runs-from-Bears, but in her dream he had grown young, his face smooth and unscarred. As always, though, he smelled quite distinctly of bear grease and hard walking. She huddled in on herself, seeking a deeper sleep in which dreams did not rely on scent to send their message.

  But her stomach was growling, and under her hip a spray of pine needles had worked themselves into a most uncomfortable spot. And the smell of bear grease was still there, now accompanied by a voice, one she recognized. Elizabeth bolted upright and knocked heads with Otter.

  “My God,” he whispered. “It is you.”

  “Otter,” she said, and drawing in one deep breath to steady herself, Elizabeth reached out and grasped both of his forearms with her hands.

  “Do you have any food?”

  His look of surprise and shock was quite suddenly replaced by a sense of purpose. He disappeared for a moment but was back before she could rise to follow him, putting a piece of dried venison in one hand, and a great hunk of nocake in the other. Her mouth filled instantly with saliva.