by Paul Clayton
“This is what I wrapped you with when you were a tiny little baby.” Overcome, she looked over at the fire momentarily, her eyes glossy with held-back tears. She turned back to him and quickly folded the doeskin up. “Take it with you and when you are far away, bury it. Now you are a man and there is no more need of it.”
In the morning, the people of Coosa Town went about their business as Swordbrought walked down the path to the palisade entrance. He quickly crossed the field toward the forest. His bow and a quiver of arrows hung from his shoulders and two pouches hung from his belt. One was the pouch his mother had given him, which contained his food and blankets, and the other, larger pouch contained the village’s sacred pipe of peace. As a bearer of the pipe, he would be given safe passage by any civilized people he met along the way.
Just before he entered the forest, Swordbrought stopped to take a last look at Coosa Town. He must succeed and he must return quickly. He prayed to his spirit guide, the hawk, and disappeared into the thick, green jumble of plant life.
Toward midmorning he came to the trail that led to the west and began running. He ran fast all day without tiring, his footfalls almost silent on the cool packed earth of the trail. At dusk he stopped and found a stream to drink from and a place to sleep.
The night passed uneventfully and in the morning he listened to the waking sounds of the forest as he chewed his corn and meat. When he walked out to the trail, another figure, which had been watching among the trees, melded silently back into the green confusion of vines and leaves. The figure remained motionless until Swordbrought had disappeared, then emerged to follow along at a distance.
Chapter 24
There was not much room inside the hut. The dull morning light entered through a square hole over the bolted door. Calling Crow opened his eyes and looked at the hole. It was much too small for him and Red Feather to crawl through. Calling Crow’s fingers reached reflexively for his medicine pouch and found nothing. Of course, he realized with despair, the big bearded man named Collier had it, along with their bows, arrows and knives. They had been locked up in this place for more than one moon now, ever since their capture and beating. The light increased, separating shadow from form, and Calling Crow looked over at his friend with sadness. Because of the beating, Red Feather’s right leg had become very stiff and was healing slowly, forcing him to limp. Calling Crow’s anger flared as he remembered that night. In the blackness of the spring house, the men’s blows had been so hard-struck that it was only through the intercession of their spirit guides that he and Red Feather had not been severely injured. Calling Crow vowed that before another moon passed he would get them out of here. He would then retrieve his medicine pouch from Collier and find Samuel.
Calling Crow went over to wake Red Feather for Collier’s hunt show. It was odd. Red Feather no longer awoke when the sun pushed its rays into the window hole. Calling Crow thought that this was also due to the beating. Red Feather lay so still these days that several times Calling Crow thought he had died in his sleep. These things troubled Calling Crow greatly.
Calling Crow shook Red Feather awake. Red Feather pulled his legs up and sat up on the crude bed. Calling Crow thought sadly how much damage the beating had done to Red Feather. Although his bruises would eventually heal, his spirit had been smashed. His once brave eyes were now vacant most of the time and he seemed much older than Calling Crow now, more like an old man.
Red Feather stared at the wall blankly, saying nothing.
“The hunt will begin soon,” said Calling Crow, “we must get ready.”
In answer, Red Feather gave him a blank look.
Calling Crow looked out the window hole. Rain was on the way. He turned again to his tastanagi. “Red Feather-- ”
Red Feather turned away and began singing a song of lament,
“Our Grandfathers are calling me,
From up where the sun moves across the sky.
They are calling me to come,
To the sacred lands-- ”
He stopped and said, “We will die here.”
“We will live here,” said Calling Crow angrily, “for a time. Then Samuel will find us and we will go home.”
Red Feather came angrily alive upon hearing Samuel’s name. “No!” he said. “You are a fool to continue to believe in this man! Don’t you see that it was he who put us here?”
Calling Crow looked at Red Feather in surprise. Red Feather had never spoken out against Calling Crow like that. Calling Crow felt no anger. Instead, a twinge of hope stirred within him. Perhaps Red Feather was rallying. His eyes blazed with angry fire. Calling Crow was glad to see this. Then Red Feather’s eyes grew dim and he turned away. “I am sorry.”
Red Feather said nothing further, instead staring off at vistas that only he could see.
The day grew gray and the rain had come by the time the keeper finally unlocked the door of the hut for the hunt. Calling Crow and Red Feather stood as the six men surrounded them. A redheaded giant of a man named Burton knelt and applied the chains to Calling Crow and Red Feather’s ankles. As he was doing this, Calling Crow looked over at the fence. A mob of English people waited there, talking and gesturing as they looked over at them.
Hugh Collier, the old man who ran the faire, shoved his large, hairy face in Calling Crow’s direction. He gave Calling Crow his own bow and two arrows. Collier had already removed the sharp shell points from them, then whittled the wooden ends to dull points. “Let’s go,” said Collier. “And move more lively, the both of you. They’ve come a long ways and you must give them a good show.”
Calling Crow looked at Collier. How he would like to cut this old man’s fat belly open and display his prettily colored insides to the crowd. That would be an even better show.
Collier looked away nervously. He and Burton and the others walked back toward the fence. Calling Crow watched them for a moment, the rain beading and running down his hair and into his face. Red Feather’s head hung as he stared at the wet gray earth at his feet.
“Come,” Calling Crow said to him. “Let us get it over with.”
Calling Crow handed one of the arrows to Red Feather and nocked the other into his bow. The ankle chains shortened his stride and clinked loudly as he walked toward two solitary trees in the middle of the pasture. Red Feather followed slowly, his eyes downcast as he took small steps. Reaching the trees, Calling Crow turned and looked in the direction of the people along the fence. A boy waved at him and his mother slapped his hand down. The people’s expressions grew animated, their eyes big at the sight of him. Calling Crow relaxed the arrow and waited. Red Feather stood still, his head hanging down.
Over at the fence, Burton opened a gate and pushed a small sheep through. The animal ran a short distance then stopped and grazed on a patch of grass. Calling Crow saw a thin column of smoke erupt upward, followed by the report of a musket. The sheep ran in panic toward Calling Crow and Red Feather. Calling Crow pulled the arrow back until the feathered vanes touched his cheek. He said a prayer to his spirit guide. Without a shell point on the arrow, his aim would have to be perfect in order not to cause the animal unnecessary suffering. When the sheep was close enough, he released his arrow. It arced up slightly into the thick, gray sky and down to its target.
The sheep lay motionless on its side on the muddy field. The shouting and laughter of the crowd grew louder as Calling Crow quickly hobbled the short distance to the sheep. He knelt and turned to watch with sadness as Red Feather approached in his slow, painful limp. Calling Crow pulled his knife from his belt and began to skin the sheep.
Red Feather knelt and stared vacant-eyed at the meat. After a moment he lifted his eyes to Calling Crow. “Do you know that we are dead?” he said almost in a whisper. “We have lost our souls.”
Calling Crow did not take his eyes off his work. He could not bear to look into Red Feather’s beaten face. “Do you want Collier’s men to give you another whipping?” he growled at him. “Prepare the fire. They are wai
ting to watch us eat.”
Chapter 25
In the pale light of morning, the spider living over Calling Crow’s bed worked steadily and methodically. Calling Crow had been fading in and out of consciousness in the grip of a powerful sickness. Now he was conscious, but almost too weak to move. Seven days earlier, out of overwhelming frustration and despair, Calling Crow had grabbed one of Collier’s men through the little window. They had beaten him for that, and it was then that he had gotten sick. Now they were very careful around him and Red Feather, and Calling Crow saw that what little chance they might have had of escaping was gone now.
Calling Crow looked up again at the spider as it dragged its abdomen past strand after strand, weaving its web. Over on the other sleeping shelf, Red Feather lay without moving. Although he was not sick, his spirit was broken. Despite Calling Crow’s love for his tastanagi, he knew that he could now do nothing for him.
Red Feather shuddered and awoke. Calling Crow wanted to speak to him but no longer knew any words that would encourage him. They had been prisoners of Collier and his show for two moons now. Without Calling Crow’s medicine pouch, he could not see how they would ever get away from here. When they weren’t penned up, they were chained at the ankles and surrounded by Collier’s foul-smelling men. And if they could escape, where would they go? Where was Samuel’s house from here? Calling Crow wondered. Aieyee! What must Samuel think of their disappearance? Had he stopped searching?
Outside a dog barked. The light of dawn was dimmed by thick dark clouds; another day was upon them. Soon Collier and his men would be coming. This was one of the days Calling Crow and Red Feather danced for the visitors to the fair. The last time Calling Crow had collapsed from the fevers. He didn’t know if he could do it today.
Aieyee! What little food that was in Calling Crow’s stomach threatened to come up at the thought of the dancing. It was a sham, a show for the people that came to see them, people who looked upon them as half-animal freaks. “Picts,” Collier called them.
“You are awake,” said Red Feather.
“Yes.” Calling Crow again thought of Red Feather’s assertion that they had been betrayed by Samuel, that the men that had beaten and enslaved them had been Samuel’s men. It was all Red Feather thought about, and it was consuming him. Calling Crow still could not believe it. What now seemed like a long time ago, he had looked into Samuel, the Englishman’s eyes when he had given his word. Aieyee! He had meant it. Calling Crow had even given him his daughter. Calling Crow had never been wrong in these things before. Was he now?
Calling Crow heard voices approaching. They would be here in a moment. He sat up; he was soaked in sweat. Fists pounded on the door. Red Feather stood as Calling Crow swung his feet to the floor. The door flew open and the English looked in apprehensively, their beards bejeweled with dewdrops, their skin red from the cold air. “Get out here!” Collier bellowed.
Red Feather helped Calling Crow to his feet and then took down from the wall the two feathered headdresses Collier’s men had made for them to wear during the dance. The headdresses were garishly ugly and comic-- brightly dyed pigeon feathers of red, blue and green. Red Feather tied Calling Crow’s around his head as Burton knelt and roughly put their ankle chains on. Red Feather put his own headdress on.
Collier approached Calling Crow and ripped his headdress away. “You’ll not be needing it any longer,” he said.
One of the men shoved the drum under Red Feather’s arm and put the beating stick in his hand. They were led down to the fence where a juggler and a man on stilts amused the crowd.
Burton poked Red Feather with his stick, then turned round to smile at the other Englishmen. “Dance! Beat the bloody drum and dance.”
Red Feather began beating the drum and shuffling his feet, the ankle chains rattling in time. Someone opened the gate and the crowd pushed in around them. Collier and one of his men took each of Calling Crow’s arms and led him toward the gate.
Red Feather stopped moving and beating the drum and called to Calling Crow in Muskogee. “Calling Crow, don’t leave me here.”
An Englishman with a stick beat Red Feather on the legs and back until he began again the pathetic semblance of a deer-hunting dance.
Calling Crow tried to hold back but someone struck him on the head, stunning him. “Where are you taking me?” he said in English.
Collier’s face was flush with exertion. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
Calling Crow called to his tastanagi, “Red Feather, don’t give up! Don’t die! I will come back for you.” He had one brief look at Red Feather before the crowd swallowed him up. A moment later Collier and Burton pushed Calling Crow up and into the back of a big covered cart. Burton climbed in after him and the cart rolled away.
Cold rain rattled against the canvas roof and sides of the big tented cart which served as Collier’s house. Inside, Collier and John Newman faced each other across the two candles burning dimly on Collier’s table. The flames moved in the cold drafts, making the figures in Collier’s big leather-bound ledger seem to lean every which way.
John removed his red-banded felt hat and put it on the table. He put his feet up on the table. “Bloody wet out there.”
Collier grunted as he squinted at the ledger. He scribbled hurriedly then put down his quill. “He should be at the brothel by tomorrow morning.”
John nodded. “The Turk will tame him, all right.”
“If he lives. He’s had the ague for a fortnight now.”
“They can survive sicknesses that would kill most white men.”
“Is that right?” Collier had been loath to send the Indian away. The pair of them were a bigger draw than just one. But it didn’t matter anymore. The big one was just too wild and dangerous. The other morning he had reached through his window and grabbed Porter, almost breaking the lad’s neck. It had taken all of them to get the Indian off of him after they’d opened the door. Wild man, indeed.
“Well,” said Collier, absently, “whether he lives or dies, it’s in God’s hands.” He picked up a cheese sitting on the table and took a big bite. A small avalanche of crumbs tumbled down his great beard, some catching in the rough wool of his cape. Some of the crumbs fell all the way to the floor, where they would be eaten later by a small colony of mice that lived under the floorboards.
Collier cleared his throat and dipped his quill in the inkwell. He made a quick calculation in one of the few remaining white spaces of a paper beside the ledger on the table. He opened a wooden box and his fat fingers disappeared inside. The click of coin upon coin sounded in the damp carriage and a moment later he produced a small white pouch and set it on the table in front of John. “It’s all there, as agreed upon. You can check my figuring if you like.”
John picked up the pouch. He was about to pour the contents onto the table when booted footsteps thumped quickly up the wooden steps outside. The door opened on the blackness and young Porter’s reddened face glistened wetly in the candlelight.
“There’s a gentleman at the gate, m’lord. He’s asking about the savages.”
“What?” said Collier. “What’s his name?”
“Newman.”
“Egads,” said John, getting to his feet. He dangled the pouch before Collier. “I’ll be back.” He put the pouch in his pocket and walked out.
Collier turned back to Porter. “What did you tell the gentleman?”
“Nothing, m’lord.”
“Good.” Collier stood and pulled his cape close around him. “Take the savage to Burton’s quarters and hide him there. Tell Burton and the others, that should anyone ask, the savages escaped. Then bring the gentleman here to me.”
Ten minutes later, Collier could see some resemblance between the man who now stood before him and his tall, menacing brother, but just some.
Samuel Newman took off his hat. “At the roadhouse in the town they said you had two wild men as part of your show. Do you deny this?”
“Well, m’lord,”
said Collier, “the truth of the matter is we did have two wild men as part of our show, and a goodly attraction they was too. But they have escaped of late.”
Samuel Newman stepped closer, his eyes growing larger. “Then it is true. When did they escape?”
Collier’s hand disappeared under his beard as he scratched. “Oh, two or three days shy of a fortnight ago, it was. They attacked my man when he went out to feed them one morning, and fled into the woods. I could show you the bloody marks on his neck. No one has seen them since.”
Collier saw the lines of concern etch themselves into Newman’s brow. “M’lord, why do you care so for a couple of savages?”
Newman waved away the question. He pointed to the hat on the table. “Yours?”
Collier frowned. “Of course. Who else’s would it be?”
Samuel continued to stare at the hat.
“I’m sure there must be dozens of them around,” Collier said, “all made by the same hatter.”
Samuel looked at him. “Could I see where they were being held?”
“Of course, m’lord.” Collier lit a lamp hanging by the door and they went down the steps of the cart.
Their footsteps splashed through muddy puddles as they walked in the yellow circle of lamplight. Collier drew back the bolt and bent to walk into the little cottage. The gentleman followed him inside.
Samuel Newman looked around for a few moments at the starkness of the room. Then he knelt and picked something up off the earthen floor. He held it to the light, a woven sash of red and blue, with frayed tassels at either end. It had been stepped on and was wet and caked with mud.
Newman turned angrily to Collier and the older man was taken aback. “How did you come to own these two men?” he asked.
Remembering John’s admonition to keep the deal from his brother, Collier fought for composure. “We bought them from some Cornish men who said they found them wandering about in the forests.”