“There’s almost no roads on this side. So they must be carried by porters. The kind of menial job Amherst would expect the tribes to do.”
Woolford nodded. “He has lots of Mohawks already here.”
“Under whose supervision?”
“The quartermaster.”
“Who would be accountable to the adjutant. Colonel Cameron.”
Woolford turned to study Duncan. “One moment you are the most zealous of Highlanders. The next you speak of them in tones of suspicion. Who are you?”
Duncan had no answer. He walked as close to the bunkers as he could, inconspicuously trying to see the markings. A pair of artillerymen in Fraser plaid passed by, then two more wearing the Montgomery tartan. It would take experienced hands to pack so many coins in the powder kegs, hands that knew the normal weight of a full keg, knew how to repack a keg without signs of tampering, hands with enough authority to control where the kegs went and with a way to guard them without raising too much suspicion. He tried to calculate how many kegs it would take. Ten or fifteen at least, more like twenty. “The westernmost battery,” he said, “the one closest to the half-king. What is its mark? Who is manning it?”
Woolford frowned again then silently surveyed the magazines. His gaze came to rest on a cluster of officers around a field desk. “Wait here,” he instructed.
Five minutes later the ranger led Duncan to the last row of earthen bunkers. The last pit in the last of the row had been dug at the edge of an encampment of Fraser Highlanders. The soldiers had dug one of their cook fire pits not thirty yards away and surrounded it with logs for seating. It was a place where men could linger, night and day, without being conspicuous.
He did not tarry as he walked by the bunker, but he quickly studied the kegs in sight. He could see at least four with the mark of the Jacobites.
He waited to speak until he was on a knoll overlooking the magazines. “Do you have paper and lead?” he asked.
Woolford reached into the light day pack he carried, and a moment later Duncan was on one knee, drawing a map. He marked each pit with a circle, then the one by the Frasers with an X inside the circle. “Tatamy said he would camp in a grove of birches a mile north of Montreal. One of your Mohawks must get this to him,” he told Woolford. “Today.”
“Why today?”
“Because tomorrow we are going to rescue the children and stop the half-king with a piece of chalk.”
It was nearly sundown when Woolford returned to the camp. The ranger captain motioned Duncan to the half-tent he had raised by tying a sailcloth between two trees. He had found some driftwood planks and arranged them on logs for a makeshift table, and he now tossed a leather dispatch case onto it.
“I copied the clerk’s copy, word for word, saying it was needed for General Calder.” He shook his head as he gazed at the case. “I don’t know how to react,” he said in a forlorn tone. “I admire the Highlanders and regret their suffering. I despise traitors.”
Duncan pulled out the single sheet of paper rolled inside. It was a report sent by Colonel Cameron to the Ministry in London the week before. Cameron had conducted a thorough investigation of the robbery, he reported. The raiders had bribed the Iroquois carpenters at Bethel Church, who had secret knowledge of the locking mechanisms in the paywagon, then had offloaded the payroll while the escort had taken a meal in one of the houses. They had waited for the wagon to leave, then killed all the Iroquois to eradicate all witnesses. Using canoes on Lake Champlain, they had expected a fast transport back to the French lines. Witnesses confirmed seeing a half dozen canoes speeding north the afternoon of the theft, all riding low in the water, indicating heavy loads. Unfortunately, that night there had been a strong storm over the central part of the lake. Reliable witnesses reported seeing the canoes floundering half a mile offshore. The overladen canoes had been lost. The raiders had been punished by the hand of God, though unfortunately the king’s treasure now lay in the depths of the lake.
“No names for the sources of his information,” Duncan observed. “Only reliable witnesses. No way to verify their words.”
“A friend of mine helped me get this,” Woolford explained. “He and his rangers do what I do, but for Amherst. After the general read Cameron’s report, he sent some of his own rangers to Lake Champlain, to Crown Point and Ticonderoga.”
“And?”
Woolford seemed reluctant to continue. He rolled the paper up, but instead of returning it to the case he stepped to the smoldering fire and lit it. He held it in his hand, watching it burn as Duncan stepped to his side.
“And?” Duncan pressed.
“There was another report, one that Amherst burned after reading. The rangers found their own reliable witnesses, officers of the garrison guard, supported by the daily logs of the guard. There were no storms that day or the next, and sightings of unexplained canoes would have been recorded. There were no such reports.”
Duncan paced around the fire. “Amherst knows Cameron was lying.”
Woolford did not disagree. “The day after he received the report, Amherst sent for Cameron to come take over the Highland units. Then he left to confer with the navy.”
“It makes no sense.”
“Intrigue between officers is not uncommon. Cameron provided the army with a convenient way to explain away the loss of the treasure. Amherst proved it was a lie, but such knowledge can be more powerful when kept secret. Favors can be asked by those who have such secrets. Cameron will be bound to Amherst forever.”
“Where is Cameron now?”
“Making final preparations for the advance of ground troops tomorrow. You saw Amherst leave to meet the second wave of transports coming up the river. And four outposts stretched along the southern bank of the river upstream of Montreal have been attacked and destroyed. A patrol from the half-king intercepted some of my Mohawks. The Revelator demands to see the Iroquois elders tomorrow. He will leave them a sign at a fishing camp on the southern shoreline above Montreal. He expects them to deliver the Iroquois League.”
“So by this time tomorrow,” Duncan said, “we will have the children or we will be tied to his torture posts.”
As their modest flotilla of canoes approached the fishing camp just after dawn, they saw three canoes speeding away toward the walled island.
A single man awaited them.
“The poet!” Conawago exclaimed as their canoe ran up on the sand. The man sitting against a boulder did indeed wear the black clothes and wide-brimmed hat of the half-king’s ambassador of death. Woolford quickly deployed his rangers to flank the campsite before joining Conawago and Duncan as they advanced on the man.
At first it seemed he was praying, with his head bowed and hands folded in his lap. When he ignored Woolford’s challenge, Duncan used his rifle barrel to push up the man’s hat.
Rabbit Jack had been hit so hard the white of his skull was exposed. Just to be certain, his killer had slit his belly. Blood still ebbed out of his gut. The stream of blood down each cheek told Duncan that he had not been dead when his eyes had been carved out.
A piece of paper had been placed between his two hands. Death to Murderers, it stated in well-formed letters. A smaller legend at the bottom said, Fortress Island.
“The half-king is making it clear that he does not blame the Council for the death of Black Fish,” Conawago observed as he signaled the elders to approach. “He gives the killer of his nephew to Custaloga.”
“He pays respect in the currency of a butcher, nothing more,” Duncan said. “This man didn’t kill Black Fish. He was killed by the man who killed Black Fish.” He heard a splash behind him, and the hell dog rushed past him. The dog bent over the body with a strangely intense curiosity, sniffing the wounds, sniffing the clothes, sniffing the hat, before turning to look at Hetty. She was staring, transfixed at the morbid sight, and though she had been approaching, the dog’s actions stopped her.
“The poet killed Black Fish, and now Rabbit Jack,” Duncan obser
ved. “He gives up his costume.”
“It is an ending of sorts,” Conawago added. “He considers his work to be done.”
“Death to murderers,” Woolford repeated. “I take no consolation from it.” He whistled for his rangers.
The elders gathered in a half-circle around the dead man. Tushcona murmured a short prayer, though whether it was for the benefit of the dead man or the elders, Duncan could not tell. Custaloga placed the hat back on the man’s head to cover his hideous face, then with a surprised gasp, he pulled the paper from the man’s hands, turned it, and raised it for the others to see.
Tushcona rushed forward to study the writing on the reverse of the paper. The four remaining captive children had all written their names on it. Above them were two more names: Adanahoe and Henry Bedford.
“It is good news,” Duncan said uncertainly as Hetty stepped to his side. “It must mean your son yet lives. His captors have at least reunited him with his students. That will be some comfort to them.”
The Welsh woman’s countenance betrayed no emotion. Her only response was to drop to her knees and embrace the hell dog as it burrowed its head in her shoulder.
The beauty of the cobalt sky and the scarlet foliage reflected in the River That Never Ends gave little hint of the violence that would soon erupt. The British troops were nearly all in place. In another day the artillery would begin their savage duels.
It had been surprisingly easy for Woolford to spirit away one of the smaller work boats to meet Tatamy’s men, and the loading of the kegs onto the boat after Duncan had marked them had been done in sober silence. The Christian Mohawks, like the elders, knew their actions thrust them into the crosshairs of both opposing armies. The game they played now was absolute. They would win or they would die.
All morning they had watched from the shore as canoes of warriors and long boats of Highlanders arrived at Fortress Island. By the time Tatamy’s men had arrived and they had made their final arrangements, their party was inconspicuous. No one seemed to notice the boat they moored to a pine on a tiny island a quarter mile from the beach. As their own canoes finally coasted onto the pebbles of Fortress Island, Duncan looked back at the point of land where Woolford waited with his men and the hell dog, wondering if he or any of his companions would make good on their promise to return to the ranger camp by nightfall. He cast a worried glance at Ishmael, who had leapt into a canoe at the last moment, defying Duncan’s instructions to stay with the rangers. “It is his war too,” Conawago had sighed with a restraining hand on Duncan’s shoulder.
But it wasn’t a war camp that Duncan and his friends walked into, it was a Highland celebration. At least two hundred men in the plaids of the Highland regiments milled about the island campsite, and though the tribal warriors far outnumbered them, the atmosphere was unquestionably Gaelic.
A man wearing the sash of a Fraser piper played a lively tune, and Duncan could not suppress a grin as he watched a handful of Scots lead several confused but laughing northern Mohawks in an impromptu jig. A man in Montgomery plaid had crossed two swords on the ground and was performing a sword dance for a delighted group of Scottish and woodland warriors. Amused exclamations filled the air, in both Gaelic and tribal tongues, and Duncan and Conawago joined in, doing their best to keep attention away from the Iroquois elders behind them, who were furtively searching for the children.
Since reaching the New World, Duncan could not recall such a joyful collection of Highlanders. No, it had been much longer-not since the clan gatherings of the days of his youth. They wandered through the knots of men and women, pausing to help pull a long pole to raise one more army tent. Duncan found himself walking slower and slower. Something deep inside him was struggling, calling out to him. Here before him, it was saying, was the best chance he would ever have of finding a contented life. Here was the chance to live among his own kind, the proof that the Highland ways could be resurrected.
On a flat below the camp, a handful of Highlanders laughed and slapped tribesman on their backs as the Indians tried to teach the Scots how to play lacrosse. Several tribal matrons watched in amusement as a stout trooper in a leather apron sliced pumpkins with a short sword.
It wasn’t contentment, but at least a faint echo of it that he felt at seeing the bighearted Highlanders mix with the tribes. A wayward ball of sewn deerhide landed at his feet. As he tossed it back to the lacrosse players, Conawago pulled on his arm as if to change their course.
A familiar tent lay ahead of them, the ornate stone-painted tent with scalloped flaps. Somber Hurons stood guard as the chieftain in the pot helm, Paxto of the Wolverine clan, and Scar, the vengeful deputy of the half-king, conferred with someone inside the tent. Too late Duncan stepped back. A sentinel spoke, the men at the tent turned, and a moment later the half-king emerged into the sunlight.
Duncan sensed movement on either side. Hurons led by Scar closed in around them. He heard running feet, and suddenly Custaloga was at Conawago’s side, and Sagatchie and Kass flanked Duncan.
The half-king was adorned for a grand celebration. Over his tattooed chest was the open scarlet jacket, fringed with gold lace, of a British officer, and along the snake tattoo on his face were waving lines of war paint. A brass gorget hung around his throat. The long braids of his hair had colorful feathers woven into them. Over his doeskin leggings he wore the red, green, and brown kilt of the Montgomerys. Instead of a sporran pouch at the front, he had stuffed the full pelt of a lynx in his belt, with the wild cat’s dead eyes gazing out from his belly.
He eyed Duncan and Conawago with undisguised malice. “I thought the oracle would have surely crossed over by now,” he said to Conawago. “So many opportunities. It seems almost miserly for you not to oblige.”
The old Nipmuc stared at him defiantly. “I will be more than ready to face the gods once you return the children and the first mother of the Iroquois.”
The half-king studied Custaloga and Tushcona, then turned back to Conawago. “I am prepared to accept the Council’s petition for an alliance. The first mother has been. .” he searched for a word, “ambiguous in her representations of Iroquois support.”
“We bring the grandparents of the children.”
“We tremble at your mighty warriors!” he mocked. His men laughed. Scar spat at Conawago, then raised a knife and made a pantomime of slitting his throat. Conawago did not react. Paxto drew his war ax and tapped its handle against his hand as if making ready to swing it.
“You would be wise to tremble,” Duncan said.
“They will be responsible for the death of their gods,” the half-king snapped.
“No,” Duncan shot back, “what kills gods is lying and murdering in their name.”
Venom filled the half-king’s eyes. “I will kill you, McCallum,” he vowed. “I will kill you for five days. I will peel the skin from your face as you beg for death.”
“Not today,” Duncan shot back. “Not here. You won’t kill a Highlander in front of all these clans,” he said gesturing toward the Scots, several of whom had paused, showing interest in their exchange.
“You thought to just steal the children from us?”
“We thought we would buy them,” Duncan answered, and tossed a coin at the leader of the rebels.
The half-king’s eyes narrowed as he stared at the coin at his feet. “A pretty piece of silver means nothing.”
“Seven thousand five hundred thirty-two of them means a lot. We could have given them back to the British so they could calm their impatient troops. We will instead exchange them for your captives.”
The half-king’s eyes flared. He turned and fired angry questions at the men beside him, who clearly had no answers.
“Impossible!” he snarled as he turned back. “Do not presume to know our secrets, McCallum.”
“What secrets? How you built a second paywagon, how you switched it for the real one then transported it up the lake? Or perhaps how you transferred its coins into powder kegs?”
Duncan dropped to a knee and in the soil drew the Jacobite symbol from the kegs.
Worry flickered on the half-king’s face, but it was quickly replaced by fury. “Where?” he demanded.
“One keg is in the canoe at the far end of the beach,” Duncan said. The half-king barked a quick order, and two men sprinted away. “A token. You will get the remainder when we have the captives.”
The rebel leader spoke another word, and they were quickly surrounded by warriors. He said nothing until the keg was set at his feet and smashed open. As the half-king kicked the keg onto its side, scores of coins tumbled out amid the black powder.
His anger burned like a fire. “Where?” he shouted.
“Where are the children?” Duncan replied in a level voice. “Where is the first mother?”
The half-king fingered his own ornate war ax as if resisting the impulse to smash Duncan’s skull. Suddenly Scar leaned to whisper in his ear, and he turned his gaze to Tushcona. “We did not realize we had the Council’s own belt weaver!” he exclaimed. “You will have the captives for the coins and a simple belt.” He stepped up to the old woman, leaning close to her face. “You will weave a belt that declares the Iroquois alliance with us. We will parade it through all the villages. The tribes will shout for joy. The English will squirm in terror as they wait for our scalping knives.”
Tushcona replied with the impatience of a peeved mother. “You do not understand the making of a Council belt, child,” she chided. “My hands weave only the truth.”
“Your hands,” the half-king growled, “will feed my dogs.”
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