The vultures were arriving. Some had landed; more circled on V-spread wings. A few steps to one side, a vulture swooped down to land on the chest of a drummer boy. Broken Trail pulled out his tomahawk. Before he could hurl it, the vulture lifted into the air and settled a moment later upon a different corpse.
Broken Trail stood thoughtfully at the side of the drummer boy. He was a small boy with blond curls, not more than ten years old. Broken Trail picked up his drum and tapped it with his fingertips. A drummer boy was what he had wanted to be when he was nine. If he and Elijah had enlisted together the way they had planned, that might have been him, lying cold and stiff and still. Where was Elijah now? Broken Trail set down the drum and continued walking, searching for the body that he did not want to find.
A sudden shout disturbed the silence.
“Ho! Broken Trail!”
There was Red Sun Rising, striding toward him. He was wearing an officer’s scarlet coat, ornamented in front with gold lace on a dark blue velvet ground. An epaulette of gold fringe hung from each shoulder.
At the sight of Red Sun Rising alive, Broken Trail felt as if the sun had broken through heavy clouds. “You escaped!” he shouted.
“I told you that was good place to hide.” Red Sun Rising ran the last few steps and whacked Broken Trail on the back. “How you like my new coat?” He grinned as he turned around to show the back. “No bullet holes.”
The coat was bloody around the stand-up collar, but otherwise unmarked.
“It’s good.” Broken Trail felt like laughing, partly from relief and partly from amusement at the sight of scuffed deerskin leggings below the splendid scarlet coat.
“Now we leave this place,” said Red Sun Rising. “Find horses.”
“Not yet.” Broken Trail glanced around the battlefield. “I’m looking for something.”
“No guns here. Soldiers and Over Mountain men take every one.”
“I’m looking for… a hat.” Broken Trail felt suddenly defensive. He could not explain about Elijah. Not here. Not now. Red Sun Rising, walking ahead, had not seen the young soldier who left off piling rocks to step forward and call out, “Moses.” And even if Red Sun Rising had heard it, the name would have meant nothing to him.
“Hat no good. Why not get new coat?” With a shake of his shoulders, he set the golden fringes of the epaulettes swinging. “Be quick. I wait where we leave horses.”
“Just a minute. Tell me. Did the rebels take prisoners?”
“Many, many prisoners. Like trees in the forest.”
“Where did they go with them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, what direction?”
Red Sun Rising pointed north. “That way.”
“When?”
“At sunrise.”
“Only this morning?”
Red Sun Rising nodded. “Everybody make camp here all night. They leave this morning.”
“Then they can’t have gone far.” Broken Trail looked northward, as if he still might see the army marching away. All he saw was a rutted, muddy track winding into the distance before it disappeared between wooded hills.
“Now I look for horses,” Red Sun Rising said. “I wait for you.”
“No. Don’t wait. If you find the horses…” He hesitated. “If the horses are still there, take one and leave without me.”
“But you travel with me to Chickamauga.”
Broken Trail shook his head. “I must go home.”
“You not come with me?” He sighed. “I think all times maybe you not come.”
Broken Trail turned his face away. He wished that he knew how to repay his friend for having guided him all the way to Kings Mountain. But making war on white settlers was not the right way. Besides, it was certainly true that he must go home.
“Someday we’ll meet again,” Broken Trail said, not believing that they ever would. He forced himself to meet the Cherokee’s gaze as they clasped hands in farewell. “Be strong,” he added, for that was the Oneida way to say goodbye.
His eyes followed Red Sun Rising, resplendent in the scarlet coat with its shining adornments, until he was out of sight down the hill. Then Broken Trail renewed his search.
It was very quiet. Hard to imagine that only yesterday screams, gunfire and the shrill blast of a silver whistle had rent the air. Broken Trail walked on and on, crossing the battlefield back and forth.
As he walked, he wondered what Carries a Quiver would think if he could see him now. Many times his uncle had instructed him to forget his white family. Always, Broken Trail had hidden the fact that he could not. For a long time he had felt ashamed about his feelings as well as about deceiving his uncle. He still felt guilty about the deception, but somewhere along the way to Kings Mountain his opinion had changed about the rest. To care about Elijah was not wrong, nor did not make him any less an Oneida. Or did it?
Broken Trail was mulling over this question when right at his feet he saw, lying in the mud, a forage cap displaying a green badge.
Just a cap. No fallen soldier nearby. He picked up the cap. It was a cocked hat made of coarse felt, bound with white tape. Inside the band, he found a long, brown hair. That proved nothing. Elijah had brown hair. So did he. So did half the white people he had ever known.
Broken Trail pulled his knife from its sheath, severed the threads that attached the badge to the cap, and thrust the badge into his pouch. Maybe it wasn’t Elijah’s. But maybe it was.
He walked across to the north side of the plateau and, looking down, studied the deep ruts from wagon wheels and the prints of horses’ hooves and men’s boots. With wounded to tend and prisoners to guard, the army could not be making rapid progress. He should be able to catch up in half a day. Then he would shadow the army, skulking in the bushes to scan the prisoners’ faces. If Elijah was there, he would rescue him. Somehow, he would find a way.
Chapter 11
HE HEARD THE ARMY before he saw it. First the creaking and rumbling of heavy wagons reached his ears, then the voices of men: officers barking orders, soldiers talking and the wounded crying out. He walked faster, and as soon as he rounded the next bend, the wagons were in sight, bringing up the rear of the army.
Now he slipped into the cover of the trees along the track. Like a wolf shadowing a herd of deer, he moved silently through the woods.
He watched the heavy draught horses labour to pull the wagons. No wonder he had caught up so quickly! The wagon wheels were over their rims in mud.
From a distance, he had thought that the wagons were loaded with supplies. When he drew nearer, he saw that what they carried were wounded men—soldiers in blue uniforms, lying or sitting on the floorboards. No redcoats were among them.
Ahead of the wagons, the prisoners walked three or four abreast in a disorderly column. Their red tunics, which had been bright and clean one day before, were soiled with mud and blood. Flanking the prisoners, two on each side, were the rebel soldiers guarding them. Fixed to the guards’ muskets were bayonets, with which they jabbed the prisoners from time to time to keep them moving.
Many of the prisoners looked barely able to walk. They shuffled along, some so weak they stumbled with every step. The healthier-looking prisoners were laden like packhorses. It appeared that they were being forced to carry the baggage and supplies that had been unloaded from the wagons to make space for wounded men.
There were hundreds of prisoners, more than Broken Trail could count. In this multitude he had to find one young, brown-haired redcoat, possibly without a cap. The best way to do it, he decided, was to station himself at a vantage point ahead of the army’s advance—at a spot where he could see but not be seen while scrutinizing each face as the prisoners passed.
Moving at double the army’s speed, he found a hiding place that the army would have to pass on its way. It was a leafy thicket from which he had a clear view of the track.
He had only a short time to wait before the front of the army drew level with his hiding place.
At the head were the officers, riding their horses at an easy walk. Though the uniforms of some looked the worse for wear, and one horse had a patch of dried blood on its flank, the officers made a brave show. There were some fine-looking horses, too. Now that he had mastered the knack of managing a horse, Broken Trail would have liked one of those for himself. The most handsome was a grey gelding ridden by an extremely fat officer. That must be Major Ferguson’s horse, he thought, remembering the remarks of the Over Mountain men. Somebody named Cleveland had claimed Major Ferguson’s horse. “You could make two Pat Fergusons out of a man that size,” one of the Over Mountain men had said. Yet the grey gelding stepped along as smartly as if it carried a feather on its back. With its thick, arched neck and flowing mane, that horse looked like a chief, born to lead.
Following the officers were ranks of blue-coated soldiers. After them came the prisoners and their guards. Broken Trail recognized Major Ferguson’s aide, Captain DePeyster. Even on foot, he kept his high and mighty air, marching with his shoulders square and his chin up. He still wore his white wig and tricorn hat, but not his sword.
Farther along the line, Broken Trail saw the soldier with broken teeth. He looked much different now that he had been deprived of his musket. His back was bowed with the weight of a large bundle draped across his shoulders.
The army passed like a slow-flowing river. One wounded redcoat collapsed as Broken Trail watched. Promptly, two guards dragged him off the track and left him lying face down in the mud.
Then Broken Trail saw Elijah. Though his face was begrimed with gunpowder, there was no mistaking who he was. Bare-headed, he walked with his left arm hanging useless at his side. There was a slash in the left shoulder of his scarlet coat, and around the slash a darker stain. Staring straight ahead, he looked like someone walking in his sleep.
The man on Elijah’s left and the man on his right both bore heavy loads. Yet it was Elijah, carrying nothing, who faltered with every step. Maybe it was loss of blood that weakened him. Or hunger. Or both. He looked very thin. Tall and thin. Three years ago, he had not been nearly so tall.
He was alive and he could walk! Broken Trail offered a quick prayer of thanks to the Great Spirit, and then a second prayer for help to set Elijah free.
At first the track ran through a forest of maples and yellow birch. Then gradually the woods gave way to small farms, where homesteaders had built their log cabins and cleared patches of land.
With no trees close to the track to hide behind, Broken Trail climbed up into the wooded hills above the farms. Here he was well hidden, but still had a good view of the army’s movement along the track. As he walked along, keeping pace with the army, he kept an eye on Elijah’s place in the column, just in case he fell and was abandoned along the way.
Shortly before sunset the army stopped at the entrance to a farm lane. The creaking wagons fell silent, the weary horses hauling them sagged in their harnesses, and the exhausted prisoners were finally allowed to sit down.
The farm where the army stopped was not a humble homestead like the others they had passed. This one boasted a big, white house with many windows, two chimneys and wide stone steps leading up to a huge front door. Behind the house were a long, low building, a barn and a silo. The farm included ploughed fields, orchards and broad pasturelands enclosed by a snake fence.
Broken Trail saw black men trudging in from the fields carrying hoes over their shoulders while white men looked on. The black men filed into the long, low building. When all were inside, a white man locked the door. There were about twenty black men, and only four white. Why, Broken Trail wondered, did the black men put up with this treatment? Since they outnumbered the white men, why didn’t they lock them up?
At the head of the army, the officers appeared to be conferring. Still mounted, they looked toward the house. The officer with the most gold braid seemed to be doing the talking. The others nodded. At length it appeared that something had been decided. Two officers turned their horses and, leaving the others, trotted briskly up to the house.
After a few minutes, they cantered back. They pointed toward the pasture. The army began to move again, heading slowly along the lane. Halfway to the house, it turned left through an open gate into the pasture, and there it came to a halt.
Flat and level at the top, the pasture sloped gently toward creek flats, where a stream ran through. Part of the pasture-land had been cleared, but some was still in bush. Down at the creek flats, the grass was lush and green.
Broken Trail watched from the hillside to see what would happen next.
When the officers’ horses had been unsaddled and the draught horses unharnessed, the fat officer pointed toward the stream at the lower end of the pasture. Promptly, six soldiers stepped forward. One grasped the halter of the grey horse. The other five were close behind as he led it down the slope. With no urging, the herd followed. Broken Trail counted thirty horses ambling to the part of the pasture where the greenest grass grew. After hobbling the horses, the soldiers rejoined the other men, leaving no guard.
Broken Trail knew in a flash exactly what he was going to do.
Making a wide detour of the farm, he approached the pasture from the woods on the far side. He crept up to the snake fence. Peering between the rails, he could see everything.
Some soldiers were pitching tents. Others were herding the prisoners together, encircling them with a ring of guards. With so many prisoners crowded together, it took Broken Trail a long time locate Elijah. His heart lifted when he spotted him close to the edge of the mass of prisoners. Although he did not like the way his brother sank wearily to the ground, it was a relief to know where he could find him when the right moment came.
As Broken Trail settled down to wait, fires were lit and cauldrons were hung on tripods above the flames. He was close enough to see steam rising from the food in the big cooking pots, but not close enough to smell it. He wondered what the army would eat for supper. Remembering the goodness of pork and beans simmered with molasses, he sighed as he pulled a hardtack from the bag at his belt.
Soldiers holding metal bowls lined up for food while the prisoners watched. From the dispirited way they slumped, Broken Trail reckoned they knew that the steaming contents of the cooking pots were not for them.
Darkness fell and quiet settled upon the camp. At the bottom of the pasture, the horses stopped grazing and dozed.
The time had come. Broken Trail crept under the bottom rail of the fence and moved at a crouch toward the horses. As he neared them, he dropped to the ground and crawled. He knew the danger. No one could predict what horses would do if disturbed in the middle of the night. Instinct might tell them that the creature creeping through the grass was a cougar. If they panicked, he would have thirty sets of pounding hooves around him.
“Oki, help me,” he muttered. What wouldn’t he give for a whiff of wolverine!
The horses did not panic. Their bellies full, they rested quietly. When Broken Trail’s knife severed the hobbles of the first horse, its only reaction was to paw the ground. The second gave a low snort. Did horses dream? he wondered. He freed another horse and then another from its hobbles. Most seemed too drowsy to notice that their legs were no longer tied.
He left the grey gelding for last. At once, he saw a difference. This horse was wide awake. Nickering softly while he cut the rope, it bent that noble arching neck to gaze at him. Its ears were pricked forward, and its large eyes were luminous. He wished that he knew its name.
Broken Trail stood up and faced the grey horse. He scratched the skin between its eyes and ran his hands along its neck. From his pouch he pulled out the cord that Red Sun Rising had given him to steer the horse he had ridden to Kings Mountain. He slipped the loop of the cord around the grey’s lower jaw. Whispering gently, he leaned against its withers and with a smooth leap laid his body across its back. The horse’s muscles tightened. Then he threw a leg over, steadied himself, and gripped tight with his calves.
“Are
you ready?” he whispered.
The grey stamped its front hooves.
Broken Trail sucked in all the air his lungs could hold. Then he raised his head. Holding his open palm to his mouth to block the intervals of sound, he gave the high, yelping whoop of the Oneida war cry. The grey horse bucked. On all sides, wild whinnies filled the air. At a slap on the rump, the grey bounded forward. With pounding hooves, the others surged after it. Thirty horses careening through the night.
Chapter 12
BROKEN TRAIL LAY FORWARD along the grey’s neck, its mane sweeping his face. If he fell off, the following horses would trample him. But he felt no fear. This was like flying, like being borne aloft on an eagle’s wings. The snake fence caught his eye. For a moment, he thought the horse would jump; but when he pulled on the cord, it veered away.
One gallop around the pasture, and then he directed the horse through the open gate and down the lane. The herd followed. On reaching the track, he slowed his horse to a canter, and then to a soft trot. The game was over.
Bringing the grey to a halt, he stroked its neck. “Good boy!”
He slid from its back. Leaving the herd scattered up and down the track, he raced to the camp. Chaos was everywhere. Soldiers were running after the horses. Prisoners, left unguarded, were seizing the chance to escape.
“Cherokees!” someone yelled. “Damned horse thieves.”
Cherokees! Broken Trail laughed.
But the joke would be on him if the rebels were to capture him wearing his deerskin clothes. Trusting to the darkness and the turmoil to escape notice, he raced to the upper part of the pasture. Their guards gone, few prisoners remained. But Elijah had not moved. There he sat, almost alone, his shoulders slumped and his head bent. Only when Broken Trail dropped to his knees beside him did Elijah slowly turn his head.
“You.” His eyes brightened. “Moses. It was you.”
“Yes.” For now at least, Elijah was welcome to use the old name.
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