The following morning, the swelling was almost gone. “You’re well enough to travel,” Broken Trail said as he washed the skin around the wound, “if you take it slowly.”
“Good. After three days in a burrow, I’m starting to feel like a badger.”
“We’ve been safe under this tree. I don’t know anything about the folks who live nearby, but they aren’t likely to be friendly.”
“My uniform may be a problem. Anybody can spot my red coat a mile away.”
“You could rub it with mud.”
“Oh, no!” Elijah looked shocked. But then he shrugged. “My coat will be filthy anyway by the time I’ve waded through the swamps to Charleston.”
“Charleston? Where’s that?”
“About a hundred miles southeast from here.”
“Why do you have to go there?”
“To report for duty. Charleston is the centre for British military operations in the south.”
“Oh.” For a moment, Broken Trail had nothing to say. He must go north. Elijah must go south. They might never meet again.
“What about you?” Elijah asked.
“I’m going back to my village. Nobody knows what’s become of me. I don’t know what kind of welcome I’ll receive. The longer I’m away, the worse it will be.”
“So you’re heading back to Oneida Lake.”
“No. Not there. Over a year ago, the rebels drove us from those lands. My band’s new village is on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River, one day’s paddle east of Carleton Island.”
“Carleton Island! Is that right?” Elijah fell silent. He lay on his back, staring straight up at the spider webs above his head. After a long time had passed, he said: “I’ll go with you as far as Carleton Island.”
“Go with me?” Broken Trail pondered this. Nothing could please him more than to travel on a long trail with his brother, yet he suppressed the thrill of gladness that rose in him. Elijah had disappointed him in the past. He must not let it happen again. “You just told me you have to report for duty,” he said brusquely.
“I do. But Fort Haldimand on Carleton Island is where I joined the Royal Greens. Why shouldn’t I go back there to report for duty? It’s where I enlisted in the first place.”
“Isn’t Carleton Island a lot farther off than Charleston?”
“Five times farther.” Another pause. “Truth is, it will give you and me a chance to catch up.”
“Makes sense to me.” Broken Trail cleared his throat, still hiding his eagerness. “Besides, I’m not sure you’re strong enough yet to travel on your own.”
Elijah may not have been listening. He appeared to be lost in his own thoughts.
“If we go to Carleton Island,” he said, “we can see Ma and Hope.”
“You can see them, not me. They’re not my family any more. Not since the Oneidas adopted me.”
“But Ma is still the mother that gave you birth. And Hope is still your little sister. You can’t change that.”
“Yes, I can!” Broken Trail sat up so quickly he bumped his head hard on the underside of a root as thick as a man’s torso. “I have an Oneida family now.”
“Just a minute. If the first nine years of your life count for nothing, then what are you doing here with me?”
Broken Trail did not answer. It was something he could not explain. He had tried so hard to forget Elijah. It was his duty to forget him. But even on his dream quest, while he was fasting in the wilderness waiting for his vision, it had been Elijah’s face that he saw when he looked at his own reflection in the pool of quiet water.
“Are you telling me I’ll always be white at heart? That’s what my enemies think. Is that what you think, too?”
“I’m not saying that.” Elijah spoke slowly, as if weighing every word. “You reckon you have to be one or the other, either white or Oneida. But it doesn’t need to be that way.”
“Yes, it does.” Broken Trail scowled. “A man can’t follow two paths at the same time. He has to make a choice.”
Elijah sat up and lightly punched Broken Trail’s shoulder. “Sorry if I said the wrong thing. I don’t want to quarrel. Let’s go. We have a long journey ahead.”
Broken Trail was glad to drop the subject. Elijah put troubling thoughts into his head. Could Carries a Quiver, so wise about many things, be wrong about this?
They crawled out of the hole. Elijah blinked when the sunshine struck his face. When he stood, he had to rest one hand against the tree trunk to steady himself. He shook his head. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”
Broken Trail could not say the same for himself. He tried to fix his mind on his Oneida home and on his duty, but found that he could no longer see so clearly what that duty was.
Chapter 15
FOR THE FIRST FOUR days of their journey, everything looked different. Perhaps on his way south, too much of his effort had been directed to staying on the horse and not enough to noticing landmarks that any warrior should automatically store in his memory. Whatever the reason, Broken Trail could not shake off the uncomfortable feeling that he had lost his way.
It was not until the fifth day, when they reached the farm where he and Red Sun Rising had stolen the horses, that Broken Trail knew exactly where he was.
Although it had been night when he saw it the first time, he recognized the farm at once. It stood nestled in the hills, just off the main trail. There was the two-storey home built of dressed timber, the barn, the paddock and the small log outbuilding. A flock of brown hens with bright red combs, scrabbling for scattered grain near the open door of the outbuilding, made clear its present use. That hen house must have been the family’s original log cabin, Broken Trail thought, for not only was it larger than a chicken coop needed to be, but it boasted a big stone chimney and, in one sidewall, a window. The window was boarded over. Although some chinking was missing from between the logs, the chicken house was still a sturdy-looking building.
There were also pigs on the farm, not in a pen but branded and ranging free. The only fence was the one around the empty paddock.
Seeing the paddock, Broken Trail felt a twinge of guilt. Maybe the farmer had not had time to replace the horses that Broken Trail and Red Sun Rising had stolen. Or maybe he could not afford to.
“You’ve stopped walking.” Elijah’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
“Have I?”
“And you’re looking mighty hard at that farm.”
“This is where Red Sun Rising and I stole the horses.”
“I wish we had those horses now!”
Broken Trail gulped. “I wish we did too, so I could give them back. Red Sun Rising said it was right to take them because white settlers stole Cherokee land. But it didn’t feel right to me.”
“What’s right doesn’t matter. In a war, people have to take what they need.”
He started to walk on, but Broken Trail did not move.
“Look!” he said. “There’s a girl.”
A girl wearing a grey gown and a white apron had come from the house. Her hair was in two long, brown braids. She looked about twelve years old.
Elijah stopped. He looked, too.
“Sure enough,” he laughed. “That’s a girl. Haven’t you ever seen one before?”
“Shh!”
The girl looked around, but not in their direction.
“Come, Rover!” she called. “Time to round up the chickens.” Her voice was clear and sweet, with a twang.
A shaggy black and white dog rose from a patch of sunshine and shook itself.
“I remember that dog,” Broken Trail said. “Red Sun Rising fed it a charm so it wouldn’t bark.”
“It looks to me like your eyes are more on the girl than on the dog.” Elijah grinned. Then his expression changed, and in an instant he was serious. “If you want to watch, we’d better hide. We don’t want the folks living here to see us.”
“You’re right. With me in deerskins and you in a red coat, we wouldn’t enjoy the welcome th
ey’d give us.”
Ducking out of sight, they crawled through the bushes to a honeysuckle thicket where they could see without being seen.
“Rover, go get ’em!” The girl stuck her fingers into her mouth and whistled. That’s all she had to do. Running close to the ground, the dog made a wide circle around the chickens. Clucking indignantly, but not overly alarmed, they moved in closer together. Then the dog completed a second, tighter circle that manoeuvred them right through the coop’s open door. The girl, close behind, slammed it shut. The dog trotted to her side.
“Good dog!” She reached down to rub its ear.
“Well, I never!” Elijah whispered. “That girl didn’t have to lift a finger except to shut the door. That’s a smart dog.”
“The girl’s the smart one—getting the dog to do all the work.”
A woman came from the house. She wore a white mob-cap on her head, and a grey homespun dress very like the girl’s.
“Libby dear, you and Rover better drive the hogs into the barn before your pa and your brother arrive home with those new horses. I don’t want them spooked by hogs before they get used to this place.”
“Yes, Ma.” She turned to the dog. “Pigs, Rover!”
“Seen enough?” Elijah asked.
“No. I want to see the horses.”
“We don’t know how long we’d have to wait. And it’s not safe—”
“Shh!” Broken Trail raised his hand. “Listen.”
Hoof beats.
There was no time to look for a safer hiding place. Broken Trail and Elijah lay still, their bodies pressed to the ground and only their heads held up to see what was happening.
Turning off the main trail were two horsemen. One horse was a roan gelding, and the other a bay mare.
The man riding the gelding was middle-aged and completely bald, with a brown beard so bushy that it more than made up for the absence of hair on top of his head. The other man was much younger, about eighteen years old. His blond hair was cut short, and he had a corn-coloured crop of chin whiskers.
The men rode their horses straight through the open gate into the paddock. Before they had dismounted, the woman walked over and rested her arms on the top rail.
“They look good, Judah,” she said. “Let’s hope Cherokees don’t steal them, too.”
“Laura, I have some mighty good news,” the older man said in a deep, rumbling voice. “Today there’s one less murdering horse thief roaming the hills.”
“Don’t tell me Captain Cherokee has been caught!”
“The very same.”
“Some fellows spotted him trying to steal a horse over near Tar Heel,” the younger man said as he dismounted. “He was easy enough for them to spot, wearing that red coat with all the gold trim.”
“All dressed up for a party!” the man called Judah rumbled. “A hanging party, that is. Laura, I hope y’all got plenty of flour and eggs on hand. There’ll be a crowd here for breakfast tomorrow. Nothing like watching a hanging to give a man a good appetite.”
“The Lord be thanked!” the woman exclaimed. “I ain’t felt safe for one minute since he butchered that family over by Elizabethtown. What kind of monster would kill an innocent baby? And those two sweet little girls.”
Broken Trail nudged Elijah’s arm. He whispered in his ear. “They’re talking about Red Sun Rising. He took a uniform from a dead officer on the battlefield at Kings Mountain. I saw him strutting around in it. But they’ve got one thing wrong. He didn’t kill that family. No, sir! We were travelling together when we came upon those folks. They were dead already.”
Judah was still talking. “Some of the boys are bringing him in. They’ll be here by sundown. We’ll lock Captain Cherokee in the chicken house tonight, then hang him first thing in the morning.”
“We should hang him just as soon as they bring him in,” the younger man said. “Why wait?”
“What! Cheat good folks out of the pleasure of watching him die? Half the homesteaders in Watauga County have been attacked by savages claiming to own this land. People will come from miles around to see him hang.”
“You unsaddle the horses and take the tack into the barn,” the woman said to the younger man. “Give Libby a hand with the pigs. Then both of you come in for supper.”
As soon as the whole family was in the house, Broken Trail sat up. “We have to rescue him,” he said.
“How?”
“I don’t know yet. We need a plan. But first, we need a better place to hide.”
Elijah pointed to a stand of sumac a little way up the side of the nearest hill. The sumacs’ green leaves were splashed with crimson. “What about there?”
Broken Trail nodded. “The leaves are the same colour as your coat. Nobody will notice us there. And it’s close enough for us to hear and see what’s happening.”
They slipped through the trees around the perimeter of the farm and up the hill to the sumac stand. They settled down to wait. Elijah munched a hardtack biscuit. Broken Trail ate a bit of corn powder, followed by water from Elijah’s flask.
Laughter was what they heard first, followed by hoof beats. A few moments later five horsemen came into sight around a bend in the trail. With them was a sixth horse, led by a rope tied to its halter. Slung across this horse’s back was a man, bound hand and foot. Broken Trail recognized the scarlet coat, the deerskin leggings and the three feathers that dangled from the prisoner’s scalp lock.
“That’s him,” Broken Trail said, “Red Sun Rising.”
“Hey, Judah!” One of the riders called out. “We brought you a guest.”
Judah emerged from the house. “Throw him in the chicken coop. And stick a gag in his mouth. I don’t want the hens upset. It puts them off laying. When you’re done, I’ll put a padlock on the door.”
“Here’s what we’ll do,” Broken Trail whispered as he watched the men carry Red Sun Rising into the chicken house. “After it’s dark, you stay here to keep watch while I creep down the hill, pull the boards from the chicken house window, and crawl inside. After I’ve cut his ropes, Red Sun Rising and I can climb back out the window.”
“You know what I think? I think you’ll get yourself hanged along with your friend. They’re sure to set guards on the chicken house all night long.”
“Sooner or later, guards doze off. That’s why war parties always attack just before dawn.”
“What about the dog? He’ll wake them with his barking.”
“Hardtack will take care of Rover. He’s not a keen watchdog.”
The sound of hoof beats rose toward them.
Elijah whispered. “More men coming. Keep your head down.”
Four horsemen made up the next group. Close behind came a dozen more.
“They brought their own supplies,” Elijah whispered.
“What?”
“Those horses are carrying enough casks of rum to get a regiment drunk.”
“Good,” Broken Trail said.
Soon a bonfire blazed in the middle of the farmyard. More horsemen arrived. They all carried rifles, and most brought stoneware jugs as well. Broken Trail counted twenty-two men. Over their everyday clothes, some wore the long, white shirts that were their battledress.
At an upstairs window, the young girl set a lighted candle on the windowsill. Broken Trail was glad to see that she was safely out of the way of the men. Downstairs, the girl’s mother occasionally passed in front of the kitchen window, the glow of the cooking fire behind her. She had a purposeful walk, as if she were on guard to protect her home.
In the barnyard, men milled about the bonfire. Buoyed by drink, they hollered and cheered. Broken Trail’s heart raced as he heard their mingled shouts: “Bring the savage out!” “Hand ’im over!” “We’ll take care of this.” “Hang the killer now.”
Judah, who seemed to be the only man not drinking, jumped onto the flatbed of an empty hay wagon. “No!” he thundered. “More folks are coming in the morning. They’ll feel robbed if we don’t wait
till then.”
The paddock was crammed with horses. Ears flattened, they stamped their hooves, snorted, and whinnied restlessly.
Looking toward the chicken house, Broken Trail imagined Red Sun Rising lying on a dirt floor, tied hand and foot amid chicken droppings and dirty feathers, surrounded by cackling hens.
Chapter 16
TWO MEN WEARING long white shirts sat on the ground a few yards from the chicken house door, their backs against a tree stump and their rifles lying beside their outstretched legs. Back and forth between them they passed a stoneware jug, from which each drank deeply at his turn.
As for the dog, it slunk about with its tail drooping, sniffing at men’s legs.
“Rover is off duty tonight,” Elijah whispered. “We won’t need to waste any hardtack on him.”
“They all look like they’re off duty.”
“If they keep up the drinking, there won’t be a man on his feet by morning.”
Around the bonfire, the mood had changed from anger to sociability. The shouts for vengeance ceased. Having made themselves comfortable, the men appeared ready to enjoy their vigil. Someone began to sing:
Yankee Doodle went to town
A-riding on a pony
Stuck a feather in his hat
And called it macaroni.
Others took up the chorus:
Yankee Doodle, keep it up
Yankee Doodle dandy
Mind the music and the step
And with the girls be handy.
It was a lively tune. Broken Trail found his toe tapping. The singer launched into the second verse:
Father and I went down to camp
Along with Captain Gooding
And there we saw the men and boys
As thick as hasty pudding.
“What’s it about?” Broken Trail whispered.
Elijah scowled. “Joining the rebel army. Bunch of scoundrels!”
There was General Washington
Upon a slapping stallion
A-giving orders to his men
I guess there was a million.
Broken Trail Page 8