THEY DREW THE WAGONS UP at the stable behind a prosperous-looking clapboard inn, and as Duncan negotiated for a few extra sacks of grain for the road ahead, Sarah secured rooms. They had pushed hard from Boston and knew they would be sleeping under the stars for much of the remaining journey. After Duncan checked Mallory’s bandages and found him a hiding place in the stable, Sarah promised the others a good meal and made lighthearted conversation as they retrieved their bags, even humming songs of the Edentown schoolchildren. Her smile, even though he knew it was forced, briefly banished his worry and fatigue.
They had already turned onto the cobbled path that led to the inn when he heard the unmistakable click of a rifle hammer being cocked behind him. He swung about to see Munro two steps behind, carrying Duncan’s own long rifle.
“Steady, lad,” the old Scot said with a quick glance at the road. “Into the inn like nay’s amiss.” Two dark-cloaked men on bay horses were approaching, riding from the center of the settlement. Reports of the warrant against Duncan would have been dispatched throughout the colony, and more than one fleet post rider had sped past them on the road. The two men had the look of the thuggish deputies who did the constable’s work or, worse, the bounty hunters who generally brought in their quarries beaten into submission.
“On wi’ ye,” Munro pressed. “I’ll just tarry with a pipe.” The canny Scot had kept a close watch over Duncan on their journey and had paused at the message boards outside the roadside taverns they passed. Broadsides with Duncan’s description and details of his heinous deeds would soon be posted along every main road in the colony. Although Adams and Hancock had promised not to speak of Duncan’s connection with Sarah and their westbound wagon caravan, tongues would soon wag feverishly in taverns, stores, and even churches over the alarming news of a vile traitor loose in the Massachusetts countryside.
Sarah hurried out of the inn and put a hand on his arm. He found himself unable to move as he stared at the foreboding figures. They made his nightmare true, his danger real. He recalled seeing a low-level tax collector in Boston being tarred and feathered. If he were caught and openly accused in a place like Worcester, with no recourse to the truth, curious onlookers could instantly turn into an angry mob. The boiling tar would be given little time to cool, and unless it was quickly washed off, its glutinous nature would adhere the scalding substance to his body, cooking the flesh underneath. The screams of the collector had been heard for days as his doctor tried to comfort him. If the same was done to Duncan, he would be thrown into a cart and sent to a cell while the tar still baked his limbs.
Sarah broke his dark spell with a more adamant jerk of his arm. As she pulled him inside, he caught a quick glance of Munro leaning the rifle against the building and pulling out his clay pipe, then of Ishmael and Conawago pausing by the roadside entrance to the inn like an outer guard, the big dog, Molly, set squarely between them.
“You cannot go down, Duncan,” Sarah stated as he looked out the window of her upstairs room minutes later. “You must stay in this chamber. You can make up for all the sleep you missed the past nights. Please!” she implored, coaxing him away from the pool of sunlight. “The innkeeper boasted of his kitchen,” she tried. “Sleep, then take a meal with us downstairs.” Her voice trailed off as she saw the determination in his eyes.
“I have to find the old ranger while there’s daylight,” Duncan explained. “Munro can go with me. He’s a wheelwright here. His shop is likely still open. Would you rather I see him now or wait until dark, knocking on every door until I find him? Should I write that script now? Prithee, sir or madame, I am looking for a former ranger from the massacre of St. Francis who may have information that will clear me of those pesky murder charges. Oh, and don’t believe what they say about me being a traitor. Long live King George.”
Sarah shot him an angry glance, then gazed out at Ishmael, who had taken up a new position in front of the printer’s shop across the road. “I will never forgive you, Duncan McCallum, if you get hanged because of those fools in Boston.”
“They’re not fools, Sarah. They are leaders of the Sons of Liberty.”
“If they would put your life at risk to avoid some embarrassment with the governor, then they are damned fools and they misunderstand the entire point of liberty.”
Duncan put a hand on her shoulder as she continued to stare out the window. He had no interest in opening their long-running debate about the nature of liberty. “Let’s just say they’ve made me more committed to my mission.”
“Mission?”
“I am not in flight, mo leannen, I am on a hunt.”
She spun about, her tribal wildness flaring in her eyes again. “I know what liberty means. It means Edentown. It means you and me in our sanctuary. Once in Edentown, what do we care if the king sends troops to Boston over some tax we never see? When’s the last time you saw a constable or a tax collector in Edentown? Never! A Massachusetts warrant will mean nothing to us there. This is not your hunt, Duncan McCallum!”
“A warrant for treason will not be lightly dismissed. It will not be difficult to discover where I live. And Edentown will suffer for it.” He felt his heart twitch as the fire in her eyes ebbed, replaced with pleading.
“Then we will go live among the Iroquois,” Sarah said, “or move into the Ohio country. There are places out there where Europeans have never been seen.”
With a finger on her chin, he lifted her head. He knew that his own eyes reflected the mix of anger, sadness, and fear that tightened her face. “Edentown is like nowhere else on earth. It is a sanctuary, yes, and not just for us. It cannot survive without you. You are its soul, and it is the anchor of your heart. You cannot abandon it.”
For the briefest instant her eyes flared again, despite the moisture that gathered at their corners. “More the fool you, Duncan,” she said in a pained whisper, and wrapped her arms around him. “You are the anchor of my heart.”
They stood in silent embrace for several breaths; then she pushed him away. “Take Ishmael and his big bear of a dog as well if you must go.”
As if on cue, they heard Molly bark excitedly from behind the house. They darted to the back window just in time to see Munro lift Will Sterret out from under a blanket in the second wagon.
SOLOMON HAYES KNEW WORCESTER, HAVING sometimes called there for trading goods used in his far-ranging journeys along the frontier, and he reported that the only wheelwright he knew of was on the opposite bank, adjacent to the old, creaky windmill. Duncan was about to step onto the narrow timber bridge that had been raised across the river when Ishmael tugged at his sleeve.
Conawago was sitting on a ledge rock a stone’s throw away. The old Nipmuc had disappeared after they reached the stable. It was a rare thing that he would not join them in the work of unhitching and feeding teams at the end of a long day, rarer still for him to turn away with sullen coolness when Duncan approached him.
“When you came through two months ago,” Duncan asked Ishmael, “did you spend a night here? Did your uncle perhaps have words with someone?”
“No,” the young tribesman replied as he studied his uncle. “We pushed on and camped just twenty miles west of Boston. But he was in a dark mood when we passed through. I asked him what had happened and all he said was ‘Everything.’ And he spoke no more that day.” He turned toward Duncan with despair on his face. “Sometimes he gets this look, one I have never seen on any man. It lasts but a moment, yet during the moment he seems to be as fierce as a bear but somehow at the same time as frail as a young fledgling. But this is worse, like nothing I have ever seen before.”
“He is finally feeling his age, and he resents it,” Duncan said, hoping that was all it was. The old Nipmuc had been born in the last century, taken from his people by Jesuits, and transported to Europe for his education. When he returned years later, filled with dreams of a new life for his people, he could find no trace of them. He had spent decades searching for them, finding only the orphaned Ishmael. Now in
his eighties, Conawago could usually pass for a much younger man, but lately it seemed as if something in his eyes had surrendered. Duncan knew he had the spirit of the bear, but he also knew that Conawago sensed the approach of frailty.
“Stay with him, Ishmael,” Duncan asked the youth. “Or at least near him.”
Ishmael gave a low whistle and stepped away from the river. Molly, who had been frolicking in the water, bolted out of the river to follow. She paused long enough to shake the water out of her thick black coat, propelling a surprisingly heavy shower onto Duncan and Munro, who laughed good-naturedly as he wiped his face, motioning Duncan onto the bridge.
The wheelwright’s shop proved to be a series of connected sheds that sat in the shadow of the old mill, whose tattered canvas vanes rattled like loose sails in the light wind.
“No,” Duncan said when Munro began walking on a path directly to the shop. “I want to know the lay of this land. One of the cardinal rules of rangering: know your quarry’s terrain.”
Munro replied with a grunt. “Forgot ye was a ranger yerself.”
“I mean to know something of Chisholm before I approach him, and to assure that no one else is watching him. No more surprises,” he said, looking back toward the inn, half expecting to see their stowaway following them. They had spoken hard with young Will, who was to have stayed with Mrs. Pope to become part of her household, but the boy had refused to be cowed. “Ain’t going to spend my years emptying those ladies’ chamber pots and having them scrub my cheeks every day.” Munro had turned away, hiding his grin, and Duncan had placed his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “Then it’s Edentown, Will,” he soberly declared, “at the edge of the great, dark wilderness.”
“Will there be bears?” the boy asked in an uncertain tone, his eyes growing round. “And catamounts? And Indians?”
“Aye, I’m afraid so. Terribly fierce, the lot of them.”
The boy’s worried face had broken into a huge smile. “Best life for me, sure as eggs!”
With that business out of the way, Duncan had asked the question that had been nagging him all day. “You said Daniel Oliver was a ranger.”
The boy nodded.
“Do you know when or where?”
“No, except he helped Major Rogers punish those Indians in Quebec in a famous battle.” The boy looked away, as if remembering his friend Oliver’s scalped corpse, and Duncan had not pressed him further. Oliver had been a ranger with Rogers at St. Francis, and Hancock had been given a package sent to another of Rogers’s rangers, with a gold coin as an enticement to join a bold enterprise or campaign in the north. Duncan was eager to learn whether Josiah Chisholm, also a veteran of the St. Francis raid, had received a similar coin.
Munro nodded toward a cemetery on the rising slope behind the mill. “I’ll go among those departed as if seeking a relative, watch the back side for a spell.”
Duncan nodded, then gestured toward a small alehouse. “Meet me in half an hour.” He watched Munro climb toward the tombstones, considering with a pang how much the graying Scot reminded him of long-dead uncles in the Highlands.
At the alehouse, he paid for a tankard of weak ale and took it outside to a bench in front of the building to study the prosperous-looking wheel shop, two-thirds of which consisted of bays that opened to the street. At one end were racks of aging oak planks, then a work area with a lathe and cradle on which the hubs were worked into shape. In the next bay, two benches were fastened with large vise screws into the heavy floorboards, on one of which a hub was fixed with spokes inserted. A lanky blond youth of Ishmael’s age, no doubt an apprentice, was manipulating the last felloe, a wheel section, onto the spokes. Behind him, near a small, smoldering forge, was a door in the rear wall that Duncan took to be an entry to an office or living quarters.
As the last felloe was knocked into place, a strongly built man in his forties emerged from the rear door. He wiped his hands on his leather apron, then patted the younger man on the shoulder as if to commend his work. From a tool chest in the shadows he produced a small, foot-wide wheel on a handle, a traveler, and ran it along the outside of the wheel the younger man was finishing. He was measuring the circumference of the wheel so he could make the iron rim that would be fitted over it. Pausing to make a note on what looked like a small slate, he disappeared behind the door. Duncan signaled Munro, and they approached the shop.
The apprentice looked up from the vise as Duncan’s shadow fell across his wheel. The lad stretched his neck, looking along the road, searching for Duncan’s vehicle. “If it’s an entire set of four that ye seek,” he declared in an amiable tone, “I must warn ye that we are booked into August already. If only a broken spoke, I might get to it tomorrow morning.”
The older man emerged from the door. He had removed his apron and was fastening the top buttons of his green waistcoat. “Run down to the smith, Sam,” he told the young man at the vise, extending a slip of paper. “Tell him this be the length of iron I’ll need.”
Sam brightened and eagerly took the slip. “And afterward go help yer ma in her vegetable plot. See ye at dinner, lad.”
The blond-haired youth offered a mock salute and sped off down the road.
“It must be a satisfying life, Mr. Chisholm,” Duncan began as the wheelwright eyed him suspiciously, “bringing ease to people’s lives with just wood, iron, and the skill of your hands.”
“Aye, but you’re not here for my trade,” the man said. Duncan saw that one of his hands was inside his waistcoat. “Ye think I’m blind, not to see the two of ye watching me as if readying for an ambush? Ye,” he said with a nod to Duncan, “took all that time to drink a small tankard, eyes on my shop the entire while. And ye,” he said with a motion toward Munro. “A lot of folks come and go in that boneyard, but I don’t recollect ever seeing one take a long rifle to mourn.” The wheelwright paused, studying the weapon in Munro’s hand. “A good Pennsylvania rifle. Lancaster, by the look of it, maybe Reading.” His hand inside the waistcoat came out gripping a pepperbox pistol, designed to fire its small barrels in one discharge. “Now tell me what I can do to satisfy yer curiosity. And don’t waste breath trying to drag me back into tenant wars.”
Duncan hesitated, considering whether to try to wrestle the pistol away. Munro simply took off his hat.
The suspicion went out of Chisholm’s eyes as he saw the mass of scar tissue. “Jesus bloody wept!” he spat, and lowered the pistol. “French Indians?” he asked Munro, then saw the brass numerals the Scot had taken from the Abenaki’s hat and fastened to the breast of his waistcoat. “The Black Watch, was it?”
The former soldier nodded. “Left me for dead at Ticonderoga.”
The wheelwright silently studied Munro, his eyes settling on the pouch of green-and-black plaid that hung from his belt. “The Abenaki dealt cruel hard with the Ladies from Hell that day,” he said, using one of the army’s names for the ferocious Highlanders in kilts. His appraising gaze shifted to Duncan, who extended an open palm, holding a bronze disk inscribed with an oak tree. Chisholm lifted it and stepped out into the sunlight to examine it more closely. “Ain’t seen one of these fer years,” he said with a faraway look. “Captain Wool-ford still running the forest like a deer?” he asked. “Best ranger officer ever was, next to Major Rogers himself.”
“Deputy superintendent of Indians now,” Duncan reported, “under Sir William Johnson. He’s more Mohawk than English these days.”
The wheelwright nodded, as if approving. “There was a wildness in that man that he always pushed too deep. The Mohawk will cure that.”
“I think that’s what he thought. But then he took a Mohawk wife.”
Chisholm grinned. “Now that’s a whole different kind of wildness.” He gazed with a longing expression at the disk, then handed it back to Duncan. “I’ve been keeping some of last year’s applejack,” he declared, and motioned his two visitors toward the door.
They passed through a chamber with walls of rough-hewn lumber, with a
sturdy rope bed in one corner, a table bearing scattered papers in another.
“My brother opened the shop fifteen years ago and built up a fair trade. When he died of consumption a couple of years ago, I came from New York and took it over. His widow, Jenny, said move in with her and the three young ’uns, but I said no, people would talk against her if I did that.” Chisholm retrieved a ceramic jar and three horn cups from a shelf and led his guests out a back door that opened into a garden under construction. Half the plot was filled with late-spring blooms, but the other half was only soil, recently worked in anticipation of planting. A spade leaned against the wall.
“Jen’s got lots of vegetables up in her plot at the house,” Chisholm declared as he poured out the applejack. His voice had a gentle quality that belied his oxlike build. “But she loves her flowers. I sent for seeds from Boston. Says she dreams of a garden planted only with flowers mentioned in Shakespeare. She reads him aloud when I go up for Sunday dinners, after young Sam recites Bible verses to us. I’m going to have marigolds and pansies and daisies. Aye, and rosemary. Hamlet speaks of rosemary, if ye credit it. Rosemary is for remembrance, the young prince says. Jen says that’s because rosemary retains its essence all through the winter.”
Duncan found himself warming to the callused, battered Indian fighter who wanted to plant the flowers of the Bard to please his brother’s widow.
“Christ on the cross,” Chisholm muttered. “Listen to me prattle on about such things to total strangers.”
“One ranger’s no stranger to another,” Duncan said.
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