Savage Liberty

by Eliot Pattison

  “You be in good company, aye.”

  “So you know Rogers?”

  “A good man. He did the suffering in the war, and the lace-collared generals got all the glory. By God, what he did at St. Francis was a miracle. It broke the back of the French Indians. No other man on God’s earth could have done it.”

  “Command of the post at Michilimackinac seems a just reward.”

  “Nonsense! They just wanted him out of the way. It was an exile. Rogers reminded the generals of some unpleasant realities, so they dispatched him to oblivion and now want to tar him with conspiracy.”

  “Unpleasant realities?”

  “That given the chance, the American colonials can fight as well as British regulars. That their way of discipline in battle may work in Europe, but not always here. That Americans think much of their own personal honor and have this perverse tendency toward independent thinking.”

  They were dangerous words. “Thinking about independence, you mean,” Duncan said.

  Allen threw up his hands in mock alarm. “I never said that. You be the traitor, McCallum, not me. I’m just talking about the honor of a free man.”

  Duncan rode on in silence, digesting Allen’s words. In the British world, treason meant acts on behalf of a foreign king, almost always that of France. But in America there were new possibilities, acts against a king that would have been inconceivable, even impossible, in Europe. The honor of a free man. Surely that was not inconsistent with loyalty to a king.

  They hurried up, then down a ridge, across the shallow river Allen had described to their party, then dismounted under a canopy of huge maples by a lazy stream. A hundred yards away, up a strangely barren hillside, stood a formation of huge, squarish stones stacked on one another by the hand of nature. It was, he had no doubt, the formation depicted on Brandt’s powder horn, the image the old corporal kept trying to hide. As Allen led the horses to the water, he tossed Duncan a hand ax. “Firewood,” he commanded, pointing to a circle of fire-blackened rocks.

  Duncan chopped three armfuls of dead limbs, then headed up the slope to the chimney formation. The huge stacked stones reached nearly four times his height. Nothing grew within a hundred-foot radius except low shrubs and small flowering plants. It had the air of the stone circles Duncan had visited as a boy. The tribes, he knew, would show such a place special reverence, and as he neared it, he was not surprised to see strands of beads, animal skulls, crude carvings, and a few brilliantly colored bird wings laid on the protruding lip of the lowest stone. The bottom two stones bore patches of green and gold lichen, but the higher rock faces showed the work of humans. There were diamond and circle designs in rust-colored ochre, drawings of deer, birds, moose, wolves, and fish, even a small grouping of dancing stick-figure humans. Scattered around the stone faces were dozens of handprints, the hands of humans that had been covered with pigment and pressed to the rock, probably across a span of centuries.

  “They call it the torch of the gods,” came Allen’s voice behind him, “because long ago there was a night when it burned bright at the top.” He shrugged as he stepped to Duncan’s side. “Lightning strike on some dried brush up there probably, though don’t ever suggest that to a tribesman. It was, they say, the night after old Samuel de Champlain was first sighted on his great lake. The Christian Indians say it was a beacon of celebration. The others say it was a warning.”

  The bearded man stepped past Duncan and touched a hand against the rock, a sign of homage. Frontiersmen learned not to mock tribal traditions. Duncan approached the makeshift altars and studied the offerings. He pointed to a belt woven of white and purple beads. “That’s Iroquois,” he said in surprise. He counted the purple beads in the pattern along the bottom. “Mohawk,” he declared then, wishing again for Conawago, struggling to understand the painted images. He pointed to the dancing stick figures, some of whom led captives by neck ropes. “That’s about a victory in battle, though whose victory and whose defeat is lost to time.” He lingered over the offerings, then turned to Allen. “Why would a Mohawk belt be here on a shrine so far from their lands?”

  A small, melancholy smile rose on Allen’s face. “His woman was a Mohawk. Formidable. She liked this place. When he was with her, he was always different, a softer, kinder man. But she took a fever and died before the war was over.”

  Duncan was about to ask whom he meant when it came to him that Allen was speaking of Robert Rogers. He paced around the rock, examining the other offerings on the narrow ledge around the chimney, then paused over a small rectangular wooden box stuffed into a horizontal crack in the granite. With a finger he pried it out into the sunlight.

  “Abenaki, Mahican, Pennacock, Pocomtuc,” Allen recited. “They all come here. Best not meddle with tribal offerings.”

  Duncan nodded, and pushed the box back into the narrow shadow. It was indeed tribal, but from the tribe of Israel. He knew such boxes from the Jewish ghetto he had lived near as a student. It was a mezuzah, one of the prayer boxes that was affixed to doorways of Jewish homes. There was only one person who could possibly have left it. In his quest to find his wife, the lonely Hebrew tinker tried to appeal to every god who might listen.

  There were more offerings on the last side of the square. Little bone flutes, images of deer and bears skillfully woven into patches of soft doeskin, even two sashes with embroidered flowers and leaves, which Duncan now knew were worn by Abenaki women.

  The talkative Allen had sunk into a contemplative silence. Duncan saw the mixture of wonder and discomfort on his countenance, a look that often settled over colonists who encountered tribal shrines. Their European upbringing taught them to be dismissive, even contemptuous of such altars, but those who had experienced the deep forest knew there was a power at such places that their own religion could not account for.

  A tanager’s lilting melody wafted through the woods behind them. Duncan walked about the rock again, then studied the landscape. The shrine sat in the middle of a long, open swath that ran all the way to the top of the mountain, widening as it descended. Spars of long-dead trees reached up from the undergrowth. It had been the site of another long-ago avalanche.

  A little slice of blue appeared on the ground before him, a jay feather, and he bent to retrieve it, then dropped it on the stone ledge near the still-meditative Allen.

  “My father was a devout follower of the faith,” Allen said suddenly. “He made me study the Bible as a boy, and I was supposed to attend divinity school at the Yale College. But then I came here, to the mountains. The wildness cured me of those notions. How arrogant, to think we can be better men of God by becoming scholars. When you see what the hand of God has wrought here, you know that the affairs of mankind must be but a minor distraction to him.”

  Duncan had no reply.

  “What always has puzzled me, McCallum, is how tribesmen like Occom and Noah take to the Scriptures. I asked Occom about it once. He said the Mysterious One wears many coats, and it is a great blessing to meet him wearing different ones.” Allen reached out and touched the feather. “And I asked old Noah once why the Bible didn’t prepare me for all this. He said Christianity is for crowds, for men dealing with other men. Then he pointed to the forest and said but walk into that wilderness and you are the first human who ever lived. They make me feel so damned small, talking like that. Just like this place makes me feel tiny. It’s all backward, ain’t it? I mean Occom and Noah’s supposed to be the pagans and we’re supposed to be the enlightened ones.”

  Duncan gestured at the handprints on the stone face. “At places like this I always feel that the people who left their mark are like old friends I should have met, forever lost to me.”

  Allen slowly nodded. “Like part of us is somehow in these stones, too,” he said in a near whisper.

  “Give me that expensive linen handkerchief I saw in your pocket,” Duncan said.

  Allen’s brow knitted in confusion, but he complied.

  Duncan flattened the linen cloth o
n the stone, laid the feather in the middle of it, folded the handkerchief around it, and stuffed it into a crack in the granite. He saw a patch of mud nearby, bent his hand into it, then pushed his hand onto the stone, leaving a muddy print. Allen solemnly did the same before they both turned away.

  “You used the word conspiracy when you spoke of Rogers,” Duncan said as they walked toward camp. “Why?”

  “Stands to reason, don’t it? Don’t suppose treason is committed by just one man. It’s what the major’s enemies would suggest.”

  “The eagle, the squirrel, and the mouse,” Duncan stated.

  “Sorry?”

  Duncan gestured to the nearest tree. “It’s what Conawago says when we confront puzzles—about seeing things with different perspectives. The eagle, the squirrel, and the mouse might all look at the same tree, but none of them would see it the same way.”

  “You lost me,” Allen confessed.

  “Say Major Rogers had a second objective when he went to St. Francis. Not just to punish the Abenaki but also to take something, something that would guarantee that he would win the next battle, even the war.”

  Allen considered his words for several long breaths. “Can’t imagine what that might be.”

  “Suppose it was a list of leaders of the French irregulars, the farmers and tradesmen of Quebec who formed the core of the French Army. By the time of the raid their morale was terrible. They hadn’t received their promised pay, not to mention their promised supplies. King Louis was reluctant to send regular troops to America because he was fighting the British elsewhere. And he had no friends among the Quebec Jesuits by then.”

  “No need to bring the papists into it,” Allen muttered.

  “They have to be part of this. I understand that the Jesuit mission in St. Francis dominated the town. Jesuits had been accompanying the raiders for years, sometimes even leading them. The French king had begun suppressing the Jesuits in France. He dissolved the order back home. Even King George banned the immigration of new Jesuit priests to America. The Jesuits and their followers in Quebec were angry at the world. Still are, I imagine. What if Rogers thought he could turn them to his cause in 1759?”

  “The war was all but over,” Allen observed.

  “Rogers didn’t know that. It’s all about perspectives. The eagle, the squirrel, and the mouse. Perspectives have shifted. What if Rogers has a new cause? That list becomes as explosive as a keg of powder. And the French haven’t given up on America. They control some of the western lands still, where they could mass troops, then a rebel force in Canada could pound the English like a hammer on that anvil. If Rogers helped them achieve that, he would become a general at last, probably even a French count with his own chateau.”

  Allen produced a plug of tobacco and bit off the end. “Intrigue,” he said with contempt in his voice. “Secret conspiracy. Those are things for kings and royal courts.”

  Duncan glanced at Allen, realizing the man wasn’t exactly disagreeing with him. “And for those who oppose them. The French Jesuits of Quebec loathe King Louis. The French colonials have no love for King Louis or King George. Rogers has no love of King George. Maybe they instead seek a paradise without a king. This land”—Duncan swept his hand toward the horizon—“is wide-open. No settlers to speak of, no flag planted firmly in its soil.”

  Allen spat tobacco juice. “Lake George wasn’t its original name.”

  “No,” Duncan said. “Once, it belonged to Jesuit colonials. Lac du Saint Sacrement, they called it.”

  Allen bit off more tobacco, then pointed toward the camp, where the rest of the party was arriving. “The first name given to these mountains was Vert Monts. The inland sea is still called Champlain.”

  Duncan paused, watching Allen as the big man continued down the trail. His words sounded almost like an effort of persuasion. Allen had no love for the colonial governments, yet he kept surveying the mountains as if for the purpose of some government. Had Duncan just been speaking with one of the conspirators?

  “Saguenay!” Duncan called to his back.

  Although Duncan still did not know if the word signified a person, a place, or an object, it clearly meant something to Allen. The frontiersman halted so fast he almost stumbled, but he did not turn to face Duncan. After a moment, without replying, he continued down the mountain.

  ETHAN ALLEN AND HIS MOUNTAIN boys, as he called them, were jovial campmates. They readily shared their ample food supply, and Will was soon being taught the fine art of flipping johnnycakes in a skillet as Corporal Brandt kept watch over a pot of molasses and beans. When they finished eating, Munro declared that he was not comfortable sleeping without a sentinel, and he volunteered to take the first watch.

  “Thought the ’Naki that worried you was disabled,” Allen observed.

  “T’ain’t the red-skinned savages I worry about,” the sturdy Scot replied, “ ’tis the red-coated ones.”

  Allen puffed on his pipe, then slowly nodded and motioned with its long stem toward two of his men. “Silas and Thomas, two hours each after Mr. Munro’s shift. Then rouse me for the dawn watch.” He turned to the youngest of his men. “Ben,” he said to the youth in his late teens, “early breakfast for ye. I want ye on the road, scouting ahead at dawn.”

  Duncan, exhausted from the long day, welcomed the moss pillow Will had collected for him, but sleep eluded him. More than ever he felt like a puppet, with invisible faces at the end of the long strings manipulating him. There was indeed a conspiracy by the French that somehow involved the Sons of Liberty, but he was also convinced that there was another in the north, involving the famous Major Rogers, these unclaimed lands, and the enigmatic Saguenay. It seemed impossible that the two conspiracies could be linked, but they had become so through French coins, dead rangers, and now Duncan himself. An owl hooted, mocking him. Who, it asked, who, who wanted him dead?

  “MIND YER FLIPPERS, LAD!” THE grizzled old Scot called out to young Duncan, pointing to the pinnace that was gliding to a halt along the starboard rail where Duncan sat. Duncan swung his legs up just as the smaller boat nudged the hull of his grandfather’s red-sailed sloop.

  “Lively now, ye seahounds!” his grandfather yelled, and the two small crews quickly went to work, lashing the two boats together and forming a line to hand up the casks from the smaller boat to stow in the sloop’s hold. The gray-haired captain lit his pipe and with a twinkle in his eyes raised it to salute the solitary old seal that often watched them; then he accepted the bottle presented by the kilted owner of the smaller vessel and pried out the cork. He sniffed the contents, took a drink, and swished the contents in his mouth before a deep swallow. “It’ll do, McDuff,” he told the whiskey maker, high praise indeed from the gruff Highlander, and called for Duncan to fetch the basket of horn cups they kept in the galley.

  He poured each man a dram and had Duncan hold an extra to fill. “To the prince across the water,” he proposed, and every man solemnly joined in the Jacobite toast. When they were done, he took the cup from Duncan and threw its contents out in a long arc across the water. “Stay long and far away,” he called after the spilled whiskey, and young Duncan finally gave voice to the question that rose to his tongue every time he witnessed the ritual.

  “Why do you ask the bonny prince to stay far away?” he asked his grandfather.

  The sailors and the captain laughed together, their amusement echoing across the bay, causing the old seal to raise its damp black eyes again. “The toast is for our bonny Stewart prince, lad,” his grandfather said. “The whiskey in the water is a charm against the English king, to keep his long German nose out of our affairs. The whiskey in these casks is the fame and honor of the McDuffs, who have been making it for the clans since time began. For that distant king to pretend it is now a crime to do so does a dishonor to the McDuffs and all of us who rely on them. But the real dishonor, and the real sin, be on the king.”

  An hour later his grandfather tensed when a little cutter flying a Union Jac
k appeared around the point of one of the craggy islands in the Minch, the turbulent water off Skye. After several worried minutes in which he yelled at his crew to stand by the sails, he laughed once more, for the cutter had becalmed herself by sailing too close to the lee of the island.

  “There ye go, Duncan lad,” the wise old man had explained. “May the hand of the king ever fumble when he tries to smear yer honor.”

  DUNCAN STIRRED OUT OF HIS deep sleep, smiling at the half-remembered scent of peat and heather that always clung to his grandfather’s clothes. Then he awoke with the sense that something was amiss. The fire was burning low, and in its flickering light he saw Allen hovering beside him. The bearded man, on his dawn watch, nudged Duncan and gestured in the direction of the tribal shrine. A slight, shadowed figure was moving toward it.

  The man had a head start, but he was proceeding so cautiously, so slowly, that Duncan had to pause frequently, hiding behind trees so as not to be spotted. The spidery, nervous aspect of the figure told him it must be Corporal Brandt, which he confirmed as the man emerged in the gray predawn light of the open swath around the sacred rocks.

  Brandt placed something on the base stone of the chimney and bowed his head for a few words before continuing up the slope. Duncan paused only long enough to see that the old ranger had deposited a little strand of braided leather with feathers in its folds; then he followed. They climbed steadily for nearly half an hour before he spotted what he knew must be Brandt’s destination, high up on a flat ledge near the top of the treeless avalanche run. Duncan slipped deeper into the woods, where he could make better time, so as to be close when Brandt arrived.

  The forest of what Allen called his Vert Monts seemed somehow older than the woodlands Duncan knew on the west side of the Hudson. Every forest had its own character, and this patchwork of granite, maple, birch, spruce, and hemlock draped with hanging moss seemed unusually calm, as if patiently bracing for what were no doubt harsh winters ahead. Daylight was filtering through the heavy foliage, kindling birdsong that flowed over the slope. Ground squirrels appeared, scampering in search of breakfast. Above him in an aged spruce a porcupine took note of Duncan and shifted to the other side of the broad trunk. For an instant he saw a dog-size creature with rich brown fur as it leapt from one tree to another, a sleek fisher cat hunting the heights.