by Robin Moore
Then Maggie glanced down and caught sight of her spook yeast pouch, its thong tangled in the throat-cord. While no one was looking, she reached up and freed the thong, dropping the pouch safely out of sight inside her blouse.
Somehow, the simple act of tucking the pouch away replaced Maggie's courage. Her fear did not leave her; it was still there. But something else entered Maggie's mind: She remembered what Franny had once told her; she remembered that as long as she had the spook yeast with her, she would never forget who she was or where she came from.
Chapter Three
When they reached the clearing, Maggie didn't expect to find Jake alive. But he was. The young men had taken his weapons and had him seated on the ground, hands tied behind his back, a stick braced in the crook of his elbows.
A short distance away, the warrior Jake had struck with the gun barrel was laid out on the ground, his torso tightly wrapped in canvas. Maggie figured his ribs must be broken.
The warrior glared at Jake. Jake stared straight ahead, his face impassive. Maggie followed the old man's example. She kept her back straight and moved with as much dignity as she could, being collared by a throat-cord.
It was clear to Maggie that as long as she stayed close to the war leader, she was safe from the cruelties of the young men. Jake was not so lucky. As he sat on the ground, the warriors took delight in poking at him with their feet. Jake stared straight ahead.
After a few moments, the leader got the war party up and moving again. Maggie was impressed by how quickly they formed up for travel. Ahead, at the point of the line, walked two warriors who served as the eyes and ears of the column. Directly behind them, Maggie and the war leader. Then the young men, carrying bundles on their backs, followed by Jake and his broken-ribbed captor, and two heavily armed warriors in the rear. The column moved with astonishing speed and suppleness, like a great silent animal slipping through the woods. Maggie had to walk fast to keep from being pulled by the throat-cord.
Maggie was surprised that the fear hadn't overwhelmed her. Instead, she felt exceptionally alert.
She watched the war leader walking ahead of her. His eyes were always roving, keeping eye contact with the men ahead and behind, scanning the woods on either side of the trail. Catching the profile of his stern, painted face, Maggie felt a hatred and rage toward him. Yet strangely, for some reason, she felt grateful to him too. For the time being, at least, he had preserved their lives.
Her instincts told her that she must do nothing to show her fear or weakness. And above all, she must prove herself worthy of being kept alive.
That night they camped in a strange place, on the edge of a cliff face that rose forty feet over a large stream. As the war leader tied Maggie's cord to a sapling near the edge of the cliff, Maggie saw that a colony of beavers had dammed the stream there, making a deep pool.
The young men dragged Jake to a craggy crab-apple tree that stood on the edge of the cliff. There were a few other apple trees around, but this one was different: It was dead and had begun to rot. The beetles had long since worked the bark off and the tree seemed almost white in the twilight.
Maggie watched as they stood Jake up against the tree and bound him to it with a wide strip of canvas wrapped round and round his chest. A horrible thought flashed through Maggie's mind: This is a torture tree. She had heard stories about the terrible things that Indians did to their prisoners; now it was happening before her eyes.
Maggie knew she had to do something. She couldn't simply stand there and watch them torment the old man. Her hands shaking with rage and fear, Maggie worked with quick fingers at the noose and slipped it up over her head. She hadn't taken more than two steps in Jake's direction when she felt someone catch her by the wrist. She spun around and found herself in the powerful grip of the war leader.
Maggie reached up to slap his face, but he easily caught her hand and dragged her back to the sapling, looping the rawhide noose tightly around her neck.
She tried to catch Jake's eye, to give him some glint of encouragement, but the old man's face had gone to stone. Maggie knew he had gone to a place inside, where the pain could not reach him.
The young men lined up, fifty paces from the tree, and began stringing their bows. The broken-ribbed warrior came forward with an armful of green, wind-fallen apples and began to place them very carefully on Jake's shoulders. The old man held his shoulders square.
When the broken-ribbed one stepped aside, the warriors fitted their arrows to their bowstrings.
Maggie tried to make herself look away, but some strange fascination kept her from doing it. She watched in astonishment as the arrows flew thick and fast around Jake's shoulders, piercing the apples. The old man stood absolutely still as the metal-tipped arrows sank into the rotten wood around his ears.
Maggie was amazed at the young men's marksmanship. They didn't take time to aim; they simply raised their bows and released. None of the arrows struck Jake. The broken-ribbed warrior came forward with another armful of apples, and the other warriors moved back a few paces.
During the next round, Maggie noticed a few stray shots: One went wild and high, sinking into the wood above Jake's head; the other went low, under his armpit. The metal point of that arrow sliced through the wide canvas band that held the old man to the tree.
Jake felt the binding loosen.
What happened next happened very fast. Jake threw his full weight against the canvas binding and ripped himself free. He took three running steps and leaped over the edge of the cliff.
The warriors shouted and sprinted to the edge of the cliff, just catching a glimpse of the old man as he disappeared, feet first, into the water. None of the young men dared to jump after him. Instead, they pulled their bows.
Maggie held on to the sapling and looked down over the edge of the cliff. In the failing light, she could make out the ripples made by the swimmer. She watched as the arrows rained down.
The war leader shouted now, pointing to the body floating in the water. The young men circled around and began scrambling and sliding down the cliff to the water's edge.
Maggie watched as a knot of warriors swam out to the body, racing to see who could reach the war trophy first.They converged and lifted the body up out of the water. The young men gave a shout of surprise and disgust. It was not Jake—it was the body of a beaver with an arrow through its neck.
Chapter Four
The day after Jake escaped, Maggie and her captors crossed the West Branch of the Susquehanna River. From there the war party headed north, making over twenty miles a day. Maggie kept close to the war leader and tried her best to keep up. When they made their camps at night, she slept as best she could, tied to a sapling like a dog.
Along the way, she occupied her mind by remembering landmarks. It was a trick Jake had taught her: storing the images of waterways and mountain slopes, an outcrop of rock or a strange-shaped tree by the trail. These would be essential if she could find a way to escape from her captors and make her way down the river to Franny's tavern.
Maggie decided to let herself think that Jake was still alive and that he had gotten away safely. She decided that it would be too much to ask that he be able to help her in some way. It would be enough, she told herself, if the old man was still alive.
After six days of travel, the war party reached the banks of the Genesee River, two hundred miles north of Penn's Valley. Three days later, at about midmorn-ing, they came to a spot along the river that looked to Maggie like a village.
For the first time the warriors seemed to relax, laugh, and talk loudly as they walked. It made Maggie very nervous. There had been a certain security in traveling the war trail. By now she knew that if she kept quiet and didn't slow them down, she would be allowed to live. But up ahead, in the village, she didn't know what would happen.
The outskirts of the village looked horrible. Along the riverbank stood two crude bark lean-tos.
"Lord," Maggie thought to herself, "could
people live in them?"
An old man and a boy came out of the woods and trotted up to the war party. They wore loincloths and tattered cloth shirts.
The old man said a few words to the leader, then led them to a sheltered place along the streambank. Maggie saw what the warriors had come for: Tied to a row of saplings, five bark-covered canoes rode light on the water.
The war party loaded up, two or three men to a canoe, the bundles lashed down. Maggie sat in the center of the war leader's canoe, one young man paddling in the bow, the older man in the rear, steering.
Maggie was astonished at the distance they covered in only a few short hours. She watched the muscles ripple on the warrior's back ahead of her. Dip, stroke, glide, and swing. Dip, stroke, glide, and swing. She welcomed this break from walking.
By noon, they were passing a village. Maggie couldn't see much of it from the river but she knew it was there. The cornfields came right down to the water. She saw the smoke from cooking fires against the sky. She heard dogs barking.
Less than an hour beyond the village, Maggie heard a roaring sound, like distant thunder. The pad-dlers heard it too. They angled the canoes into shore and began to unload.
Maggie glanced around, confused. There was no village here. Why were they stopping? And what was that sound?
The young men lifted the canoes onto their shoulders and began climbing a well-worn trail along the riverbank. Maggie followed along, led by the war leader. As they climbed higher, the air filled with mist. Then she saw and understood: The river dropped here, a large waterfall and a deep pool below. They carried the canoes around the falls, repacked the gear, and paddled ahead.
In less than a mile they encountered even bigger falls. This one was over a hundred feet high and was the grandest Maggie had ever seen. The view from the trail was breathtaking. From here Maggie could see the wide, deep canyon the Genesee River had cut through rock.
The physical beauty of the gorge drew her away from her troubles, and for a moment, at least, she forgot her fear and misery.
Clouds of small birds wheeled and flew up along the cliff walls. Other birds sailed high and majestic, looking for food. Two hawks glided by, scarcely ten feet away. They flew in tandem, their wings almost touching, cutting the air with a slight sound. Maggie watched the hawks as long as she could. There was something about the ease and grace of their flight that lifted her spirit. She watched them as they spi-raled upward on the wind currents, then separated from each other and flew off. Her heart flew with them.
Then the birds were gone and Maggie was back with her captors on the ground, tethered down by a throat-cord.
They camped that night on the floor of the canyon, by the water's edge. In the morning it took a long time for the sun to reach them, the canyon was so deep. Another morning of dip, stroke, glide, and swing.
Near the end of the day, they came upon the war party's home village. At first, all Maggie could see were cornfields, young cornstalks rising up green and verdant on both sides of the riverbank. Then she heard dogs barking and, a moment later, she caught the scent of wood smoke. She knew this was the end of the journey.
Maggie watched as the men retouched their paint and arranged their clothing. She sat still in the canoe as the leader painted her face bright red and fastened back her hair with a rawhide thong. Maggie looked at her reflection in the water over the side of the canoe. The red paint made her face appear stark and thin, like a deathskull.
"They couldn't have brought me all this way just to kill me, could they?" Maggie thought.
The first people she saw were a group of young boys, playing on the rocks by the river. When they got closer, Maggie could see that they were spearing frogs with long, sharpened sticks.
When the boys saw the canoes approaching, they stood on the rocks and shouted, thrusting their sticks in the air. One of the boys had speared a frog. Maggie watched it kicking, impaled on the wooden point of the spear.
Suddenly, Maggie no longer saw the frog's body but her own, impaled on the wooden shaft, writhing in pain. All the terrible stories she had heard about Indian tortures began flooding her mind. Her breathing came in fast, shallow sobs. Up ahead, she could see people coming down to the bank to meet them.
To comfort herself, Maggie reached into her blouse to grasp the pouch of spook yeast. Her fingers groped slowly at first, then frantically.
The pouch was gone!
She searched her clothing and the bottom of the canoe. But it was not there. When had she last seen the pouch? Was it last night, in the camp on the canyon floor? She couldn't remember. It could have fallen away and been lost along the trail anywhere. One thing was clear: Her most precious possession was gone.
Tears of rage and grief welled up in her eyes. For a moment, Maggie buried her face in her hands. But before she could feel anything more, her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of splashing water.
When Maggie looked up, she could see that a dozen men had waded out from the shore to pull the canoes in. In a moment they were all around her, their hands on her, lifting her up and out of the canoe. Somewhere up in the village, she heard drums.
Chapter Five
When they came up through the corn and into the village, Maggie gasped. It was nothing like she had expected. She was prepared to see a cluster of miserable bark huts, like the ones downriver. But this place was different.
The earthen road they walked was a hundred feet wide and ran straight as an arrow to the setting sun in the west. Arranged neatly on either side of the avenue were more than a hundred of the most elegant houses Maggie had ever seen on the frontier. Most were hewn log with shake shingles, but a few were more elaborate, with real glass in the windows.
Each house had a neat yard with vegetables, flowers, and fruit trees arranged in orderly rows. In the center of the village was an enormous two-story building of peeled logs, with a red, gabled roof.
A sparkling stream ran through the center of the village. Round and about the town were acres and acres of cornfields, lush grasslands, and expansive fruit orchards. It was the most beautiful place she had ever seen.
The people were not at all like she expected either.
Unlike the warriors, they were dressed in a subtle combination of colonial and native garments. The women wore handsome trade-cloth dresses and the men wore colorful shirts and were decked with silver jewelry.
The war leader brought his party up to the red-roofed council house. Sunk into the ground near the doorway was a huge wooden post. The leader pulled his tomahawk from his belt and struck the post. A shout of joy went up from the crowd.
People were coming from all over now: women with babies; children, naked and playful; old men wearing military officers' coats. The drum was still beating somewhere.
The leader raised his hand and the crowd fell silent. He spoke in a rich deep voice for several moments, gesturing toward Maggie and toward the pile of plunder by the war post.
Maggie was suddenly aware of a large, moon-faced woman standing at her elbow. The woman turned Maggie’s face toward her and stared into her eyes.
Although she was trembling inside, Maggie made herself stand with her back straight. She sensed that her fate would be decided within the next few moments.
"Steady now, Maggie," she told herself. "Show these people what a Callahan's made of."
The woman stared for a few moments more, then said something to the war leader. For the first time in many days, he slipped the noose from around her neck and tucked it into his belt.
Then the woman was grabbing her by the wrist and drawing her out of the circle of people. Another woman, younger but with the same broad features, grasped her other wrist. They held her tightly and brought her down to the stream that ran through the village. They drew her into the water, and Maggie watched as they drew their belt knives.
Maggie turned her eyes up to heaven and tried to think of some prayer. She felt the steel blades cutting along her body and—with
a rush of astonishment and relief—she felt them cutting away her ragged clothing. The women scooped up handfuls of sand from the creek bottom and rubbed her skin vigorously, washing away the dirt of the war trail. They washed and plaited her hair, then drew her up on the bank and retouched her face paint.
Back on the shore, they unrolled a bundle, taking out a beautiful trade-cloth dress and soft doeskin moccasins.
The women moved in a sure, strong way, but not unkindly. Maggie had to admit that after the rigors of the war trail, it felt good to be among women and womanly things again; to feel clean clothing against her skin and dry, comfortable moccasins on her weary feet.
After she was dressed, the younger woman held Maggie's head firmly as the older one pricked a hole through each of Maggie's earlobes. The women worked quickly, running a greased string through each hole.
Then a very odd thing happened. A cluster of women came down to meet them, sobbing as if they were overcome with grief. They led Maggie to a nearby one-room cabin. When they got there, the room was already filled with weeping women. There was not a man in sight.
The moon-faced one began to speak in loud, impassioned tones, and the wailing grew loud and frightful in Maggie's ears. She felt afraid for her life. Then the moon-faced woman dried her tears and smiled, placing her hands on Maggie's shoulders. She spoke quietly now. Everyone watched intently as the older woman bent and kissed Maggie on the top of the head.
The women turned and silently filed out, leaving Maggie with her two protectors. They sat Maggie by the fire and gave her a bowl of corn soup. It tasted delicious. Then they showed her to a bed covered with soft blankets and motioned for her to take off her moccasins and lie down.
Maggie lay there in the dark, listening to the drums and the high-pitched chants outside.