“You must show how eagerly you embrace a new beginning,” Tenskwatawa called out. Then he paused.
“Seguy,” the people said into the moment of silence.
Tenskwatawa hesitated another moment. His arms remained lifted but his head turned slowly from side to side, as if he listened to the long silence.
He hears the Master of Life’s voice. Wind Man strained but could hear nothing but the silence and the breeze in the leaves and the whisper of bodies standing close together.
Then Tenskwatawa raised his arms above shoulder height and lifted his voice. “You must throw away your medicine bags.”
This time the moment of silence after Tenskwatawa’s words remained only silence. No one spoke seguy or shouted in approval. Wind Man tried to remember how to breathe.
A medicine bag contained the fetishes of a person’s guardian spirits, the talismans by which the spirits might be called for protection. To throw away your medicine bag would be to banish something sacred from your life, to turn your back on the guardians who watched over you. To strip yourself naked and stand helpless before your enemies.
Helpless, save for your faith in the Master of Life. And that was the test.
Around Wind Man, the people murmured and whispered, asking each other how Tenskwatawa could mean such a thing.
“The children are afraid.” Tenskwatawa’s voice rose above the whispers. “The Master of Life knew it would be so. For this reason, he will himself light the fire upon which your medicine bags are to be burned. Watch. As the Master of Life stirs the lenipinsia, the great spirit panthers of the storm, to bring rain to our fields, he now bids them to call fire from the sky.”
That foreboding heaviness in the air grew heavier yet. An acrid, metallic tang settled on Wind Man’s tongue. Chill air sharpened itself against his bare arms and chest.
The people’s murmurs rose higher.
With a sudden and great shout, Tenskwatawa thrust his arms toward the sky. Thunder boomed, directly overhead and with such force that Wind Man nearly fell to his knees. With sizzling fury, lightning streaked from the sky.
Blue-white light seared Wind Man’s eyes, blinding him. Instinctively, he wrapped his arms around his head. Screams followed, but through the ringing in Wind Man’s ears, they seemed muted and distant.
Then Wind Man could breathe again, and the pain in his eyes and ears grew less intense. He lowered his arms.
Flames leapt in the bonfire. Splinters of wood lay scattered around its perimeter. The thunder did not come again, nor the lightning. The sky remained perfectly clear.
“Day and night, this fire that the Master of Life has made will continue to burn.” Atop his rise, Tenskwatawa alone stood upright. Firelight burned in his eyes. “Until every medicine bundle of every good child of his has been turned over to it, it will burn.”
Wind Man was not sure if the pulse rushing through his veins and pounding in his ears was awe or fear. Now was the moment. Now was when Tenskwatawa expected Wind Man to come forward, to be the first to show his faith in the Master of Life. In Tenskwatawa.
Laughing Girl rose to her feet. Standing beside her father as she was, light and shadow danced across Laughing Girl’s form. Wind Man could not see her eyes in the glare of the bonfire, but her face was turned toward him. He knew she was watching. Waiting.
Tenskwatawa lifted one arm again, palm up and extended toward Wind Man.
“Brother?” he said. “Do you believe?”
Not “son of my father.” Brother.
“I am not without fear.” The quaver in Wind Man’s voice would have told them that truth without the words. “But yes. I believe.”
His hand shook as he reached for the bundle hanging from its leather thong around his neck. His legs carried him unsteadily forward, until the blaze lit by the Master of Life heated his face. The flames sizzled, weaving a song with the nearby rush of the river. They sounded to Wind Man like laughing voices.
Wind Man lifted the leather thong over his head and paused for a moment, the medicine bundle clutched in one hand.
Will you really do this? Can you?
He looked across the fire into the weary, lined face of Tenskwatawa and the bright, hopeful eyes of Laughing Girl. They smiled, both of them.
The medicine bundle left Wind Man’s hand with greater ease than he could have imagined. The pouch began to smoke almost before it landed on the burning branches. Wind Man’s breath caught as he realized he could not now or ever take back what he had just done.
A feather from the first turkey I hunted. A strip of bark from the tree beneath which my father was buried. A hair from the head of the woman I love. All things which made me strong, and I have thrown them away.
Behind Wind Man, a smattering of followers in the crowd recovered from the shock of the lightning strike and of Tenskwatawa’s directive. They shouted whoops of joy that were at first tentative but quickly grew stronger.
“If you show them the way, they will follow after you,” Tenskwatawa had told Wind Man on the day he had asked Wind Man to follow after him. And they would, Wind Man knew as the shouting rose around him and Laughing Girl beamed at him and Tenskwatawa nodded with grim approval. The people would burn their medicine bags and, in doing so, place themselves in the palm of the Master’s hand.
That would be a good thing, Wind Man reassured himself, as the voices of fire and water whispered around him. It had to be.
Had not the Master of Life said so?
7
August 1806
Indiana Territory: The White River
Vincent had decided they would never actually reach Vincennes. He would be stuck in his saddle for the rest of his days, shunned by everyone except Annie James, watching while Kellen grew more distant from him and closer to Ger Owen with every jarring thud of hooves over the rough trail between Louisville and Vincennes. And if he had to listen to the near-constant drip of rain through the trees for too much longer, he thought he might go crazy.
He was better off, though, some part of him knew. He wasn’t breaking his back hauling crates for next to nothing in wages, wasn’t trapped in a city where he stood no chance at all of doing anything better with his life. People might not understand what they were looking at when they looked at Vincent, but they looked at him. He might know that Ellis held all the power, but the people looking at Vincent believed he held power, too.
Vincent figured he could live with that. And there was still the chance, however fleeting, that he could turn it into the truth.
They’d set out that morning under a flat blue sky. It wasn’t raining, but the humidity was so thick that it may as well have been. He’d started hearing whispers of far-off thunder an hour ago—just before they reached the spot where Ellis intended them to cross the White River, of course.
“Terrific,” Vincent muttered. He glanced toward the horizon and saw nothing but clear sky. Maybe it would stay that way long enough for them to get across the river.
A log-built ferry house squatted alongside the rutted trail, which sloped down toward the river. Vincent had no way of knowing what the water was usually like, but today it was, like all other bodies of water they’d encountered, swollen near to over-flowing and moving at a brisk pace. On the far side, not quite a mile across, the trace picked up again.
Annie drew up alongside Vincent. He hadn’t pressed her for any more answers about her father or his adventures among the Indians, and she’d gradually started talking to him again.
“We’re near there,” she said now. “Once over the White River, it’s not far. We might even make it by day’s end. I heard Mr. Ellis tell Father.”
Thunder rumbled, still distant. Vincent thought if they didn’t screw around too long, they could make it before the rain started.
“I’d be more excited if he told your father we’d get to sleep inside for a night,” he told Annie. “Or two. Maybe ten.”
Annie smiled.
Ahead of them, Ellis and Samuel James neared the fe
rry-house and the river, the two wagons driven by Mrs. Epler and Mr. Lockton trailing behind them. Annie kneed her horse and rode ahead of Vincent. Vincent supposed she meant to eavesdrop on more conversations.
“I wasn’t joking,” he muttered as she rode off.
By the time Vincent caught up to them, Ellis had dismounted and was making arrangements with the ferryman. James remained on his horse, head bowed as he bent over the leatherbound notebook opened across his saddle. Annie got her tall and gangly from him, but his hair was less dark and more red. He wore a shirt with a standing collar, but his jacket was draped haphazardly across the saddle behind him and his shirt sleeves were shoved up to his elbows.
Annie sat her horse beside James now, a brittle, self-conscious smile across her mouth, as if she were being generously tolerant of her father’s distraction with his work. Vincent thought it more likely that she’d tried to strike up a conversation and he’d either asked her to hush or, most likely of all, never realized she was talking at all.
Vincent would have smiled at her, but experience had taught him that sympathy only embarrassed her. Just a kid, he reminded himself. Annie James was brilliant and strong-willed, but she was still just a kid.
“We will load the wagons onto the ferry first.”
Vincent hadn’t heard Ellis coming, but he was suddenly there, all crisp words and haughty stride.
“I will go on the first ferry as well,” Ellis continued. “Mr. James, if you and your daughter would join me?”
But James was frowning into his bound book of paper, squinting as he scribbled with a stub of pencil. He shook his head without looking up and waved a hand at Ellis.
“In a moment,” James said. “Give me just a moment more.”
Vincent could practically hear Ellis straining to hold onto his composure. “We really have no time to waste, Mr. James. There is a storm approaching. Perhaps you’ve heard the thunder?”
James’s answer was to flap his hand once more. He still didn’t look up.
Ellis stared for one moment of very chilly silence. “Lieutenant Bradley. Please send Mr. Kalvis to join me on the first ferry. Mr. James will be on the second, along with half the remaining Crowmakers. You and the rest will bring up the rear on the third trip.”
“Yes, sir.” Vincent wheeled his horse and rode back the line without argument. Between Ellis and the oncoming storm, he didn’t figure they had time to be picky about who rode on which ferry.
By the time Vincent had passed the word and split the Crowmakers into two ranks, the wagons had lumbered onto the first ferry, accompanied by Ellis and Kalvis leading their horses.
The ferry man worked the rudder, angling the ferry into the river’s current and drawing taut the bridle cable to which it was attached. The way the water tugged greedily at the ferry didn’t make for a fast trip—to Vincent’s impatient senses, it seemed to take an eternity. But the ferry moved steadily across the river and then back again for its second load.
Thunder continued in the distance, but the sky stayed blue and the distance stayed distant. Vincent started to hope he’d been worried for no good reason.
James dragged himself from his distraction long enough to board the second ferry as Ellis had instructed. It was only after that group had started across that Vincent realized Annie wasn’t with them. He found her standing quietly beside her horse just behind him, reins in hand and a small, victorious smile on her lips.
“You are supposed to be keeping an eye on me, after all,” was all she said.
Vincent answered with an exasperated sigh. It wasn’t like he could do anything about it now, anyhow.
When the ferry came back for the last of them, Vincent fixed them all—Annie included—with a stern glare. “No trouble,” he said.
Joseph Goodson, a short and stocky, mouse-meek man who moved with a similar steady slowness as the river current, nodded somberly and led his horse forward. Pretty boy Robert Langston rolled his eyes.
“No trouble, no fun.” Langston grinned. “If you’d loosen up some, Bradley, you might get laid more often.”
Vincent stared steadily back at Langston, but apparently that was the extent of his attitude for the moment. Langston followed Goodson onto the ferry without another word. Vincent shooed Annie after Langston and urged his own reluctant horse onto the wooden deck.
Remembering how to balance against the gentle roll of the ferry took a few seconds. By then, Kellen and Jennett and the tall and broad Dutchman Jan Bosch had boarded, too. They settled themselves into ranks—Goodson and Vincent with Annie between them, Langston and Kellen behind, Jennett and Bosch at the back.
The ferryman cast off the mooring ropes and wrestled the rudder into position. The river flowed in rills and eddies around the flatboat’s aprons and sideboards, but the boat ploughed steadily through the slow-moving water.
They were half across when Vincent heard voices. In the distance, he thought, and from the paced rhythm of it, some kind of chanting. Maybe it was just the thunder, and some trick of distance that twisted it to seem like something else.
But even as Vincent thought it, he also thought that wasn’t quite right. The voices were quiet, all right, but they didn’t seem distant. He couldn’t put his finger on what that meant—just they they didn’t feel like they were far away.
They seemed, really, very close.
“What is that?” Annie said.
Vincent looked down into her upturned face.
“You hear it, too?” he asked.
“Yes.” A little v formed between her brows. “It almost reminds me of—”
Annie’s horse snorted, suddenly, and jerked its head up.
Annie grabbed at the reins and pulled its head down again, made soothing sounds and rubbed its forehead.
Vincent’s horse squealed and yanked on his reins, too. Behind him, other horses whinnied and shuffled. In the same moment, another sound whispered across the flatboat.
“Good Lord almighty,” the ferryman said, and fear trembled in his voice. “What in God’s name are you folks about?”
Vincent turned around.
The first face he saw was Kellen’s, just behind him. Her face had gone gray and pale, and her eyes were wide. She held steady on the reins of her jittering horse, but her eyes were turned toward the Crow perched on the back of her saddle.
The Crow’s wings lifted and rattled and lowered. Lifted again.
“Jesus,” Kellen whispered. “Stop. Stop!”
Beyond her, every other man on the boat’s flat deck fought to keep his horse under control. Every Crow on every saddle rattled its wings, creating a metallic buzz that even Vincent found unnerving. No wonder the horses were spooked.
“What is it?” Bosch asked, too loudly and with an odd, high-pitched cracking in his voice. His perpetually-pink face went redder yet. “What the hell is it?”
Bosch’s reins nearly slipped from his hands. His horse’s front hooves rose briefly and clomped down again onto the flatboat’s deck.
“Hold those horses steady!” Vincent barked. “And get those Crows under control. Make them stop!”
The hairs on the backs of Vincent’s arms prickled, and a sudden heaviness in the air pressed against his chest. Moving felt like swimming, and breathing felt like drowning. The smoky, smoldering sense of power he’d always felt from the Crows nearly overwhelmed him. It stank like blood.
“Trying,” Kellen murmured.
Her horse danced, nudging her closer to the hand rail, its single wooden plank the only thing between her and the murky water swirling around the flatboat.
“Careful,” Vincent said. He took a step toward her.
On Kellen’s other side, directly behind Annie, Langston’s Crow abruptly lifted into the air. Less than a hands-width above Langston’s saddle, it flung its wings wildly back and forth, clacking and clattering madly but going nowhere.
Langston’s horse neighed and tried to rear. Langston held it steady, but it jostled the hindquarters of the hors
e in front of it.
Annie’s horse.
Kellen’s horse shoved her again, hard with its shoulder this time. She stumbled backward, and the hand rail caught her behind and just above the knees.
Vincent grabbed for her.
Annie’s horse screamed.
Kellen threw her weight forward and found her feet. She glanced at Vincent’s extended hand, and then her eyes met his.
Annie’s horse reared. From the corner of his eye, Vincent saw its head rise above his horse’s, its forelock tossing and eyes wild.
No.
He flung himself around and ducked under his horse’s thrashing neck.
Late. It was too late. Annie’s horse’s forelegs flailed and churned. Vincent’s breath went out of him all at once.
“Annie,” Vincent gasped.
8
On the far side of Annie’s horse, Goodson shouted. “Watch yourself!”
Hooves dropped, slicing through the air and hitting the flatboat’s deck with a solid thump.
Onto the deck. Just the deck. There was no mangled girl beneath them. Vincent looked up.
Goodson had Annie caught up tight in an arm that was nearly as big around as she was. She shied back against his broad chest.
“Get those reins?” Goodson’s voice was as measured as ever, but a tremulous note wove through it.
Annie’s horse was still dancing, gearing up to rear again. Vincent snagged the reins and held it steady, instinctively murmuring calming words.
The ferry thumped and then dragged, mud sucking at its hull as it drove aground. The rest of their party waited up the bank, brows drawn together in varying expressions of puzzlement and concern.
Vincent looked behind him. Horses still danced, but they were under control. The Crows had fallen still. Vincent heard nothing more alarming than their protesting huffs and the creaking of the ferry.
And thunder, like a deep and distant laugh. Vincent had forgotten all about the impending storm. He glanced skyward and found it darker than before. The storm hadn’t forgotten about them.
Vincent led his own horse and Annie’s from the ferry. His head felt as unsteady as his legs, and the weight of all those eyes on him made him want to shrink down and cover his head with his arms.
Monsters of Our Own Making (Crowmakers: Book 2): A Science Fiction Western Adventure Page 9