Nearly across, Baskins struck a deep spot. With difficulty, he stayed erect, but was unsure if his rifle's lock had gone under. In the dark he could not check. Cursing to himself, he struggled on.
With the day's first lightening, Baskins began his scout. All that he saw encouraged. The cabin's worthless contents had been tossed about, but apparently long before. No fresh fire pits were to be seen, and he detected no marks of recent passage.
Of course, his abilities to see beyond the most obvious were greatly limited. William Baskins was a farmer, not a frontiersman or Indian fighter. Except for Rob Shatto, who lived over in Sherman's Valley, Baskins could not have named a real frontiersman.
Baskins recognized that he was not alone in lacking an Indian's woods lore. Thomas McLean did not even own a gun, and neither of them could tell one redskin from another. Lacking those special abilities, they did the best they could, struggling to open land for the plow, and in the case of Indian uprising—just fighting to stay alive.
When the far shore could be seen, Baskins signaled his people to cross, then immediately turned to corn picking. There was a danger of Indians up or down river seeing the whites crossing, and Baskins considered that it might have been wiser to have had all cross at night, with the rest hovering offshore while he scouted. Too late, if there were a next time, he would do it better.
Deer had ravaged nearly half the crop. He was mildly surprised at the damage. Over the seasons he had killed many deer, and it had become rare to find even their tracks near the fields. A fresh herd had come in from somewhere. Perhaps an unwary animal would appear. Fresh venison would bring a pretty penny as the Fort Hunter area was long shot out.
Which reminded him of his gun. The fine powder in the lock pan should be changed even if the musket had not gone underwater. Damp powder beneath the flint meant a misfire, just as surely as would a wet charge behind the bullet. Reloading the gun took precious time, but he resolved to see to it as soon as his people got to their harvesting.
— — —
The Belcher's scheme was simple and sure. He and his companions would appear, thrusting their chins aggressively and glowering as if anxious to use their hatchets. They would order the whites into their canoes and away from Iroquois land.
Whites feared the Iroquois. Everyone knew this. The fright was always in their eyes and their nervous fingerings.
When among their own people, whites had to be closely watched because their fear made them treacherous. Fear could easily become anger, and white hatred of those they feared often stirred violence. If these whites numbered only two men and their woman the whites would leave with gratitude for their lives.
Belcher signaled his two young men close. He explained how they would approach the man and woman who were working together. When they heard him speak to the white laboring alone they would appear wearing their most intimidating expressions and fingering their weapons. None could speak white, so hand talk would force the corn pickers away. If the whites had corn in their canoes, it would be removed. Their eyes eager, the young men nodded understanding and the Belcher slipped away.
The lone picker was separated from his companions by a raspberry thicket that had to be circled, and the Belcher moved cautiously. The picker's own crashings within the corn made detection unlikely, but Belcher's sudden appearance—as if by magic—could startle and instill fear. That was the Belcher's goal.
He saw the lone white across a beaten and tangled mass of stalks. Belcher saw no weapon other than a chopping blade the man worked with. Most of the corn had already been picked, and Belcher knew a rush of satisfaction. His foolishness in almost walking into the whites could be made less important than having the corn already picked and gathered for him.
The white woman screamed. The Belcher's hair rose with the sound. A white bellowed, perhaps in answer, and cornstalks crashed as bodies rushed about. A Seneca war whoop added to the din, and Belcher knew his plan was gone like smoke.
The lone white appeared frozen in place. Fear contorted his features. Having no choice, the Belcher smashed into the cornstalk tangle, but he had no hope that the white would wait for him.
The white corn picker was young, lean, and very frightened. When Belcher appeared, the man fled. He disappeared while his pursuer still floundered in the corn.
The Belcher was not listed among the runners. Years had paunched his belly and other interests limited his hunting. Still, Belcher tried. He rushed ahead, ignoring the branches that whipped and the brambles that ripped, but he did not gain on the white who sped through the same restricting undergrowth. The white ran straight away, so perhaps he could be trapped against the river. What then? The Belcher had not intended warring with the English. The Iroquois peace was fragile, and chiefs would not approve a Duncan's Island massacre.
Thomas McLean had never before experienced real fear. It was Martha who had screamed and William Baskins who had bellowed. The terror and anguish in both voices froze McLean’s guts. The Indian war whoop turned his bones to jelly, and he knew with horrified certainty that he was about to die.
Crashing cornstalks jerked McLean’s eyes and he saw a giant Indian almost upon him. In his terror, other painted forms leaped amid the trees and brush. Blind panic started McLean moving. Mind-numb, he plunged directionlessly away. Glancing off a tree trunk he risked a look behind. One charging savage was close. He did not look for the others.
Thomas McLean burst from the forest and struck the Juniata River at full run. The low over-hung bank added impetus, and he landed well out in hip deep water. He could swim a little, and with vivid imaginings of arrows and tomahawks driving into his exposed back, McLean flailed for distance. Current caught him and swept him past vicious rocks. He was thankful for it. Distance seemed his only hope.
A horrendous sound, peculiarly like a giant belch swept McLean’s hearing. He risked a glance and saw an Indian bounding along the bank near where he had entered the water. Fresh terror lent strength, and Thomas McLean swam as he could never have believed possible.
Spent by even the short run, the Belcher watched the white flee. Grasping a tree branch to ease his straining lungs the Seneca resolved to smoke less kinnikinick and spend increased time in the woods. He summoned full lungs and hurled a powerful belch at the fleeing white. He was pleased to see the frightened man increase his already frantic efforts. This white would not return. There had been no shots, so his companions had apparently been successful in their capture. The Belcher tuned away.
Halfway across the river, Thomas McLean’s fear-inspired energy began to fail. The water's bitter cold sapped his strength, and his mind began to surrender to thoughts of simply giving up and letting the current and cold have their way.
Then his feet touched rocks, and an instant later he was carried into knee-deep shallows. Of course, Sheep Island. A small tree covered rock pile nearly across the river. McLean crawled ashore and hid beneath overhanging brush amid a rock outcropping from where he could watch his back trail.
No Indian showed and no foreign sounds broke the natural silence. Were his enemies circling? Resignation set in. If they were, so be it. He could go no further. McLean huddled against a tree bole, storing his body's warmth. He would stay where he was and leave no trails. Perhaps the hostiles would pass him by. He wondered about the Baskins, believing in his heart that they were already dead. He almost hoped it were so. The ferocity of Indian torture was well known, and the children? McLean tried not to think of them.
In his misery and fear Thomas McLean sobbed silently. Murderous savages even now sought his life, and he had no weapons or skills to aid him. Still, if he avoided detection until dark he might escape beyond the Juniata and across the Susquehanna to safety. The distance was quite short—if only night's concealing protection would arrive.
Belcher feared he would vomit. He had seen the dead countless times, and this one with his head bashed did not disturb him. What turned Belcher's stomach was how he could explain the death to his village chi
ef.
Killing whites could have strange repercussions. Unlike Seneca, who might seek personal vengeance, whites usually appealed to sachems of great power. How those greater chieftains would respond was always curious and rarely satisfying.
The young man who had killed harbored no such reservations. He strutted about preening like a mating grouse. His companion appeared only envious.
It had gone wrong because the white woman had seen them. Her screeching had sent her man running for his gun, but the musket had misfired, and the first youth to reach him had crushed his skull with his war club.
Belcher wished he could club the youth equally hard. They could have simply grabbed the luckless white and spared them all some very difficult explaining.
The white squaw crouched protectively above a pair of children, a boy of a few years and a girl a few seasons older. The Belcher did not consider killing them. More deaths would only compound his problem. His immediate thought was to take the three to Chilesquakee where English speakers could explain, and where wise counselors could decide the best courses.
First however, there was the corn. The squaws were called in. Belcher explained how it would be, and all went to work.
The women clucked over the white squaw's loss, but forced her back to the harvesting. A blanket was placed over the dead man, and that the youthful killer would know his mistake, Belcher described the stupidity of killing the white and the anger of village leaders they would soon face.
Belcher put the slightly chastened youth to keeping guard over the white woman and helping transport corn ears to the canoes. Belcher and his other brave scouted farther afield so that surprises would not appear.
The harvest was better than Belcher had hoped. The canoes filled and he was thankful for the white man's boat. He dared not linger to husk the corn. Other white parties could appear, sent perhaps by the man who had fled across the river.
Even with the white squaw's help it was late afternoon before the last ear was piled aboard. The long day had given the Belcher time to consider, and he had decided to change his plan. His new explanation would taste better to village elders, or at least he hoped that would be the case.
The trick would be to appear careless and allow the woman to escape with her children. A single dead man would not infuriate whites as would the death and capture of an entire family.
To further confuse, Belcher hung about the woman's neck his favorite pouch partly filled with pemmican. It would keep the family alive until they reached their own people. More importantly, the pouch was Shawnee and would place blame away from the peaceful Iroquois nation.
The children were brought ashore, and the woman was allowed to bury her man. The Seneca busied themselves at the boats, certain that the whites would seize their opportunity to flee.
Consternation! The woman was gone, but she had left the children. The men chased about, but the trampled-over ground made tracking impractical and shadows were growing longer. Belcher wondered if the Corn Father's mischief-makers were among them.
There was no real choice left. None believed the woman would return to search for left-behind children. The man lay half buried and would remain so. Belcher placed a child in each canoe. The girl of nine or more summers was given a paddle. The men boarded the whites’ boat, and the party moved upstream.
The plank boat was a curse. Even with three paddling or hauling on ropes the clumsy craft fought as if alive. Belcher suspected the river would freeze before they could return to their village.
The solution was easy enough. At dusk the party disembarked on a larger island and made camp. The corn was unloaded and kernelling began. The women complained that the white squaw would have helped, but Belcher had greater worries. Her tears ignored, the girl child was put to work. The boy was too young.
With one man as lookout, Belcher could take time to consider the white children. The girl could be useful. A village family would take her. As she was too young to offer challenge, Belcher's own squaw might keep her.
The boy was another matter. He was a quiet child who observed through Seneca-dark eyes, and who had not cried aloud even at his mother's desertion. But, he was only another mouth to feed. Unless a family hungered to replace a fallen son, the boy could be difficult to give away. Perhaps the chiefs would send the children to Conrad Weiser, or one of the black robes from the French country.
Belcher had crouched to examine the boy more closely. He was pleased that the child had gone to the woods for nature calls and did not stink as some would have. A large and dirty tear mark had formed beneath the boy's right eye and the Belcher instinctively reached to wipe it away. The mark remained and Belcher wiped more vigorously. His efforts changed nothing. Grunting in surprise, Belcher hoisted the boy closer. A squaw busy with kernelling said, "It is not a tear drop. The Great Spirit has marked him with sadness."
Belcher looked closer, and it was so. A perfect teardrop appeared tattooed just below the eye. The Seneca experienced awe. Truly it was a marking to be cherished.
He sat the boy down and rose still thinking about it. "Then he has a name. We will call him ‘Tear’.
Two canoes heavily laden with shelled corn was a magnificent addition to the Chilesquakee longhouses. Belcher's party was praised for their cleverness. The children and their story was another matter.
As expected, the village council was greatly disturbed. No good could come of the incident. A wise head provided a logical answer.
"Belcher has placed blame on the Shawnee. That is good, but whites will pass through this village, as will Iroquois travelers. Message carriers will see the children and will remember. The whites will discover the truth.
"Therefore, the children must be taken far beyond this place. To them, this longhouse will be but one of many. They must not be killed and buried, for then a mystery would live and some mouth might speak. The children will be discovered among other people, and the path to Chilesquakee will be lost forever."
Wise was the speaker. As the young men were responsible, to them were given the duties. They were to travel far. Each would take a branch of the Susquehanna. The girl would go to the west, far beyond Iroquois lands. The boy called Tear would be taken west and north to the Huron at the great lake called Erie. During the journey the young men would claim various villages as home, and so the trail would further be hidden.
Belcher was thoroughly pleased. It had ended better than he had expected. He amused the Tear with his countless belching sounds and induced a smile or two.
Within hours the young men were gone. There was importance as well as effort in their journey. Beyond punishment for striking too soon and killing the white farmer, there was trust in completing a task of many moons now during the Frost Father's approach.
The white farmer's knives and his musket were sent as gifts to the Huron because few would want a boy child so young. The girl's gifts would be the blankets of her family and a few odd things found in the abandoned wooden boat.
No trace of the children's presence remained at the creek longhouses. The young men delivering the children had been sternly counseled that good families would be chosen for the white children. That they lived to be seen and known about was important.
In early winter the first deliverer returned. Tear had been taken in by a Huron woman of influence. As with the Iroquois, women owned the lodges and most property. Swift Wing, a Huron woman, and her man, Charlie Pierre, named in the French tongue, was a hunter of reputation.
Worn and exhausted, the second deliverer returned in the new year. The girl was with the Miami on the far away Ohio.
By spring the incident at Duncan's Island was nearly forgotten. Runners en route to Tioga and Onondaga mentioned a Shawnee raid that killed a settler and carried off children. The war party was described by a male survivor as large with many painted warriors. The mother, who escaped to Carlisle, saw only a few, including squaws.
The Seneca of Chilesquakee sucked on their pipes and shook heads in sympathy.
>
Chapter 2
1762
Except for a lighter skin hue and the teardrop beneath his eye, Swift Wing's youngest son blended with the other youth of the village—black of eye and hair, blocky in build, and like most growing boys, quick and snaky in movement. Tear was accepted as an adopted son; therefore as Huron as any family born child.
Many children died in harsh winter and from diseases the best of medicine dancing could not cure. Many family heads fell in battle or died in accidents of the hunt. Male children were adopted with gladness of heart. In time they too would be men—to fill cooking pots and to defend the lodge and lands claimed by the Huron.
That Tear had come from the warmer lands of the Iroquois Nations was known and sometimes speculated upon. That he had white blood was accepted and mattered no more than would have Delaware or Abenaki heritage. Tear was now Huron.
On occasion, Charlie Pierre would show the musket that had come with Tear's arrival and Tear's mother, Swift Wing, might display three iron knives that were included. Other Squaws envied the iron tools, but it was the musket that brought power to the lodge of Swift Wing.
Already a noted hunter, the musket gave Charlie Pierre added advantage over the bow and spear hunters. The musket killed more surely and at longer range than other weapons. Pierre had meat and hides to trade, although more than he wished had to be traded for flints, powder and lead at private trading posts, which were not controlled by the Indian Agent, Sir William Johnson.
Of course, the musket was worth the barter. Hunger did not stalk the lodge of Swift Wing, and by the fifth year of Tear's arrival, Charlie Pierre hunted for the agent's kitchen as much as his own.
That hunting paid more than ammunition. The family lodge held red and blue blankets—and, more recently, iron pots and kettles.
Sir William Johnson was interested in his Indian charges. Unlike many appointed officials, Johnson sought to better the lives of his citizenry without ripping asunder the fiber of their culture, which meant that Johnson restricted both whiskey trading and missionary proselytizing. Each required careful managing because each vocation had powerful allies in Parliament that required placating, lest Johnson find himself replaced and en route to England.
Tim Murphy, Rifleman Page 2