“Like a savage Indian, mum?” Jamie said that with a smile. “It’s all right. I don’t mind. I learned a lot from the Shawnees.”
“From a filthy pack of red niggers?” another man spoke up. A man that Jamie had taken an instant dislike to back on the road.
“Beggin’ your pardon, sir,” Jamie said. “But this band of Shawnee bathed regularly. They make their own soap, just like we do.”
“Sounds to me like you’re defendin’ them savages,” the man said angrily.
“Now, calm down, John Jackson,” the reverend said. “You’ve no call to address the boy in such a manner.”
“How do we know that both the boy and the wench ain’t spies for the red devils?” Jackson demanded. “I say we banish them both from town.”
“I say nay to that!” a merchant man named Abe Caney spoke up. “John, you’ve no right to accuse these people of any wrongdoing. They’ve been put through enough without adding false charges from you.”
The others in the meeting room were quick to agree with Caney. John Jackson stood up, jerked his hat from the peg, and stormed out into the late afternoon.
“Pay the man no heed,” Mason said. “He’s an ill-tempered man but a good man in his own way. We’ve all fought the savages and John will stand with the best of them.”
“Aye,” Caney said. “And he’ll be the first to help with the building of a cabin.” He smiled. “Although he does grouse about it the whole time.”
“My child,” the Reverend Callaway said, speaking to Hannah, who was anything but a child, with a well-rounded figure and full bosom. The only thing the ladies of that time would object to were her tanned cheeks and arms. But that would be the case in the cities, not on the frontier, where women usually worked alongside their men in the fields. “Have you given thought as to the rest of your life now that you are free from the hostiles?”
Hannah smiled. “My life was interrupted at age fourteen, Reverend Callaway. I’m afraid I haven’t been free long enough to do much thinking about the rest of it.”
“Of course, of course!” He patted her hand. “Well, you can stay with us for a time, and Jamie, a young couple will be along shortly to fetch you to their home. They’re a lovely Christian couple without children and they were delighted when I sent a boy riding to their farm with news about you.”
Jamie nodded his head. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“You’ll not be needing that bow and quiver of arrows now, Jamie,” Mason said.
“I’ll keep them,” Jamie replied. He smiled. “As souvenirs.”
* * *
Sam and Sarah Montgomery were a nice young couple, and Jamie found himself liking them from the start. They were amazed at Jamie’s size, expecting to see a small boy of eleven, not this strong and quite capable appearing young man who, despite his young age, exuded strength and quiet confidence.
After supper at the Callaway home, on the wagon ride back to their farm that evening, Sam asked, “Do you have much knowledge of the fields, Jamie?”
“I helped Pa when I was little, yes, sir. And I had a section of the garden that was mine.”
“Wonderful. I’m in the process of clearing land to raise more crops.”
“I haven’t had much experience with an axe, sir,” Jamie said dryly.
Sam cut his eyes to the boy/man sitting between he and his wife. Jamie had a sense of humor, Sam discovered. But he doubted the boy rarely let it show. Probably wasn’t much to laugh about while a slave in a Shawnee town. “I imagine that’s true, Jamie,” he replied.
Jamie knew why the quick glance. “Indians have a good sense of humor, Mr. Montgomery,” Jamie said. “They just don’t show it much around people not of their kind.”
Sam started to say that the only good he’d ever found about Indians was when they were dead. But he held his tongue. There were dozens, hundreds, of questions the couple wanted to ask Jamie, but they did not know how or where to begin.
“You live a long way out of town,” Jamie observed, after a few moments of silence.
“We have a little settlement out here,” Sarah said. “About a dozen families live within a two- or three-mile radius of one another. There are enough children that we now have our own school. I do some of the teaching.”
“I could read and write some when Tall Bull took me. I think I’ve forgotten how.”
“It’ll come back to you in jig-time,” Sam said. “We won’t push you, Jamie. You’ve got a lot of adjusting ahead of you.” Like learning how to wear shoes again, he thought. Jamie wore his moccasins; said the shoes he’d received hurt his feet.
“Do the Indians bother you out here?”
“Sometimes,” Sam admitted. “There are a lot of areas close by that are not settled. But the savages are slowly being forced out as more and more settlers come in. Some are saying that the nations will someday be settled from coast to coast. Probably not in our lifetime,” he added. “What lies beyond the Mississippi is pretty much a mystery”
“Not to my grandfather,” Jamie said, suddenly remembering the stories his pa used to tell him.
“What’s that?” Sarah asked.
“My grandfather. The man I’m named after. He went west to the big mountains years before I was born. Seventeen ninety, I think Pa said. He came back once, Pa said. Years before Pa and Ma got married. Said he looked like a wild man. All done up in beaded buckskins and hair long as a woman’s. Then he went west again and no one’s ever heard no more from him.”
“Wasn’t there a MacCallister with the Lewis and Clark expedition, Sarah?” Sam asked.
“I believe there was. Seems like I’ve read something about that. He joined up with them in the west as a guide.”
“That’s my grandpa, then,” Jamie said. “I wonder if he’s still alive?”
Sam did not want to tell the boy that he’d heard nothing good about the white men who lived in the mountains of the west. They were, for the most part, a wild and Godless lot, more savage than civilized, heathen to the soul. Some had taken to calling them mountain men. And there sure was a MacCallister among them. A bad man, some said, who had killed other men with knife and gun. He would tell Sarah not to mention the man to Jamie. In time the boy would forget all about his wild and Godless grandpa.
* * *
There was to be a shindig, Sam told Jamie. All the people who lived in the small community were going to gather the first warm Saturday and there would be singing and eating on the grounds. Jamie would get to meet all the folks and make new friends. It would be a grand to-do, Sam promised.
The cabin of Sam and Sarah Montgomery was much finer, larger and better built than the one Jamie vaguely remembered from his childhood. Sam and Sarah came from monied families, and that was evident in the cabin’s construction, for it was a two-story log house with several rooms. It had a central chimney — something that Jamie had never seen before — and it was made of stone and was fireproof. It was the grandest house that Jamie had ever seen, and he said so.
“Is it, now?” Sam said. “Well, let’s take the grand tour then, lad. I’ll show you your room.”
The boy surfaced. “My own room?”
“All your very own, Jamie,” Sarah said softly. “We want you to be happy here. We think you’ve had quite enough unhappiness in your life.”
Jamie couldn’t believe his eyes. His room, his very own room, was bigger than the whole cabin in which he had been born. And he had a whole big bed to himself, with a feather tick and two pillows.
“The corner logs of the house are not square-notched, Jamie,” Sam explained. “I had a skilled worker come in and dovetail them all. Makes for a sturdier structure. The home is built on stones for support and it’s stone-walled all around the base. The roof don’t leak. Put together with nails. They’re expensive, too. This home is solid, Jamie,” he said proudly. “She’ll be standing for years to come.”
“You best get ready for bed, Jamie,” Sarah said. “You must be exhausted and here we’ve been pratt
ling on.”
Long after the candles had been pinched out and the lamp wicks had cooled, Jamie lay wide awake in the soft bed. It was too soft. He couldn’t get comfortable. Finally, he took his blankets and rolled up in them on the floor, on the rag rug beside the bed. That was much better. He was asleep in minutes.
Jamie was jerked out of sleep by a slight noise. While the senses of anyone living in the frontier had to be keen to stay alive, Jamie’s were Indian-keen. And something had brought him wide awake. Jamie slipped from under the blankets and padded soundlessly to the shutters. He cracked them and looked out. Two men were slipping across the clearing toward the barn where Mr. Montgomery’s fine horses were kept. Mr. Montgomery worked the land himself, and had no paid hands or indentured people on the place. Sam and Sarah did not believe in indenturing people and frowned mightily on slavery. Jamie dressed quickly and silently and took up his bow and quiver of arrows. He strung the bow — it was a powerful one, made just recently by Tall Bull — and slipped his way silently down the steps. He had already tested to see which steps squeaked and which did not. He stayed close to the wall on his way down and fixed the latchstring so he could get back into the home.
Jamie slipped around to the side, where an overhang had been built, to both afford shelter from the rain and allow Sarah to wash clothes in the big pot while enjoying the shade. Mr. Montgomery hadn’t missed much when he had the home built.
Jamie had overheard Mason and Caney talking about the rash of horse-stealing that had been going on in the community and about how the man appointed sheriff seemed unable to do anything to stop it. Jamie knew how to stop it. For his Shawnee town had come under attack by Indians several times since he’d been renamed and accepted by the tribe. Jamie had put arrows into several enemies. He didn’t know if he’d ever killed anyone, or not. But he had sure tried.
Jamie had helped Mr. Montgomery put away the team earlier that evening, and had seen the fine horses kept in the barn. They would be a prize for anyone, and would bring a lot of money for a person who didn’t particularly care where they came from.
The men were dressed all in dark clothing and had kerchiefs tied around the lower part of their face. They carried bridles in their hands. Jamie slipped closer; close enough to hear them talk.
“We’ll ride to Tennessee,” one said. “Sell them down there. I got a man who’ll fix up papers for us.”
Jamie notched an arrow.
“Too bad we can’t knock Sam in the head and have us a time with Sarah,” the other one said.
Jamie drew back.
“Maybe next time we’re in the country. I could have me a high ol’ time with that wench.”
Jamie let fly.
The arrow flew straight and true and embedded deeply in the man’s rump and he let out a fearsome shriek and fell to the ground, on his knees. Jamie put his second arrow into the other man’s leg, knocking him down. Within seconds, Sam Montgomery was outside, a pistol in each hand.
“Over here, Mr. Montgomery,” Jamie called. “Horse thieves.”
“By the Lord!” Sam said, as Sarah came outside in a dressing gown. She carried a lantern. “Ring the warning bell, Sarah,” Sam told her. “Ring it loud and long.”
He looked at Jamie, standing calmly, another arrow notched and ready to fly. “Lad, you should have called me. You might have been killed.”
“Not by those two,” the boy said, no sign of fear in his voice. “I’ve stood and faced Yuchi, Miami, and Creek, and got arrows into all of them. Those two are cowards.”
Sarah was ringing the large bell set at the front of the house. “We all have those bells, Jamie,” Sam explained. “It’s a warning system for Indian attacks or a house afire. There’ll be ten men here in that many minutes.”
Sam had lit a lantern from a peg under the overhang and he and Jamie walked over to the groaning men. “Masked brigands,” Sam said contemptuously. “Thieves in the night coming to steal from honest men.”
“I’m bleedin’ to death, man!” one of the horse thieves said. “Help me.”
With his next gesture and following words, Jamie knew that Sam was no man to play with. He lifted one heavy pistol, cocked it, and said, “Want me to put you out of your misery? I can. Just say the words.”
The man screamed, “No. For the love of God. Are ye daft, man? And who is that little savage with ye?”
“My son,” Sam said, the words proudly spoken. “And if you call him a savage again, I’ll put a ball between your eyes.”
The man with the arrow in one buttock cried out. “I been grievously wounded, Mr. Montgomery. Will you see to it that I come under a doctor’s care?”
The pounding of hooves stopped any further words. Armed men jumped off their mounts and rushed to the scene. They looked at the arrow-punctured bandits and then at Jamie.
“I think you done well by takin’ this lad under your roof, Sam,” one said. “These are the Saxon brothers from down Tennessee way. My oldest boy said he thought he seen them a-skulkin’ around your place the other afternoon. I was raised up with their oldest brother over in Virginia. He’s a good man, but these two is nothing but white trash.”
“Where’d you stand to put the points in them, boy?” another man asked.
“Over there by the overhang,” Jamie said, slipping the sinew bow string off to save both string and bow. “They were talking about knocking you in the head, Mr. Sam, and then... well, doing things to your wife.”
“That’s a filthy calumny!” one of the Saxon brothers yelled. “We done no such thing. He’s just tryin’ to get us hanged!”
“I do not lie,” Jamie said. “There is no reason for me to lie. If I had wanted you both dead, I could have easily done so.”
One of the men who had ridden to the scene said, “That’s a good twenty-five/thirty yards over yonder, boy. You right sure you didn’t just luck out these shots?”
Jamie looked at the man. Without changing expression, he restrung his bow and notched an arrow. The barn door was fifty yards from where he stood. “The dark spot just above the latch,” he said, and lifted the bow. The arrow flew to the dark spot with a thud. “This one will go beside the first one.” The arrow landed within an inch of the first arrow.
The men laughed. One said, “You got any more questions about the boy’s skill, Luke?”
Luke good-naturedly joined in the laughter and replied, “Nope. My wife always said I beat all for puttin’ my foot in my mouth. Looks like I done it again.” When the laughter had once more subsided, he smiled down at Jamie. “You’re all right, son. You’re all right.”
“I got me a arrey in my arse and y’all’s havin’ a arrey shoot!” the rump-shot brigand yelled. “How about givin’ me some relief?”
Luke spat on the ground. “When the jury hears the boy’s testimony about what you wanted to do with Mrs. Montgomery, you’ll get some relief, Saxon. Thirteen steps and a rope.”
The men were trussed up and tossed, not too gently, into the back of a wagon and since it was only a couple of hours until dawn, they were taken into town to the jail, escorted by several of Sam’s neighbors.
“Stay here and protect Sarah, Jamie,” Sam told him.
The boy nodded his head, a solemn expression on his face. “I will do that, sir. You do not have to worry while I am here.”
“I do believe he means it, too,” a man muttered. “I shore do.”
On the way into town, one of the neighbors said, “The boy don’t smile much, do he, Sam?”
“I guess if you’re raised as a captive by Shawnees,” Sam replied, “you wouldn’t have a lot to smile about.”
“Raised by Shawnees!” one of the Saxon brothers hollered, lying on his stomach in the bed of the wagon. “Why, that’s got to be the Wolf-boy that there Cherokee told us about a couple of months ago, brother. The one that was taken captive as a tadpole.”
“Wolf-boy?” a neighbor said.
And the conversation was lively on the ride into town, with Sam telli
ng the story — he still wasn’t sure he believed it — about Jamie facing down the pack of wolves and gaining the Shawnee name of Man Who Is Not Afraid.
“Damn!” Luke said. “You shore nuff got you a ring-tailed-tooter, Sam.”
“Yes, I sure did,” Sam replied. “I don’t believe anyone would argue that.”
“I damn sure won’t,” a Saxon said. “Oh, Lordy, my arse is on fire!”
Four
The news of Jamie’s felling two horse thieves with arrows was all over the small community by breakfast time. Most of the people applauded the boy’s actions and most of them lamented that Jamie did not aim higher and once and for all rid the land of the worthless Saxon Brothers.
“Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,” the Reverend Callaway told a gathering of men.
“The Lord also works in mysterious ways,” one of Jamie’s supporters countered.
But a few were on the other side.
“I told them at the meetin’ hall that damn boy was nothin’ but a savage,” John Jackson said to Hart Olmstead, the only man in the community with a worse disposition and attitude than John. Hart was an ignorant, opinionated, overbearing, crude, hulking lout. And his four sons were just like him, one of whom was Jamie’s age.
“Oncest them damn Shawnees git holt of a person, that person ain’t never fitten to live in a white society agin,” Hart said. “I’ll not have my boys rubbin’ elbows with no damn red nigger. He ain’t white no more. He’s Injun, through and through.”
Very few in the community agreed with that opinion, but it only takes a few.
“And I don’t believe that wench’s story about her bein’ off in the head, neither,” Hart opined. “Some stinkin’ buck bedded her down first night in that Shawnee town and that’s that.” He shuddered at the thought. “That’s almost as bad as bein’ had by a nigger. Let’s go see Sheriff Marwick. I know them Saxon boys. They ain’t bad people. I don’t believe they was tryin’ to steal Montgomery’s hosses.”
The sheriff, a large pus-gutted man named Burl Harwick, was about as qualified to uphold and enforce the law as he was to be pope. But when elections were held, no one else wanted the job so he got it, more by default than popularity. Burl was even more ignorant than Hart Olmstead, and on top of that, he was a coward. He was also inherently lazy. Few really liked the man, so it was only natural he would be friends with John Jackson and Hart Olmstead.
Eyes of Eagles Page 4