Wilderness Double Edition 25

by David Robbins

  Unwary travelers were considered fair game by Boomburg’s conscienceless gentry. Every rider, every wagon, was scrutinized and assessed as ripe for plucking, or not, as the case might be.

  It was pushing nine o’clock and darkness had descended when a pair of riders brought weary mounts to a stop at the hitch rail in front of The River Rat, Boomburg’s one and only tavern. As the sole watering hole for miles around, it drew the thirsty in droves. This night was no exception.

  The locals studied the two newcomers with the predatory manner of hunting hawks, and decided the game was not worth the blood that would be spilled. For the pair were armed for bear. They strode straight to the bar, and the burlier of the duo, a muscular slab of a man, surprised everyone by climbing on the counter.

  “Hold on, there!” the tavern keeper rumbled. “Who do you think you are? My customers behave themselves or they get tossed out on their ear.”

  “Interfere and I’ll shoot you,” the burly man warned, to the delight of some of the patrons. Many thought the tavern keeper had a habit of being too highhanded. Then, motioning for quiet, the newcomer raised his voice for all to hear. “I’m Arthur Forge from New Albion.”

  “That means nothing to us!” an unkempt customer snarled. “Why don’t you toddle along and leave us to our liquor?”

  “How would you like money for more than you can drink in a month?” Arthur Forge asked.

  Raw greed spread like wildfire on every face. “What are you on about, mister?” called out a man at the back of the room.

  “Justice,” Forge said. “I’m after the stinking savages who killed my son. They call themselves the Nansusequa. My hounds lost their scent in the marshy country east of here.”

  “I hate Injuns,” a man declared.

  “Makes two of us, Humphrey,” a red-nosed sophisticate grunted. “Old Andy Jackson had it right. The only good redskin is a dead redskin.”

  “I’ll drink to that!” a hulking river pirate exclaimed, and did so.

  Arthur Forge impatiently tapped his rifle until quiet fell, then said, “I have reason to believe they will try to cross the river by any means necessary. You have a ferry here, and boats. Need I spell it out?”

  “There was mention of money,” someone said.

  “That there was,” Forge confirmed. “There are five of these Nansusequa. Two men, two women and a girl. I’m offering a hundred dollars a head.”

  “Dead or alive?” came an excited query.

  “I’m not fussy,” Forge said. “Although I’ll pay extra for alive if only so I can whittle on them before I kill them.”

  Murmurs spread. Five hundred dollars was more than most of these men had ever had in their possession at any one time in their entire lives. One of the more distrustful by nature hollered, “How do we know you’re good for the money, stranger? We don’t know you from Adam.”

  “I’m good for ten times as much,” Arthur Forge boasted, adding, “Ask any of the dozen men with me.” He counted on the mention of the extra guns to cool the monetary ardor of those who might entertain notions of bashing him over the head and helping themselves to his poke.

  “Mr. Forge is as good as his word!” piped up the man who had accompanied him. “He’s one of the leading citizens of New Albion.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” a man at the bar asserted.

  “And me!” hollered another.

  Forge smiled as vicious a smile as any of the assembled cutthroats were capable of. “I knew I could count on the likes of you. At daybreak I will be here with my posse, ready and willing to pay out to those who have earned it.”

  Ten seconds after the tavern door closed, the denizens of the River Rat scurried in a mad rush to be the first to exit, only to be brought to a stop by a snarl from the most seasoned member of their pack.

  “Not so fast, clods and dimwits! Or would you rather the bounty money slips through your fingers?”

  “What are you on about, Silas?” the tavern keeper demanded.

  When Old Silas spoke, the others listened. It was said there wasn’t a law Silas hadn’t broken, a commandment he hadn’t trampled. He was generally conceded to be the shrewdest of their criminal brotherhood if by no other measure than he had lived so long without having his neck stretched.

  “Just this, lads,” Old Silas said. “It’s Injuns you’re dealing with, and those red devils are crafty.”

  “So?” demanded a ruffian.

  “So where are you all off to if not to stand guard over your boats and canoes and skiffs in the hope the redskins will waltz into your gun sights?” Old Silas snapped. “Them, with their eyes that can see in the dark better than ours, and their ears that can pick out a whisper at a hundred paces.”

  “How else would we snare them?” a man asked.

  “Simple. You lay a trap. You make it so easy for them, they can’t resist.” Old Silas tipped his ale to his lips and wiped his mouth with his sleeve and did not say anything else.

  Finally a stalwart took the bait. “Flow do we do that?”

  “You hide most of the watercraft,” Old Silas answered. “Leave a few out in plain sight, with half a dozen men hid nearby to watch each one.”

  “It’s brilliant,” a man marveled.

  “But those in on the catch will have to share the bounty,” another noted.

  “A share is better than none,” opined a philosopher.

  Old Silas motioned with his stein. “Brilliance doesn’t come cheap. I get twenty dollars if they’re caught.”

  Everyone agreed that was fair, which in itself was remarkable. Groups were chosen, and out they barreled. Boomburg saw more hectic activity over the next half hour than it had seen since its inception, with the result that all but two canoes and a small boat vanished into sheds and shacks and under nets. One canoe was placed along the bank at the north end of the settlement, the second canoe at the south end, while the small boat was tied to the dock that normally berthed the ferry. The ferry was hauled across to the other side of the river.

  Pleased with their devious trap, the riffraff hid themselves and waited for fate to smile on them.

  In the marsh to the east of the settlement, on a hummock of dry land that jutted above the snake and alligator-infested waters, huddled five weary figures. A clammy fog had formed, a ghostly mantle imbued with moon-induced pallor. The surface of the water was a dark mirror that offered no clues as to the presence of the swamp’s deadlier residents.

  The five had been laboring across the swampland for days. Creepers and vines hung in profusion, impeding their way. Slippery moss was constantly underfoot. The marsh was a morass of vile, dank water, quicksand, mosquitoes, leeches, spiders—the list was legion. Whites usually shunned the marsh, which was largely why the five surviving People of the Forest had intentionally plunged into its fearsome fastness.

  Tenikawaku had never been so exhausted. Sprawled on her side, her head and one arm resting across a moldy log, she yearned for the pristine greenery of her beloved forest. She and her green buckskin dress were splotched with mud, her dress damp in spots. She would gladly sleep for a week if she could. “How much farther? Does anyone know?”

  Degamawaku was the only one on his feet. He had lost considerable weight, and his buckskins hung on him more loosely than before. His moccasins were caked thick with marsh mire, a consequence of always breaking the trail. “It cannot be far,” he hazarded. “What do you think, Mother?”

  Tihikanima had lost her bearings their second day in. She knew north from south and east from west, but the monotonous sameness of their surroundings rendered distance a nebulous concept. “I hope the river is near, my son,” she said, and looked at her husband. Hope flared in her eyes but as promptly died.

  Wakumassee stared numbly at a rotting stump. He seldom spoke unless spoken to, and when left to himself would sit slumped in despair, unmoving, until they were on the go again.

  “Are you all right, husband?”

  “I will never be all right again.�
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  Tihi switched her attention to the other one who worried her. Little Mikikawaku was skin and bones. “How are you, daughter?” Tihi asked. “Any pains I should know about?”

  “I am fine, Mother,” Miki lied. The stink, the muck, sickened her. Her legs ached so much at times, she feared they were rotting away. Time and again her brother had to hoist her to his shoulders and carry her, or she would have collapsed.

  To the west, a break in the fog gave Dega a glimpse of something other than slime and moss. “Lights! It must be a white settlement. I will investigate.”

  “Not alone,” Tihi said, thinking her husband would echo her precaution and offer to go along. But Waku said nothing.

  “The two of us will investigate,” Teni offered, although every muscle in her body yearned for rest.

  Dega squatted next to her. “One of us must watch over the others,” he whispered. “They are weak and worn.”

  “And we still have far to go,” Teni said. “The prairie stretches forever, the whites say.”

  “It cannot stretch forever if there are mountains on the other side,” Dega responded. “We will reach those mountains. We will have a new home.” He offered her the rifle. “Take this to protect them while I am gone.”

  “Only you know how to use it,” Teni reminded him. “I have my knife and my bow.” Her mother and father had bows, too, fashioned while on the run from a band of whites who had been on their trail since that terrible day the village was destroyed. Countless times they had tried to shake their pursuers and failed. Only recently did they find out why; the whites had dogs, great bristly brutes trained to track.

  Dega squeezed Teni’s shoulder, smiled encouragement at Miki and his mother, and quickly stepped over the side of the hummock and into a tepid pool. He remembered to hold the rifle over his head in case he slipped. It would not function wet. But the water only rose as high as his waist.

  The thickening fog clung to Dega in wet folds. They had encountered a lot of fog since entering the marsh, which helped as well as hindered. The fog made it harder for the whites to find them, but it also made it harder for them to find their way out of the quagmire.

  Plus, it made it difficult for Dega to spot alligators and snakes. He stayed alert for the telltale bumps of alligators’ eyes and the sinuous ripples that marked the passage of serpents.

  The marsh was alive with sounds. Bird cries. Shrieks. The croak of frogs and the chirp of insects. At night the yeonk-yeonk-yeonk of young alligators bleated without cease, except when they were drowned out by the less frequent booming bellows of the adults.

  A mosquito stung his cheek, but Dega did not slap at it. Sharp sounds drew unwanted attention.

  Fingers of dry land alternated with the marshy tracts. In spots the vegetation was so thick, Dega had to hack a path with his blade. Once he gripped what he took to be a vine and it hissed and slithered from his grasp.

  At length the fog thinned. Across a last rivulet of foul water stood the settlement Dega had spotted. It lay quiet under the stars. Signs of life were few. Lights blazed in a score of windows, and somewhere a woman sang softly, as if to an infant.

  Dega circled to the north. He intended to find a safe way around the settlement and go back for his parents and sisters. By dawn they would find a spot to hole up, and, after they rested, push on afresh to the west in search of the waterway that some tribes called the Father of Rivers and the whites called the Mississippi.

  Dega was past the last of the marshland and crossing a field grown high with grass when a scent stopped him in his tracks. It was the scent of water, but not the foul water of the marsh. This was the unmistakable smell of a large body of water, a lake or a river. He continued on and soon heard gurgling and velvety rippling. Silently scrambling over a bank, he came to a flat fringe of shoreline.

  It was a river.

  Rising, Dega tried to assess its size. He could see lights perhaps three arrow flights distant, which he took to be a house. The reflection of the moon was no help as it was too low in the sky. He was bending to grope for a rock when he realized the lights he thought to be a house were moving. Not toward him, but from north to south. He had never heard of a moving house, but he would not put any absurdity past the whites.

  Belatedly, Dega perceived that the river and the moving lights were cause and effect. The house must be a boat. White boats regularly plied the Albion River. The speed with which the current carried the craft suggested a river much larger than the Albion.

  Dega’s mouth grew slack with amazement. Squatting, he dipped a hand in the water and splashed his shoulders and chest. Was this the Mississippi? he wondered. The boat was almost to the settlement, but it did not veer to the dock. He watched until the craft was swallowed by the darkness; then he crept along the shore.

  An untended canoe caused Dega to stiffen with excitement. It had been drawn up out of the river and turned upside down. Beside it was a pair of paddles. Nearby was a plank building.

  Dega started forward, then stopped, wary. He had noticed the canoe was in a circle of light cast by a lantern. The lantern itself sat on—Dega had to struggle to remember the word his father said the whites used— a crate. But of the person to whom the canoe belonged, and to whom, conceivably, the lantern also belonged, there was not a trace.

  The canoe was exactly what Dega’s family needed to cross the Mississippi, if the river, was, in fact, the one they sought. He should be overjoyed. But he could not help wonder why the canoe was in the circle of light, like a fawn staked out to attract a marauding bear. And why, farther down the shore, was there another watercraft in another circle of light?

  Dega sank onto his belly. The situation smacked of a trap. Yet that was preposterous. The whites in the set-dement had no way of knowing he was in need of a means to cross the river. They had no way of knowing anything about him. He was exercising caution where none was called for.

  Dega started to crawl but once again stopped. He could not shake the feeling that something was amiss. Coming to a sudden decision, he stripped off the powderhorn and ammo pouch and placed them with the rifle. Then he angled to the right, into the water. His belly scraping the bottom, he wriggled along the shore until he was abreast of the canoe.

  From here Dega had a better view of the settlement. All appeared quiet. In fact, the streets were empty. That, too, was strange. It was early yet, by white standards. Yet he heard none of the lusty sounds he had always associated with the watering holes, as the whites called them, in New Albion.

  With only his nose and eyes showing, Dega waited. The water was chilly but not uncomfortably cold. He was just beyond the circle of light, so if someone did spot him, he might mistake him for an alligator.

  Dega thought of his sisters and his parents, alone and exhausted in the terrible marsh. They were counting on him. He must not take forever. He slid his right hand toward solid ground to pull himself out of the river, then turned to stone.

  A door in the plank building near the canoe had opened a crack. Someone whispered. The door opened wider and out crept a grizzled white man in dirty clothes, who turned and hurried into the settlement. The door closed again.

  So it was a trap. Dega suspected that their relentless pursuers were somehow behind it.

  Dega had not told Teni or the others, but one night he had snuck back and climbed a tree to spy on them. He had seen the great shaggy dogs with their powerful jaws rimmed with sharp teeth. He also saw Arthur Forge, the father of Byram Forge. Arthur had vowed to take revenge for Bryam’s death, and evidently he intended to fulfill that vow.

  Dega studied the situation. The canoe was a quick dash from the water. It would only take a few moments to turn it over and push it into the river. But the whites would spill out and shoot him. Unless—

  Dega smiled as an idea was born.

  Rocks littered the shoreline. Several the size of grouse eggs were within easy reach. Dega slid closer and lined up several in a row.

  Footsteps heralded the return o
f the man who had gone into the settlement. He carried a bottle. He knocked lightly on the shack door and it opened to admit him.

  As soon as the door closed, Dega snaked along the water’s edge until he was past the shack and in shadow. He crawled out onto dry land and lay there waiting for his body to stop dripping. Then he crawled to the side of the shack and rose. A number of implements leaned against the wall. He chose one with a stout handle and metal tines.

  From within came whispers and chuckles. Dega put an ear to a plank and heard a sloshing sound, as of the bottle being upended. He crept around the corner and froze. A small hole in the center of the door enabled those inside to see the canoe. Keeping low, avoiding the hole, he carefully and silently wedged the long-handled tool against the door. Returning to the river, he eased into the water and moved north until he was near the canoe again.

  Dega hefted one of the rocks. As a boy he had practiced dropping birds until he could hit one on the wing. Cocking his arm, he threw the rock at the lantern. His aim was accurate. He struck the base, not the glass, and it upended and fell from the crate. But it did not go out, as Dega had hoped. There was a crunch and a phjfttt, and flame spouted in a bright flare.

  A loud yelp came from the shack.

  The smart thing for Dega to do was to get out of there. Instead, he bounded to the canoe, flipped it over, threw the paddles in, and began dragging it toward the river. Angry shouts filled the shack. Furious pounding shook the door, but the stout-handled prop held.

  The canoe was heavier than those the People of the Forest used but not so heavy that Dega could not handle it with relative ease. He slid the bow into the river and climbed in. The shack door was splintering under heavy blows as he grabbed one of the paddles and stroked westward.

  More loud voices came from down the shore.

  With a loud crack the whites spilled from the shack. They saw him. Rifles and pistols spewed lead and flame.

  Dega bent low as lead balls chopped the water on either side and whistled above his head. He was far enough out that he was in near complete darkness. He stroked a little farther, then turned the canoe north. The current proved stronger than he anticipated but not so strong that it defied him.