It was a melody of Duncan’s youth, one often sung by a French chambermaid in his Dutch boarding school, where he had heard of his family’s destruction. No, I’ll not go into the woods again. No, I’ll not alone be going.
The Iroquois boy was singing a lonely French ballad. There were Mohawk clans who lived in Quebec, but it was rare to find one of their number so far south.
Duncan was two steps away when the youth spun about and, with catlike quickness, sprang at him. He saw the flash of the blade in enough time to deflect it from his chest, but not soon enough to avoid a slice across the back of his hand. With a swing of his rifle butt he knocked the boy to the ground, pinned his wrist with his foot, aimed his rifle at the boy’s heart, and pulled back the hammer.
The boy’s thin, soiled face filled with tears. “Go ahead,” he said in English. “It is the way of you cowards. Shoot warriors from ambush. Kill the child who scares you.” With his free hand the boy crossed himself then, to Duncan’s horror, pulled the gun barrel to his chest so abruptly Duncan’s finger almost pulled the trigger.
“Warriors?” Duncan asked, then glanced back to the log where the boy had sat, seeing now a moccasined foot among the wild violets. He darted to the figure’s side, the instincts of his medical training taking over. He checked for a pulse, felt for warmth on the man’s forehead, but the dull, unseeing eyes were all that he needed to know. The shot that had killed him had ripped into the back of his neck. The moss he had fallen onto was stained crimson.
The man was an Iroquois in his prime, his broad shoulders, sinewy arms, and calloused thumb the marks of one who still used the bow. The narrow scalp lock at the crown of his shaven head held red pigments, matching the red that covered his ear. The tattooed image of a snake coiled around one arm, an intricate design of curving and jagged lines around the other. On the breast of his sleeveless brown waistcoat was a quillwork image of a leaping deer. On his cheek were four parallel slash marks from which blood still oozed.
“Murderer!” The boy was on his feet now, coiling as though for another assault.
Duncan ignored the knife in his hand. “I know this man,” he said in surprise. “I sat with him once at the fire of the Great Council. His name was Red Jacob, of the Oneida people.”
The boy halted. His hand was shaking.
“There are words to be said,” Duncan continued in a level voice. “We should catch a snake or a bird so it can carry word to his family on the other side.”
The boy seemed about to speak when a branch snapped on the slope above. His face drained of color and he crouched beside the log as if for cover. “If it comes back we will die,” he declared in a fearful whisper.
“It?”
“The demon. The monster who eats men’s bones, who plays with their bodies like dolls. I know about him, from the campfires. If you hear the shaking of his rattle you will know that you are dead.”
Duncan scanned the slope uneasily, then pointed to a shape in the shadows. “It’s just a stag. The smell of blood makes it uneasy.”
“But it attracts others. The wolves are probably with the demon now, sharing the bones of Long Runner.”
Duncan’s head snapped up. “Long Runner?” He had not heard the name for two or three years, and had almost forgotten it.
“There were three of us.” The boy spoke slowly, as if only half hearing. His eyes were locked on the face of the dead Oneida. “Long Runner was taken first and as he went down he shouted for us to run, that we had to make Edentown at all costs.”
Duncan stood and reached for the boy, shaking him by the shoulders. “You mean an Englishman? A soldier?”
The Iroquois youth nodded. “But he speaks the Iroquois tongue like he was born to it. I only met him last week at Johnson Hall. They call him captain sometimes.”
Duncan lifted his gun. “Where? Tell me where Long Runner is!”
The boy pointed up the trail that intersected from the north. “Near the top of the ridge.”
Without another word Duncan sprinted away.
It was nearly a mile to the crest of the ridge, through a field of huge misshapen boulders that would have made for a perfect ambush. Duncan’s instincts blazed with warning. The Oneida had died less than an hour earlier. His killer might still be near. He slacked his pace, an eye on the boulders he passed, pausing once to listen. The forest was constantly speaking, Conawago had taught him, if only you knew how to listen. Birds kept quiet when intruders were close. Carnivores were drawn toward the dead and dying.
The wolf’s gaze was so intent on the base of the outcropping he did not notice Duncan until he had thrown a rock. The creature yelped as it struck his shoulder, and then faded into the shadows. Duncan ran to the limp form the wolf had meant to claim.
“Patrick!” he groaned. His friend the Long Runner showed no sign of life. Blood oozed from multiple wounds. A musket ball had ripped into his thigh, another had pierced his right side, and he had been struck in the head with an ax.
Patrick Woolford had been a captain of a company of frontier rangers during the war with France, nearly as famous as Major Rogers for accomplishing impossible feats. Declining frequent offers of positions in England and at headquarters units, he had gone west to fight in the recent rebellion of the western tribes. Even now, with the hostilities long over, he would disappear for weeks at a time with the Iroquois and frontiersmen who served in the small, elite ranger unit he commanded. It had been years since Duncan had seen him in uniform and despite the fact that, excepting Conawago, he had no closer friend, Woolford always found a way to change the conversation when Duncan asked how he served the king on his long treks in the forest.
With a sigh of relief, Duncan found a pulse. It was weak and irregular, but Woolford was alive. Duncan quickly straightened his long limbs and set to work. With a strip of cloth torn from Woolford’s linen shirt, he tied the thigh above the wound to slow the hemorrrhaging. The ball had pierced the muscle and exited the back of the leg. He gazed forlornly at the chest wound. If a ball had gone through his ribs, there would be little Duncan could do but prolong his suffering. Slowly Duncan unbuttoned his friend’s shirt then stared, disbelieving. Woolford had fastened an apparatus of oak slats around his torso, held together with knots of sinew. It was a form of Iroquois body armor once worn by the tribes in battle, before the arrival of firearms. Duncan had seen such artifacts on longhouse walls, even seen some, intricately decorated, under the sacred masks of the spirit lodge. Woolford’s oaken vest had the patina of age and every one of its slats was inscribed with symbols. Europeans tended to speak down to the woodland natives, dismissing them for their lack of education and written language, but Duncan knew better. Some of the wisest, most intellectually active men he had ever known numbered among those tribesmen, and their wisdom flowed from a fount much deeper than those of European institutions. Such symbols, moreover, often told stories more eloquently than many European books.
The vest would have been useless in a closer battle with guns but the ball aimed at Woolford had come from afar, as if the captain had anticipated such an attack. Although it had smashed through the vest, he saw amidst the splinters of wood and bone the metal gleam of the bullet. The vest had kept it from reaching a vital organ.
More troublesome was the tomahawk blow Woolford had taken to the head. The strike had been a glancing one, as if the ranger captain had been struggling, but the gash was deep and had nearly taken off his ear.
Duncan lifted an eyelid. The pupil did not respond. He whispered Woolford’s name as he poured water over the gash on his head. A patch of bright white, his friend’s skull, gleamed through the ragged tissue. Death hovered over the ranger.