“Men say ye be like a doctor or such.” The words came like a frigid blade along his spine. He looked up into a gaunt scarecrow face over soiled buckskins.
Duncan did not move as Hawkins stepped to his side, in front of the pigs. Strangely, he held a young rabbit, small enough to fit in his palm. Duncan recalled seeing a nest under a log at the edge of the wheat field.
“I’ve had training in-” he began, before realizing the trapper was not interested in a reply. Duncan put a step between them, placing himself out of the range of the man’s sinewy arms.
“It be truly amazin’, the things that spill out when ye gut a man.” Hawkins spoke in a level, casual voice, his narrow eyes aimed like gun barrels at Duncan. “There’s some in the tribes that collects parts, string up a necklace of ears or such. Must be of the medical persuasion, too. Onc’t I saw a string of men’s privates.” Hawkins raised the terrified rabbit and stared into its eyes. “Hell,” he said with a cold laugh, “onc’t I saw a savage cut open a prisoner’s belly, pull out his breakfast, and feed it to his dog as the man watched.” He stroked the rabbit’s neck with a finger. The creature quieted, settling into his palm.
“What do you collect, Mr. Hawkins?” Duncan asked in a brittle voice.
“Prayers,” Hawkins replied in a whisper, grinning, “the last sounds the dying make.” With that, the rabbit uttered a shuddering cry, cut off by a snap of bone.
Duncan looked down to see the little rabbit limp, its neck broken between two of the trapper’s fingers. Hawkins tossed the body into the pen. Instantly three pigs began a tug of war with the still warm creature, ripping it into pieces and devouring them. Duncan stared numbly at the little patch of blood on the dirt before looking up. Hawkins was gone.
Shaken, he found his way back to the schoolhouse, reviewing the events of the past days. He had done nothing to provoke Hawkins. Except tell Frasier to ask certain questions. Opening the book he had left on the table, he read again, read until the hairs on his neck rose and he snapped his head up. Captain Woolford had materialized ten feet away.
“Do you have any idea of the damage you have caused?” Woolford demanded. The odor of brandy reached Duncan even before the ranger advanced a step, leaning forward as if about to pounce. Duncan had never seen such wildness in the officer’s eyes. “Major Pike only considered you a nuisance before, a possible link to your brother. Now he will revile you as much as your brother. Calder will have no choice but to send more men west. You have forced him to move the regular troops, to make a show for the governor.”
“I did not expect your reaction so quickly. How did you discover what I wrote?”
“The original was dispatched yesterday on a swift horse. Before it left a copy was transcribed.”
Duncan had seen a figure at the dining table, with quill and paper. Crispin. “Before, there was a chance of finding answers. Now you have unleashed a pack of mad dogs, banishing every chance of a ranger having a quiet dialogue with any Indian within two hundred miles. And it will take them but a few moments to realize that if the army was responsible for Evering’s death, there was only one member of the army on board the ship. If Calder decides to look for a quick solution, it will be my head he offers.”
“I am pleased to have finally gotten your attention, Captain. Perhaps you will finally admit that the paths you and I follow are the same? The murders of Evering and Jacob, the death of Adam Munroe, are all rooted in what happened at Stony Run. You are trying to find justice for the massacre at Stony Run. My mystery and yours have the same answer. And finding it is now as urgent for you as for myself.”
Woolford, suddenly unsteady, dropped onto one of the students’ stools. “You will never understand. You cannot understand.”
“I understand more than when I arrived a few days ago. I understand not to touch a bear or a snake. I understand the army and the Ramsey Company are rivals somehow. I understand that a woman pretending to be a dead girl is at the eye of the storm. I understand what it means to have your people destroyed by an oppressor.”
Woolford, elbows on the table, buried his face in his hands. “When the army first sent me to America eight years ago, no one dared go into the forests. Everyone had heard stories of savages who ripped out your liver and ate it as you died. I was ordered to join a militia scouting party in the winter. Our leader and half the others drowned when our canoe went over a waterfall. We were lost and starving and it began to snow. One man froze to death. A Mohawk family found us more dead than alive. Two of their men lost toes to frostbite while carrying us back to their village. King Hendrick’s village. More snow came, eight or nine feet of it. We spent two months with them. They taught me their language, taught me the ways of the forest. I watched as they prayed to their spirit world. I played with their children, helped with their dead. When I came back to the settlements, I signed on as a ranger.”
“What really happened at Stony Run?”
Woolford took a long time to answer. When he finally spoke, he faced the fireplace. “The leaders of the tribes see the future hurling at them, forcing them to new ways, and they don’t know what path to take. Tashgua was arguing that the Iroquois should end their involvement in the war, that the tribes needed to go back to the old ways, before muskets and silver coins and whiskey. Ten of the most important chiefs agreed to meet him, to take part in his ceremony to reach the mother spirit. Where they went, no one was allowed to take weapons.”
Woolford fell silent, and rose to face the window before continuing. “I discovered the bodies, every chief but Tashgua, and many of those who travel with Tashgua as his guard.”
“Pike was there?”
“Came in behind me, hours later.”
“Fitch showed me a piece of tartan.”
“At least three of the dead were deserted soldiers.”
“From the Black Watch?”
Woolford nodded. “They had taken up new lives with Tashgua’s band. I saw to it they were taken back with their fellow warriors.”
“Without telling Pike,” Duncan said.
“He would have strung them up for the crows. That’s when I sent a squad out for reconnaissance. They never returned. Two days later I found them dead, every man. General Calder’s report said they were killed by French Indians, Huron or Abenaki. But each of their guns still held its priming. My men would not have faced the enemy without firing a shot.”
“But why, if you were trying to find the killers, would you suddenly leave for England?”
Resentment filled Woolford’s eyes. “I took leave because there was a surviving witness.”
Duncan grew very still. The realization came out in a hoarse whisper. “Adam Munroe.” I have seen things no man ever should have to see, Adam had told Frasier. He gazed back into the cold fireplace, the haunting words of Frasier echoing in his mind. He had to find the young keeper, had to make him reveal what he knew that could destroy the Company, had to make him understand the danger he was in if he spoke about Adam to anyone else. A dozen more questions for the ranger sprang to mind.
But when he looked up, Woolford was gone. A motion outside caught his eye. Cameron walked past the barn, carrying a heavy sack on his shoulder. No, Duncan saw, as he sprang to his feet, it was a limp man.
He found the big Scot in the open bay of the forge, locking the padlock of the crib. Blood stained the front of his shirt. “Will be no doubts this time,” Cameron growled as he saw Duncan. “Every man in the Company will want to see him swing.”