The savage groaned as Duncan hit him again and again, repeating his furious demand, then rolled away as Duncan faltered, swaying as his head began spinning. The Indian leaned against a moss-covered boulder, his eyes filled with pain, as Duncan dropped to his knees, a hand to his temple. The throbbing returned, now a low, steady roll of thunder in his head.
“If you insist on this frantic activity,” the Indian declared, gasping, speaking in the deep voice Duncan had heard earlier, “I fear your wound will open again.”
Duncan stared at the man, his jaw agape, looking about the small clearing, then into the forest and back to the stranger again. The man’s face was as worn as a river stone, and his bright, intelligent eyes fixed Duncan with a steady, if sad, gaze. Around his neck hung a necklace of glass beads from which hung a small fur-bound amulet. At the end of a second necklace, a leather braid that had had been freed from inside his shirt during Duncan’s attack, were two small silver cones that made a tinkling sound when he moved. Like tiny bells.
“I didn’t. . I don’t. . ” Words failed Duncan. Still on his knees, propping himself with his makeshift weapon, he silently gawked at the man.
When the stranger lifted his hand, Duncan thought it was to make a gesture of warning. But instead he slowly extended one finger, first to his lips, then to a shrub at the edge of the clearing. Duncan followed the finger to a bird, with scarlet body and black wings, that burst into a light melody as it studied the two men. They listened without moving for over a minute, until the bird flitted away.
“In the tongue of my boyhood we called him Firecatcher. I have never heard an English name for it. You English have so few names for the important things.”
Duncan looked back at the man with the same curious gaze the bird had used. “I am called Duncan McCallum. In the tongue of my boyhood I would be called ungrateful.”
A small grin stirred on the man’s face. “If you wish you may call me Conawago.”
“Scottish. I am Scottish, not English.” Duncan nervously surveyed the forest again.
Conawago offered a nod toward the base of a big tree near the circle of their camp. “They are gone.” At the bottom of the tree were splinters of wood and three long barrels, the remains of three muskets. “Without their guns those kind are like frightened children.”
“Who else?” Duncan asked, watching the forest again. “Are your companions nearby?”
“As I grow older, I find the company better when I travel alone.” Conawago returned Duncan’s stare with the same inquisitive, slightly amused gaze he had fixed on the scarlet bird, then with a wince of pain he rose and resumed loading his bag.
As he did so Duncan noticed streaks of red on the back of the man’s shirt. “I injured you,” he said, stricken with guilt. Conawago was probably three times Duncan’s age. He had not only viciously attacked an old man, he had attacked the man who had saved his life.
“It is nothing,” the Indian muttered without looking up.
“I studied to be a doctor. Let me help.”
Conawago continued his packing. “I’d as soon turn myself over to one of the old witches in the Iroquois towns than to a European doctor. Bleed this, they always say, bleed that. Take some opium. Try some Peruvian bark. Swallow some cathartic. Treat a wound by making a bigger cut.”
“I know enough to wash your wounds.”
Conawago tightened the drawstring of his bag and straightened, ignoring Duncan, looking toward heaven and making an upward spiraling motion with his hand.
“I struck you. It was. . ” Duncan searched for words. “I wronged you. Allow me to render a kindness. You saved my life.”
Conawago’s face betrayed no emotion. “It remains to be seen whether that should be considered a favor.”
“Then you at least saved me from wearing a hat for the little time I have left to live.”
A flicker of a grin crossed the old Indian’s face. “There is a stream with a pool two miles north where I can clean my wounds. I was going there in any event. Farewell. If you truly know something of doctoring, you will know you will lose consciousness long before you could get there, so do not try to follow.” He swung the bag onto his shoulder, lifted his staff, and began walking down the narrow trail that led toward the high ridges. For the first time Duncan noticed on his belt a long, curving club, its ball-shaped top carved like the head of a bird, whose bill was a lethal iron spike.
Duncan rose, staggered a few steps, and collapsed. By the time his head cleared, Conawago was out of sight. As he sat there, summoning his strength, he realized for the first time that his medallion, Adam’s medallion, was gone.
He knelt, swaying on his knees, fighting not dizziness now but shooting pain from his head and ribs, and then forced himself to his feet. With his hand ax he cut a staff, then sliced a four-inch section from a small limb, inserted it between his teeth, and began walking. He stopped every two or three hundred paces, wiping away blood that dripped down his forehead and into his eyes, clutching his head, cutting a new plug of wood when he bit through the first. The trail branched with no sign of the old Indian’s path, and he halted, trying to understand the signs he knew the people of the woods could instinctively read. There was a pool, Conawago had said. It would be the kind of place where animals would congregate. He chose the wider, more heavily used fork and kept walking.
When he finally reached the shaded, forty-foot-wide circle of water, Conawago was stripped to the waist, his back to Duncan, standing under a narrow flow of water that spilled into the pool from a ledge a few feet above his head. With a pang of shame Duncan saw the bruises and broken skin his attack had caused.
Conawago was muttering something unintelligible, catching the water that missed his head in a cupped hand and pouring it over his chest, looking up when he spoke, as if addressing the huge chestnut tree whose roots hung over the ledge above. Duncan collapsed at the bank, dropping his bag and lowering his head to the cool water, drinking it from his hand, then sluicing it over his own head.
“I have a spare shirt,” Duncan said to the Indian’s back. “I can make bandages.”
Conawago’s only response was to raise a palm toward him, to silence him. The old Indian continued speaking, sometimes to the water itself, but mostly facing upward, toward the ledge above. The old Indian had said he was coming to the pool in any event. He had come, Duncan realized, to pray to the massive tree.
He felt strangely embarrassed, wanted to turn away, but Duncan could not take his eyes from the old man. His grandfather had sometimes prayed like that, standing in an ebb tide under a full moon, refusing to come out when his mother had begged him to, laughing when their priest cursed him for a pagan.
After several minutes Conawago stopped speaking and backed a few inches away from the small waterfall. He caught more water in his hand and stared at the glistening drops. “I did not expect you,” he said in a voice like that used in a church. “Now that you are here, there are words you, too, must say.”
“I do not know your language,” Duncan said awkwardly. “I cannot remember the words you said.”
“I was apologizing for the spilled blood, and the foolishness of men. No good thing ever comes out of violence. You must always cleanse it away.” He looked for the first time at Duncan, and stepped toward him, stopping eight feet away, knee deep in the water. “The words you must use are different. Say this,” Conawago instructed, and began reciting words in the tongue Sarah had used.
Slowly, clumsily Duncan repeated the sounds.
Conawago nodded, then continued, speaking a few syllables at a time. Duncan echoed each phrase without comprehension, recognizing only one word of the many spoken. Ohskenonton. Deer.