Broken Trail (10 page)

“In there,” he said.

Elijah stared. “It's a hole in the ground!”

“It's dry and it's safe.”

“How do I get in?”

“Wriggle in feet first. I reckon you can't crawl very well with your shoulder hurt.”

Inside, there was scarcely room to move. Elijah, flat on his back, took up most of the space, leaving Broken Trail huddled with his head touching the exposed roots that formed the rough roof.

Elijah's pewter buttons glinted in the faint light that penetrated the vines. Leaning over, Broken Trail unfastened the top button, and then the next.

“What are you doing?” Elijah asked.

“I need to look at your wound.”

Elijah lay unresisting while the rest of the buttons were unfastened, wincing only when his linsey-woolsey undershirt was pulled from his skin. Even though it had been softened by rain, the congealed blood stuck like glue.

The wound was in the soft spot just inside the upper part of his arm. There was no fresh bleeding, just milky seepage and pus. Around the gash, the flesh was hot and swollen. An abscess. That was no surprise.

What did surprise Broken Trail was the Iroquois medicine bag that hung on a leather thong around his brother's neck. It was a tiny bag, brightly painted with many symbols. He touched it reverently. How did a white soldier come to possess so sacred an object? It meant that the unseen spirits were protecting Elijah. But why should this be? What story lay behind it? Now was not the right time to ask.

He said, “You need a poultice on your wound.”

“A poultice! Where are we going to find a poultice around here?”

“I can make one. I just have to mash up the inner bark from a slippery elm. There's some growing nearby. And there's white willow, too. Soaking white willow bark in water makes a drink that lessens pain.” He found himself taking
pride in showing off his knowledge. “That's the sort of thing every Oneida knows about.”

“Do what you can.” Elijah's forehead was beaded with sweat, and his eyes had a glazed look when they met Broken Trail's.

Broken Trail unhooked the canteen from Elijah's belt and crawled from the hole. The steep side of Kings Mountain loomed over his shoulder as he walked down to the creek. In this glade he and Red Sun Rising had left the horses hobbled while they went to give the message to Major Ferguson. Was that only two days ago? It felt twice that long. Now little piles of horse manure were the only evidence of horses having been there.

Broken Trail had told Red Sun Rising to take one of the horses and to leave the other for him. Travelling on horseback, Red Sun Rising must be nearly home by now. What a warm welcome awaited him! Broken Trail pictured him riding into Chickamauga wearing the handsome red coat and riding the dark horse.

What had become of the second horse? Broken Trail wondered. Most likely an Over Mountain man had come upon it, cut the hobbles and ridden off. A fine prize to take home!

On the flood plain Broken Trail quickly found a large slippery elm from which he could strip bark without killing the tree. He knew the rituals for gathering medicines. It was not only animals that had spirits. Shrubs, herbs and trees all
must be spoken to before their parts could be harvested. Standing at the foot of the tree, he chanted softly:

With the blade of his tomahawk he hacked through the furrowed outer bark of the slippery elm, and then used his knife to cut away the sticky, slippery inner bark. When he had enough to make a poultice, he wrapped it in burdock leaves.

Broken Trail chanted the same words to the white willow that he found growing beside the creek. He needed only a little of its inner bark, just enough to trim into slender strips that would go through the opening of Elijah's canteen to steep in fresh water from the creek.

Finally, he found rocks of the right size and shape to serve as a natural mortar and pestle. When he had pounded the slippery elm bark to a thick paste, he carried it in burdock leaves to the cavity under the maple tree.

Taking care of Elijah gave Broken Trail a good feeling. It seemed as though the two of them had crammed into one day and one night three lost years of brotherhood. Before long, they would have to part again; he tried not to think about that.

When Broken Trail had laid the wet poultice on the wound and covered it with the burdock leaves, Elijah looked more cheerful. Without objection, he drank the sour liquid in his canteen.

“The drink will make you feel better soon,” Broken Trail said. “The poultice takes longer. By tomorrow we'll see a difference.”

Elijah smiled weakly. “You should be a doctor.”

Broken Trail shrugged. He saw himself as a future warrior, not as a healer—though both deserved respect.

“I mean it. You could teach a few things to that sawbones of a surgeon in our regiment. After every battle, he inspects our wounded. Shot in the leg? Cut it off. Shot in the arm? Cut it off. Shot in the head? Cut—”

Broken Trail laughed. “Oneida healing is different. We know how to draw out poisons. In our villages, you don't see many old warriors hobbling around with limbs missing.”

That night Broken Trail slept sitting up, his legs bent and his head slumped on his knees. Too uncomfortable to slumber long, he woke in the middle of the night and, unable to fall asleep again, pondered the strange turn his life had taken. More and more he came to believe that finding Elijah was part of the Great Spirit's plan. But what purpose lay behind it?

He knew about men and women whom the unseen spirits
had especially favoured. Some, like Wolf Woman, had a gift for healing. Some had power to find things that were lost. Some had the power to know what they did not know. To him, this was the most mysterious gift of all. How could you know what you did not know? Yet it was this power that he sometimes felt stirring within him, giving him an unsettling feeling, like being helpless and powerful at the same time.

Sensing Elijah's eyes on him, he turned his head. It was too dark to distinguish his brother's face.

“You awake, too?” Elijah said.

“I can't sleep. I've been thinking about everything that's happened, like finding you, and what it all means.”

“I always thought we would meet again. After you ran away, I never stopped wondering what became of you.”

“That's a long story.”

“Reckon it must be.” He hesitated. “Tell me about it. Start where the Oneidas carried you off. What did they do with you?”

“They adopted me to replace a boy who'd died. My new mother's brother became my teacher. That's the Oneida way. I was nearly ten, and I knew nothing that an Oneida boy that age should know.”

Once Broken Trail started talking, he found it easy to go on. He described how the Oneidas had brought him up as one of their own, although some rejected him. He found himself opening up to Elijah about his fears, about how long he had waited for his
oki,
his totem animal, to appear
and how terrible it had been when the vision of his future was snatched away at the last moment. Then he described how the two soldiers had taken him to their camp, where the captain had promised him a rifle as payment for delivering the warning to Major Ferguson.

Elijah listened with complete attention, asking a question now and then, as if determined to understand. When Broken Trail had finished, he asked, “Do you reckon your
oki
will come back someday to let you see that vision?”

“As soon as I return to my village, I'll ask my uncle about that. He's very wise about such matters.” He paused. “Now tell me your story.”

“I'll start where you did. We were camped by Oneida Lake with two Mohawk warriors to protect us.”

“Axe Carrier and Okwaho.”

“Yes. Okwaho was my hero. You were jealous when he took me hunting.”

“Can you blame me? Back in Canajoharie, we used to do everything together. You taught me to fish. You promised that you would take me hunting as soon as I was old enough. But after Okwaho took you under his wing, you had no time for me.” He paused. “And then Ma made me gather nuts with the little girls. That was more than I could bear.”

“Ma blamed me when you ran away. I would have run away too, but Okwaho wouldn't take me with him. ‘My path not good path for you,' he told me. That nearly broke my heart. But then he gave me a medicine bag.”

“I saw it.”

“I never take it off. Okwaho promised it would keep me safe. There's a stone the colour of blood inside, and dust made from the skin of a rattlesnake and the beak of an eagle.”

“Powerful medicine,” Broken Trail said. “Hundreds of soldiers died on Kings Mountain, but you're alive.”

“It was Okwaho who turned me into a sharp shooter. You might say, it's because of him I'm here today.”

“I remember how he hung a dead squirrel high up in a pine tree and made you keep trying until your arrow hit it.”

“He was a good teacher. When I joined the Royal Greens, I was the only recruit who could hit a blessed thing with those muskets they issued. That's why Major Ferguson picked me for his rifle company. Ferguson invented a new kind of rifle, a breech-loader. Very fast. I figure he was the smartest man in the world… except he got a lot of us killed.”

“That wasn't too smart.”

“Well, he didn't know how to fight in the mountains. We were sitting ducks. But he wouldn't budge. He told the men, ‘I'm on Kings Mountain and I'm the king of that mountain. God Almighty and all the rebels of Hell can't drive me from it.'”

“The British sent me to warn him. I arrived in time, but I never had a chance to deliver my message. The soldiers wouldn't listen. They mocked me.”

“It wouldn't have made any difference if you had given your message to Major Ferguson. He had already decided to make a stand on Kings Mountain while we waited for reinforcements.
Once he made up his mind, nothing could change it.”

“I saw what happened. I was hiding with my friend in a clump of junipers on the hillside when the rebels sneaked up. They had good cover behind the trees.”

“On the plateau we had no cover. We had to go out in the open to shoot. When we fired down the hill, our shots went above the rebels' heads. They charged over the top and mowed us down. Ferguson was on his horse, wearing that checkered hunting shirt over his uniform, galloping all over the battlefield, blowing his silver whistle.”

“I heard the whistle.”

“After he fell, we tried to surrender. Two of our men went out waving white flags. The rebels shot them down. When we raised the white flag again, they finally stopped shooting. They told us to lay down our weapons and sit on the ground. As soon as those Over Mountain men saw us sitting there defenceless, they went crazy. They're devils, not men. Even the regular soldiers were out of control. They stripped Major Ferguson naked, along with Virginia Sal, and threw them into the same grave. While all this was going on, I lay on the ground and played dead. I'd had one bayonet stuck in me already and didn't want another.”

“I heard them yell, ‘Remember Waxhaws!' What did that mean?”

“Waxhaws is where Banastre Tarleton's troops massacred rebel soldiers who were trying to surrender. That's what they say. Major Ferguson's men weren't there. Whatever
happened, we never did it.” He shook his head. “You say you were hiding with your friend. Who was he? What happened to him?”

“He's a Cherokee, and he guided me to Kings Mountain. His name is Red Sun Rising. Nothing happened to him—I mean, he wasn't killed. He left for home the morning after the battle. I reckon he's back in Chickamauga by now.”

“Chickamauga! That's where the diehards live. Dragging Canoe and his warriors are ready to fight to the last man rather than give up one more inch of their land.”

“Red Sun Rising is ready to die with them.”

“If we'd had some of those Chickamauga Cherokees fighting alongside the Loyal Americans, the last campaign might have ended differently.”

“They could have taught Major Ferguson how to fight in the mountains… supposing he would listen. Red Sun Rising said the Loyal Americans were making a big mistake if they thought no one could defeat them on Kings Mountain. And he said that
before
the battle.”

“Turns out he was right.”

In his mind Broken Trail he saw the bodies lying on the battlefield and the wounded being marched away. He said, “I went to Kings Mountain because I wanted a rifle, but I found my brother instead. That's the one good thing that came of it.”

Silence fell. From Elijah's steady breathing Broken Trail realized that he had slipped into a quiet, restful sleep.