Manly Wade Wellman - Novel 1966 (6 page)

 
          
“Here’s
blood,” he said, pointing to dark splotches on the earth, “and yonder is more.
I wonder if either of those skulking devils struck down by Mark and Tsukala
will be up again, to cause us more worry. What say you, friends, should we not
press on and perhaps overtake and gall them worse?”

 
          
“Aye,
Captain,” approved Stoke, with old- soldierly determination. “They are heathen
foe, and have showed it by firing on Mark and trying to run him down.”

 
          
“Then
we take their trail at once,” Jarrett said fiercely. “Here comes Tsukala back
to us. Did you see which way they went, Tsukala?”

 
          
“Yuh.
The track is
plain.”

 
          
“Forward,
then,” ordered Jarrett. “Their number is cut to but ten who can
fight,
and we are seven, with arms in our hands and courage
in our hearts.”

           
But Tsukala held up his hand, to
halt the party. “They are more than ten,” he said.

 
          
“How,
more than ten?” protested Esau. “You told us that two of them were down.”

 
          
“The
ten met with friends,” Tsukala elaborated. “I followed them a little way. It
was easy to follow— blood was on the ground. Then their tracks came to where
more tracks showed.”

 
          
Jarrett
blew out his breath and sank his great head between his shoulders.

 
          
“How
many more?” he asked.

 
          
“Another
ten, maybe more than that,” replied Tsukala. “All tracks came together, and I
saw where all kept going south from here. But they are not far away. Tracks
were fresh.”

 
          
Mark
felt his blood run cold. He was amazed at the feeling, for until now things had
moved too fast for him to find time for any chills of apprehension.

 
          
“Faith,
Tsukala,” spoke up Philip Lapham, “you tell us that a whole nation of Indians
is in these parts, to plan our ruin.”

 
          
“Indians
of many nations,” Tsukala reminded again.
“Bad Indians.
Like wolves, like snakes. More, I think, than there are of you men.
More Indians than all white men at Bear Paw Gap.”

 
          
Leland
Stoke shrugged, perhaps to beat a quiver of dismay from his limbs. He squinted
to peer among the trees around them.

           
“For all we can say, they may be
stealing back to surprise us at this very moment,” he said.

 
          
Tsukala
made a negative fluttering gesture with his hand. “No, not now,” he said. “They
have lost two men. I think they will wait and talk before they come to fight.”

 
          
“Fight
they will,” Lapham predicted. “We’ve shed their blood, and they’ll burn to shed
ours.”

 
          
Jarrett
breathed deeply again, and turned away toward the stream. “Let’s not wait here
for them to come,” he decreed. “I won’t let myself fear Indians, but I’d rather
meet them on ground of our own choosing.”

 
          
They
headed back the way they had come. Tsukala walked between Mark and his father.

 
          
“But
how did so many outlaw Indians come together, from tribes that live far apart
and are not friendly each to the other?” Mark wondered aloud. “What Indian
among them thought of that device?”

 
          
“No
Indian, maybe,” said Tsukala.

 
          
Mark’s
father stared. “But you have been telling us that these are Indians from
several tribes,” he said.
“If no Indian gathered them into a
body, then who?”

 
          
“I
tried to look at all those tracks, quick,” said Tsukala. “I saw some tracks
that were not Indian tracks. Their toes pointed out, like tracks of a white
man.”

 
          
For
some paces the party moved along in silence.

           
“ ’Tis
a
strange thought, and an ugly one,” muttered Jarrett at last.
“A
white man among outlaw Indians.
Perhaps he leads them, directs them
against us. I ask myself, what sort of white man would run the woods in such
evil company?”

 
          
“I
told you those Indians have bad hearts,” Tsukala said. “I told you their
peoples have driven them out. I think it is like that with this white man.”

 
          
“Egad,
a true word!” exclaimed Leland Stoke, coming alongside. “He’ll be an outlaw
himself— hunted and banished from among his own kind, as Jipi and those others
have been banished from theirs.”

 
          
“Yuh,”
assented
Tsukala. “Their hearts are bad, but his heart is very bad. Among them all, he
is worst. Worse, I think, than Jipi.”

 
          
To Mark, the forest air seemed suddenly to grow cold and dark and
terrifying.

 
          
Night
Adventure

 
          
That
evening at sundown, Mark sat on the threshold log of the Jarrett kitchen door,
drawing the charge from his rifle.

 
          
The
men of Bear Paw Gap had gathered for the most earnest of councils that day
after noon dinner. After consulting with Tsukala, Jarrett had pointed out to
his neighbors that the hovering near at hand of more than a score of Indian
warriors meant a threat of something beyond off-hand violence and plunder. So
large a band would never gather save for considerable blood and booty. The
threat was a dire one, and concerned every household in the region.

 
          
The
three households beyond Jarrett’s Ridge, the Sheltons, Ramseys, and Laphams,
had voted to gather for the time and live at the home of Seth Ramsey, largest
house of the three. Their stock would be penned together, and final reaping of
crops would be done in force, with weapons at hand as well as tools. The
Jarrett and Hollon families, close together, might also feel something like
security in their numbers, and Leland Stoke and his son, with their two wives,
were certain that they could defend their snug cave dwelling against a host.
Durwell and Schneider, at the mill, seemed apprehensive, but vowed to keep a
sharp lookout.

 
          
Jarrett
had advised the furbishing and loading of every single rifle, musket, and
pistol in every house. A policy of defense was adopted, with no thoughtless
ventures south of the Black Willow for the time being.

 
          
Mark’s
pondering on these things was interrupted by the appearance of his sturdy
cousin Esau, who came and leaned his rifle against the cabin wall.

 
          
“Ha,
Mark, you’ve had high excitement this day,” said Esau. “I envy you for what
you’ve seen and done, scouting close to those redskin slinkers and then
escaping.”

 
          
“I
take no pride or pleasure from it,” was Mark’s sober reply. “I’m only glad that
I came off with a whole skin from that encounter.”

 
          
Esau
sat beside him. “Your bullet struck an enemy and felled him. How do you feel to
have done that?”

 
          
“I
could wish I might never have it to do again,” said Mark, oiling a scrap of
cloth and pushing it down the muzzle of his rifle with the long ramrod. “Esau,
I’m ready to fight as true and fierce as any if it must be done. But we’ve had
mystery and trouble enough and to spare at Bear Paw Gap, just to hold our homes
among these rocks and trees.”

 
          
“That’s
the truth,” Esau agreed.
“ ’Twas
our former troubles I
come to speak of. Do you remember our fear of an Indian spirit, the
Fire-Carrier? It was said to put a curse upon our homesteads. And then ’twas
proven to be but a scurvy trick, meant to scare us away.”

 
          
“I’m
not likely to forget those times, not if I live to be a hundred,” Mark said,
taking another rag to swab the rifle bore a second time. “I would that we had
solved this present threat and riddle as we solved that one.”

 
          
“The
earlier mystery may help solve this new one,” said Esau meaningfully. “You
remember also that of all those settled here, the least to be suspected was
Barney Cole. Who were so amazed as you and I when he proved to be a mountebank
knave, playing tricks and frightening great and small? And all the while he
pretended to be a silly, timid old man. Now, I say that perhaps a like subtlety
is being attempted upon us.”

 
          
“How’s
that, Esau?” asked Mark, uncomprehendingly.

 
          
“Tsukala
spoke of a white man’s tracks among all those of the Indian raiders,” Esau reminded
him. “It gives me to wonder, which of the white men here might have made those
tracks and perhaps directed those Indians?”

 
          
Mark
laughed, despite his own sober concern for the plight of the settlers. “Nay,
Esau, Tsukala did not recognize those tracks. He knows the print of every foot
in Bear Paw Gap. He can read prints as you and I read letters in a book.”

 
          
Esau
shook his head violently. “Tsukala did not tarry to make a close study of those
tracks. He himself said that he did not know how many men had made tracks; he
did not wait to see. I’ll engage that could we but see the feet that left
traces there—the white men’s feet, with toes out—we’d know those feet well, and
recognize the body and the face above them.”

 
          
Mark
inspected the latest of the rags he had used to clean the barrel of his rifle.
It showed white and he turned his attention to oiling the lock.

 
          
“Who
then do you think it was?” he inquired.

 
          
“Who
but Simon Durwell’s German servant, Bram Schneider?” flung back Esau
triumphantly.

 
          
Mark
stared. “Never Schneider, Esau. Why, he trembles at the very mention of
Indians.”

 
          
“Barney
Cole pretended to fear Indians and their evil spirits, before we unmasked him,”
argued Esau. “See now, Bram Schneider is a foreigner among us.”

           
“We’re all foreigners in
America
, or we were a few generations back,” Mark
pointed out.

 
          
“I
mean, Schneider was a Hessian soldier, and came here to fight our fathers and
destroy American liberties,” said Esau.

           
“He was drafted to that service
unwillingly/’ Mark rejoined. “At the first chance he saw, he left the British
cause to live among Americans.”

 
          
“Aye,
for he must have known his side was losing the war.” Esau tapped Mark’s arm
with his finger. “Think, Mark. Today, when you came back to the mill from your
scouting of those outlaw savages, was Schneider there?”

 
          
“Why, to be sure.
As I came to the river and looked across,
I saw him come from behind the mill shed.”

 
          
“And
you cannot say where he had been before that,” said Esau triumphantly. “He may
have been with the Indians, and he may have hurried back ahead of you.” Esau
rose to his feet. “You are more stubborn than your wont when you defend him. I
came to seek your help in learning if he means us harm. If you will not join
me, I must scout him alone. I go now to do that.”

 
          
“Nay,
Esau, we won’t quarrel,” Mark placated him. “And you’re
right,
we should overlook no possible hint of danger. I’ll help you study Schneider,
if only to make sure that he’s no more than a timid, harmless fellow in a
strange and perilous land.”

 
          
A movement inside the open door.
“Mark?”
came
Celia’s soft voice. “Is that Esau with you?”

 
          
“Aye,
Celia, come out and talk with us,” invited Esau. “I’m all nerves as it gets
darker,” she confessed.

           
“Mark, I heard but the half of all
that scouting and shooting of yours today.”

 
          
“Do
not ask me to tell you the other half,” Mark said, rising from the log. “I’m
glad that I got not so much as a scratch.”

 
          
“I
am glad, too,” said Celia. She sat on the log and clasped her hands around her
knees, looking across the yard with wide, troubled eyes. Mark carefully
examined his rifle in the last light of the day, and told himself that it was
spotlessly clean, inside and out. He began to load it again, very carefully.

 
          
“I
hope and pray that those savages have gone back to whatever place they came
from,” said Celia, but her voice suggested that the hope was a faint one.

 
          
“Come,
Celia, be of good cheer,” Esau rallied her.

 
          
“Aye,
you never were a coward,” Mark added, and he thought of how he had first seen
Celia Vesper, that very spring.

 
          
Mark
remembered the day of his first exploration into the unknown valley beyond the
height now named Jarrett’s Ridge; how he had looked down into the pathetic
little camp made by Celia for her two orphaned cousins, and how Celia herself
had toiled to break ground and plant a few handfuls of seed to give them food;
how he himself and Tsukala had made furtive visits to leave chunks of venison,
strings of fish, turkeys, where Celia could find them; and how Celia and the children
had been taken in and adopted by Mark’s parents. It seemed long ago, and at the
same time as though it had just happened.

 
          
“I
heard you telling Esau that you felt only gratitude that the perils of this day
were past,” Celia told him slowly. “I am glad for you, Mark, and though you
call me brave and say I do not flinch, yet I would be vain and foolish did I
not feel concern.”

 
          
“But
by now, those Indians have probably fled far away,” said Esau to comfort her.
“In any case, they won’t dare challenge us here in our homes. If they do,
they’ll have good cause to rue it sorely.”

 
          
The
three of them chatted more cheerfully as the evening became a soft autumn
night. They tried to avoid the subject of danger to their homes. Inside the
house, Mark’s father’s fiddle began to sing. Then Anne Jarrett called Celia,
and Celia rose and went in.

 
          
“Well,
Mark, shall we go and look at what Bram Schneider may be doing in the dark?”
prodded Esau.

 
          
“Aye.”
Mark tucked his rifle under his arm and headed for
the road. Esau came after him and walked beside him.

 
          
They
moved on opposite sides of the road, habitually soft of foot. Each glanced
again and again into the trees to left and right. They came to where they could
see a wink of yellow light, from a window of the mill house, with lamp or
candle inside. Mark drifted across the road to where he could whisper.

 
          
“We
need look for no Indians abroad in the darkness,” he said, as softly as he
could. “Tsukala assures us of that.”

 
          
“No,
more likely they’re sitting together somewhere to plot and plan,” muttered Esau
back. “And I’ll warrant Bram Schneider will be with them, with word as to how
they may take us off guard.”

 
          
“Aye, if your suspicion of him be right.”

 
          
“We’re
out to learn if I’m right.”

 
          
They
walked on in silence. They drew near to the mill pond. Mark heard the soft
lapping of water against the lowered gate, and in the night he saw the loom of
the shed, with a lighted window facing toward the road. He touched Esau’s hand.

 
          
“Drop
back behind me, and make not a noise,” Mark directed. “We’ll stop where we can
see in at the window.”

 
          
He
stole along the road, to where the thick splits of logs bridged the stream from
the mill pond. He moved with care, lest the loose timbers creak. Esau followed
him to the far side. Together they paused below the mill, gazing upslope toward
the window with its yellow glow.

 
          
Then
Mark’s hand shot out to clutch Esau’s shoulder and force him to drop to the
ground. For between that lighted rectangle and the two watchers appeared a moving
black silhouette of a head and shoulders, sliding across as though to approach
and peep in.

 
          
Esau
flung himself prone and set his left elbow to the earth of the road. He shoved
his rifle forward and took aim, but Mark pushed the barrel aside. “Wait/’ he
whispered. “We don’t know who that is.”

 
          
“An
enemy,” Esau said under his breath, but relaxed his finger on the trigger.