Bone Rattler (59 page)

He had waited only ten minutes behind a boulder where the trail opened onto the river flats before he made out the sound of running feet. His timing was not perfect as he sprang in front of the man, but it was good enough for him to land a glancing blow to the man’s temple that knocked him to the ground.

Hawkins had begun to squirm away when he saw the rifle leveled at his chest.

“You murdered an old Iroquois today,” Duncan growled. “A bullet in the back of his head.”

“And here I thought no one appreciated my work,” Hawkins sneered. The trapper glanced left and right. As his hand inched toward a stone, Duncan kicked it away. “He would have been dead a moment later anyways.”

“But then you would have lost the bounty,” Duncan continued in an icy tone. “If Jamie had died in the blast, you would have had no claim to the money. Except you shot the wrong man.”

“An honest mistake,” Hawkins spat. “Who would have thought he would give his coat to some old buck?”

Duncan pulled back the hammer on the rifle. “Leave Jamie be, Hawkins.”

The oily trapper studied Duncan’s moonlit face. “Y’er the one who set me free? That be y’er bargain, boy? My freedom for y’er brother’s life? I don’t deal with slaves. And Ramsey would have me free on the morrow anyways.”

“Then why do you run, Hawkins? Because you fear I get close to a truth you can’t have others know? Like how Frasier died? That’s the price. Take a bullet now or tell me what happened at dawn that day.”

It was the lowest of pugilist tricks that undid Duncan, a quick hook of a foot around his calf that caused him to totter long enough for Hawkins to grab the barrel of the rifle. The trapper sprang up like a cat, wrenching the rifle away, clubbing Duncan with it. Suddenly Duncan was on the ground, the end of the rifle pressed against his neck as Hawkins probed his belt, lifting away Duncan’s ranger knife. Pressing the blade against Duncan’s throat, tucking the gun under an arm, the trapper deftly opened the frizzen pan and blew away the priming, rendering the gun useless.

“Ye’ve only a wee bit of a killer in ye, boy,” the trapper said, amusement in his tone as he tossed the gun aside. “Not near enough to survive in these parts.”

Duncan made a slight movement of resistance, twisting his spine, and the blade flashed downward, slicing into his arm before returning to his throat.

“I need money, boy.”

“I haven’t any.”

Hawkins sighed, raised the knife again, slower this time, toying with Duncan, bringing it down to slice the other arm. But suddenly it was frozen, immovable against the head of a war ax whose iron spike suddenly protruded through the flesh of Hawkins’s forearm. He uttered a long groan before grabbing the knife with his other hand, poised to throw it at the old Indian who held the ax. Then he froze once more, his entire body solid, as if it had gone numb. The knife slowly came down.

With a quick, crablike motion Duncan moved out of reach, then
followed the trapper’s gaze. Hawkins looked not toward Conawago, who still held the ax that had impaled his arm, but toward a round, shimmering thing that floated in the moonlight.

It was an image of a raven, black against yellow. It was Adam Munroe’s medallion, stolen by Duncan’s attackers the day he had left Edentown.

“Drop the blade,” Conawago said in a cool, fierce voice. “McCallum wants an answer about a murder.”

The knife did drop, but Hawkins did not speak. For a moment he had the look of one of the doomed animals that thrashed in his traps. Then his hollow, cold-blooded gaze returned. With impossible coolness, he pulled his arm free of the ax spike. His muscles coiled. He seemed about to leap at the shadowy figure with the medallion. But when he launched himself, it was backward, out onto the flats.

Duncan grabbed his knife and raced toward the canoes, a step in front of Conawago, thinking Hawkins was intent on stealing one. But when they reached the vessels, none were missing, and they could see a dark figure raising silver water as he hurried across the waist-deep river.

When they returned to the trail, the one who had been holding the medallion was sitting on a moonlit boulder, staring forlornly at the black bird in his hand.

“Sarah said you knew my brother,” Ravencatcher said to Duncan.

“Adam Munroe was your brother?”

“The husband of my sister is my brother,” Tashgua’s son explained. He cradled the medallion in his fingers. “You were there, when he died?”

“He died strong. He died for your sister.”

“I gave this to him, on the day they became husband and wife.”

“I lost it, the day I left Edentown.”

“And I found it,” explained Conawago, “on the dead man lying against the tree at the cabin.”

Duncan stared in the direction Hawkins had fled, then slowly tuned back toward Ravencatcher. “You should keep it,” he said.

“No. It is right that you have it, McCallum,” said the Iroquois.
“Adam would wish it so. My second sister would wish it so,” Ravencatcher added, then thrust the quillwork medallion into Duncan’s hand and slipped away into the shadows. His second sister. He meant Sarah.

“Don’t go back to the camp,” Conawago warned. “Tashgua’s men are all at the embers of the old tree, with his body, which is where Ravencatcher and I go now. Ramsey woke to find Woolford gone, and untied his men.”

But Duncan knew the only way he could return to Edentown was in Ramsey’s chains.

A bright fire was burning as he entered the camp, with Ramsey and his head keeper standing beside it. A new fury had risen on Ramsey’s face. He had revived, and had spoken with Cameron.

The patron stepped toward Duncan as soon as he saw him. Something wild and hot had grown in Ramsey’s eyes. With surprising speed he lifted an arm and slapped Duncan, hard.

“Sedition!” Ramsey hissed. “I curse the day the good reverend laid eyes on you!” He turned to Cameron, standing in front of the remaining Company men. “Seize him!”

Cameron glanced toward the ridge path, then leapt forward. He held Duncan at both sides as Ramsey slapped him again, and again. “You were the one who encouraged her. You were the one with the impudence to defy me, to steal my trust. You were the one who destroyed my charter!”

Duncan’s head swam, his vision blurred. The Company men swarmed around him. He was vaguely aware of movement at his back, of something cold on his shoulder. By the time he understood and tried to resist, it was too late. One of the hinged iron collars was on his neck, with a small, bent hook fastened in the holes at the rear.

“Your hot Scottish blood blinds you to the simplest of facts,” Ramsey hissed. “The Ramsey Company requested your transportation to America. The Ramsey Company can rescind its request. You, sir, will be shipped back to England in irons with a long list of new crimes, signed by myself as magistrate. I vow to you, McCallum, you will rot away the rest of your miserable life in a moldy English cell.”

A figure appeared beside Ramsey, and a hand seized the patron’s arm as it rose to slap Duncan again. Woolford was instantly surrounded by Cameron’s men.

“And you, Captain Woolford, will be mucking barracks stables in India by the time I finish with you.”

Woolford surveyed the hungry faces of the men around him. The ranger had only a handful of his own men to back him up, and once they were out of the wilderness, the world belonged to Ramsey. As Duncan watched, Woolford cast a glance toward the path to the sacred valley. They both knew it would take little encouragement for some of the Scots there to deal permanently with Ramsey. But if they let him be killed, none of them—neither Duncan, nor Woolford, nor Jamie—could ever face Sarah again. The ranger dropped his hand and retreated, pulling Sarah with him.

Ramsey watched as the ranger faded into the shadows, then turned toward the post and spat a quick command. Duncan saw the motion of a thick piece of firewood being swung through the air. It knocked him to his knees. As he fought for his breath, a second blow connected with his skull and flattened him against the ground.

When he regained consciousness, Duncan had been untied from the post and a rope had been fastened to the collar. He watched as if from a distance as Cameron strung the rope over a limb and heaved, tightening it so that Duncan had to stand on the balls of his feet. They left him there in the chill autumn air and returned to their blankets. By the time someone loosened the knot, in the small hours of the night, he was so wracked with pain, he could only collapse onto the ground.

At dawn he was awakened with cold water on his face as the Company men made ready for travel. Cameron pulled Duncan to his feet in time to see Ramsey throw his pack into the underbrush, then the keeper led him down the trail to the river like a leashed dog, out of the now-abandoned Iroquois village.

Duncan stared at the earth as he walked, reliving a memory of his long-ago day on the mast. A black wave was speeding toward him again. Ramsey was pushing him into it, and afterward he would have no life.

Suddenly Cameron spat a warning and lifted the club in his hand, then relaxed as Woolford stepped onto the trail, followed by Sarah, in a green dress, her hair neatly combed, her face scrubbed. “The rangers are taking Major Pike downriver,” she announced in a flat voice. “We have readied more canoes. If we leave now, with so many men to help with the portages, we can be at Edentown tomorrow afternoon.”

“This escapee,” Ramsey said, with a gesture toward Duncan, “receives a hundred lashes when we reach Edentown. And I have decided that two days after we return, the old man hangs.”

“You cannot!” Duncan’s protest came out so loud every man turned toward him. “The governor must approve first.”

“I have decided to ask his forgiveness,” Ramsey explained in an imperious tone, “rather than his permission. I will explain the crisis of law and order that we face and the need for a speedy resolution. He will understand when I explain that our town is populated with Scottish convicts. But before we hang him, McCallum, we will bind him to the scaffold and make him watch as we flay the skin from your back.”

Sarah and Woolford turned down the trail without reply. On one of Woolford’s shoulders hung Duncan’s haversack; on the other, an extra rifle. Duncan’s rifle.

Three strangers waited at the first of the ranger’s canoes, all wearing Highland bonnets and dark plaid kilts, their top half naked save for sleeveless waistcoats and chest straps. Not strangers, Duncan realized with a start. Jamie and two of his men, having scrubbed off their paint and shifted to a semblance of European dress, were traveling with them. His brother offered no acknowledgment as Duncan caught his eye before being dragged toward a canoe, did not seem to notice as Cameron shoved him downward to soak his clothes, assuring he would shiver in the cool air.

The river was faster than Duncan could have imagined. The canoes shot downstream until sunset, then the party stopped to camp on an island, where two fires were lit—one for the Ramsey men, the second for Woolford and the others. Duncan, tethered to a tree, was given a strip of dried meat to chew and otherwise ignored
as his captors covered themselves for sleep. Then a shadow appeared at his side. Sarah arranged a blanket over his legs, then rolled herself in another blanket, to sleep beside him, though they did not sleep at first, only leaned against the tree, her head nestled in his shoulder. There were no words between them, not simply because the others might hear, but because he knew it was the not the way of Sarah or the Iroquois who had raised her to give words to what rose in their hearts, only to show it. And in these moments he felt their roles reversed, as if he were the wild deer about to bolt.

He only spoke when the moon was high, when he was certain the Company men all slept. “They were going to use you as bait to attract Tashgua,” he said. “You realized it, and with Adam and Evering gone, you did not know how to stop it. It’s why you made the ritual at the compass, then went out on that mast in the storm.”

He could feel her nod against his shoulder. “Adam was arranging for Evering to help me escape,” Sarah whispered. “Evering would meet Conawago in New York town, and Conawago would take me away.”

“But Adam and Evering died,” Duncan said, weighing her words. “You ran away from the inn to the mission. You could have gone into the forest. Why did you go to Edentown?”

“Because of you, Duncan, and what happened to Mr. Lister. When I heard about that, at the inn, I knew Lord Ramsey would destroy you both.”

“Why the barn, Sarah?” he asked after weighing the puzzles of the past ten days.

Her reply, slow in coming, sent a shudder down his back. “Because Lord Ramsey and Hawkins share the same skin,” she said in a cracked voice.

He touched her cheek. It was soaked with tears.

Duncan gazed at the moon a long time, mentally reciting the list of the McCallum clan chiefs, then asked her to find Woolford. She returned with the ranger and a god. The Indian wearing the spirit mask gazed at him with hollow eyes as Duncan explained the battle to come.