Broken Trail (11 page)

IN THE MORNING
Broken Trail took Elijah's undershirt and coat to the stream and washed them in the clear water, pounding them on a rock to remove every bit of blood. After bringing them back to the maple tree, he draped them over a bush to dry, close enough to the cavity's entrance that he could pull them inside if he heard anyone approach. That scarlet coat with its blue facings made a brilliant contrast to the bush's grey-green leaves.

Then he changed the poultice. Already it was doing its work, pulling out not only pus but also bits of dirt and shreds of fabric that the bayonet had driven into the wound. The swelling was down. Elijah's brow was cool.

Elijah slept most of the day, waking only to eat and drink.
After trying both hardtack and corn powder, Elijah said he would leave the corn powder for Broken Trail, explaining that he was happy with hardtack, being used to it. Broken Trail was glad to learn that.

The following morning, the swelling was almost gone. “You're well enough to travel,” Broken Trail said as he washed the skin around the wound, “if you take it slowly.”

“Good. After three days in a burrow, I'm starting to feel like a badger.”

“We've been safe under this tree. I don't know anything about the folks who live nearby, but they aren't likely to be friendly.”

“My uniform may be a problem. Anybody can spot my red coat a mile away.”

“You could rub it with mud.”

“Oh, no!” Elijah looked shocked. But then he shrugged. “My coat will be filthy anyway by the time I've waded through the swamps to Charleston.”

“Charleston? Where's that?”

“About a hundred miles southeast from here.”

“Why do you have to go there?”

“To report for duty. Charleston is the centre for British military operations in the south.”

“Oh.” For a moment, Broken Trail had nothing to say. He must go north. Elijah must go south. They might never meet again.

“What about you?” Elijah asked.

“I'm going back to my village. Nobody knows what's become of me. I don't know what kind of welcome I'll receive. The longer I'm away, the worse it will be.”

“So you're heading back to Oneida Lake.”

“No. Not there. Over a year ago, the rebels drove us from those lands. My band's new village is on the north shore of the St. Lawrence River, one day's paddle east of Carleton Island.”

“Carleton Island! Is that right?” Elijah fell silent. He lay on his back, staring straight up at the spider webs above his head. After a long time had passed, he said: “I'll go with you as far as Carleton Island.”

“Go with me?” Broken Trail pondered this. Nothing could please him more than to travel on a long trail with his brother, yet he suppressed the thrill of gladness that rose in him. Elijah had disappointed him in the past. He must not let it happen again. “You just told me you have to report for duty,” he said brusquely.

“I do. But Fort Haldimand on Carleton Island is where I joined the Royal Greens. Why shouldn't I go back there to report for duty? It's where I enlisted in the first place.”

“Isn't Carleton Island a lot farther off than Charleston?”

“Five times farther.” Another pause. “Truth is, it will give you and me a chance to catch up.”

“Makes sense to me.” Broken Trail cleared his throat, still hiding his eagerness. “Besides, I'm not sure you're strong enough yet to travel on your own.”

Elijah may not have been listening. He appeared to be lost in his own thoughts.

“If we go to Carleton Island,” he said, “we can see Ma and Hope.”

“You can see them, not me. They're not my family any more. Not since the Oneidas adopted me.”

“But Ma is still the mother that gave you birth. And Hope is still your little sister. You can't change that.”

“Yes, I can!” Broken Trail sat up so quickly he bumped his head hard on the underside of a root as thick as a man's torso. “I have an Oneida family now.”

“Just a minute. If the first nine years of your life count for nothing, then what are you doing here with me?”

Broken Trail did not answer. It was something he could not explain. He had tried so hard to forget Elijah. It was his duty to forget him. But even on his dream quest, while he was fasting in the wilderness waiting for his vision, it had been Elijah's face that he saw when he looked at his own reflection in the pool of quiet water.

“Are you telling me I'll always be white at heart? That's what my enemies think. Is that what you think, too?”

“I'm not saying that.” Elijah spoke slowly, as if weighing every word. “You reckon you have to be one or the other, either white or Oneida. But it doesn't need to be that way.”

“Yes, it does.” Broken Trail scowled. “A man can't follow two paths at the same time. He has to make a choice.”

Elijah sat up and lightly punched Broken Trail's shoulder.
“Sorry if I said the wrong thing. I don't want to quarrel. Let's go. We have a long journey ahead.”

Broken Trail was glad to drop the subject. Elijah put troubling thoughts into his head. Could Carries a Quiver, so wise about many things, be wrong about this?

They crawled out of the hole. Elijah blinked when the sunshine struck his face. When he stood, he had to rest one hand against the tree trunk to steady himself. He shook his head. “Don't worry. I'll be fine.”

Broken Trail could not say the same for himself. He tried to fix his mind on his Oneida home and on his duty, but found that he could no longer see so clearly what that duty was.

FOR THE FIRST FOUR
days of their journey, everything looked different. Perhaps on his way south, too much of his effort had been directed to staying on the horse and not enough to noticing landmarks that any warrior should automatically store in his memory. Whatever the reason, Broken Trail could not shake off the uncomfortable feeling that he had lost his way.

It was not until the fifth day, when they reached the farm where he and Red Sun Rising had stolen the horses, that Broken Trail knew exactly where he was.

Although it had been night when he saw it the first time,
he recognized the farm at once. It stood nestled in the hills, just off the main trail. There was the two-storey home built of dressed timber, the barn, the paddock and the small log outbuilding. A flock of brown hens with bright red combs, scrabbling for scattered grain near the open door of the outbuilding, made clear its present use. That hen house must have been the family's original log cabin, Broken Trail thought, for not only was it larger than a chicken coop needed to be, but it boasted a big stone chimney and, in one sidewall, a window. The window was boarded over. Although some chinking was missing from between the logs, the chicken house was still a sturdy-looking building.

There were also pigs on the farm, not in a pen but branded and ranging free. The only fence was the one around the empty paddock.

Seeing the paddock, Broken Trail felt a twinge of guilt. Maybe the farmer had not had time to replace the horses that Broken Trail and Red Sun Rising had stolen. Or maybe he could not afford to.

“You've stopped walking.” Elijah's voice interrupted his thoughts.

“Have I?”

“And you're looking mighty hard at that farm.”

“This is where Red Sun Rising and I stole the horses.”

“I wish we had those horses now!”

Broken Trail gulped. “I wish we did too, so I could give them back. Red Sun Rising said it was right to take them
because white settlers stole Cherokee land. But it didn't feel right to me.”

“What's right doesn't matter. In a war, people have to take what they need.”

He started to walk on, but Broken Trail did not move.

“Look!” he said. “There's a girl.”

A girl wearing a grey gown and a white apron had come from the house. Her hair was in two long, brown braids. She looked about twelve years old.

Elijah stopped. He looked, too.

“Sure enough,” he laughed. “That's a girl. Haven't you ever seen one before?”

“Shh!”

The girl looked around, but not in their direction.

“Come, Rover!” she called. “Time to round up the chickens.” Her voice was clear and sweet, with a twang.

A shaggy black and white dog rose from a patch of sunshine and shook itself.

“I remember that dog,” Broken Trail said. “Red Sun Rising fed it a charm so it wouldn't bark.”

“It looks to me like your eyes are more on the girl than on the dog.” Elijah grinned. Then his expression changed, and in an instant he was serious. “If you want to watch, we'd better hide. We don't want the folks living here to see us.”

“You're right. With me in deerskins and you in a red coat, we wouldn't enjoy the welcome they'd give us.”

Ducking out of sight, they crawled through the bushes to
a honeysuckle thicket where they could see without being seen.

“Rover, go get 'em!” The girl stuck her fingers into her mouth and whistled. That's all she had to do. Running close to the ground, the dog made a wide circle around the chickens. Clucking indignantly, but not overly alarmed, they moved in closer together. Then the dog completed a second, tighter circle that manoeuvred them right through the coop's open door. The girl, close behind, slammed it shut. The dog trotted to her side.

“Good dog!” She reached down to rub its ear.

“Well, I never!” Elijah whispered. “That girl didn't have to lift a finger except to shut the door. That's a smart dog.”

“The girl's the smart one—getting the dog to do all the work.”

A woman came from the house. She wore a white mob-cap on her head, and a grey homespun dress very like the girl's.

“Libby dear, you and Rover better drive the hogs into the barn before your pa and your brother arrive home with those new horses. I don't want them spooked by hogs before they get used to this place.”

“Yes, Ma.” She turned to the dog. “Pigs, Rover!”

“Seen enough?” Elijah asked.

“No. I want to see the horses.”

“We don't know how long we'd have to wait. And it's not safe—”

“Shh!” Broken Trail raised his hand. “Listen.”

Hoof beats.

There was no time to look for a safer hiding place. Broken Trail and Elijah lay still, their bodies pressed to the ground and only their heads held up to see what was happening.

Turning off the main trail were two horsemen. One horse was a roan gelding, and the other a bay mare.

The man riding the gelding was middle-aged and completely bald, with a brown beard so bushy that it more than made up for the absence of hair on top of his head. The other man was much younger, about eighteen years old. His blond hair was cut short, and he had a corn-coloured crop of chin whiskers.

The men rode their horses straight through the open gate into the paddock. Before they had dismounted, the woman walked over and rested her arms on the top rail.

“They look good, Judah,” she said. “Let's hope Cherokees don't steal them, too.”

“Laura, I have some mighty good news,” the older man said in a deep, rumbling voice. “Today there's one less murdering horse thief roaming the hills.”

“Don't tell me Captain Cherokee has been caught!”

“The very same.”

“Some fellows spotted him trying to steal a horse over near Tar Heel,” the younger man said as he dismounted. “He was easy enough for them to spot, wearing that red coat with all the gold trim.”

“All dressed up for a party!” the man called Judah rumbled. “A hanging party, that is. Laura, I hope y'all got plenty of flour and eggs on hand. There'll be a crowd here for breakfast tomorrow. Nothing like watching a hanging to give a man a good appetite.”

“The Lord be thanked!” the woman exclaimed. “I ain't felt safe for one minute since he butchered that family over by Elizabethtown. What kind of monster would kill an innocent baby? And those two sweet little girls.”

Broken Trail nudged Elijah's arm. He whispered in his ear. “They're talking about Red Sun Rising. He took a uniform from a dead officer on the battlefield at Kings Mountain. I saw him strutting around in it. But they've got one thing wrong. He didn't kill that family. No, sir! We were travelling together when we came upon those folks. They were dead already.”

Judah was still talking. “Some of the boys are bringing him in. They'll be here by sundown. We'll lock Captain Cherokee in the chicken house tonight, then hang him first thing in the morning.”

“We should hang him just as soon as they bring him in,” the younger man said. “Why wait?”

“What! Cheat good folks out of the pleasure of watching him die? Half the homesteaders in Watauga County have been attacked by savages claiming to own this land. People will come from miles around to see him hang.”

“You unsaddle the horses and take the tack into the barn,”
the woman said to the younger man. “Give Libby a hand with the pigs. Then both of you come in for supper.”