All True Not a Lie in It (31 page)

I walk with my captors towards my men. I feel myself part of a mad play. The snow crunches, the sun strikes it blindingly. We crunch along all day, and the cold brightness does not lessen though the trees shade the light now and then.

At the Blue Licks camp, the men are lolling on their blankets in the last of the day’s light. The river is too high, the spring water too diluted to give even a taste of salt now. Lying in the pool of light, the men look idle and content enough. Young Jimmy Callaway is usually watching carefully for any trouble so he might be proven right, like his uncle Dick. I am glad Colonel Dick is not here and that perhaps I will never have to see him again. But even young Callaway is lying back with his patched moccasins upon a stone, looking only into the dimming sky. Hill is humming, bobbing his head back and forth with his eyes shut. The big kettles sit cold with the few sacks heaped up beside them, ready to be packed back to the fort.

All of this is about to change, I am about to change all of it. I look back to the chiefs. Black Fish lifts his chin. And so I walk forward first from the trees.

Hill sits up and rubs at his forehead, which has gone pink. He is the first to speak:

—Dan! Here is our hunter. Surely not empty-handed.

I take a breath and I say:

—No. I have brought plenty with me.

I blow out through my teeth. There is nothing clever that I can do or say here. I have done it. Here is the only truth:

—Boys. The game is up. They have me, there are too many of them. Do not fight and you may live yet.

They look at me as though I were a ghost, as though I am mad indeed.

They do not kill anyone straight away. Black Fish stays his warriors, though some of them keep their weapons out at I might say jaunty angles.

My men are still looking to me, all narrow eyes and straight mouths. They are sitting in the snow, tied to Shawnees now. The whole camp is scratched over with purple shadows and our guns are a dark shapeless hill a way off. Callaway looks grim but satisfied, his uncle’s usual expression. He and the Brooks brothers were the last to give up their weapons. I see him speak to Hill, and now Hill’s eyes bounce about the camp. He appears to be considering some leap or statement.

I know I will have to speak before Hill does. I will have to play the game. Well. I know how.

Slowly I get to my feet, pulling my heavy keeper up with me. He stands beside me and makes sure to show he is gripping the tie
and my arm in his hands. My mind rolls over like an old dog. In my slow Shawnee mixed with English I say:

—Brothers. Look at us. You see all of these warriors? Look. They will make excellent hunters. They know what to feed women. They know, believe me.

I try to smile, and Hill guffaws, though he understands nothing, before stopping himself. Black Fish’s interpreter turns my words into better Shawnee, that is to say I hope he is doing so. A general stir and laugh come. I go on:

—They will be able to feed your families as well as ours who remain at the fort. I must tell you that the fort is strong. It is a very good fort, a great one. You were on your way there, I know, but it will give you much difficulty if you try to take it. There will be many deaths. We do not need more deaths. And there is no need to harm my men here. I know you will not do that.

I hope the real fort, poor and rotten as it is, does not paint itself on my face. But the Shawnee are listening. The talk rains out of my mouth, though I am not thinking right:

—It is better to wait. Much better to wait. In spring our women and children can travel easily. No deaths. Then I will take you there, and they will all surrender gladly when I tell them about you, and we will go to your towns and all live as one people. It will be better, we will all be better off.

For a wild moment I believe the mad talk that is tumbling from me, this wonderful story, all of my lies. I catch Hill’s face, smiling and full of belief as well. My arms are out, my hands turned up. My ribcage feels thin as eggshell, but my brain is quick as lightning. I say:

—Be good to my men and they will do as you ask. Look at them. All good men. See?

The black man speaks for some time. I cannot catch all of the words.

When he is done, all at once the Indians begin to talk. Their argument boils up and sweeps round the camp, rising and falling like wind. When someone reaches for a tall straight stick among their things, a sudden order takes hold. They queue up to have their turn holding it and speaking. They all speak long and full of passion. Their faces shift and fade in the twilight but their talk goes on.

I understand enough to know that it is bad. Some of the Shawnee warriors throw back their heads as they listen. Aroas looks serious. Some of my men stare back, and few of the younger ones bare their teeth, attempting to show they are not weak, but unsure of what to do. Callaway lifts his lip and I see his dead side-tooth. He rubs his red hair up under his hat. Then his face returns to its measuring. I can see his thoughts working in a line like ants:
There is a way out, there are several
.

The chiefs go off to speak amongst themselves. My men look to me, but I do not understand anything now. The snow is still pale in the dark. The stars try to pierce through.

Black Fish steps away from the chiefs and walks back towards us and his warriors. He pronounces something and sets his hands apart with the space of a foot between them. His eyes give off cold.

It is very silent. He says one word, it is a short word.
Neppoa
. Now comes a show of Shawnee hands.

The black man counts slow, his finger bobs as if he were marking music. Black Fish says another word. I do not catch it. More hands go up. I cannot count now, it seems to me I no longer know what numbers are. My brains try to recall Ma singing a counting song when I was a small boy. One and two, two and three.

The black interpreter draws in a breath and speaks. At once shouts rip loose from the Shawnee. We sit amidst the roaring as if in a windstorm, trying to look stoical. Johnson, small and thin as a child, looks as if he were at a picnic lunch, turning his head about to see the various views. Hill turns his own head about as if it will spin off.

The interpreter appears triumphant. Now he walks the line of us, surveying our upturned faces. He bends and speaks into my ear:

—Fifty-nine.

A solemn slow voice but with an undertone of mischief.

I say:

—Fifty-nine what? Wives apiece for us?

—You can keep them.

This from young Ben Kelly a finger thrust into the air. A few of the men laugh. The black man does not smile. He cocks an eyebrow at me and says:

—Fifty-nine say die.

He walks back up the line, he looks at each of us in turn with his lips set. Then with his back to us and his hands clasped behind him, he ambles off towards the fire.

Hill shouts in disbelief:

—What? How many say live?

The man is walking away. He does not answer. Others begin to shout with Hill: How many? How many? Their voices have the sound of alarmed birds. From up the slope the black man says:

—Is that your concern? You whites. There is never enough for you. Never satisfied. That is your greatest trouble, you ought to know it.

He walks on a few steps and then tosses back:

—Sixty-one.

Hill cries:

—What did he say?

The man is gone. Hill says:

—What did he say, Boone? What is it?

I say:

—Live.

The men roar and gibber and then fall silent, all thinking
Fifty-nine, sixty-one
. To this day I hear those numbers in that slow amused
voice. I look but I cannot see the interpreter, he seems to have disappeared into the dark, and I find myself fearful, not knowing where he has gone.

They are feeding us from our stores when the black man comes back. He stands before me with his arms behind him yet, as if he plans to continue on his idle wander. Black Fish is watching his men packing up our things and cracking pine boughs from the trees. I do not know why they are doing this. The sounds are worse than shots, so hard does the wood crack in the cold. To Black Fish I say:

—Food, but no peace, then.

—We agreed to be peaceful towards your men. Did we say anything of you?

I see the black man’s slow smile, and a bright flicker of amusement across Black Fish’s face before it falls. What he says is true enough. I see the Shawnee sweeping the snow with the broken boughs, raising powdery clouds. Now I know what is coming. I say:

—For me only? Then I will take my pleasure straight away.

—As white men do.

The black man keeps up his smile, the Shawnee laugh. I laugh also, a great braying laugh. As white men do.

The dark comes quick. The interpreter walks me to a long alley made by two lines of Indians running some hundred yards. They have swept the ground in the middle, the bare earth looks black. My men sit tied to one another in the snow at the end of the lane far away. The pitch torches burn like bright blowing tents against the dark. The eyes are all flashes when they move, the teeth show in laughing crescents.

I am near bare. My skin shines and flickers orange. They have let me keep my leggings and moccasins. The cold air stings my
chest, gooseflesh crawls up my body. I breathe hard, my mouth and nostrils open. One of the warriors I recognize calls in English:

—Run pony, run.

He claps. I do not run yet. They are all watching to see what I will do. I know this feeling well enough. Clubs, gun-butts, sticks, a few furtive knives, to judge from the metal glints here and there. All waiting.

My muscles whisper and tighten, almost a happiness. But no. There is no happiness now. I do not know what it is, I feel old and young at once, as if I were being reborn out of bones and ashes in the snowy dark. Confusion cramps me. I do not wish to be alive.

They will kill me. I think this and it is a relief. It propels me gasping forward.

I run hard from the start. They all let out their own coiled force, lashing with their weapons and their feet and fists. This is no game, there is no easy go for me here. Black Fish’s still face flashes by behind the line on the left, but I am past him quickly, I dodge skull-crackers and an axe all coming down in flying arcs. I see each movement and each planned movement, each flare of a weapon turning and falling in the light. My eyes are everywhere, dried out and raw with cold. My shoulder is snapped hard and pulled back as I go, but it seems to belong to someone else and so does my heart, it is leaping like a caged bird in another chest.

Jamesie. No. Do not use him as fuel, do not waste him here, you goddamned ape.

My mouth burns dry and sour. My skin is hot, the snow falling is like thousands of wings brushing me. I cut and feint, I dance along the alley of weapons, a fist, another ball club, a yell, an open palm, a closed one, a gun-butt raised to smash in my forehead, a short blade slashing low. A club bangs my rib with a crack but it disappears behind me with everything else. I am living still and running. I am inviting Death to a fight. I do not know what I am about. My skin is
inches thick, made of pounded metal. An old knight crashing forward in a joust, O Sir Dan! And no real armour and no horse, only a poor ghost of something that was, but I am winning. If I run fast enough I will reach you, Jamesie.

The last man. Direct in my path, big-shouldered. His hands out low, his arms tense and ruddy in the torchlight, a strip of paint across his eyes. He is not Cherokee Jim but he is framed like him, or close enough. Yes.

I lower my iron head and drive it straight at the waiting chest, ploughing through the suddenly soft body, no breath left in it or me.

This is the end. I keep running, I cannot stop. I might run on into the forest and I do not think that they could stop me now. All the way home I might go. Or elsewhere. Some clean snowy place I have never been and that nothing has ruined.

The sound reaches me, my men applauding and Hill bawling out, Haha!, and one of his ridiculous whoring songs for joy:

So I’ll roar and I’ll groan
,