Bone Rattler (60 page)

T
HE GALLOWS WAS NEARLY COMPLETE when they arrived at Edentown, a whipping post with an iron ring already sunk into the ground beside it. The men of the Company would not look Duncan in the eye as he stumbled along the main street, pulled on his leash by Cameron. He resisted as he passed the smithy, and though the jerk of the rope nearly knocked him off his feet, he paused long enough to make out the silent shadowy form in the charcoal crib, and to see the bony fingers that gripped the slats. Lister, looking like a ghost, was watching the finishing touches on his gibbet.

Ramsey’s spirits had risen steadily as they approached the town, and by the time he climbed onto the bank near his massive barn, he was snapping orders, calling for men to clear the desks from the schoolhouse, to line the classroom with benches, to straighten a fence rail here, clean a harness there. He completed his promenade when he reached Duncan, now tied to the hitching post at the schoolhouse steps.

“I shall bathe and take a large meal,” he announced airily as Crispin arrived with a cup of tea, “then we shall have our justice. Mr. Lister will be tried for murder, and you, McCallum, shall be tried for theft. We shall—” Ramsey paused, looking at a group of strangers huddled at the cooper’s shed—a dozen men, women, and children,
their clothing torn and soiled. “Who are these trespassers?” he demanded.

“More settlers, sir,” Crispin explained. “Burned out of their cabins. Some escaped the Huron, fled as soon as they heard the cries in the night.”

Ramsey surveyed the ragged group with a frown, then his gaze was captured by movement on the riverbank. Sarah had arrived, and was being helped ashore by Conawago. Ramsey silently pointed her toward the great house and waited to enter until she had disappeared inside. Moments later Crispin returned to the schoolhouse with food, drink, and a basin to wash Duncan’s wounds.

By the time the patron emerged more than an hour later, bewigged and dressed as if for church, Jamie and his two men were moving among the Company workers, several of whom uttered small sounds of joy at the sight of their kilts. Wherever they touched the ranks, the men dispersed, fading away behind the barn. Ramsey, busy positioning and repositioning his freshly powdered wig, noticed their actions only as he climbed the schoolhouse steps.

“Fools!” he snapped at the keepers, who now held Lister, so weak he had to be supported, at both shoulders. “Summon the men back! The trial commences!”

But the keepers did not move. Their eyes, wide and worried, were focused on the new rank of strangers who, as if by magic, had appeared along the riverbank.

They were larger than life, huge bronzed men—some adorned only with paint, leggings, and loincloths, some in britches and boots wearing remnants of uniform tunics. Three wore kilts; two, incongruously, wore swords. All were armed, with rifle, war ax, or bow. Their faces were solemn, their spines rigid and straight. The remainder of Tashgua’s band had arrived, and stood as if ready for battle.

At the center, beside Tashgua’s son, was Woolford, freshly shaven and in a spotless uniform, wearing, for the first time since Duncan had known him, the brass gorget of rank at his neck. The ranger stepped forward. “The trial commences,” he repeated in a loud voice.

“Do not mock me, Woolford,” Ramsey growled.

“Do not mock the king,” Woolford shot back as he approached. He paused at the water trough, filled a ladle, and handed it to Lister, who ravenously gulped it, then marched to the foot of the steps. “This is a theater of war. I am a captain in His Majesty’s army. I have records showing that one of your defendants is enrolled as a ranger in my own company. There is the murder of my sergeant to resolve. There is evidence of a crime committed by a king’s officer.”

Ramsey had the look of a hungry predator whose fresh meat was being threatened. “You cannot have McCallum.”

“You mistake me, sir. A court-martial is required, but I respect your desire for efficiency in the administration of justice. So we shall proceed with two judges.”

Ramsey glared at the ranger. “I am aware of military procedure, Captain. You have no authority.”

“In the wilderness,” Woolford said in a treacherous tone, “in the midst of war, we are all used to asking forgiveness rather than permission. Major Pike has been relieved of command. Until countermanded by a more senior officer in the regular army,” he said, “I speak for the military.”

“I am colonel of the Edentown militia. If you wish to exercise authority, then you may clamp James McCallum in chains, Captain.”

“A regular army officer is not beholden to the militia,” Woolford declared in an even tone. “And we shall try one McCallum at a time.”

Ramsey paused and glanced at Duncan. The patron’s temper seemed about to erupt anew when he saw five figures emerge from the house. Sarah was attired in a dark blue dress trimmed in lace, one Duncan had not seen before, with her hair pinned back, giving her the look of a woman several years older. Flanking her were Crispin and Conawago, each holding the hand of one of the younger Ramsey children. Sarah stepped forward and curtseyed to the patron. But for the leather pouch that hung beside the gold chain on her bodice, she would have been a match for any young woman of elegant breeding on any promenade in London. The dress had a French flair to it. It
was, Duncan realized, most likely borrowed from her mother’s closet. Her appearance struck Ramsey dumb.

“We shall convene in the barn,” Woolford announced, and he turned without waiting for a reply.

Sarah, Crispin, and Conawago followed the ranger into the huge structure that dominated the town—Ramsey’s precious Palace of Husbandry. The patron watched in confusion for a moment, then darted inside the school, returning with an ornate gavel and his copy of Plato, and followed, gesturing for the keepers to bring their prisoners. Duncan took a step toward Lister, who, leaning on a makeshift crutch to relieve his broken ankle, seemed about to topple at any moment. But with a satisfied grunt, Cameron pulled back on Duncan’s collar, then shoved him toward the barn.

Two wide planks had been placed on trestles, nearly spanning the center aisle. Two stools were placed behind this improvised bench for the judges, and a third at the end of the table, for witnesses. Ramsey, scowling, was about to sit when he froze and pointed above their heads. “Remove that monstrous thing!”

Old Crooked Face had been shifted within the loft, so that the Iroquois spirit mask hung on a barn post directly above the judges’ bench, as portraits of the king hung in English courtrooms.

When Cameron stepped to the ladder, Jamie was there first, blocking his way. “There was a great debate, Your Highness,” Jamie said to Ramsey in an exaggerated Scottish burr, “about whether an Iroquois should sit as judge, given the crimes committed against them. It would be one of the older women most likely, since they are often deemed the wisest among the tribes.”

“The king’s justice,” Ramsey replied in a chill tone, “will never bend so far.”

“But my aboriginal friends agreed,” Jamie continued, “that we need not have a third justice beside you, so long as there is one listening overhead. Perhaps we might borrow a wig for him?” Two of his band appeared overhead, in the loft, flanking the mask as if to guard it. “He is a grand god, you know. Old Crooked Face. He was
working in the skies, helping create the world, when he began frolicking with the other deities—racing, as it were—and got a wee bit carried away. In his excitement, he fell against a mountain and smashed his face. The Iroquois love him. I think it is for his honesty. He still goes out in the world and admits his ugliness. He lets the world know that sometimes the almighty can go too far.”

Ramsey’s eyes flared again. “I want him—I want that thing in the smithy furnace,” Ramsey demanded, turning to Crispin. Duncan glanced at the forge. The furnace had been lit. When the trial was over, the smith would drive a hot bolt into Duncan’s iron collar and crimp it permanently down, sealing his fate.

As Crispin took an uneasy step forward, Ramsey gazed anxiously at the assembly of Company men, Indians, and Scottish deserters, then sighed and raised a restraining hand. He rose, lifted his stool, and placed it on the opposite side of Woolford. The mask was no longer in his field of vision. With a stroke of his gavel, Ramsey commenced the proceeding.

The trial, he had once proclaimed, would be a grand ritual, an instruction in biblical commandments and Plato’s logic. Now he extracted a sheet of paper folded within the volume of Plato. From his seat five feet away, Duncan had no trouble recognizing Arnold’s handwriting, and realized the vicar would have had time to rewrite the notes he had sent with McGregor, and lost. Ramsey stated the murder charges against Lister and the charges of theft and breach of indenture against Duncan, then straightened the paper on the plank in front of him and read the first name on Arnold’s list. He worked the witnesses in quick succession, taking testimony on the deaths of Evering and Frasier, following the advice of Arnold from beyond the grave.

“We have no end of comments about circumstances,” Woolford interjected after the fifth witness, “but not a word on the criminal acts of the accused.”

“Mr. Lister was found bending over poor Frasier’s body, the boy’s blood on his hands,” Ramsey snapped. “The night Evering died, everyone was accounted for except Lister. He killed Evering because
of his hatred for everything English, more particularly because Evering had doubtlessly discovered his lie. He killed Frasier because Frasier had discovered evidence of the first crime.”

“There are other circumstances to be considered,” Woolford declared. “I call on Mr. Lister’s advocate to explain,” He pointed to Duncan, in the front row.

“McCallum?” Ramsey gasped. “Impossible! You cannot ask a prisoner to—”

Woolford ignored Ramsey, motioned Duncan to rise. “There are other motives to consider,” the ranger said, “and other men who were unaccounted for the nights Evering and Frasier were murdered. And there is the science of their deaths. Science does not lie.” He addressed Ramsey now. “Science, like justice, instructs the truth.”

Ramsey’s anger seemed to subside. Here, at least, was the kind of talk Plato would have preferred at a trial.

Duncan quickly led them through the scientific evidence, explaining how it proved Evering had been killed in his cabin with two blows from a hammer, how Frasier had also died of a hammer blow, a single blow to the head. Before being killed, Evering had smashed one of Sarah’s dosing vials of laudanum, had, as Sarah could confirm, been allowing her to awaken, had been speaking with her of her plight and of the Ramsey Company. Jacob—another friend of Sarah, Duncan added—had died when his path had crossed that of the Company.

“The ferryman? He was a heathen,” Ramsey scoffed, his patience paper-thin now. “Two killings will be sufficient to stretch this man’s neck.”

“There were four murders, counting Sergeant Fitch,” Duncan rejoined, speaking to the assembly in front of him. “All arising out of Ramsey Company affairs.”

“Do not presume,” Ramsey simmered, “that by digressing you will save a minute of this killer’s life.”

“I call my first witness,” Duncan said in reply.

Ramsey pounded his gavel angrily. “You will not mock this tribunal, sir. You have no authority!”

“I call my first witness,” interrupted Woolford in a loud voice. The officer gave Duncan an inquisitive nod.

“Reverend Zettlemeyer of the German Flats mission,” Duncan announced. Woolford repeated the name.

The Moravian, dressed for the pulpit, emerged from the back of the assembly. Duncan lost no time in asking him about the settlers in the lands between Edentown and the mission. Of his own accord, Zettlemeyer produced a piece of paper—a map. When Ramsey objected, Woolford ordered Duncan to proceed. Pike, sitting between two soldiers on a front bench, rose as if to leave; his sergeant, the Irishman, blocked his path. The major hissed an order. The sergeant pointed him back to the bench. Duncan held the Moravian’s map for all to see, pointing first to two crosses marking German Flats in the north and Edentown in the south.

“What are the little squares?” he asked the missionary. There were over two dozen squares scattered around the map.

“Each is a homestead, a farm,” the German replied, “all those within forty miles of the mission.”

“Who has such a map?”

“I made this copy from two identical ones I sent to Reverend Arnold four months ago.”

“We must know all our neighbors,” Ramsey said, as if in protest. “The Reverend had to know all the sheep of his flock.”

“Are some of that flock present?” Duncan asked the missionary.

Zettlemeyer nodded and motioned a man and a woman forward, introducing them as the survivors of two different homesteads. Duncan asked them to mark their farms on the map, then all the others that had been attacked by Indians. He soon displayed the map to the assembly, now showing many
Xs
, all along the river.

When Duncan called the next witness, Pike growled out a futile protest. All the way to the stool, Pike’s sergeant looked at his feet. The big Irishman quickly confirmed that Major Pike often consulted a map kept in the leather cartridge case on his belt. Pike made a quick sideways motion as if to slide off his bench, then felt the
chill stare of his sergeant and moved no more. He said nothing as a ranger approached and pulled the leather cartridge box from his belt. Duncan accepted the case, opened it, and pulled out another map. He held it up beside Zettlemeyer’s map.

Duncan showed how the map had been folded, addressed on the reverse, and marked for postage. “Why, Major Pike,” he asked, pointing to the addressee’s name, “would Reverend Arnold send you one of his maps?” When Pike did not reply, Duncan paced along the front of the assembly. “And why would it be precisely the same map, with the same marks as those we’ve made today by the homesteads that were destroyed?”