Kings Pinnacle (15 page)

“Weel now Robber, look at
the fasherie ye’ve got us into now,” said Hugh who was lying on his
back on one of the cots in the cell.

Robert didn’t say anything
as he gazed out the cell window toward the Larne harbor.

* * * *

Alex

Dawn was just breaking over
the eastern horizon in muted rosy shades as the sky lightened. The
morning sun soon melted the fluffy clouds, and the Iroquois started
stirring from their night’s sleep. Alex and the Longhunter had
spent a cold, sleepless night lying on the creek bank beside the
log while covered up with mud and leaves.

The Iroquois scout that had
paused on top of the log that they were hiding next to had not
stayed long. He had moved on to cover more of the stream as soon as
he determined that he could not locate the two men in that area.
The Iroquois band had decided to camp for the night on the flat
area near the stream bank, just above where the two men lay. From
snippets of overheard conversation, the Longhunter had determined
that the warriors thought that those who attacked them were further
downstream and had run to ground for the night. The braves thought
that they would rather pursue the ones on foot who fired muskets at
them and killed some of their warriors than chase one or more of
them on horseback that got away. They surmised that it was better
not to divide their force and go after the horse, which had a head
start and was obviously running fast. Riding fast at night was
risky, as evidenced by the dead horse in the trail, but the person
riding the horse obviously had nothing to lose. The warriors didn’t
want to take the risk in order to chase the person on the horse at
night.

When it was light enough to
see, the Iroquois mounted their horses and rode further down the
stream. They left warriors behind to guard the camp site and to
block any attempt by their quarry to double back toward the main
trail. Alex and the Longhunter knew that they must make their move
as soon as the warriors were out of earshot. The Iroquois would
surely find their hiding place when they couldn’t find any sign of
the two men further downstream and came back to explore the stream
near the camp site more closely.

As soon as the guards
settled, Alex and the Longhunter crawled under the cut bank. Using
signs and whispers, the Longhunter told Alex how they would circle
around and kill the guards before they ran back toward the main
trail. They crawled along the creek to a wash where they could get
up the bank without being seen and then worked their way around
behind the guards. After a short period of waiting and listening,
the Longhunter and Alex determined that there were probably only
two guards. Using signs and gestures, the Longhunter directed Alex
to creep up behind one of the guards while he took care of the
other one. At a signal from the Longhunter, Alex lunged with his
knife and stuck his assigned guard in the back. Simultaneously, the
Longhunter was close enough to reach around with his knife and slit
the throat of the other guard.

The guard that Alex killed
gave a grunt before he dropped to the ground, and Alex finished him
off by slitting his throat. That grunt from the dying guard alerted
a third Iroquois guard that Alex and the Longhunter had not seen or
heard or accounted for. The third guard immediately took off
running toward the main group of Iroquois to alert them of the
location of their quarry.

Alex and the Longhunter saw
the guard run toward their pursuers but couldn’t do anything to
stop him. Neither man had had an opportunity to reload his rifle
after the previous night’s skirmish. So they both turned and ran in
the opposite direction, back toward the main trail. When they got
to the main trail, they turned again in the direction that the girl
had ridden and took off at a fast ground-eating trot to save their
strength. They knew that the Iroquois were on horseback, and it
wouldn’t be long before they were overtaken. So they wanted to put
as much distance between themselves and the warriors as possible.
Their hope was to find some kind of defensible position where they
would have a fighting chance before the braves got to
them.

It wasn’t long before they
heard horses coming. Not long after that, they heard the war cries
of the warriors as the two men came into sight. A good defensible
position had not been located, so Alex and the Longhunter ran off
the trail and into the trees, where the band of warriors could not
just ride them down and overwhelm them. The braves followed the two
men more slowly, as their horses picked their way around the trees.
Very quickly, the pursuers moved up on both sides and behind the
men, herding them into a small clearing just off the main trail
where the braves on horseback encircled them. The Iroquois
tightened the circle around Alex and the Longhunter until they were
about forty paces from the two men.

Alex and the Longhunter
stood back-to-back in the middle of the clearing preparing for the
final fight of their lives, holding only dirks and knives because
their rifles were still unloaded. There had been no opportunity
during the entire chase for them to reload. The fighting was now
either going to be close combat or it was going to be their
execution using bows and arrows. The Iroquois sat there for several
heartbeats on their horses, eyeing the two men in the center of the
circle while the tension mounted.

Slowly one of the warriors
notched an arrow into his bow string and aimed it at Alex. Alex was
turned away from that brave and didn’t see the danger he was in.
The Longhunter spied the peril at the last moment, just as he
turned his head to look in that direction. He knew that he didn’t
have time to warn Alex. Just as the Iroquois let the arrow fly, the
Longhunter leaped between Alex and the arrow. The speeding arrow
pierced the Longhunter’s shoulder, and he fell to the ground. Alex
turned just as the Longhunter fell, and rage pumped more adrenaline
into his body. His face turned bright red from his anger. Alex
stepped over the Longhunter and flipped his knife around so that he
was holding it by the blade. He quickly drew it back and threw it
at the Iroquois whose arrow had downed the Longhunter. The knife
throw was a good one, and the blade buried itself in the chest of
the Iroquois who had shot the arrow. The warrior fell off his horse
and lay dead beside it with the knife sticking in his
chest.

Alex had no way of knowing
that the Iroquois’ plan had been to kill Alex immediately and then
capture the Longhunter to take him to their longhouses. The
Longhunter faced a long and painful death back at the Iroquois
longhouses, where all the members of the band could witness and
participate in his death.

The Iroquois were even more
angered by Alex’s killing of their warrior, and they began to
slowly ride their horses toward the two men in the clearing. Alex
stepped over the Longhunter and stood astride him, turning in all
directions as the band rode toward them in a tightening
circle.

“Alex, I’m done for. See if
you can break free of the circle and make a run for it,” said the
Longhunter.

“I’m not leaving you here
alone.”

“It’s alright lad, I am
killed anyway, either here or back at the Iroquois village,” said
the Longhunter.

Alex didn’t move. The
Iroquois stopped their horses about twenty paces from the two men;
simultaneously they all strung their bows and notched war arrows
for Alex’s execution. There was no way out this time, because their
war arrows couldn’t miss Alex.

As the braves were ready to
draw back and release arrows, the sound of men on horseback caused
everyone to look back toward the main trail. A group of armed,
mounted men came charging into the clearing, yelling and firing
pistols and rifles at the Iroquois. The Iroquois forgot about
killing Alex and the Longhunter and turned their horses to flee
back into the trees.

The mounted men did not
pursue the Iroquois after they ran them off, but turned back and
dismounted near the Longhunter and Alex. The leader of the men
grabbed his saddle bag off of his horse and walked over to where
the Longhunter was lying on the ground. He reached down and broke
off the tip of the arrow that was sticking out the back of the
Longhunter’s shoulder and then pulled the broken remainder of the
arrow, minus the arrowhead, back out the way it went in.

“This is going to hurt a
bit,” he said as he cleaned and dressed the wound.

“Do your worst,” said the
Longhunter.

“You’ll be okay, Alexander,”
said the man after he had bandaged the wound with a clean
dressing.

“Thank you, Ellison,”
replied the Longhunter.

“Hello, lad,” said the man
called Ellison as he stood up and held out his hand to shake hands
with Alex.

Alex was dumbfounded and
couldn’t say a word. He wondered how the men had found them, who
they were, and where they had come from.

“Hello, sir,” was all Alex
was finally able to say, shaking hands with the man named
Ellison.

Things became a little
clearer for Alex when he saw the girl ride the pony into the
clearing. She had ridden as fast as she could during the night all
the way back to Fort Cumberland, where she had awakened the
Maryland Rangers, a group of militiamen that were paid by the
colonial Maryland government to protect the settlers from the
Iroquois. After the girl told them her story, the Rangers had
mounted their horses during the night and followed the girl back
toward where she had left the two men. They had heard the sounds of
horses and warriors in the clearing just off the trail. The Rangers
had told the girl to wait by the trail while they turned their
horses and went into the trees to see what was going on.

Alex walked over to the girl
and helped her dismount the pony.

“Thanks for saving my life,”
said Alex.

“
Thank you for saving
mine,” said the girl.

“I’m Alex Mackenzie. It’s
nice to meet you.”

“Hello Alex, I’m Martha
Kelly. It’s nice to finally meet you, too. I’ll give you your shirt
back as soon as I can.”

“Thanks; I appreciate it.
I’m not in any hurry for it,” said the shirtless Alex.

The Longhunter got up after
having buttoned his arm into his shirt to hold it in place and
walked over to join the couple.

“Lass, I’m sorry about your
folks. Alex and I gave them as proper a burial as we could with the
time we had available.”

“Thank you, Mr. Glendenning.
I’d like to go back to the cabin and pay my proper respects to them
if I could. I’d also like to gather up any of my possessions that
might have survived the fire.”

Captain Ellison McCoy was
the head of the Fort Cumberland detachment of the Maryland Rangers.
He put his medical supply kit back into his saddle bags and walked
over to the group to join the conversation.

“Lad, are you sure that you
are okay?” asked Ellison.

“I’m fine, sir; I’m just
happy you and your men showed up when you did. You saved my life
and Alexander’s too,” said Alex.

“That’s our job, lad. We go
where we’re needed and do what needs to be done in order to keep
the frontier safe for people like you, Alexander and Martha here,”
said Ellison.

“Sounds like good, honorable
work,” said Alex.

“If yer looking for a job,
we are in need of a Ranger right now, and you seem to have plenty
of grit,” said Ellison.

“I’ll take the job, sir. But
first, I need to see Martha settled and get my shirt back,” said
the bare-chested Alex with a grin as he raked his long blond hair
out of his eyes with his left hand.

* * * *

Samuel

“
Hey Tom, does it get any
rougher than this?” yelled Samuel at Tom Jenkins’ back.

Tom Jenkins, the nefarious
ex-militia scout, led the way for the small party of men on
horseback and the wagon carrying the rifles. They had traveled
west, first following along The Great Wagon Road from Philadelphia,
for several days, and later, turning off it onto a game trail.
Samuel was driving the wagon, sitting on the driver’s bench. His
two friends, who had sailed with him from England, were riding
horses along both sides of the wagon in places where the trail was
wide enough to allow them to ride beside the wagon or behind the
wagon if it wasn’t. They had passed through Lancaster, Pennsylvania
early that morning and were well on their way to the meeting that
Tom had arranged for them with an Iroquois band.

The game trail followed a
narrow path through the trees, and the going was getting pretty
rough. The wagon could barely pass through many of the tighter
spots and their progress had been slowed to a crawl.

“
It opens up just ahead,”
shouted Tom in reply, turning his head to look back at Samuel
Ruskin and his two friends.

It did in fact open up just a few miles
ahead, and when it did, Tom fell back to ride alongside the wagon
in order to speak with Samuel while he rode.

“
We’ll follow this trail
for a while and then turn off south at the next fork,” said
Tom.

Samuel just nodded and
glanced briefly at Tom before he turned his head back to watch the
trail ahead. Tom had earlier cocked his rifle flintlock and grasped
his rifle stock while it was lying across his saddle between his
lap and the saddle horn. An experienced scout and woodsman like Tom
was always ready for anything when traveling in the wilderness.
What Samuel didn’t know was that Tom had also primed his musket pan
while he was leading the party. As soon as Samuel turned his head
back to the trail, Tom pointed his rifle toward Samuel and pulled
the trigger. Tom’s other hand was still holding his reins and
controlling his horse.