Original Death (4 page)

The first time Duncan had encountered a native warrior adorned for battle, he had felt like a child cringing before some mythic monster come to life. Even now as the Indian came into view, a shiver of fear ran down his spine. The man was taller than Duncan's six feet, his flinty countenance decorated with a horizontal band of black paint that ran over his eyes and back to his ears, with parallel red stripes below it on each cheek. The front of his scalp was shaven, the remaining hair tied in braids into which bits of fur had been woven. The bare skin of his scalp had been adorned with red paint, with streams running down the side of his head to resemble dripping blood. His naked chest was covered only by a
tattered sleeveless waistcoat. The warrior fixed him with a cold, hungry stare. As the man reached for his rifle, Duncan thought he recognized the wolf tattooed on his shoulder.

“I am a friend of the Mohawk,” he said as he yielded his gun.

“No,” the man with the pistol declared as he stepped into the light. “Ye killed a friend of the Mohawk. Which makes ye an enemy of the Mohawk, an enemy of blessed King George, and especially an enemy of my friend Sagatchie,” he said with a nod to the warrior. The Englishman had a square, brutish face, scarred from battle. He was dressed in a green wool jerkin with leather leggings over his britches.

“Perhaps one of us committed murder,” Duncan shot back. “But it was not me.”

The Indian lowered his blade to lift a piece of rope from a peg on the wall, then roughly pulled Duncan's hands behind him, tying them tightly together. The man in green bent over the dead soldier and cursed. As he straightened, his fist slashed out, slamming across Duncan's jaw so hard it knocked him back to his knees.

His assailant whistled and another figure emerged from the aisle of the barn to confer with him. As his head cleared, Duncan saw that the sinewy newcomer was dressed in the same green jerkin as his companion.

“If you are truly rangers you have a chance of catching these killers,” Duncan interrupted. “My name is McCallum. I just arrived in search of someone who lived here. This happened only two or three hours ago. The raiders probably fled up the slope into the mountains.”

The man with the scarred face turned with a sour expression. “I am not inclined to take advice from a murderer.” The cow bleated again, and the man kicked a pail to the second man. “Get someone to milk the damned beast, Corporal,” he spat, “then search every house and find me a witness.”

“Sergeant Hawley,” the soldier acknowledged with a knuckle to his temple and disappeared.

“Don't waste your time,” Duncan said. “Everyone's dead. The children must have—”

“Sagatchie,” the sergeant muttered impatiently.

Duncan only saw a quick motion out of the corner of his eye before something hard slammed into his skull. He collapsed unconscious to the floor.

HE AWOKE CHOKING on dirt. A cruel laugh rose nearby, and more dirt landed on his face. Despite the throbbing pain at the back of his skull, Duncan shook the dirt off his head and struggled to rise. He was being buried. His legs and half his torso were under a foot of fresh earth. He tried to push himself up only to find his hands still tied. He spat a Gaelic curse, then leaned back on the ground and with great effort heaved his hips upward, pushing away enough soil to free his legs. Duncan rolled and began to stand, only to be pulled backward by a sudden strangling pressure on his neck. He was bound to a tree by one of the neck straps used by the tribes to restrain their captives.

He turned toward the jeers, louder now, discovering three men leaning on shovels, staring at him in amusement. “Every hour you wait,” he growled, “makes it more likely these killers will not find justice.”

The nearest man, the wiry corporal from the barn, swung his spade as if to spray more dirt at Duncan, then laughed at Duncan's reaction and lowered it. “We don't waste time, lad. We be giving these poor souls the Christian burial they deserve. And the king's justice has already found the one who did this butcher's work. Your hands were covered with their blood when we found you.”

“I did nothing more than try to help a fellow Scot,” Duncan snapped. His voice trailed away as he surveyed his surroundings. They were behind the little church. Along the building's rear was a row of bodies wrapped in blankets, makeshift shrouds no doubt taken from the beds of the houses. Crude plank crosses leaned on the wall above all but the last two bodies.
Joshua Halftree
read the first, then
Rebecca Halftree, Martha Strong, Ezekial Strong, Barnabas Wolf
, and
Lizzie Oaks
.

“You knew them, Corporal?” he asked the ranger.

The soldier gestured toward the south. “There's a farm down the road. Sergeant Hawley sent for them. This was their church. They could at least put names to most of the dead.”

“Most?” Duncan asked.

“There be a nameless corporal of the 42
^nd
of Foot,” the ranger declared. “The one you gloated over in the barn. His body was sent back with the dispatch rider for Fort Edward.”

Duncan found he had no stomach for argument. Four open graves lay before him. “Let me help with the digging,” he said in a weary voice.

The corporal studied him, then approached Duncan. He gestured to the guns leaning near the first cross. “We have ranger loads in those barrels. Know what that means?”

“Swan shot on top of a full ball.”

“Tends to take a man down permanently,” the ranger declared as he loosened the strap on Duncan's neck. “If ye try to run we'll all fire. Ye'll be in pieces before ye reach thirty paces.”

A cool determination settled in Duncan. “If I turn my back on these dead,” he vowed, “you are welcome to put a bullet in me.” Though he had not known any of the inhabitants of Bethel Church, he felt an unexpected affinity for them. They had given a home to Conawago's kin. In their way they too were more last ones of their kind, and too many last ones were falling.

They dug in silence, Duncan pausing every few minutes to look around, hoping for a sign of Conawago but not daring to ask about him for fear it could risk his friend's arrest.

They had finished another grave when a stranger wearing clothes of brown homespun cloth appeared, carrying another rough cross.
Abraham Oaks
, it read. They were all the names of Christian Indians, names assigned upon christening.

“There were children,” Duncan said.

The corporal gestured toward two shrouds lying together. “Brought from the smithy with the rest.”

“There were more. Young ones taken from the schoolhouse,” Duncan said.

The ranger shrugged and kept digging.

As they finished another grave, a sturdy blond woman in her thirties wearing a bloodstained apron appeared with the last cross, for Rachel Wolf.

Duncan looked at it in surprise. “But there was another in the smithy,” he called out to the woman.

She shook her head but said nothing, just pointed to the cross above the church. The man in brown homespun appeared beside her. “My wife means that although the wheelmaker discussed the one God with great interest, he had not been touched by holy water.”

Hickory John would not be buried in the churchyard.

“But surely—” Duncan's protest faded as the tall Mohawk from the barn walked around the corner of the building, leading a horse. Draped over the back of the animal was another shrouded body.

“Sergeant Hawley says Sagatchie knows a place,” the farmer declared. As he spoke, the sour man who had arrested Duncan appeared behind the horse.

A place. The Mohawk meant a ground sacred for the Haudenosaunee, the Iroquois, where the dead were laid on platforms with offerings to take on the long journey to the spirit world. The tribal ranger stared at Duncan without expression. His war paint was gone in preparation for his solemn duty.

“He'll need help,” Duncan suggested to the sergeant. “He will have to build a platform as high as his head and lift the body onto it. Not a job for one man alone.”

Hawley frowned. “My men are plenty experienced in handling the dead. One of my corporals will go,” Hawley spat, then he turned to the wiry man with the spade, who muttered under his breath.

“Something to say, corporal?” Hawley growled.

“Only how it seems a lot of trouble for a dead savage. Any fool can throw a body into a boneyard.” The rough men of the frontier became rangers for many reasons. Some did so for the money, which was greater
than that paid to garrison soldiers. Others signed on to keep their homes safe from raiders. Some did so just to kill Indians.

“There're words that must be spoken,” Duncan pressed. “Hickory John was one of the last of a great tribe. He must be honored.” The Mohawk ranger cocked his head toward Duncan, surprise now in his deep black eyes. “The spirits must be made aware of his coming,” Duncan added, addressing the Mohawk now.

The man with the spade gave another jeer. “I know the Psalms, boy,” the corporal growled. “The Lord maketh me lie down in green pastures.”

Duncan shook his head. “Do you know the names of the spirits that must be called to admit Towantha to the next world? Can you speak the condolence of the tribes? Will you find a snake to carry the news of his journey to the other side?”

When Duncan turned to the sergeant, Hawley's gaze was locked on Sagatchie, who stared contemptuously at the corporal. The tribal rangers were critical to the success of the irregular units, and they had to be respected. The sergeant stepped to the Mohawk's side and quietly conferred. Sagatchie hesitantly handed him the treacherous war ax slung over his back. The sergeant turned to Duncan, lifting the curved club that ended with a hard ball on one side and an iron spike on the other. “Do you have any notion how many this ax has killed, McCallum? Near a dozen I know of, and no doubt there's more. Sagatchie can split your brainpan at fifty feet if he has to.” Duncan offered a quick bow of his head toward the Mohawk. “Corporal!” The sullen ranger looked up at Hawley. “You'll go too.” The corporal cursed.

“If the prisoner offends the spirits, Sagatchie, you can teach him proper respect,” Hawley added. “Just bring him back mostly alive.”

Duncan eyed the Mohawk uneasily. Sagatchie's face seemed chiseled in stone, its expression somber, but in his eyes Duncan recognized the anger that smoldered in such warriors, never totally dying away. He looked over the Indian's shoulder, increasingly concerned that he had not seen Conawago. Surely his friend would want to be present for the death rites of his kin.

Sagatchie stepped forward and extended the lead rope of the horse toward Duncan. Hawley refastened the strap around Duncan's neck then untied it from the tree, handing the end to the Mohawk. Duncan cast one more worried glance toward the settlement before yielding to Sagatchie's tug on the prisoner strap and following him up the trail into the forest.

They climbed up steep switchbacks for over an hour, Sagatchie chanting in his own tongue the entire time, until they reached a small valley dominated by hemlocks, interspersed with maples. When they reached a flat where all the foliage was blood red, Sagatchie tossed down the end of the prisoner strap. The surly corporal lowered himself against a massive sugar tree and cut a piece of tobacco.

“Careful, Corporal,” Duncan said in a casual tone. “Some in the tribes say the spirits of such trees can reach out and pull in humans who show no respect for the place.”

“What kind of fool talk is that?” the corporal spat.

“My friend Conawago and I found a skeleton once. The tree was growing over the bones. I said the man must have died many years before. Conawago insisted it had happened only days earlier, because the man had not shown the proper reverence. Of course such a powerful tree would have to have the mark of the spirits on it.”

The corporal seemed about to curse again, but as he turned he saw Sagatchie untying the horse's burden, then nervously studied the landscape beyond the tree. A casual glance may have dismissed the regularly spaced, thin timbers in the shadows as a grove of saplings, but now the corporal saw them for what they were, the posts of more than two score platforms, each topped with a decomposing body.

The soldier shot up and looked uneasily at the massive trunk he had been leaning against. “Jesus weeps!” he gasped and quickly backed away from the tree. Above his head were carved symbols, worked in the wood by many different hands over many years. A human skull had been carved into it, and also a bear's paw with long curving claws, a leaping deer, and
at least a dozen snakes, creatures understood by the woodland tribes to be particularly important messengers to the gods.

“A sentinel tree,” Duncan explained. “It protects the other side.”

The corporal frowned but warily looked around the back of the tree as if taking Duncan's words literally.

“Some of the ghosts may still linger,” Duncan suggested, “trying to find their way across.”

He picked up the ranger's musket, which the corporal had abandoned in his hasty retreat. “Perhaps you'd best keep watch from the creek,” he suggested to the ranger, and extended the weapon to him. “But I would like the loan of your belt ax, Corporal.”