Scattered Seeds (21 page)

“Father, what are ye doing?” Henry could not believe his eyes. “Be careful.”

“He is nae gonny rise.” He poked the sweating Indian with the axe handle. “That make ye feel better?”

The Indian moaned.

“Father, let us pack up our things and go. Let his fate rest wi’ whate’er pagan god will have him.”

Father marched straight for him. “Ye listen here,” he said with his nose to Henry’s. “That is a dying man, and it’s the least we can do to gi’ him whate’er comfort we can. Do ye not remember Molly Martin? She nursed Mary back to health on the brig when no one else would e’en look at us. Do ye recall what she said? I do. She said, ’
Twill be thanks enough if ye one day think of me and offer aid to another in need
.’ I shall ne’er forget it, and in truth, I am shocked to find that ye have forgotten so soon.”

Henry looked away. “I have nae forgotten.” His heart sank, not out of shame, but because Father’s chastisement restored Mary’s image to his memory at a time when he’d been enjoying some success in forgetting her.

Father returned to the wounded Indian, and Henry followed, defeated and terrified.

“Make no mistake, Father, I’m doing this for no other reasons than my obedience to ye and repayment to Molly Martin. If I had things my way, this son of a whore would suffer no more.”

“Henry, I’ve had enough of your foul mouth.”

They rolled the Indian onto his back, revealing another wound near his temple. His black eyes fluttered open, and Henry caught a spark of terror in them before the injured man fainted. They pulled him out of the water.

“He must have thought the cool water would ease the swelling.” Father gestured toward their campsite. “Go get the tarp. We’ll use it to carry him back to the fire. I’ll splint his leg and clean the gash in his arm. If we use the ox’s paste—”

“But we have so little of it! What happens if ye waste it on this . . .
thing
. . . and then the ox’s feet go bad?”

“Henry, enough! Do as I say.”

Henry stormed to their goods and threw boughs off the pile, then straps and bags. His father was out of his mind for wanting to restore a murderous savage to health. And what would happen then, when the Indian regained his strength? He’d butcher them in their sleep. There’d be another flaxen scalp hanging from a heathen’s belt, right beside a fuzzy brown one that once covered a madman’s head.

He found the tarp and yanked it out of the pile. “Sorry, ox,” he said, tramping past the animal. “Ye’d better pray your feet stay good.”

By the time he returned to the creek, the dead Indian was naked and Father wore moccasins. He passed Henry a breechclout and deerskin leggings.

“Ye ne’er know. Mayhap we’ll find a use for them.” He held up one of his feet. “Ye’re right. They are soft on the heels.”

The Indian moaned beside the fire, his wound sterilized and his ankle encased in a sapling splint. He smelled horrible.

Outside the tree, the ox faced away and halted mid-chew, strands of grass dangling from its jaws. It fixed its ears on the forest, a recurring sign of the animal’s extreme nervousness.

Henry shared the ox’s agitation, and as much as he wanted to attribute his edginess to the wounded man lying inside the tree, he could not. Something else stalked them, watched their every move. He knew it, same as the ox knew it, yet no matter how carefully he scanned the forest, he detected nothing awry.

The tomahawk he’d stripped from the Indian’s belt would take care of whatever lurked, should it decide to attack. He ran his fingers along its blade and wondered how many innocent heads fell prey to its sharp edge.

He laid the weapon within easy reach and took another bite of trout. Its orange flesh would have tasted fine if consumed at a table, not inside a tree, and certainly not next to a stinking barbarian. The day’s events ruined the broth, too. Every drop of water had boiled out of the kettle while they buried the dead Indian, the one whose murderous days were over.

Henry had suggested rolling him into the creek for delivery to the other vipers writhing near Duncan’s, but no, while the broth burned, they gave the thing a Christian burial, even though Henry’s back still ached from burying yet another man. Elias White deserved a proper interment; the Indian didn’t. But there was no such thing as arguing with Edward McConnell. What Edward McConnell wanted, Edward McConnell got.

“More fish, Henry?” His father held out the frying pan.

Henry shook his head.

Father set down the pan. “I keep thinking that somewhere, someone loves him, someone wants him hame.” He leaned forward to check the man’s arm. “I am at a loss to explain how they are so robust. They live so close to the edge of death, in no more than bark huts, I hear, wi’ no stock, no crops other than their maize. It does warrant some admiration, ye must admit.”

Henry would admit no such thing. He could find nothing admirable about men who burned women at the stake.

Father correctly interpreted his silence. “I would hope my son would judge a man by his actions.”

The Indian spared him further rebuke by groaning and opening his eyes.

Henry reached for the tomahawk. “He’s awake.” His muscles quivered with readiness.

The wounded man lay perfectly still except for his eyes; his gaze roamed the walls of the tree, then the fire. When he met Henry’s, he gasped and shoved backward with all his might, managing only to land beside Father and grimace and howl. He reached for his missing tomahawk.

Like a feral cat, he flattened his body against the tree’s interior. “
Ni-ki-neh-ki
.” He tore the bandage off his biceps, staring with obvious confusion at the stitched gash he uncovered. He looked at Henry again, and then at Father, who nodded and held a spoonful of fish out to him. The Indian shook his head, an action that seemed to dizzy him. He pressed his fingers to his forehead, swayed, and closed his eyes. When he reopened them, his stare fell to the tomahawk in Henry’s grasp.

Henry tightened his grip on the weapon’s shaft.

The Indian gestured to Father’s new moccasins. “
Ni-jai-nai-nah, Outhowwa Shokka.
”

“What’s he saying?” Henry asked.

“How should I know?” Father offered the fish a second time. The Indian studied his face, then slowly reached out with his good arm to take the spoon.

Henry thought his father a fool for trusting the Indian with an implement that could gore out an eye.

As if reading his thoughts, the Indian raised his eyebrows and shoveled the fish into his mouth in an exaggerated fashion. He handed the spoon back to Henry, not his father, and said, “
Neahw
.”

Father took the spoon. “I believe he just thanked you. Surely, Henry, he understands by his patched wounds that we mean him no harm.”

“He will see our very presence here as harm enough.”

The Indian pointed again to the moccasins. “
Ni-jai-nai-nah.
”

“That’s the same thing he said afore,” Henry said. “He’s asking about the shoes. Mayhap he thinks ye killed his friend for his shoes.”

Father stood and extended a hand to the Indian. “Come.”

The Indian wobbled up and winced as his injured ankle bore his weight.

Father
slid under the native man’s suntanned good arm. “Easy there.” He stood a full head shorter than his patient.

Henry followed them, his eyes scanning the forest and his hand like an iron band on the tomahawk.

Father helped the injured man limp to a mound of fresh earth. At its head, a cross made of branches displayed a copper gorget and a clay pipe.

The lines of the Indian’s leathery face deepened, and he swallowed hard and bit his lip. He stood motionless for a long while, only the feathers in his hair and mutilated ears swaying in the breeze. When he finally spoke, it was as if a dam broke. He turned to them and spewed uninterrupted sentences, embellishing his words with overstated gestures and grimacing as he made wide sweeps with his injured arm.

His dramatic reenactment of an attack required no translation, but an attack by whom? He pointed to the grave and emulated a stab to the gut.

Father asked, “English?”

“
Mat-tah. Tota.”

He acted out another stab to his belly with his good arm, then pointed to the north. “
Metathwe Tota. Shingas
.”

“What is he saying?” Henry asked.

“I think he’s trying to tell us who attacked him.”

“We’ll be next.” Henry surveyed the lengthening shadows on the flood plain. “We need to move.”

“Aye.” Father gestured to a tree near the fishing hole. “Hack off an ash limb for a crook. He can lean on it and keep weight off his leg.”

“Ye canny mean to take him wi’ us.”

“We have no choice.”

Henry’s fury boiled over. “We do have a choice! Ye’ve already patched him up, just let him here.” He pointed to their lean-to. “He’s got a warm fire there and the rest of our fish.”

“He has a lump on his head, and he’s dizzy. He’ll need more of the ox’s paste on the morrow. He’ll ne’er understand me if I try to tell him that, and if he does nae get it, his arm will go foul and he’ll eventually die.”

“Why is that our concern? Jaysus Christ our Savior, where has your good sense gone?”

Henry stormed away, swatting twigs and briars out of his way. One of them recoiled and slapped him on the jaw, adding to his irritation. A wounded savage would now share their precious supplies and limp beside their half-starved ox, an ox carrying damp grain that would soon molder in its sack. They would move slower than ever. He could forget sleep unless he perfected a way to do it with one eye locked on their wild companion.

Failed flaxseed led to . . . this.

Henry stormed toward the creek, where a spindly ash sought the waning sunlight amid greedy birches. He sat on a fallen log and prepared to fling his legs over it, but froze mid-task, his eyes locked on the mud, where paw prints dented his earlier footprints. He crouched and inspected the nearest one. It was doglike, with a pad and four elongated toes.

Wolves
.

So they were the eyes watching from the forest! The monsters were stalking them, or more likely, the ox, waiting for the perfect opportunity to strike.

An old man who remembered Donegal’s wolves once said,
“Ye feel
’
em afore ye see
’
em. It’s a fear that creeps closer, bit by bit, until ye’d swear it lives inside ye.”

A scream scattered the birds and sent Henry running before his legs were fully under him. He staggered and swatted branches out of his way, concern for his father blinding him.

Father sat alone on the grave rubbing his bloody forehead and looking dazed.

With the tomahawk still in his grasp, Henry plunged to his knees. “Father!” He searched for the Indian and saw no one.

Father’s head swayed as he lifted his eyes to meet Henry’s. “Ye were right. I should have listened to—”

“Shush.”

“He’s gone. Ran on that splint like there was naught wrong wi’ him.”

Henry smoothed back his father’s hair to better inspect his wound. “He did nae split your skull, thank heaven. There’s a mighty lump rising, though.”

“Probably looks worse than it is.”

Henry was about to ask what weapon the Indian used when he saw the uprooted cross lying on the ground. He shot upright. “The bastard! The goddamn son of a whore! We should have killed him when we had the chance.”

This time, Father said nothing about his foul language.

Chapter 35

Edward’s skull hurt far less than his pride. He trudged behind the ox wearing a dead man’s moccasins and counting the many ways his recklessness could have harmed Henry. A European with the Indian’s same injuries would quickly fall into fever. He’d underestimated the native’s resilience, but perhaps not his capacity for mercy.

He shivered, hearing the bloodthirsty shriek and seeing the black eyes again, wild and fearful, as the Indian swung the cross at him. He recalled the softness of the fresh grave against his back as the Indian straddled him, fist cocked.

The native gave him a long, hard look, chest heaving, and then disappeared just before Henry charged like a mad Celt, leaping over logs and beaver-honed stumps with murder in his eyes and a tomahawk poised to strike.

Henry, the boy forced into manhood too soon.

What have I done to my innocent son?

Six months ago, Henry wouldn’t squash a beetle.

He thought of Elizabeth, saw her suckling their son. She would take to her bed for a week if she’d known that the tiny mouth clamped on her breast would one day discharge foul language and murderous thoughts instead of fervent prayers. She would never accept Henry’s newfound bloodlust and profanity, no matter how much Edward tried to explain their origins. Like Edward, she came from a time and place where such things were punishable sins. In that world, Henry would share their aversion to cursing. In this one, this wild, new place, he made his own rules, and experienced a liberty few modern Ulstermen would ever know.

The path through the wilderness was leading Henry to what he would be, a free man. Edward still believed that freedom was worth every risk, even if it left his son swearing like a common midshipman.

They followed the creek into a stand of hemlocks that stole the daylight. Ahead of him, Henry halted the ox.

“I smell smoke.”

Edward smelled it, too. “Bide here.”

A wall of light marked the end of the forest. Edward slipped past Henry, his moccasins silent on the spongy moss. With the creek bubbling through a hollow to his right, he sneaked from tree to tree. Just as he reached the last of them, he caught sight of a smoking chimney.

Slowly, he peered around the ruddy trunk—and into the barrel of a musket.

“Who are you?” A girl aimed a gun twice as long as she was tall. She was naked except for a short buckskin skirt with a crooked hem and the threadbare collar from a man’s shirt.

Edward looked away from her bare breasts, shock stealing his words. She was fully developed, probably five-and-ten years old.

“I’m gonna ask you one last time. Who are you?”

Edward could not meet her eyes. He stared at her bare feet. They were filthy and calloused. “My name is . . . Lassie, I have a blanket. Let me go back to my packs and—”

She pulled back the hammer on the musket.

“I didn’t ask you for no blanket. I asked you for your name.”

Edward saw no point in lying. “McConnell. Edward McConnell.”

“How many you got with you?”

“Just me and my son.”

“Call him up.”

Edward forced himself to look at her. She wore no cap, and he guessed that none would ever contain the red tangle tumbling down her back.

Edward locked his eyes on hers. “Henry! Bring the ox.”

The girl took a step back, still aiming the musket at his head.

“Lassie, where is your maw?”

“Ain’t got a maw no more.”

He heard the ox and their packs brushing against hemlock boughs. “We mean ye no harm, lass. We’re just trying to get to our own place along this same creek.”

“Whoa, ox,” Henry muttered behind him.

The girl stared past Edward’s shoulder to where his son surely stood agape. “Henry, is it?”

“Aye,” Henry half-gasped.

Her stare penetrated like a sheepdog’s. “Walk.” She waved the barrel of her musket toward the house. “Go on.”

They ambled past her.

“Father, she’s nearly naked.”

“I have eyes, Henry. Try not to stare.” It was a pointless statement. Of course, Henry would stare.

They passed the house, a chicken coop, and finally, a small barn and corral where a mule idled next to a milk cow near a pile of hay.

The girl motioned to the corral. “Put your ox in there.”

Edward shook his head. “If we put him in there, he’ll roll in manure and destroy our goods.”

She seemed to consider this. “Then tie him to the rail.”

He looped the ox’s lead around a fence rail. “What’s your name?”

“Clara.” She jabbed the musket toward a grassy slope. “This way.”

They climbed to a low summit overlooking a field next to the creek, where a man in a breechclout uprooted dead cornstalks and tossed them onto a heap. He noticed them, lifted a blunderbuss off the ground, and jogged up the hill.

“Clara, put the musket down.” He twisted his hands over the iron on his ancient weapon. “Who are you?”

“Says his name is McConnell.” Clara shouldered her musket.

“McConnell, eh? Would you be any relation to William?”

“He’s my brother.”

“Well, then, we’re neighbors!” The man’s mouth stretched into a wide grin. “Come on in. We ain’t got much, but we’ll share what we got.”

The man was Lemuel Tanner, a proud second-generation American whose grandsire came to the Colonies aboard a prison ship. His house was tidy, though sparsely furnished, and his barn loft brimmed with fodder and bushels of corn. He distilled spirits in a shed beside the corral, and this enterprise, he said, bought him peace with the Indians.

“They can’t get enough of it.” He lit two pipes and handed one to Edward, who sat next to the hearth on the only chair. It was lopsided and made of twigs.

On the floor beside Edward, a naked boy played with cornhusk dolls and eyed him doubtfully.

Lemuel craved news. He already knew of Braddock’s defeat and the ensuing construction of British forts, but he did not know about Lancaster’s increased population and the desperate circumstances of the settlers fleeing there. He listened with interest, puffing on his pipe while Clara carried a griddle to the fireplace. She hung it from a chain and added more wood to the fire. The room grew stifling and smoky.

Lemuel propped open the door. Outside, daisies bloomed near five fieldstone grave markers.

Edward nodded toward the open doorway. “Your kin?”

“Three of them. My wife and two infant sons. The other two belong to a French trader and a Delaware interpreter.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” He wondered how the two unrelated men came to be buried there.

As if reading his thoughts, Lemuel said, “They came two springs ago while I was out hunting. I heard shots and ran home to find my wife breathing her last next to a dead Injun. She lived long enough to tell me that a Frenchman took Clara.”

The pipe bowl in his hand lost its glow as Lemuel stared at the fire and continued his story with a dispassionate voice. “Folks with sense will tell you the one place in this world you
never
want to go is Kittanning, on the Allegheny River, for the number of Delaware savages there is staggering, but that’s exactly where the Frenchman was heading with my little girl when I caught up to him.”

Henry spoke from the floor at the far wall. “But the Frenchman is buried here.”

Lemuel smiled and relit his pipe. “Indeed he is, my boy. Still have his mule, if his bones ain’t enough to prove it.” He shared a knowing glance with Clara, who looked up from a bowl of batter.

The toddler handed Edward a doll, and he took it, suddenly understanding the Frenchman left more than his corpse and a mule at the Tanner homestead.

Lemuel exhaled a puff of smoke. “I would be lying if I said I took no pleasure in killing him, and I have suffered no pangs of guilt since.”

Edward sucked on the pipe and found the taste pleasing. He tried to put himself in Lemuel’s place. “No man would blame ye for doing what ye did.”

Clara ladled batter onto the griddle. It sizzled and spattered her breasts with fat.

Edward noticed stretch marks on her belly and looked away.

Lemuel seemed to sense his discomfort. “I told Clara she’d have a new gown in the spring.”

Henry, who looked everywhere but at the girl, said, “How will she bear the cold this winter? We have spare feedbags and a breechclout. She could sew them into a shirt for herself, mayhap something for the lad, as well.”

“I ain’t got money, not even paper notes of the province. From what you’ve said, it seems I’m better off than most, having been left in peace to harvest my grain, but I got no way to get it to market. Clara will not budge, and I can’t leave her alone with only the boy.”

Edward said, “If your grain holds until spring, we can take it wi’ ours to market. Until then, take the bags, or, at the very least, the breechclout.” He rubbed the lump on his forehead, careful not to disturb the new scab there. “I would be glad to be rid of it.”

“Much obliged, but we’ll get by. Looks like you ran into some trouble along your way.”

“Injuns, two of them.”

Clara slid what looked like a deer’s scapula under a corncake to flip it onto a trencher.

Lemuel handed the meal to Henry, along with a small jug. “Pour that on there. The trees by the creek are good for tapping.”

Henry took a bite and licked his fingers. “It’s lovely. Clara, ye’re a good cook.”

She waved away his compliment and ladled more batter onto the griddle.

Lemuel asked, “Whereabouts did you see these Injuns?”

Edward answered, since Henry’s mouth was full. “About two hours from the Juniata, where the creek makes a sharp turn and crosses a plain.”

“Sounds like the beaver flats.”

“Aye, there were signs of beavers there, wolves too.”

Lemuel’s neck stiffened. “Wolves? I’ve never seen any in these parts.”

“They’re here now. I’d put the stock in the barn at night.”

“We do anyway, though we have little to fear from the local tribe. They live about a mile up the creek.”

“That close?”

“Big Turtle will give you no trouble you don’t deserve. He’s Chief Kishacoquillas’s nephew. You ever heard of Chief Kish?”

“Canny say I have.”

“Chief Kish was a good man, a friend to the English. He lived a ways up the Juniata, near Arthur Buchanan’s place. Died last year at Harris’s. It ain’t his folk you need to be scared of. It’s the damn Delaware you have to look out for. These Injuns you saw . . . what did they look like?”

“They were painted black and red. One wore a turtle shell and the other a—”

“Copper gorget.” Lemuel smiled and nodded his head. “Aye, those are two of our locals, Black Snake and Yellow Hawk, sons of Big Turtle. I heard they were heading east to speak for Big Turtle at a council. A farce, if you ask me, but you can’t tell the Injuns that. For belts of shells and cheap kettles, they send their sons to war for their white fathers in France and England.”

“One of them is dead.” Edward pointed at his head. “The other gave me this.”

Lemuel blasted smoke. “Dead? Which one?”

“The one with the gorget.”

“Yellow Hawk? Jesus Christ, man, did you kill him?”

“We found them at the creek. The one was already dead, and I thought the other one was, too. Turns oot he was alive enough to nearly crack open my skull.”

“Believe me, if Black Snake meant to crack open your skull you’d be picking your brains out of the trees.” Lemuel set his pipe on the mantel. “Yellow Hawk, dead. I can’t believe it. This will hit Big Turtle hard. He’s only got two sons left now, Black Snake and Magi. I only saw Magi once, and from a distance, but Black Snake’s been by a time or two. Friendly enough.”

“Do ye speak their language?”

“A word or two, but there’s little need for it. Most of them speak at least a few words of English.”

“Then that heathen understood all we said,” Henry said from the corner. “Yet he did nae offer a word in English.”

Lemuel chuckled. “It’s a trick they pull, and a good one. They’ve learned by experience that men who judge them ignorant speak freely. They learn much by their silence.”

His expression turned serious. “I wonder who attacked them? Lots of distant tribes flowing through these parts on their way to council, so it could be just about anybody, but I’ll bet it was old Captain Jacobs.”

“Is he stationed at a fort hereabouts?”

Clara snickered and flipped another corncake.

Lemuel said, “Captain Jacobs ain’t stationed anywhere. He’s a Delaware chief, and a damn mean one. His real name’s Tewea. A settler gave him the nickname. Said he looked like a burly German he knew. The nickname stuck.”

Edward’s pipe had gone out. He handed it to Lemuel, who set it on the mantelpiece next to his own.

“Tewea,” Edward repeated, “Henry, was that the word Black Snake kept saying?”

Henry pushed the last bite of corncake through syrup puddled on his trencher. “Sounded more like
Tota
.”

Lemuel fell against the wall as if the floor had suddenly turned to a raft on rapids. “Are you sure?”

“Aye.” Henry shielded his mouth with sticky fingers. “The word was
Tota
.”

Lemuel gave a heavy sigh. “
Tota
is the Shawanese word for Frenchman.”

“There was an S-name, too,” Henry said, sucking syrup off his index finger. “Shinkusk? Shingask?”

“Shingas?” Lemuel’s voice was barely audible.

“Aye.” Henry slapped his thigh. “That was it.”

Edward leaned forward. “What does it mean?”