Scattered Seeds (22 page)

“It’s the name of the Delaware king, a man renowned for his brutality, even among his own kind. He turned after Braddock’s defeat. Supports the bloody French now.” He stared through the open doorway. “It’s one thing to have a few Frenchmen traipsing through, but if Shingas is with them, then we’d all better learn to see out the backs of our heads.”

Despite Lemuel’s assurances that the local tribe was peaceful, Edward was in no mood to test their hospitality, especially since Black Snake would recognize them and, perhaps, fabricate a story implicating them in Yellow Hawk’s death.

So, instead of taking the easy walk along the creek, they crossed it and climbed Turkey Ridge, nearly straight up, with the ox stumbling and practically crawling on its knees.

Edward carried the tomahawk, and Henry kept a death grip on the hammer. Both of them eyed the forest while monitoring their packs carefully. If the load shifted and the beast tumbled back down to the creek, it would die.

Henry and the ox crested the ridge first. “Look!” Henry pointed at something in the valley below.

Edward hurried as much as his painful hip would allow. In the far corner of the valley, two creeks converged at a verdant square. “That must be our field.” A wave of joy overcame him. He laughed and lifted Henry and his hammer off the ground, careful not to cut him with the tomahawk. “We made it, Henry! We made it!”

Henry chuckled, and Edward released him to inspect their distant field through watering eyes. “Och, Henry, imagine putting our feet up at our own hearth and sleeping under our own roof again.”

He looked back and saw a corner of Lemuel Tanner’s field. He turned to mention it when a branch swayed in the periphery of his vision.

The ox saw it, too. It bellowed and tore the rope out of Henry’s grasp, bolting away from five Indians who leapt from behind a cluster of stump sprouts. The vermillion-painted warriors charged, whooping their awful vibrato screeches and wielding clubs above their heads.

Edward threw the tomahawk with all his might. It somersaulted through the air and split the forehead of a man who fell like sawn timber, tripping two more warriors.

Two others sprang at Henry, who knocked one out with his hammer before losing his grip on the tool.

The remaining Indian attacked before Edward could move.

“
Ooph.
” Henry slammed against the ground, rolled onto his belly, and tried to crawl away.

One Indian grabbed his ankles and hauled him back to another who straddled Henry’s back and snatched his hair, flexing his neck at an unnatural angle.

“Henry!” Edward ducked under a thrown tomahawk and heard its blade sink into a nearby tree. He leapt toward Henry, but a warrior caught him by his shirt. The garment tore as he spun and grabbed a fallen branch from the ground and swung it. The end of the branch splintered against the temple of the man holding Henry’s ankles, and the warrior wilted to the ground.

Edward roared and grabbed the ball of a war club poised to strike Henry’s skull. He yanked it—and the man clutching it—off his son’s back.

Henry staggered to his feet and plucked the tomahawk from the tree. He blindly thrashed the weapon at a smirking man twice his size while Edward held another against the ground and pounded his greasy face until the man writhed no more.

Edward sprang off the nearly unconscious man and leapt for the warrior sparring with Henry. Midway there, the man he’d struck with the branch shoved him against a tree and knocked the wind out of him.

With no air to support his body, he could do nothing when the warrior he thought dead caught Henry by his neckerchief and a part of his shirt collar.

Henry twisted away, tearing the flimsy fabric in the process and sending him sprawling beside Edward, the tomahawk still in his hands.

The torc, now fully revealed, reflected the filtered sunlight.

The two conscious Indians dropped their arms to their sides and stared at the gold with their mouths agape until something behind Henry and Edward spread terror across their faces. All of them backed away slowly, defensively.

Edward peered around the tree.

There, with saliva dripping from quivering lips and bared teeth, an arc of wolves approached, their heads low to the forest floor. The animals stalked past them, seemingly unaware of their presence, and placed themselves, growling, with ears pinned down, like a wall between them and their attackers.

The warrior Edward battered wobbled to his hands and knees and reached for his club, which lay an arm’s length in front of him. A black wolf lunged and snapped its jaws within inches of the man’s face. He abandoned hope of retrieving his weapon, bowed submissively, and slunk away, trembling, on his hands and knees.

The warriors retreated, carefully dragging their dead and injured with them until the shadows of the forest devoured them and the woods returned to silence.

The wolves remained as though frozen.

Edward longed to look for the poor ox, whose fate he dreaded, but he feared any movement would bring the wolves upon them. They were hideous things, larger than their European counterparts, with matted coats, unholy yellow eyes, and stinking of blood and piss.

Beside him, Henry fingered the torc.

The black wolf whirled and stalked toward them, its ferocious jaws level with Henry’s throat. It halted about ten feet away, crouched, and licked its lips.

The fittest male, their leader. The kill would be his.

Edward eased his feet under his rump and prepared to shield his son. “When they go for us,” he whispered, “step on my back and climb the tree. They’ll eat me and go away.”

“Do nae talk so dumb.” Henry slid the tomahawk off his lap.

“By John Calvin’s holiest sermon, son, stop moving and do as I say.”

Henry leaned forward. “It will nae come to that.”

“Henry, sit still.” Edward’s heart hammered against his chest. “Stay still, for God’s sake.” Had the lad been struck senseless in the scuffle? He pulled on Henry’s bare arm, where a welt was already rising.

The black wolf prowled closer, its nostrils flared and glistening.

“It will nae hurt us, Father.” He tapped the torc. “The witch promised Somerled that dogs would serve and protect him and his forever.”

“This is no time to test—”

His own gasp severed his words as Henry reached for the wolf. Edward found his own streak of profanity then. “Jaysus Lord Christ, son of the one true God, Henry, sit still!”

With his eyes still on the lead wolf, he slapped at Henry’s outstretched arm, but Henry leaned away, and Edward’s palm thumped the ground.

The wolf stretched its neck far enough to sniff Henry’s fingertips, then whined and sprang away, disappearing with its pack into the forest.

For a long while, Edward strained to hear anything over his own heartbeat and panting breaths. When he was certain the wolves were gone, he wiped sweat from his brow and retched. Using the tree for support, he stood on trembling legs. “Where is your sense, Henry? Ye could have been killed.”

“Where’s the ox?” was Henry’s only reply.

Oh, shite, the ox.

“I’ll look for him.” Edward wobbled along a deer trail scored into the ridge, expecting to find the ox’s entrails at every turn. Instead, he found the animal shitting on their supplies, which had slid off its back when the beast became tangled in briars.

In the next hollow over, the wolves howled.

He shivered and wondered how he would ever enjoy a full night’s sleep in such a wild and terrifying place.

Chapter 36

Edward kicked over a stone in William’s field, exposing the rich loam. “Look at that. Wheat’s gonny grow sky-high here.” He pointed to the far corner of the field. “And there, imagine the beans and potatoes we can grow there.”

“We’ll have to burn it off and plow around the stumps,” Henry said.

The attack atop Turkey Ridge left his shirt in tatters, exposing his prominent ribs and a sizeable bruise on his flank. He wore his Sunday neckerchief—his old one was good for nothing now except threads and patches—and its pristine condition mismatched the rest of his attire. Edward stared at it and tried to remember when he saw it last.

Was it at the chapel?

“Father?”

Or was it at a wake?

“Father?”

Edward snapped out of his reverie. “Eh?”

“The stumps. I was saying we’ll have to plow around the stumps.” Henry eyed him curiously. “Are ye ill? Ye look like boiled shite.”

“I’m grand. Just tired and ready for a good night’s sleep.” But Edward wasn’t grand. He was done in. “The stumps, aye. Mayhap left o’er from the trees William used to build the cabin. We must be close.” In spite of his fatigue, his pulse quickened at the prospect of reaching their destination, at last. Rest lay in their immediate future, and he was glad of it.

“I was thinking, too, that we must be close,” Henry said. “The field’s good, real good. Rocky yet, but I’ll soon sort that. If we have a mild winter, we can build a byre, someplace to store the harvest until we can get it to market.”

His confidence in the torc’s protection unwavering, Henry no longer looked behind them.

Edward was less certain, but he happily allowed Henry any belief that comforted him and kept him walking.

They crossed the field where ears of corn nodded on stray stalks. Edward twisted one off and peeled away the husk. “Look at that.” He showed Henry the rows of kernels. “The ground seeds itself! I expected some seed on an ear, but not this much.” He counted no less than thirty such stalks, though wildlife had molested some. “There’s enough seed here for a decent spring planting. Had I known that, I would nae have bought seed corn.” His spirits soared with the unexpected boon. “I should nae be surprised. William ne’er did anything half-arsed. I expect the cabin will be as grand, when we find it.” He strained to see a building, or at least a path leading to one.

They intended to hustle the rest of the way across the field, but the ox had no knowledge of their proximity to the journey’s end and shared none of their rejuvenation of spirit. It only knew it was exhausted and aching. They’d pushed the beast to its limits, and an earlier misstep on a sharp rock left it with a painful slice between its toes.

Edward would be glad when the poor animal lazed in a corral, even more delighted when its wound scabbed over. Foot rot claimed many cattle. Little of their costly paste remained, thanks to him.

“There it is!” Henry pointed to a copse of pines, where a dismal structure crouched on a rise about twenty yards above the creek. A dead branch teetered on its roof, hurled there by a lightning strike, if its scorched end was any clue.

Edward shuddered to think what they’d be looking at if the branch had caught fire.

The cabin’s door hung open and crooked on a damaged strap, evidence of a break-in. His spirits fell, and he chased away mounting anxiety by reminding himself of his brother’s good judgment. William was no idiot; he would leave nothing of value within easy reach.

They tied the ox to a bough, then rushed inside their new home. William’s plow sat in the middle of the room, which was dim and reeking of old smoke, must, and pine. Some of the chinking between the logs had given way and poured in dusty peaks onto the planks near the walls. They would replace that immediately or suffer the constant whistle and chill of wintry drafts. The roof, made of birchbark shingles, leaked judging by the chronic water damage staining the floor.

A line of carpenter ants trailed up the walls past a spider as broad as Edward’s hand. In the corners, acorn caps and hickory nut hulls lay in piles. Leaves filled the hearth.

“It needs a bit of redding up.” Henry bent over to look up the chimney while Edward inspected the plowshare. “There’s an auld bird’s nest up there, and some twigs and leaves, but a wee fire will do no harm.”

Edward envisioned rosy firelight dancing on the walls. “The place would benefit from a blaze. Needs a good drying oot.”

Henry smiled and lifted a sparse brush from a peg on the wall. “A fire, tax-free.” Had a traveler happened by, he would have sworn by Henry’s joy that he’d just gained acceptance into the goldsmith’s guild.

Edward grinned. “Remember that night we were so cold we lit a fire in your maw’s cauldron?” He shook his head, incredulous that any government could strip a man of means to heat his home.

“How could I forget? The smoke nearly burned the eyes oot of my head.”

“No more, Henry, no more. If a man’s cold here, then it’s by his own sloth, not because a spark is too dear. Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise.”

He walked to the only cupboard where William would have stored plates, if he’d had any. Its doors hung open, and he closed them.

Henry righted an overturned rope bed, an item, like the plow, too bulky to steal. They had no mattress for it. That was a luxury to come later. For now, they would sleep on hemlock boughs.

Henry kicked leaves out of the hearth.

“Watch for copperhead serpents, Henry.” They’d seen only one, on Second Mountain, but it planted in Edward the seed of a growing phobia. Copperheads were more dangerous than rattlesnakes, in his opinion. Rattlers gave a man fair warning. Copperheads didn’t. The devil himself created copperheads, those silent strikers decorated with patterns to match the fallen leaves.

“Thinking about that serpent again?” Henry asked.

“Hard to forget it. Worse than an Injun.”

Henry pointed to the bruise on his flank. “Forgive me if I canny agree. Come on, let’s see what’s ootside.”

Edward followed Henry to the smokehouse. The building still smelled of cured meats. He flattened his palm across his belly. “Shut the door afore I lick the wall.”

They inspected the pole shed next, where a bin still held charcoal. “This was William’s forge,” Edward said, “but it’ll make a handy byre for the ox. I hate to say it, but we’ll have to bring him into the hoose at night until we get this fixed up for him. Our legend may keep wolves from harming us, but there’s naught to keep them from devouring our beast. We have Shingas to worry about, too, and stray Frenchmen.”

“Gonny be a tighter fit than it was wi’ auld Phoebe.”

Poor Phoebe. She was probably covered in salt and hanging in Archie’s smokehouse now.

“Just as rank, I fear, but we canny lose the ox.”

Henry thumped his fist against a post and looked up at the shed’s sooty rafters. “Will nae take us long to build up the sides and put a door on this. It’ll make a good byre. Roof looks good yet.”

Henry saw beyond their crude abode, Edward knew. He imagined possibilities and wondered what it would take to make the place livable—for Mary—even if he would never admit it.

They carried their goods into the smokehouse for safekeeping, then enclosed the limping ox in the forge by tethering long branches to the uprights.

Henry tossed the beast a sheaf of grass scythed and bound hours earlier.

The ox was too exhausted to eat, a worrying development.

“Gi’ him a few hours,” Edward said when the animal collapsed beside the grass. “He’ll eat when he’s rested.”

He crawled under the rail and massaged the ox’s back, intending to stealthily inspect its injured hoof, but the animal had drawn its front legs underneath its chest. There would be no way to look at the wound without making the ox rise again, and Edward had no heart for taking a switch to it. He patted the beast’s thick neck. “Get some rest, laddie. Ye’ve done your service to us for now.”

A rustling noise made him turn toward the cabin, where Henry was already sweeping the floor. Edward smiled, recalling the last time clouds of dust billowed through an open doorway. Had the wielder of that brush thought of him since? The letter sent to her from Lancaster would be in Philadelphia by now. Over the next few months, it would make its way to her lye-scorched hands. Would she come? He hoped not. He’d written that hasty letter before he fully understood the danger awaiting them on the frontier.

The matter gave him little anxiety. Sarah didn’t strike him as foolhardy. She would not uproot herself from her secure life just because a man wrung ink out of his heart and used it to scrawl a few sentences on a piece of manure-smudged foolscap.

He left it at that and entered the cabin.

“I would feel a lot better tonight if William’s rifle shared our bed wi’ us,” he said.

Henry stopped sweeping. “Shall we go look for it?” Without waiting for an answer, he went for the shovel.

They headed downstream, nearly jumping out of their skins when wood ducks flushed from beneath a low branch. Edward watched them fly until they made a sharp turn and disappeared. He pointed to the bend in the creek.

“That must be the big bend William mentioned in his letter.”

As he crossed the creek, Edward looked down at the water rushing past his knees, and it worsened his dizziness.

They climbed the creek bank.

“That must be them.” Henry pointed at three buttonwood trees blazing like sun-bleached skeletons among the dowdy oaks and hemlocks. The largest had a cavernous trunk. “That’s got to be the one he hid the rifle in.”

Edward scuffled through strips of sloughed bark to sit on a downed log. He pressed his palms against his temples and watched Henry crawl inside the tree.

“Can ye see anything?” he asked.

Henry reemerged, spitting and brushing rotten pith and black ants from his neck. “Got something in my eye.”

“I’ll try.” Edward ducked inside the tree, where he saw nothing but dancing stars. He patted the tree’s interior walls, sending a shower of decaying wood onto his face and into his mouth. He spat and coughed and wondered if copperhead serpents hid in hollow trees. The thought set his heart to racing, but he ignored his fear and renewed his search in earnest, inspecting every palpable nook inside the tree. “There’s naught in here.”

Henry’s face appeared at his thigh. “Has to be. This is the place, ten paces from the creek at the big bend.”

Edward felt again, suffering a bout of wooziness and another shower of debris and insects. “Nay, naught.” Something crawled on his arm and he shook it off, praying it wasn’t a poisonous spider.

“Here, use the shovel. Poke it up as far as ye can.”

The shovel’s shaft brushed against his calf, and he drew the tool inside the tree. He rammed it upwards, sending a torrent of rubble down the back of his shirt and inside his moccasins. The shovel struck nothing solid. “It is nae here.” He rubbed his forehead, smearing moist grime on the tender lump there.

What were they going to do without a rifle?

“Stand back.” He kicked shards of bark and peaty soil out of the tree, hoping by some miracle the items lay buried in the decomposing heartwood.

“Hold it,” Henry said outside, “what’s this?”

Edward exited the tree, grateful for fresh air. “It’s a leather bag.”

“I know it’s a leather bag.” Henry opened it, then poured shot and a few musket balls into his hand. He turned away. “Someone got here afore we did.”

Edward threw the shovel to the ground and ripped the bag from Henry’s hand. The bag swirled and grew fuzzy, but he narrowed his vision and stared, as if doing so could somehow transform it into the promised rifle.

No rifle. No way to protect oursel’. No game. No game!

This was disastrous. They were sitting ducks, and they’d soon be hungry sitting ducks.

Nay. We did nae come this far to be killed or starve. The iron. We need the iron.

Edward handed the bag back to Henry. He kicked away the leaves, then retrieved the shovel.

“What are ye doing? Uncle William did nae bury the rifle.”

Edward sank the shovel’s blade into the soft silt. “Nay, but he did bury the iron, and we’re gonny need it, now more than e’er. We can forge spear tips, gigs for fish, and arrowheads. We already have hooks and line. I’ll be damned if we’re gonny go doon wi’oot a fight.”

His stomach rose into his chest, and he stopped to swallow bile.

“Father, we can only fish until the creek freezes o’er.”

“Then we will cut a hole in the ice.” Edward strode to a weeping willow and broke off one of its whip-like branches. “We’ll weave these into fish traps and catch ten at once for drying. We can set snares, too. I did that as a lad in Ulster, when a man could take hares wi’oot being hanged for it, and I still remember how to do it. We’ll do all right, Henry. We’ll make it. Ye’ll see.”

“And we’re gonny do all of this while we plow a field, sow our seed, repair a cabin, build a byre, and gather enough wood to keep us warm through an entire winter . . . all of this under threat of attack from Injuns and the bloody French?”

“Aye, we are, because we do nae have a choice. A mild winter would certainly help. Ye ne’er know, it could happen.”

“Wi’ our luck, it will be the worst winter in history.”

“Have ye a better idea?”

Henry poured the scant lead he still held back into the bag and pulled the cord to close it. “We could go back to Lemuel Tanner’s place and hunt for him in exchange for staying in his barn.”

“And stare at yon lassie’s bare paps all winter long?”

Henry’s face flushed.

Clara Tanner was not particularly attractive, but the memory of the firelight licking her pouting nipples tortured Henry. Edward knew this because of his own shameful torment in thankfully few idle moments. How much worse was Henry’s suffering, that poor lad craving his first taste of a woman?

“Nay.” Henry shifted from one leg to the other. “I could nae bear it.”