The Bold Frontier (36 page)

About noon they stopped to rest and water the herd in a little stream the dry weather had reduced to a trickle in the mud. Noggins pulled off his tall wool hat and swabbed his forehead with his arm. He looked southward, to a great waving expanse of grass.

“See that, Nicky? ’Tisn’t all the wind.” He kept his voice low.

Nick gave a slow nod. “I noticed it a while ago.” Behind them the slaves were shouting at the cows and whacking them with sticks. There was a pronounced ripple in the middle of the savanna, distinct from the movement of the surrounding grass. The ripple worked its way southeast in front of them, like a sea wave. Beyond, some distance on, a smudgy line of trees hooked to the right. Continuing to move in that direction, the ripple seemed to smooth out, fade away.

“Well, they spied us,” Nick said. “They’re in front of us now. They’ll wait till they find a suitable place and a suitable moment.”

Noggins scratched his unshaven stubble. “Want me to tell the others?”

“No.”

“This is a cursed journey, Nicky.”

“That, we and they already know.”

He checked the powder in his pistols before they rode on.

The march continued through the afternoon, without incident. Dusk brought little relief from the heat. They camped in the woods, a dark cathedral of old, gnarled oaks with smaller volunteer pines between them. The air smelled of wet earth and pinesap.

Barbara supervised the fire. Poll and another slave heated the mixture of rice and black beans and served it with some soggy corn bread. Mrs. Thring loudly declined any food and remained in her cart, moaning at regular intervals as if she feared she’d be forgotten.

Nick slid his tinware plate under the bulldog’s snout. Worthless lapped it clean in a trice. Nick smiled, his first smile all day, but rather empty for all that.

Barbara and Poll moved off together to talk. Jelks Wyndham circled the fire, whose heat improved no one’s disposition. Wyndham braced his left side with his cane. He was well armed, a beautiful silver-chased pistol and a fine English knife thrust into the sash of his doublet. He seemed less assured than previously. He quirked his pale eyebrows at the darkening treetops.

“A lot of owls and mockingbirds abroad tonight.”

“Mockingbirds without wings.” Nick drank from a bottle of claret Noggins had provided. Noggins was off walking the perimeter of the rope pens strung for the cattle.

“Will we be attacked?”

“It’s almost a certainty.”

“Any idea as to when?”

“That’s the part that makes for strain. It could be any moment, when we’re awake or when we’re resting. They won’t rest till it’s over. They’ve prepared themselves, you see. Worked themselves up over several days—danced, sung, fasted. I’m sure they’ve swallowed the black drink.”

“What the devil is the black drink?”

“A powerful emetic. It must be mixed by a conjurer. They drink it in preparation for war.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

“Nor have most white men in the colony. That’s why the Indians are stronger than we are. War to them is more than it is to us. To us it’s defense of our thievery. To them it’s defense, and sport, and a holy cause in one.”

“Fortunately, Barbara has no idea of the seriousness of our situation.”

“God, you give her no credit for brains. Of course she does. Your poor mother, too, I expect. They all know you’re willing to sacrifice them for your precious cattle. Well, you aren’t going to sacrifice my partner, or me.”

“Explain the meaning of that, if you please.”

Nick took pleasure in turning his back without answering.

Wyndham spread his blanket near Barbara, who was resting against a wheel of the cart, then laid his pistol on his stomach, his right hand curled around it. He fell asleep almost at once, which only reinforced Nick’s feeling that the man was a worthless fool.

Nick had another bad night. He spelled Noggins on guard duty, walking his tour around the pens for three hours and then collapsing near the remains of the fire, which still cast faint, ruddy light over their clearing. By that dim glow Nick saw eyes shining.

Barbara’s. She was awake.

When their eyes met, she gave him a weary, despairing smile. He tried to grin back in a cocky way, but it was too late for bravado, and the smile was wan; false.

Out in the woods, the owls and mockingbirds conversed.

An hour after they got under way, the skies opened and poured down one of those hot rains typical of Carolina. The roaring shower lasted but a few minutes. In its wake came worse heat, and insects from nowhere, and clouds of steam from the earth. They were following the hooking curve of the forest, running roughly southeast. The dark rampart of woods to their left smelled wet and rank. Little could be seen there except heavy palmetto growth between the taller trees near the perimeter.

Nick crossed a stream the rain had temporarily replenished. He felt the mud of the streambed under his horse but gave it little thought, all his attention fixed on the path ahead. It snaked through tall grass along the edge of the forest.

Suddenly, behind, Jelks Wyndham yelled, “Whip the ox. Make him move.”

Nick looked back; cursed. Mrs. Thring’s cart had rolled into the stream and its off wheel was sunk to the hub. The ox, already on the near bank, strained against the yoke. The steeply tilted cart rose slightly but wouldn’t pull free. Mrs. Thring, thrown against the side of the tilted cart, wailed and thrashed about. Wyndham rode into the stream and began to beat the ox with his fancy stick. Nick turned his horse around, shouting, “Huger, lend me a hand.”

In a moment his sweating partner rode up from the other side of the stream. Nick was already dismounted. Noggins jumped down and, behind the screen of his wool hat, whispered, “They’re coming. They’re close. Behind us now, I think. Following in the woods.”

“Help me push the wheel.”

“There isn’t room for two to work. Let me try by myself.”

Nick didn’t argue. The round little man walked into the stream, backed against the mired wheel, lowered his body just a little, then reached behind with both hands to seize the wheel’s rim. “When I give the word, Wyndham, hit the ox. Not before.”

Wyndham slapped his cheek. The crushed insect left a bloody spot. He glared at Noggins, then at Nick, as if the bite, and all his problems, were somehow their fault.

Short hairs on Nick’s forearms itched unmercifully. Something was about to happen; every sensibility cried the alarm. He twisted around to look at the cattle but saw no problems there. The herd had stopped short of the stream, some animals cropping grass while the slaves fearfully eyed the woods or the empty savanna stretching away. A hot, airless vista, but nothing dangerous to be seen.

Yet Nick’s nerves were screaming.

Noggins clenched his jaws. His face turned dark as a ripe apple. He shuddered. He shut his eyes. Vessels in his neck thickened under his skin. His forehead seemed to bulge. His lips peeled back from his teeth as the sunken side of the cart rose a little, pulled up out of the mud by his immense strength and will.

“Now, Wyndham. Hit!”

Wyndham was a trifle slow, but he beat the ox as instructed. The ox lunged against the yoke. Noggins made a noise, or Nick thought he did, but it was peculiar—shrill, like a cry of fright. The mired wheel rose and the ox hauled the cart onto the bank, where Nick was now remounting.

“
Nick!
” He saw Barbara, wildly waving. He understood then. He had heard someone other than Noggins. He wheeled his horse around. It was a slave who’d cried out. The man was vainly trying to keep his seat on his horse while clutching one hand around the shaft of the arrow that was sunk deep in his shirt bosom, where a red flower of blood had bloomed. Nick pulled a pistol from its holster.

Wyndham was paying no attention. He was dismounted, reaching through the cart rails to comfort his distraught mother. The cattle were moving, the leaders starting to run south, over the savanna, away from the trees. Painted Indians were pouring out of the forest behind them. Perhaps twenty of them. Worthless began to bark and snarl and run in circles in the grass.

The slave struck by the arrow slid slowly out of sight. The Indians ran among the other slaves with arrows nocked, lances poised, hatchets raised. They stabbed and lanced the slave horses indiscriminately. A few of the Indians had firearms. An old snaphaunce boomed. Nick ducked low; heard the lead whisper by.

The cattle began to stampede with mad bellowing. Nick charged his horse toward Barbara. “Into the trees. The trees! We need cover.” He rammed his horse against hers to get her going. She responded quickly, booting her mount ahead and plunging into the woods. Noggins caught his horse, but the rope bridle broke and the animal ran off. Holding the pistol barrel in his teeth, Nick dragged Noggins up behind him as the Indians split into two groups, the nearer flowing toward the whites while the others chased cows on foot and brought the slower ones down with lance or hatchet.

Wyndham couldn’t prise his mother out of the cart. She was wailing and hanging on to the rails. He abandoned her and rode for the woods. “Blessed Jesus,” Noggins exclaimed.

He jumped off Nick’s horse and loped back to the cart. With fisted hands he hammered Mrs. Thring’s fingers until she let go of the rails. Then he pulled her out, lifted her not inconsiderable bulk to his shoulder, and staggered toward the trees.

Nick quickly positioned his horse between Noggins, who was faltering under his load, and the Indians charging toward them from the other side of the stream. He laid his pistol across his left elbow, aimed, and drew the hammer back. He compensated as best he could for the dancing of his horse. The pistol fired, spewing smoke into his face. One of the feathered Indians fell, a great chunk missing from his right shoulder.

Noggins reached the cover of the gloomy woods. Nick was riding right behind, with Worthless practically underneath. He could no longer see Barbara, or Wyndham. The palmettos grew high and thick in here, concealing whoever might be moving behind their cover. Riding was difficult; Nick jumped down off his horse.

“Barbara?”

“Here.” She was some distance away, and the noise of Indians moving back into the forest, rattling the underbrush, made it hard to fix her location precisely.

Noggins was already out of sight. There was noise in the tall palmettos directly in front of Nick. His heart was beating hard. A sickening sense of doom enveloped him. “Huger? Where are you? We must stay together.”

The palmettos parted and an Indian leaped out: a Yamassee wearing feathers, with yellow and ocher slashes on his cheeks and his sweating breast. While Nick grabbed his second pistol, the Yamassee raised his blunderbuss and aimed at Nick’s face. A shattering explosion followed. For an instant Nick wondered why he felt no pain; no impact from the ball. The Yamassee’s mouth opened wide. His eyes grew round and he swayed forward. As Nick started to leap back the Indian fell on him; the Indian’s blunderbuss fetched him a hard blow on the temple.

The Yamassee fell into his arms like a lover. On the Indian’s bare back blood flowed over the yellow paint slashes. A step away, shaky, Noggins blew out the muzzle of his empty pistol.

“Him or you,” Noggins said as his justification for a shot in the back.

Nick lowered the dying Indian to the ground. A welter of sounds filled the woods. Mrs. Thring crying out; the attackers thrashing among the palmettos and yipping like dogs; Worthless snarling back; a sustained shrieking which Nick took for one of the blacks being tortured. In the distance, the cattle lowed; the sound was receding. Wyndham’s property was in flight.

“Where are the others, Huger?”

“Nearby, but scattered.”

“Let’s find Barbara first, then we—”

Two Yamassee leaped out of the brush to their left. Noggins dived for the fallen blunderbuss, an action which saved him from a lance through the chest. The lance sailed over his head. Noggins seized the blunderbuss by the bell muzzle and swung it against the head of the lance thrower, stunning him.

The other Yamassee leaped at Nick with his scalp knife swinging. Nick rammed his left elbow under the Indian’s jaw, pushing upward. Worthless shot into view and began to savage the Indian’s leg like a joint of meat.

Face to face, the adversaries struggled. The Indian shot his knife hand up to strike. Nick shifted his left hand and caught the wrist in the air. The Yamassee’s bare belly was exposed. Nick snatched his own long knife from his belt; buried it halfway to the hilt.

Spurting blood hit him. The Indian crumpled. Worthless continued to worry his leg until Nick called him off.

Noggins gestured urgently. Nick lurched after him into the palmettos. The shrieking was nearer. Through a break in the brush Nick saw old Poll on his knees, running blood making his face a redbrown mask. He was being scalped alive, from behind, by two Indians.

Nick ran to try to save the old man. The Indians saw him coming. One plunged the bloody scalp knife into Poll’s back and grinned. Old Poll toppled forward, dead before he sprawled onto the ground. Nick screamed and lunged at the Indians, his long knife raised. They fled.

Noggins grabbed Nick’s sleeve and dragged him ahead to a small open area carpeted with damp, decaying leaves. There, two of their party had abandoned themselves to their fate: Jelks Wyndham, leaning against a live oak with another, smaller pistol in hand; and Barbara, behind the tree, for what scant cover it afforded. One pale hand hugged the bark; only half her face was visible.

When she saw Nick her eyes grew as round as the eyes of the Indian Noggins had shot. Her mouth opened in an O of horror. Nick glanced down. She was staring at his blood-soaked leggings.

“Wyndham, where’s your mother?” It had come to Nick that Mrs. Thring’s cries had stopped.

Wyndham’s fine, fair hair straggled in his face. His linen blouse was torn and soaked with sweat. Waving, he said, “Out there somewhere, I don’t know.”

“Look sharp, Nicky,” Noggins yelled. Nick spun as an Indian with an old fowling piece ran into the clearing. Nick’s eyes flew wide. So did the Indian’s. Tattooed dragons raged on the Indian’s muscular arms.