The Legend of Tyoga Weathersby (14 page)

The night was completely still. The night birds stayed their nervous chatter. The crickets quelled their incessant buzz. The fire stopped spitting ash. Nothing moved.

Tyoga’s eyes lit with the spark of an idea. “Sunlei, I’m gonna take the blanket off of us. Don’t move. Just sit still. Let’s let him get a good look at us.”

“Ha-wa,” she replied.

The wolf tensed and stepped back when Tyoga slowly removed the blanket from around them. “It’s okay, Ditlihi. It’s only us.”

Emboldened by the wolf holding his ground, Sunlei sat up on her knees and leaned towards the tentative animal. Reversing his slow retreat, he stepped closer to the fire. He sniffed the air again, and sat down two steps away from them.

Tyoga wrapped the blanket around the two of them. “He’s okay, Little One.” He picked up a stick and stirred the fire into a gentle, hot burn.

The wolf stood up, circled twice, and then stopped to face the trail leading up to summit rock from the south. His ears piqued and he sniffed the air. The scent flared his nostrils, and his eyes burned with the sensation of the night. Nervous, anxious, and filled with life, he circled once more and lay down in the direction of the pungent signals that would not let him rest. He turned his massive head to look at them one more time before placing it on his forepaws. He did not close his eyes.

Tyoga and Sunlei turned their eyes skyward to gaze up the stars.

“A-silo, gitsi.” She got up and walked into the woods beyond the fire’s light.

Tyoga watched her emerge from the woods.

The moonlight danced off of her naked breasts. Her skin glowed in the light of the fire.

He had prepared their bed and was lying on his back covered with a soft black bearskin blanket.

Completely at ease with her nakedness, she knelt beside him and giggled when she lifted the blanket to see that he too was naked, and very much ready to forge the bond of a committed couple.

It was well after midnight before they fell asleep in each other’s arms.

The Shawnee warriors camped on the overlook down the south trail were still wide awake.

Chapter 13

The Spirit Dog

T
yoga awakened to the first drops of rain and the steel gray skies of a gloomy Appalachian morning. Nestled in the rocky crags of Summit Rock, they had been protected from the light drizzle that preceded the storm. Without the brilliant sunshine that usually flooded the mountain peaks to wake them at dawn, they had slept later than was their usual custom.

Sunlei was startled awake by Tyoga’s hand covering her mouth. Bringing a finger to his lips, he indicated for her to be quiet. She heard the voices, too. So muffled at first that they were unable to discern any words. As the voices grew louder, they looked at each other with eyes wide with fright. The voices were speaking an Algonquin dialect that while unfamiliar to them both, conveyed a meaning that they clearly understood. Shawnee. Tyoga did not have to explain what it would mean if they were found alone on the summit of Mount Rag by a Shawnee hunting party.

It would be horrible. Especially for Sunlie.

The Shawnee had been driven out of the upper Ohio valley by the Iroquois in the 1660s. The Cherokee allowed one clan of the Shawnee to settle in South Carolina to serve as a buffer between them and the Catawba tribe with whom they had been feuding over a political rebuke. Another Shawnee clan was permitted to locate in Tennessee to serve a similar purpose with the Chickasaw. But the Iroquois were fierce warriors and extremely protective of their lands. The transgression that caused them to chase the Shawnee from neighboring territory had never been forgiven, and the Iroquois pursued the Shawnee deep into Cherokee territory. The raids were brutal and cruel. Crops and lodges were destroyed, men and boys were tortured and killed, and the women and girls were taken by the Iroquois to serve as slaves and concubines.

Because the raids occurred on Cherokee lands, the Amansoquath were quickly drawn into the skirmishes with the Iroquois. Many Cherokee braves died fighting side by side with the Shawnee against the marauding tribe from the north. The bonds of battle secured the peace and friendship between the Shawnee and the Cherokee nations for years.

In the late 1680s, there was fierce competition between the French and the English for vast tracts of land in the New World. Bribery and treachery were common tools of diplomacy in the claiming of lands. Neither the French nor the English were above pitting tribe against tribe if the outcome suited their purpose.

In the early 1690s, the Shawnee aligned themselves with the British, and the treaties struck between them were codified with the exchange of money, whiskey, and guns. When commodities for which the English were willing to trade began to lose their caché, the Shawnee devised a plan to acquire a new line of goods for which they were certain the English would gladly trade, Indian women.

In 1692, while the men of Tessuntee were away on a winter hunting trip, a rogue party of Shawnee dog soldiers raided the village, killed the male children, and captured the women and girls as slaves to trade with the English. The cowardly raid on the unprotected village destroyed any trust or friendship that existed between the Cherokee and the Shawnee. From that day on, the Shawnee took their place alongside the Iroquois as the sworn enemies of the Cherokee nation.

When Tyoga was certain that the voices he heard were Shawnee, he was frantic to get off the summit of Mount Rag. He had good reason to flee in haste. The Shawnee were fierce warriors, whose cruelty in battle was legendary. War parties were known to fillet captured warriors alive, beginning with their thighs. Their adversaries would die in agony as they watched their captors cook their flesh and dine on it for their evening meals. Those prisoners who endured the savage torture without screaming were rewarded with a quick death after the meal by having their throats cut. Those who could not contain their suffering were left alive—limbs stripped of meat down to the bone—to suffer for hours on end.

While Tyoga hurriedly kicked sand and dirt on the dying embers in the fire pit, Sunlei put on her doeskin tunic and boots, and gathered up their blankets and supplies.

When she was getting to her feet, her hand went to her chest to grasp the sacred amulet she wore around her neck. Her eyes were wide with despair when she looked up at him and whispered, “My amulet. Ty, it’s gone. I took it off last night when we—I can’t leave this place without my amulet.” The totems contained in Sunlei’s amulet pouch were powerful medicine. The objects had been given to her at milestones in her life and they were imbued with the power to protect and guide her through life’s journey. To leave without it was unthinkable.

Tyoga understood its importance. “Where could it be?”

On her hands and knees, she searched the ground next to where she had slept. “It has to be right here. Ty, help me look. Quickly!” She felt his hand on her shoulder. She looked up into his eyes and he motioned for her look down at the ground. The prints of the commander were clearly stamped into the wet sand next to where she had been sleeping. “Ty, the wolf?”

The voices and laughter of the Shawnee braves were getting louder. They were rapidly making their way to Summit Rock. Unaware of the prize that awaited them at the summit, they approached the campsite with casual indifference. They were but moments away.

Leaving all of their supplies behind, Tyoga snatched Sunlei by the wrist and raced from the summit with reckless abandon. They had not gotten a hundred yards down the mountain when they heard the voices of the Shawnee braves replaced with bloodthirsty war cries.

Discovered, they ran for their lives.

The light drizzle to which they had awakened was but the harbinger of a fierce storm moving in from the west. As the shower turned into a steady rain, Tyoga could tell that the storm’s intensity was growing rapidly.

In the mountains, gullies and hollows serve as conduits to channel the force of colliding air masses into winds of unimaginable power. The currents build from the valleys below to pick up speed as atmospheric pressures crush the massive volume of air against the upward slopes of the mountainside. Like tributaries of a mighty river adding their contents to the downstream flow, each ravine contributes its volume in turn until the tons of pressure force the wind up and over the mountain peaks in a thunderous roar.

From the higher elevations, Tyoga could hear the roar begin miles away and thousands of feet below as a sound akin to that of muffled canon fire. They both felt the need to pop their ears. With the pressures bearing down from miles up in the atmosphere, Mount Rag felt like a mountain thousands of feet taller.

When he heard the first torrent begin its crescendo from below, Tyoga knew that they were only minutes away from being immersed in a power so violent that it would be impossible for them to continue their frantic charge down the mountain. The deafening roar that would engulf them would be so intense that they wouldn’t be able to hear one another no matter how loudly they screamed.

The Shawnee would face the same challenges.

With the storm’s help—Tyoga and Sunlei would have a chance. With the wind whipping the trees in violent convulsions to distort direction and distance, and the deafening roar blocking out the sound that gives away prey, they had the cover necessary to make an escape.

But Tyoga would have to make a bold and daring move.

The terrain on either side of the trail was rocky, muddy, and terribly steep. If they stayed on the trail, the Shawnee warriors would be sure to overtake them. They would make him watch while they raped and ravaged Sunlei before they tortured him to death. It was too horrific to even contemplate.

Leaving the trail to brave the naked raw terrain of the mountainside was a risk that he was willing to take.

They galloped another two hundred yards down the trail, and with an animal-like bound—pulling Sunlei like a soaking blanket—Tyoga dove into the forest to leave the trail behind them.

The wind let out a thundering roar as it raced towards them at incredible speed.

Jumping over a downed giant pine, he tucked Sunlei between the ground and the trunk of the tree just as the first blast of wind hit the summit. Like buffalo stampeding over the western plains, the earth shook when the force of the raging wind crushed the tops of thirty-foot saplings to the ground. The explosive fury of massive century old trees cracking in two added a lightening bolt dimension to the violence of the storm. Dirt and leaves filled the air with a blinding shrapnel that disoriented and confused.

Tyoga heard the party of Shawnee shouting while trying desperately to keep track of each other and refocus the chase. He raised his head above the trunk of the enormous pine to see where the braves were on the trail. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash in the underbrush. It bound straight up the side of the mountain at a speed that rivaled the wind.

He grabbed Sunlei by both arms and screamed, “Sunlei, grab my shirt. Don’t let go no matter what happens. Just hang on. We’re gonna move fast. We’re goin’ straight down this mountain.”

She clutched the tail of his shirt and he took off down the mountain.

Another salvo started to build in the valley. As the roar increased, growing louder and louder as it flowed up the mountain slopes, he did not stop to hunker down to take the blast. They had to keep moving.

The Shawnee were right behind.

Before the blast exploded overhead, they heard a horrifying scream above and behind them. The roar of the wind drowned it out.

Unsure of what to make of the distant cry, they stopped for just a moment to look into each other’s eyes. The pause was but for an instant. They had to continue the run for their lives.

While walking speed is increased when traveling down a mountain trail, the degree of difficulty in traversing the terrain isn’t diminished in the least. Climbing down uses different muscles than climbing up, and those used going down aren’t nearly as strong.

Blinded by the wind and the rain, and with no trail to point the way, Sunlei and Tyoga tripped and slid their way down the treacherous slopes. They stumbled over downed trees, roots jutting out from the black wet loam, and rocks greased with a thin film of mossy slime. The branches whipping in the wind lacerated their face and arms, and their hands were bloodied by the bark of trees and jagged rocky outcroppings they used to brace themselves while sliding towards the valley below.

Running more on instinct than visual cues, Tyoga kept moving down. Down.

Sunlei held tight to his shirt. Wherever he could, he would hoist her over obstacles too large for her to handle on her own. Yet, she was strong and held her own.

In another hundred yards, they would be far enough down the slope so that the wind would no longer explode overhead. Once the wind subsided, he would be able to listen. Since hearing the terrifying screams, he had lost track of the Shawnee. He didn’t know if they were still following them.

He stopped long enough to turn around and look at Sunlei. Her eyes were frantic and she was breathing hard. He knew that she would not complain, and would do nothing to slow them down, but she couldn’t go on much longer.

Not hearing anyone behind them, and with the fierceness of the storm abating, he sat her down on a rock to rest. In the fog and haze that had descended upon the mountain, he gently touched his forehead to hers.

“Are they still following us?” she asked in between gasps for air.

“I don’t know.” He was breathing equally hard. “I don’t know how they could track us in this storm.”

“Ty, what will happen if they catch us? We can’t let them catch us, Ty. They’re Shawnee. You know what that means.”

“I know. I know, Sunlei. Just be quiet now. Let me think.”

Sunlei could tell that he was worried, and she understood his shortness with her.

They remained silent in the driving rain, the buffeting wind, the cold and the fog.

They were getting their breath and bearings when they heard the sound of someone—or something—stumbling through the brush. Whatever, or whoever, was still following them was moving very slowly. Unsteady. Stumbling. It wasn’t clear which direction the person, or animal, was headed. Whatever was there—out of sight in the woods—was too close for them to be able to make another run down the mountain without being overtaken.