Follow the River (4 page)

I’m doubtless a fool, he thought, wasting an hour of good working light just to settle some head-spook Mary gave me.

But when he cleared the end of the woods, he saw smoke rising from among the house roofs, half a mile away. His heartbeat quickened, and he broke into a run up the long meadow, raced through a field of green corn and jumped over a rail fence.

By the time Will reached Casper Barrier’s cabin and saw it burning, he was sure that Draper’s Meadows had been attacked by Indians, though he had not seen any of them yet. He dropped to a crouch and moved with stealth, his pulse pounding in his ears. He crept to a corner of the cabin, hearing the busy crackle of flames inside, and peered around. Now he could see the knot of Indians, milling about in the yard up near his own cabin. There seemed at first glance to be perhaps twenty warriors, Shawnees, judging by their paint and ornamentation, some of them handling the settlement’s horses, other carrying household items out of the cabins and sorting and examining them. They were in high spirits. Will craned and leaned forward, his nape bristling with anger and
the chill of fear as he searched the clearing for a sign of Mary or the children. Then some Indians moved aside and he saw them, the abject little cluster of captives sitting, bound, among pots and kettles and blankets and other booty.

There was Mary; she seemed not to be hurt. She was kneeling on the ground, facing Georgie and Tommy, who sat on the ground near her. Even from this distance, Will could see that the boys’ faces were pallid with fear. There too was Bettie Draper, her head hung far forward. Henry Lenard stood nearby, bound, an armed Indian holding him secure by a neck noose. Will looked for his mother-in-law and for Colonel Patton and Casper Barrier and Bill Preston and Jim Cull, all the other people who had been present at the settlement that morning, but could not see them. Either they had escaped or were lying dead somewhere, he guessed. He edged forward to the door of Casper’s cabin to look in. The most pressing desire in his hammering heart was to get his hands on a gun. Then he could try to imagine what to do next, though there seemed nothing he could do against so large a body of savages. But with a gun he would be a little less helpless …

Two braves emerging just then from the smoky interior of Casper’s house, their arms full of blankets and clothing and utensils, almost stepped on Will. Their eyes bugged and they dropped their loot and yelled. Will turned and bolted back the way he had come.

His feet thudded in the grass. He leaped the rail fence and plunged through the cornfield. He could hear both braves behind him, yipping, their bodies swishing through the corn-leaves as they came after him. He was sprinting with all his power, but they were swift and he was not getting away from them. Bursting out of the corn and pounding down across the meadow, he glanced back and saw them coming, each with a drawn tomahawk.

He realized that he had started running directly toward the place where he had left Johnny Draper, as if Johnny might help him. But Johnny was unarmed, too. Mustn’t lead them onto him, Will thought. He veered to his left, heading toward the wooded gully where he had seen the deer vanish minutes
before. If I can get in there … maybe lose them, he thought. Or at least find a stick to … fight ’em with …

His legs were burning with exhaustion. His breath wheezed. But the Indians’ yells were coming from a little farther back now; he had gained ground here in the open.

He plunged into the moist green shadow at the edge of the wood, down the gully. Leafy limbs lashed at his face and shoulders as he plunged headlong through them like a bullet. He could hear the rustling progress of the Indians in the woods behind him. They seemed to be gaining again.

A huge fallen ash lay on the gully slope across his path. Its great root system jutted up from the hole in the forest floor where it had been anchored. Will had too much momentum to veer around it; instead he leaped to clear the trunk. He did not leap high enough. His foot struck the top of the log and he somersaulted through space. He landed with a grunting thump on his shoulders in a shower of last year’s dead leaves. Before he could regain his footing, the two warriors sped by, around the upturned tree roots and down the gully, disappearing into the underbrush below. They had not seen him!

Will scrambled to his feet and struck off at a right angle from the path of the chase. They would discover soon that he was no longer ahead of them, and they would double back. He would have all he could handle to shake them. Later then he could find Johnny Draper. Then the two of them would …

Would what? They were unarmed. They were helpless to follow and rescue Mary and Bettie and the children from so large a war party. And it would be at least a two-day trip back over the Blue Ridge to raise an armed company to go in pursuit—even if anyone would come …

God, O God Eternal
, big Will Ingles thought as he trotted through the woods, feeling more hopeless and helpless with each step.
God tell me what to do!
In his mind he saw Mary’s comely face and the faces of his boys and the old gray head of Elenor Draper. He knew it was likely that they all would be murdered before this day was out. His entire family! And not a drop of his blood would then pump through any other living heart!

Something kept telling him he should have plunged in among the Indians and fought and died with his family.

He plodded on through the woods, his soul crushed, and soon every step he took jarred a sob of guilt and misery out of him.

The warriors led their train of stolen horses out of the sunlight of the meadows down into the profound humid green shade of the forest and into a creek bed. They went westward in the ankle-deep water, which washed away their trail at once.

In bundles on the back of one horse were the bodies of the two braves Colonel Patton had killed with his broadsword. On the horse behind that one, Mary Ingles rode, holding her son Georgie before her. She rode unblinking, in a state of shock, her head wobbling on a limp neck with the horse’s movements. She had hardly heeded the Shawnee chieftain when he had said, in English:

“Mo-ther will ride.”

And they had put her on the horse, and had handed her little boy up to her.

Bettie Draper, in a trance of grief, rode astride the next horse, with Tommy behind her. He sat with his arms around her waist and the side of his face pressed against her back, his eyes glazed. Bettie’s broken right arm hung bloody and untreated at her side.

The other horses were laden with everything the Indians had seen fit to carry away from the burning settlement: tools, clothing, pots and kettles, blankets, guns and ammunition. From the Ingleses’ house they had brought virtually every movable thing except the grandfather clock; they had shied away from its mysterious ticking noise and left it standing by the wall.

Still secured by wrist-thongs and the noose around his neck, Henry Lenard splashed afoot down the stream. The other end of his noose was tied to the baggage on a horse’s back. If he lagged, he would be jerked forward and fall, to be dragged almost under the horse’s hooves. Thus he concentrated on his pace and footing and did not try to speak with Mary Ingles or Bettie Draper. Nor did he try to look back and
see whether their husbands were following. He simply behaved very well, knowing that his life depended on it.

The creek curved around the base of a mountain. After progressing about half a mile, the party emerged into the sunlight in a cleared patch of bottomland. Through the numbness of her soul, Mary Ingles was vaguely aware that this was the little homestead of old Phillip Barger. This brook they had followed, she knew, led to Sinking Creek, whereon Mr. and Mrs. Lybrook lived farther down. And their house was the last they would encounter. At the end of Sinking Creek they would come to the New River, upon which, she knew, no white man lived. Adam Harmon and his sons had a hunting shack and a cornpatch there, but seldom stayed there. There was too much Indian traffic on the New River.

The Shawnees stopped the horses a few yards from Mr. Barger’s cabin, which was little more than a hut. The tall chieftain spoke to two warriors, who vanished into the corn toward the cabin with their muskets at the ready.

Mary suddenly was aware that they were going to attack the old man.

“Mister Barger!” she cried at the top of her voice. “Indians!”
In
 …” her voice was choked off by a strong brown hand at her throat. And as she tried to take in breath through that powerful grip, she saw the snowy-haired old man emerge into the sunlight at his cabin door, blinking, looking around. He did not see the two Indians until they materialized on both sides of him and pinioned his arms.

Then the chieftain called something to them. He drew Colonel Patton’s broadsword from its scabbard, which was lashed to the side of one of the packhorses, and strode through the corn. He stopped in front of the old man and said something to the two braves, who then twisted the old man’s arms up behind him and forced him into a kneeling position, bent so far forward that his silvery forelock almost swept the ground. Holding the broadsword in both hands, the tall Shawnee laid the blade on the back of Philip Barger’s neck for an instant, then raised it.

Mary Ingles shut her eyes and put her hand over Georgie’s face to shield his eyes.

Even at this distance, she heard it, the
swish
of the great blade, then the murmur of the Indians’ voices.

When the chieftain came grinning back to the pack train, he held the bloody sword in one hand. From his other hand hung a cloth bag, stained red, something heavy and round in it. Mary tried not to look at it as the party proceeded down sinking Creek toward the Lybrook house. The warriors were in a cheerful mood now, laughing and chatting, as if the beheading of Philip Barger had fulfilled some last requirement of their bloody mission. Revenge, perhaps, for what another old white man had done to two of their brothers with that same big Scottish sword.

Colonel Patton’s nephew, Captain Bill Preston, was at that moment leaving the Lybrook cabin with Philip Lybrook. They had shouldered the tools they would need to help with the harvest up at Draper’s Meadows, said good-bye to Mrs. Lybrook and her small son John and started up Sinking Creek.

“Now I’d reckon,” said Mr Lybrook, “we’d save us a half hour if we jus’ cut across th’ mountain here. They’s a good path ’crost t’ the Drapers’. If’n y’ don’t mind a wee climb.”

“Lead on, Mr. Lybrook.”

They left the creek bottom and turned into the forest and began a diagonal ascent up the steep mountainside along a well-worn deer path. Sunlight penetrated the oak and maple foliage and dappled the fern-covered slope, the mossy stone outcroppings. The climb quickened their breathing and they talked little.

“And how fares your uncle?” Philip Lybrook said after a while as they labored toward the crest of the ridge.

“As always,” said Preston. “In the best of health and still working like a yoke of oxen.”

“Good. And pray what says ’ee to th’ Indian War?”

“That we hearabouts sh’ll likely never get even a whiff of it … Whoa, now!” They had reached the stony spine of the ridge. Preston pointed toward Draper’s Meadows. “Look ’ee yonder. They’s somethin’ big a-burnin’ there.”

“Aye!” Philip Lybrook began trotting heavily down the
mountain path. “Folly me lively. Might be we can help ’em put it out yet!”

Mrs. Lybrook stepped to her cabin door at the sound of hooves grating on the creekbed gravel. Her son Johnny came running up through the garden looking back fearfully. He grabbed her wrist and dodged behind her skirts to peer out at the Indians and horses that had just halted in the creek.

“God help us,” murmured Mrs. Lybrook. She had caught a glimpse of blue and gray cloth and white faces among the Indian party, and she squinted hard. “They’ve got Bettie and Mary. Oh, God help us!”

Three of the Indians had detached themselves from the group and were coming toward the house. They were smiling and talking cheerfully and seemed not to be armed; but for the sight of their captives, Mrs. Lybrook might have presumed they were friendly.

The tall, lithe warrior leading the trio raised his hand in greeting as he came. His smile was handsome and pleasant despite the parallel streaks of ochre paint across his nose and cheekbones; his teeth were white in his russet face. Mrs. Lybrook stood frozen with fear and doubt, afraid that she would provoke them if she ducked inside for Philip’s gun. And Philip, she thought, dread building inside her: What have they done to my Philip? He and Captain Preston surely would’ve met these savages up along Sinking Creek, aye, but minutes ago.

The chieftain emerged from the garden now and stopped a pace in front of Mrs. Lybrook. He raised a cloth bag darkened with blood and held it up to her. Johnny was quaking so hard he was shaking her.

“Man here you know,” said the Indian, glancing at the laden bag and then back at her eyes. He thrust it closer to her. He wanted her to take it.

Mrs. Lybrook was growing dizzy. All her blood seemed to be draining to her feet; she felt certain at once that the bag contained some grisly remnant of her husband.

Finally the Indian grabbed her arm and thrust the neck of the bag into her hand.

She stood there holding it, holding its awful swinging weight, while the warrior said something to his braves. They shoved past Mrs. Lybrook and her son into the cabin and then came out carrying Mr. Lybrook’s musket and a bag of barley, four big turnips and half a haunch of cooked venison—all the ready food that had been in the house. They spoke to their chieftain and went back toward the horses. Then he raised his hand again, still smiling that mocking smile, and turned away to go after them.

Mrs. Lybrook stood, she knew not how long, holding the bloody bag in her shaking hand, until its weight made her arm ache and she had to do something about it. She clenched her jaw, shut her eyes and prayed a moment for strength, and ordered Johnny to go into the house and wait. She took one last look after the party of Indians and captives, seeing a glimpse of Bettie Draper’s white face turned back toward her just before they vanished into the leafy shadows. Then she opened the bag and peered down into it with God’s name on her lips. She gasped and flung the bag away and sank to her knees in a turmoil of gratitude and horror as the bloody package thumped to the ground and rolled flopping to the garden’s edge.