Original Death (21 page)

“General Amherst doesn't consult with me, sir,” Woolford replied.

“But your conjecture would be better informed than mine.”

Woolford sighed. “Amherst doesn't trust my rangers, doesn't trust the tribal troops, hates the colonials, and curses every time he hears a Highland name. Take your pick.”

As he spoke, Kass appeared carrying a large basket covered with a linen cloth. She silently set it on the table and extracted a wooden plate of sweet biscuits, several chipped china cups, and a copper teapot with steam rising from the spout.

Woolford gave a satisfied sigh. “If I had the strength I would hug you for this, Kassawaya,” he said. She offered a silent smile in reply as she filled the cups.

Sagatchie sipped at his cup with surprising relish.

Woolford grinned at his Mohawk ranger. “I am afraid the baronet has corrupted our friends' simple tastes,” the captain announced with a glance to Johnson. “I saw the list of the first supplies you ordered, Colonel, when you were asked to organize the tribes into auxiliary forces: two hundred blankets, two hundred axes, forty teapots, and four hundred pounds of tealeaf. It sells as dear as bullets in many villages.” He grinned more broadly as Sagatchie drained his cup and refilled it.

Kass poured herself a cup and sat on the edge of a cot, gazing expectantly at Woolford, who shrugged when he met her gaze. “I have no news, Kass. All I know is that the half-king's army is moving with lightning speed. Scores of canoes passed the fort at Oswego in the dark three nights ago.”

They were interrupted by a low whistle from below. Johnson leapt to his feet and shot down the stairs. When he came back up, he moved much more slowly.

“A messenger,” he announced in a grim tone.

Before explaining he stepped to Kass and bent over her, whispering. The woman's face tightened, her eyes flared. She threw her cup against the wall, shattering it into tiny fragments, then dropped her head into her hands.

“It was only a small force the Iroquois Council sent to the Lightning Lodge,” Johnson explained to the others. “The Council has to be careful not to start a whole new war. They tried to defend it. Hurons came from the North and Mingoes from the South. Waves of them, like locusts on trees.” He looked back at Kass with pain in his eyes. “The Iroquois all died, except one taken captive to serve as a messenger. The half-king sent word that the Iroquois must either come to ally with him or come to die.”

Duncan drained his cup and rose. “I would ask that you keep the boy safe here,” he said to Johnson.

“You leave so soon?”

“You said it already. Hetty may be the best intermediary. If Conawago still lives I have to—”

Johnson held up a hand to interrupt. “I'm sorry lad. There's more. The messenger talked with those at the landing. As soon as they heard the news they threw their bags in the canoe. Hetty and the boy left with that big Highlander.”

Chapter Eight

T
he river fought them as they paddled, throwing a constant wind in their faces, as if it did not want the canoe to go deeper into the tribal lands. Duncan dug into the dark water, doing his best to match the strokes of the figure in front of him. He had not at first recognized the woman when she had appeared by the canoe Sagatchie readied. The Oneida maid wore no more calico, only a sleeveless green waistcoat over a long dun-colored shirt and doeskin leggings with strips of fur for garters. Her protective amulet hung between her long black braids. This was not the gentile courtesan of Johnson's household. She was Kassawaya, the untamed Oneida, and she had been transformed by the news of the deaths of her father and brother. On her forehead she had painted two wavy blue lines, the sign of the river, under an arrow, the sign of a warrior. On her back had been a quiver of arrows, in her hand a well-crafted bow.

Sagatchie had stared in confusion when he first saw her. Duncan had been unable to read the flood of emotion that had risen on the Mohawk's face, but he could not mistake the angry tone of his words as he approached the woman, stepping between her and the canoe. The ranger had quickly recovered from his injuries and stood strong and straight, firing questions at her, pointing toward Fort Johnson. The woman had replied to each with
firm, short syllables. Whatever she intended, she would not be dissuaded. Sagatchie's tone had changed from anger to worry, then finally resignation, and he had stepped aside. Kassawaya had helped finish loading the canoe and then settled into the bow.

They had left just after dawn, and there had been no words spoken among them for hours. The three paddled with grim determination, the Oneida woman making no acknowledgement of her companions except to point out an otter that chose to follow them. The creature moved lithely along the canoe, its sleek form often visible just under the surface, effortlessly keeping up with them, finally speeding ahead then rolling over and flipping its tail as though to mock their slowness before diving into the deeps. When it reappeared beside Duncan half an hour later, Kass paused and gazed at it intently as if reading something in the animal's actions, then she cast a long, impatient glance at Duncan, which he could make no sense of.

“You knew her once,” Duncan suggested to Sagatchie as they gathered firewood at their evening camp.

“Her father was the greatest war chief of their clan. Her family would often visit our village. Kassawaya and I would run in the woods together. She still knew how to laugh then. She had four brothers, all fierce warriors. Like my clan, they have a particular feud with the Hurons. Her mother was captured years ago by Hurons and died before they could rescue her. One brother died of a Huron ax blow at the battle of Lake George. Two were killed by Hurons at Fort Niagara. Her father and last brother left her with Johnson for her safety. She was supposed to be married to some Seneca chief.” Sagatchie paused and looked back at the fire where Kass sat cleaning fish they had caught. “It is not for a woman to be a warrior, I told her. It is not the way of our people, I said. We need our women to be safe, in our lodges and at our councils. She told me all her people were dead now, and she would decide her own way.”

When they finally returned to the fire carrying wood, three small trout were spitted over the flames, scant fare for their empty bellies.
Duncan saw no sign of the woman until Sagatchie betrayed her with a small gesture. The Oneida woman stood motionless in a cluster of reeds. As Duncan took a step forward, a duck flushed from the reeds. Kass lifted her bow and loosed an arrow before Duncan even grasped her intentions. The duck fell, an arrow through its neck. The woman turned toward them with a gloating smile, making no effort to retrieve her prey. Sagatchie remained motionless, frowning, in obvious disapproval as the duck floated downstream. In the tribal world she had done the man's work and she now expected Sagatchie to do the woman's. Duncan looked from one to the other in frustration then leapt into the water to fetch the rest of their supper.

FORT STANWICK WAS a hulking shadow as they drifted by in the moonlight. Sagatchie had shaken Duncan awake at midnight and pointed to the canoe, where Kass waited. “If we go before the moon rises high, we will not be seen by the fort,” the Mohawk ranger explained.

Now, as they passed it, the last of the garrisons protecting the settlements, Duncan reconsidered Sagatchie's words. They had not just been an acknowledgment that Duncan was a fugitive. Sagatchie himself did not want to be seen. Sagatchie did not trust the army. There was rot in the regiments, Woolford had said, and men were dying from it.

He found himself watching the outpost, forgetting to paddle. The lanterns hanging at its corners seemed feeble sparks against the dark wilderness beyond. In such moments the grip of the Europeans on the land seemed so frail, an impossible overreaching, an overreaching that Duncan increasingly hoped would fail. Duncan had barely begun to glimpse the depth of the woodland people, but he understood enough to know the Europeans grasped so very little of the wildness and its nations. He recalled Johnson's words: Our mistake is to think of the tribes as cruder forms of ourselves.

THE TRADITIONAL ROUTE into the heartland of the tribes lay over the portage known as the Carrying Place and on through Lake Oneida, but Sagatchie ignored the well-worn landing at the portage, pointing them into the northern arm of the river. The Revelator was in the North. Hetty and Ishmael were going north. Conawago was going north. They were converging on the secret place where spirits died.

The once mighty river became a narrow stream. Several times they portaged around falls, Sagatchie moving quickly each time to see that he and Duncan did the work of carrying the canoe, leaving Kass to bring the packs and rifles, ignoring her when she suggested loading all the equipment in the boat so they could all three carry the load.

At first she seemed amused at being shunned by the Mohawk warrior, but as the day wore on Kass grew sullen. Finally, at the fifth of their portages, she hastened forward to grab the canoe, lifting the vessel with Duncan and leaving Sagatchie to carry the remaining gear. When she dropped her arrow quiver, Sagatchie ignored it. The woman made a low growling sound, and when Sagatchie stepped away from her quiver, she abruptly dropped her end of the canoe and leapt at him with an angry snarl. The packs he carried went flying as she collided with him, knocking him into knee-deep water.

They fought like two angry bears, Kass clearly expecting no quarter because of her sex and Sagatchie giving her none. They disappeared under the water so long Duncan was about to leap after them when Sagatchie emerged coughing up water, dragging a limp Kassawaya onto the bank. But as the tall warrior turned his back, the woman rose and leapt onto him again. They went down on the bank, rolling in the mud, spitting epithets in their native tongue, pausing only for one quick silent moment to gauge each other before Kass flung mud and took up the fight again. Finally Duncan tried to intervene. But as soon as he pulled Kass away, she rolled and jerked him downward so that all three lay in the mud. As Duncan pulled himself up onto his hands and knees, he realized his companions had gone quiet.

He lifted his head to see a moccasined foot before him. Duncan turned over and looked up into the face of a fierce warrior. Then he saw another, then half a dozen more, all with rifles or war axes raised. They were not Iroquois.

Kass snapped a hostile greeting. “
Huron agaya
!” Huron dog! She eyed the quiver laying on the bank. More figures appeared, the last of them two fair-skinned men in kilts.

“I regret to say you are prisoner of the half-king,” the nearest of the deserters declared with a Highland accent. “Though I daresay,” he added with a grin, “you might be better off if we just let you kill yourselves in peace.” His hearty laugh was echoed by the man beside him, then by others, until the entire company was laughing at their mud-covered, helpless prisoners.

THE DELAWARE, A muscular man with a strong, handsome face, had been dying for days. The Huron women who brought them their food made sure Duncan and his companions, tied to posts across from the Delaware, understood the penalty for those who opposed the Revelator. With cruel glee they explained that the man had come from the West with a load of furs, defying the half-king's decree that no more animals of the Ohio lands would be sacrificed for the enrichment of Europeans. The Christian Indian had been given a hearing before the Revelator and had chosen to loudly denounce the Revelator as a false god. He had been condemned to what the half-king's followers called the death of five days.

“Scar!” a woman hissed. The women quickly retreated at the approach of a huge Huron warrior with a face covered with hash marks of deliberately inflicted scars. The hideous pattern twisted with a sneer as the man called Scar declared himself to be the lieutenant of the half-king, then kicked dirt in the Delaware's face and boasted of the man's torture. On the first day the man's knees and ankles had been shattered with stone hammers. On the second children had been allowed to work on his extremities
with knives, slicing away small pieces of flesh, which they fed to the gathering dogs. On the third his toes and ears had been sliced away. On the fourth his fingers had been taken. On the fifth, that very morning, long splinters of wood had been thrust into his body. If he survived to the next dawn, he would be roasted alive. The Huron grinned then kicked the man before marching away.

Such cruelty was the way of some tribes, Duncan knew, but his heart wrenched as he realized the tortured man gazed at him. The post he was tied to was no more than five paces from that of the Delaware, close enough for him to hear the labored breathing and to see that a deep intelligence endured behind the torment in the man's eyes.